Film, TV, Advertising and Games composer services from Ithaca Audio
We were recently asked by Berlin production company Moist Creation to create all the audio for their new animation for Red Bull. This included sound design for each of the different scenes in the video and music to tie the whole piece together.
Here is the video with just the sound design elements:
Loud noises attract our attention and these days adverts and brands are screaming at us from every angle to take notice. Consumers are overloaded, so it’s time to look at some slightly more cunning ways to get the attention of the public and get your message out there using the power of audio.
These tips will give you some insight into some creative ways of using audio to get people’s attention and will also dip into the science behind ‘attention grabbing’ sounds along the way.
The very nature of sound vibration is that it loses energy over time, meaning almost all sounds start loud and get quieter. Hitting a gong, plucking a string, dropping your keys, with all these noises you instantly get sound that then dies away at varying rates. Our brain is used to this, play a sound backwards and our brain focuses on the sound trying to work out what is happening.
Here is an example recording, the sound of a radiator being hit.
Normal
[audio:http://www.ithacaaudio.com/uploads/Radiator.mp3]
Reverse
[audio:http://www.ithacaaudio.com/uploads/RadiatorReverse.mp3]
Our ears have evolved to amplify certain frequencies. Your outer ear and your ear canal act as an amplifier boosting the signal where you need it most. This is centered around the human speech frequencies, which if you think about it makes sense. Humans have become the dominant species through the abilty to communicate with each other and it is only natural that we should have evolved to easily hear each other speak. The frequencies that the ear focuses on most are between 300hz and 3khz and this is one of the reasons why the bassist in a band gets less solos that the guitarist.
Here is an example from our news themes post:
Normal
[audio:http://www.ithacaaudio.com/uploads/NewsThemeShort.mp3]
Here we have just the 300hz-3Khz frequencies. While the sound is not as full you can still distinguish the instruments and the melodies fairly easily.
[audio:http://www.ithacaaudio.com/uploads/NewsThemeShortBandPass.mp3]
This time the 300hz-3Khz frequencies have been removed making it much harder to distinguish the important information about the audio.
[audio:http://www.ithacaaudio.com/uploads/NewsThemeShortBandNotch.mp3]
The audio equivalent of an M.C. Escher drawing, psycho-acoustic effects confuse your brain. Take the Shepard Tone for example, it is a sound that appears to be constantly rising with no end point:
[audio:http://www.ithacaaudio.com/uploads/Shepard%20Tone.mp3]
Silence is a very powerful tool in the audio arsenal. Again, much of the effect of silence on our attention stems from evolution.
Naturally the world is quite a noisy place and sudden silences are often an indicator of danger in the form of predators. As a successful species humans have evolved to take a particular interest in avoiding being eaten. As such our ears are always on, even when we sleep and our brain is constantly processing the input. It is very good at identifying sudden changes in audio that could be dangerous to us.
Much of the time our brain is ‘passively’ listening to the sound all around us, blocking out the everyday noises (traffic, computer fans, wildlife etc.) that are of no danger to us. When our brain very rapidly switches to actively focus on a particular sound this really grabs the attention of all our other senses. Load noises are a good example of this but often overlooked is the effect of sudden silence which in many cases can be much more interesting.
Here is a piece of music created by Ithaca Audio that focuses on the change in volume between loud and soft sounds to create tension in the listener:
Last but certainly not least is quality. High definition, well recorded or created sounds just get our attention. Any of the attention grabbing tricks mentioned above will be dampened by bad quality audio. Wherever possible steer clear of low quality encoding such as mp3. Where small file sizes are necessary try looking at some of the lossless audio codecs such as mp3HD, FLAC and Apple Lossless. If size and compatibility absolutely demand mp3 then encode it at the highest quality settings that you can.
An interesting new advert from HP, promoting their Beats Audio system. The advert features Plan B (who recently won three Ivor Novello awards) de-constructing the composition of his hit single ‘She Said’.
Ithaca Audio was asked to compose a sonic logo for the global asset management company Schroders. The audio makes use of very organic instrumentation and composition techniques to give a natural yet modern feel to the visuals.
Following up from Evian’s Roller Babies spot a couple of years ago, agency BETC Euro RSCG have created this:
The online version features a great sound track in the form of the DJ Mehdi and Uffie cover of Tom Tom Club’s Wordy Rappinghood. The TV version apparently uses a remix of Rapper’s Delight, slightly less original but probably more suited to the ‘offline’ audience.
Directed by Legs, who have previously worked for La Roux, Florence and the Machine and brands such as Sony, Diesel and Coca-Cola.
Art Director: Agnès Cavard
Copywriter: Valérie Chidlovsky
Ithaca Audio was recently asked to compose and produce the music for a new spot for the Jenny Craig company.
The aim was to reflect the friendly vibe of the advert in the music by producing a piece that was upbeat, organic, modern but not too intrusive.
This new ad for VW has been doing the rounds today. Created by Deutsch LA and making great use of John Williams’ iconic Imperial March from Star Wars. A great idea from the creative team involved and John Williams’ music always creates a great impact on screen.
Director/Copywriter: Eric Springer
Group creative director/Art director: Michael Kadin
Associate creative director/Copywriter: Jim DiPiazza
Associate creative director/Art director: Mark Peters
Copywriter: Matt Sherman
Art director: Paul Oberlin
Director of integrated production: Vic Palumbo
Senior producer/Music supervisor: Marisa Wasser
director/DP Lance Acord via Park Pictures, Bicoastal/London, with executive producer Jackie Kelman Bisbee and Mary Ann Marino, line producer Patricia Frazier, head of production Dinah Rodriguez, production designer Jeff Mann and costume designer Melinda Eshelman
An interactive advert with an accompanying audio recognition App for the iPhone is to start airing tonight on Channel 4 and ITV. The advert allows viewers who have downloaded the ‘Honda Jazz – This Unpredictable Life’ iPhone App to ‘catch’ the characters from the advert using audio recognition and motion detection.
See the App in action
It’s great to see agency Wieden+Kennedy continuing their run of quality adverts for Honda with another ad that makes excellent use of audio, in this instance for tracking the advert and enabling an interactive element.
It would be good to see this open a gateway to more interactive elements in advertising and sound is the perfect medium to use for these kinds of features.
The music to the ad was written by the French composer Bruno Coulais. Coulais is probably best know for his score to the film Coraline for which he one an Annie Award in 2009. The score he has produced for This Unpredicatble Life matches the visuals extremely well giving it a light, playful, fantasy feel. He has also recently been nominated for a Cesar award for Best Original Soundtrack for his score to Disney’s documentary Oceans.
You can find Bruno Coulais’ music on Spotify
Agency: Wieden+Kennedy
Creative Directors: Chris Groom & Sam Heath
Production company: Nexus Productions
Directors: Adam Foulkes & Alan Smith
Thanks to @harrison_katie from W+K for the info and well done to the team on the ad.
Following on from the post last week on advert music, a current advert well worth looking out for is the new Ford Grand C-Max spot. With music created by electronic artist Si Begg the advert really stands out for it’s innovative concept and well matched audio.
The team behind the advert also put together a ‘making of’ video with commentry from Director Asif Mian: Making of ‘In your hands’
Credits
Agency: Ogilvy
Creative Director: Camilla Herbertstein
Production: Stink UK and 1stAveMachine
Director: Asif Mian
Composer: Si Begg