Weekly Broadcasting and Podcasting

For the broadcasting class at AI I had the privilege to lead a team of students to create weekly radio broadcasts.  Each broadcast had a certain amount of advertisements needed as well as new content every week based on our format that we chose.  For my team we chose comedy radio play style piece about a team of audio engineers stuck in space, and the adventures that they went on.  We had to create scripts for the ads and for the play weekly, and the amount of time we had to broadcast grew each week as well.  It took a couple weeks to really get everyone on the team involved and working smoothly, but when we hit our stride we got better and better in all aspects.  It was great to help lead the team in a creative direction, as well as watching us grow together as a team.  We spent a lot of time each week making sure everything was top quality, and at a rapid pace.  There were many strict deadlines which we had to meet, and as we went on it got easier and easier to meet those requirements.  Working with fellow students and voice actors was great to add a unique flair to our piece.  It was probably the most intense 6 weeks of recording that I’ll have at the art institute but it was really important for developing core skills and attention to detail, as well as team work aspects as well.  The use of memory locations within Pro Tools was key for our timing and our success at filling in enough time each week.  While it was highly challenging at times it was also a lot of fun.

Live Sound Recording

 I got to help out some fellow audio students record a live band over at the 702 Lounge just off the strip.  It was really great getting to collaborate with both audio and video students to make a complete, and really nice looking project.  The band we recorded was great and had a variety of instruments from trumpet, to piano, bass, drums, and vocals from the female lead and backup vocals from the trumpet player. They played a mix of jazz and rock songs as well as some original tracks as well. We got there just before the band started so we could set up.  It was a fairly simple set up for the group. We used a DAR to record all of our audio and get our levels, and we used the Rode NT-5 pair set up on opposite sides of the stage to get the proper stereo width of the performance. We then set up a pair of Shure SM-57’s in the back by where we were recording to capture the proper room tone as well as audience sounds.  The thing that took the longest was getting the levels set up properly to capture the bands sound, but once we had that dialed in it was all about getting a good mix during the songs.  My teammates and I took turns mixing songs and getting the level correct for each song the band performed.  After the concert we broke down and then it just took a little touch up in Pro Tools to get the proper sound and to sync the performance to the video we captured.  I’m really happy with how the project turned out.

Location Sound and Video Editing

This is from a group project that I helped work on several quarters ago during my Field Sound Production class.  It was a short film that a fellow classmate had already come up with the script for.  We shot it on a location off campus and I did some boom operation while the filming was going on.  There were two of us doing boom, one for each character to make sure they got the clearest sound quality.  Adding those tracks with the ambience of the camera audio really added to the feel of the piece.  I edited the piece for continuity, which was difficult at times because our shooting was on a tight schedule, so piecing together the script from only a couple takes of each line made it fairly difficult.  I mainly achieved success through using a lot of reaction shots as opposed to just showing each person talking back and forth.  I used a couple sound cuts, as loud sounds are made it really helps make the cut more invisible and flow with the emotion of the piece.  Color correcting for this piece was a lot of fun, and I chose to make it black and white to match a classic mob movie piece.   It was great adding a little bit of film grain in there as a top layer on it to give it the extra spice it needed.  From there I found music beds which were appropriate for the style of shoot we were doing.  It ended up turning out much better than what I originally thought. 

Music Composition for Video

This is a shot of me doing some work in the studio for my Music Scoring for video.  I started out recording live instruments such as guitar, bass, and some acoustic drums.  I used some fairly basic processing using such preamps as the Avalon 737, which adds nice analog warmth to any recording.  From there I added in some different synthesizer patches within Pro Tools to add more layers.  I used a drum machine to add some extra effects to the drum tracks.  I recorded my micro korg as well to have more control over my synth sounds.  Any other instruments such as horns I used my micro korg as a midi controller to punch in the horn instrumentation.  Getting the right reverb on each track to add proper depth and space was very important as well.  The important part was getting the music to add the necessary emotional effect to the video.  Using volume automation I was able to add the necessary dynamic quality to add the punch I desired.  Besides that it just came down to using my vast knowledge of music theory to compose a chord progression and melody that fit along with the piece.  I layered in some different sound effects to add to the mix in slight layers.  This adds greater depth to the mix especially when listening on a nice pair of headphones.  Getting the drums to mesh properly took a good amount of EQ-ing as well as some light compression to get everything to resonate properly and also cut through the mix.  Rhythm helps drive the piece forward to add the exact flair to my video piece.  Adding this music to my film really helped jump the effectiveness of the overall piece soar above and beyond.