Yup, it’s Autumn. Harvest time. Soon, the markets will fill with apples, potatoes, squash, pumpkins and things like those funky little gourds.
Sadly though, our own Gordo won’t be filling the radio airwaves this October as our beloved Minnesota Twins spiraled away like so many maple leaves – getting raked up, bagged and deposited 17 games out of first in the A.L. Central. Ouch.
Despite the fact that we won’t get a chance to see Johan Santana striking out Vladdy Guerrero until sometime next Spring – there’s still some interesting hardball on the way. So, while you’re fine tuning your “Jeter Sucks” rally, and reassuring yourself with salves like, “at least the White Sox didn’t get in” we thought we might review one of the highlights of the Twins season – their radio ad campaign that we worked on with Periscope right here at Babble-On Recording.
Not only is the “This Is Twins Territory” campaign of radio spots pretty funny – consistently so, in fact – it’s also unique in how it caused us to approach the production process in a different and creative way . Unlike a typical recording session (where a voice-over talent will come in and read a script they’ve most likely never seen) – Bill Woodson, the longtime voice for this campaign, receives a scratch VO track recorded by Tom Witkowski, the writer for these spots. So, before ever stepping into the voice-over booth, Bill has a pretty good idea of what Tom is hoping to achieve.
Here’s the scratch voice-over for the spot that would become “Walleye”
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While it’s not exactly a lined shot to center (more like a pop-up with the infield fly rule in play), it does communicate a rhythm, cadence, and style as well as some pronunciation guidelines. Frankly it’s a pretty big cost saver. Here’s what Bill gave us once he got behind the mic –
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Tells you a lot about Bill’s interpretation skills, yes? But, even with that killer delivery, the final nugget that brings the spots together is finding the most bombastic, pretentious and overblown music tracks that we can. It seems that everytime we pump up the absurdity, it only heightens what we mix with Bill’s illustrious voice-over style.
In general, the majority of the spots in this campaign are meant to humanize the players – making them approachable as people, characters and ambassadors of the game. Considering the reality that some salaries now equal the GDP of a few Third World Countries, and that steroids, questionable off-field behavior and tainted records have become the fools fodder filling the screens of reporters laptops – the campaign is quite refreshing.
Tom said “Baseball is all about fun…the Twins realize that, and everything they do they want it to be about fun. Someone here (at Periscope) said once, the best kind of gauge of how they look at the (radio and TV spots) is if their seven-year-old thinks they’re funny and laughs. then it’s good – because it really is about that kind of family fun, lightheartedness and excitement.”
Here are the rest of the spots from this years season:
“Canadian”
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“Cannon”
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“Everywhere”
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“Faithful”
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“How I Roll”
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“John”
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“Mantana”
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“Mauersota”
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“Muds”
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“Smells Of The Game”
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