Mar 2005
“C”-ing, is “B”- leaving. Greg’s Excellent Adventure
DSC06219This week saw the unveiling of Studio C, our surround-sound mixing room, here at Babble-On Recording.
(No, that's not Greg with more hair in the photo at left. In fact, that's not even studio C. But, we'll get to that )

Eventually.

Here's the skinny: Greg Geitzenaur moved from Studio B, where he has been a fixture for the past three years, into some swanky new digs that we put together as part of our expansion. Its taken six months. Just slightly longer but certainly less painful than my terrible headlines.
John Lukas (above) is the new resident of Studio B. Here, he's setting levels for a session with Mary Rehbein
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Studio C is Babble-On’s venture into the world of surround-sound mixing for television and movie work. Over the years we’ve done numerous ADR projects but this new room allows us more flexibility than ever.

Plus, hey, if nobody books it, we’ve got a great place to hang and watch DVD’s in HD with surround-sound during those slow days of summer.

In the coming weeks we'll post some mixes and a few more pictures of the happenings in studio C.
Greg, pictured center (this is surround sound after all) winds up his first session in C with Scott Jorgensen and Michele Philips.
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An alternative to ISDN patches? Well…maybe.
Last week we were presented with a new way of doing digital patch work with other studios. Instead of using our traditional ISDN lines and a typical codec (Telos or APT), we’re testing a product called Source Connect, a Pro Tools plug-in which can accomplish the same thing as ISDN but uses our internet connection instead. We’ve been pretty impressed with what we have seen in our 15-day demo version, but of course it is only useful if other studios have it as well. We’ve put out the feelers over the past few days by calling and e-mailing other studios around the country to see if this idea is catching on. John Lukas, who has already run tests with a few studios, will be setting up test patches with Bell Sound, Atlantis Group, 48 Windows and Evolution Audio by the end of the week. We’ve got the demo for another 10 days, so if you would like to try it out, give us a call and we can set something up. We think it’s definitely worth checking out.

Part of what we’ll do is post some of the audio here as we have it. And, we’ll share your feedback (anonymously if you’d like) on the Feedback page of our blog.

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Governor "Exterminator" at Babble-On
This week we had the pleasure of working with voice actor Pat Pinney via ISDN connection with Patches, which is one of our usual haunts when we're recording in L.A.
Pat has done numerous voices for cartoons with which you'd be familiar, including work on Spongebob Squarepants and Mighty Mouse.

For our session he was asked to mimic the sound of a certain erstwhile Austrian who is currently the governor of California. No, not Kurt Waldheim. But, a good guess nontheless. The results were really funny. If you ever need a really great "Ahhnold" this guy has the chops. Take a listen.








The Termite Killing Machine
Client: Bayer
Product: Premise
Agency:Colle+McVoy

Part of what makes a session like this fun, (other than the obvious indiscriminate use of explosives) is being able to go back and listen to the out-takes. Apparently, Pat has had some experience with Termites and offered his own colorful insight as to how he likes to deal with them









If you'd like to hear more of what Pat can do, he's got a fun website that you can check out here.

If you'd like to book him for a session, just contact his agent, The William Morris Agency in Beverly Hills.

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Ad Hocked.* Why the ad biz has been hobbled since 2000.
Great article on advertising in this week's "Star Tribune". Well, let me re-phrase that: “A depressingly informative article in this week's Strib” is what I should have said.

In a nutshell, anyone who's worked on broadcast media since the turn of the century probably knows much of this stuff intuitively - the production of broadcast advertising has slipped a lot over the past few years. The leading causes? Well, the usual culprits are there: September 11th and the following recession. However, many are of the belief that the actors' strike of 2000 put quite a dent in the industry, too. In fact, many local union actors, who felt the strike was not in their best interest, still cite that strike as the axe swing that chopped their livelihood.

The other sobering reality that we've needed to face is that the time that people spend with media these days is becoming more fragmented and segmented. Therefore, ad dollars that were already short are being spent more cautiously. Many studies are showing that people are co-mingling time with multiple mediums. For example, someone might be watching television while listening to their iPod and surfing the Web. I know, because, well, I'm that kind of ADD.

The answer for many advertisers has been to do guerilla marketing. The BMW Web films come to mind as having been one successful way of getting new and interesting messages out to prospective consumers. The Strib article mentions several other campaigns and ideas that have been successful too - including a job on which I worked for Carmichael Lynch and their client, Porsche.

I spent the better part of a week in Birmingham, Alabama riding shotgun with a professional racecar driver capturing sounds that would go on a CD-ROM that folks could get in the mail. We knitted in a great story line, added music, and finished with some really funky mixing, too. It was interesting work but, as a business owner, I noticed that it was not quite like what happens when you work on a TV or radio campaign - that kind of work can sustain you and your business for a year or even longer. Literally, although jobs like this are quite cool and challenging, they end up being a “one and done” kinda thing.

Here's a sample of the section where we drove the 911.
(It's much lower res than I'd like to offer here, but bandwidth can be an issue for some who visit here)








One thing that I wanted to share, that is not included in the on-line edition of the Strib article, but was in the print edition, is information related to ad spending on specific media. All categories were down - except for direct mail. However, the only other category that even fared remotely well was radio advertising. In the three year sample covering dollars spent from 2000 to 2003, radio had only dipped about 1%. Amazing. Its amazing because this seems like the medium that so many people in our industry dread producing - yet, it is so cost efficient and effective.

Why is that?

In the coming weeks/months, we'll offer thoughts and insights on commercial radio production, radio advertising, and the production of alternative media from people whom we know in the industry. (Well, it might take a while to post, I mean, hey, we still have to do the stuff we're talking about.)

If you work in advertising, media buying, or if you have an insight on radio commercials that you'd like to share, we'd like to hear from you. We'll edit and share some of the best comments and we'll keep you anonymous if that is your wish.

* Hocked - To disable by cutting the tendons of the hock; hamstring.


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Babble-On gets Schooled by Brainco
mark1In March, Babble-On hosted a radio class from Brainco, The Minneapolis School of Advertising. It was a chance for the students to learn about directing talent, keeping track of takes, when and why it's smart to edit your script, and what it takes to get your spot the way you'd like.

The teacher, Brian Ritchie, a writer at Twin Cities advertising agency Colle+McVoy, created a contest where all of his students had to write a script that could potentially be produced during this “field trip” recording session. The lucky (or, perhaps “cursed”) winner of the contest would be announced at the session.

The evening started with über-voice talent and radio writer Mark Benninghofen sharing his insights on what a radio ad strong.

Here, Mark talked to the class before going into the voice-over booth to record the winning spot written by student Jim McCrary (that's Jim in the center looking appropriately reverent - and scared)


Below are some shots of Mark Benninghofen doing what he does so well in the booth - being funny and charismatic.
Mark B Stitch copy3


HairPlugs
Once the recording was done, we discussed what were the best takes and what vocal styles seemed appropriate for the spot. From there it was a matter of editing, shaping, and mixing everything before our time was up - or the snacks ran out.

The spot, a mock-up for Tylenol, ideally would have been performed with multiple voices to offset the announcer read. However, even without having done that, the idea came through once we treated the background voices Mark had performed and added some music.

In the photo at left, Jim thoughtfully considers losing some copy. André, is thinking - hair plugs.

Below is the final mix of “Headache.” Of course, it is not a real ad for Tylenol and should not be considered an actual endorsement of their product, its effects, or its efficacy.

Great, now I have headache.









If you'd like to know more about Mark Benninghofen, click here for his Twin Cities agent, Wehmann Models and Talent

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Overheard this week at Babble-On…
Q: "Have you heard that the new Star Wars movie is going to be rated, like PG 13 or something like that, because of what they're calling 'violent content'?”

A: “Well, yeah, but let's hope it's because Jar-Jar Binks gets gang banged by a bunch of Wookies.” - Scott Jorgenson, freelance writer


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Not Standing Pat
Patrick-CoyleMinneapolis film writer, producer, director and voice actor Patrick Coyle was in this week to record via ISDN with Evolution Audio in Kansas City.

The big news for Patrick is that sometime in August 2005, he’ll be going to Chicago to shoot the movie “Broken Bow – A Romantic Comedy About Grief.” Again, this is a movie that Patrick wrote and that he will be directing. Word is that there might be a few big name stars for the project - but, we don’t have anything official as of yet.

Patrick, if you don’t know, is the man behind the critically-acclaimed independent movie “Detective Fiction” that was selected for the Sundance Film Festival and the Newport International Film Festival in 2003. It also got great reviews at the Minneapolis - Saint Paul Film Festival that same year.

You can find out more about Patrick Coyle by contacting his agent Wehmann Models and Talent

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