Steph's Summer Intern Blog Week 4

Week 4:  Things have been busy here at Tapeworks Recording Studio throughout the month of July! Here are some of the highlights of the past month:

     For the past two weeks or so, we have been working on audio for the Lego Galaxy Squad mini movie, which will make its grand appearance online sometime in the near future! Check back soon to find where and when you can view for yourself this epic bug battle! I was able to do some hands on work with this project, helping with sound design, or adding in sound effects. After watching Bill and Chris do this on other projects, it was fun to finally get a chance to try it for myself! Most of what I worked on was in the "bug battle scene," adding in explosion sounds, laser gunshots, and more, which was not as simple as it may seem. First, I had to identify where a sound was needed, then audition multiple sounds that could fit the scene. After selecting the perfect sound, I positioned and edited it in Pro Tools to synchronize with the video play back. However, not every explosion sounds the same, or lasts for equal amounts of time. So through the use of pitch/time shifting, EQ, and gain, I created multiple different versions of each sound file to develop a unique sound for each occasion, while still maintaining a sense of unity through all. All of us here at Tapeworks spent a great deal of time working on this awesome project! Who knew that Bill could speak bug along with bringing to life a world of creepy crawlies and massive aircrafts, tanks, and machines through sound design?! Meanwhile, Chris spent long hours hard at work composing the orchestral score that highlights the intense bug battle. It was a big undertaking, as it was an involved project with a very limited time frame, but it all was completed on schedule!

     There were several radio commercials that were recorded recently, including one for Lockheed Martin and one for Hartford Hospital. Most people do not realize the amount of time and work that goes into recording a radio commercial. There could be twenty different takes for a thirty second commercial, with the difference between each take amounting to a one word change, or a slightly different emphasis on a phrase. It all pays off when the final, perfect take is captured! (Or cut up and edited in Pro Tools later.)

      The next big upcoming project will be for the Big E. There are two different radio commercials that need to be recorded, along with a few different TV spots. The difficulty with this task is that each commercial involves voice actors, an original musical composition, plus the fact that each spot varies a bit from the last. So we shall see how this unfolds over the next couple weeks. This will be a really fun project, which you just may hear on your favorite radio station soon!