One Second Radio Ads - Audio Branding In A Blink

From AdAge:
BACKGROUND: Clear Channel, the country's largest operator of radio stations, is discussing the idea of one-second radio spots with marketers and media buyers. Called "Blinks," the new format is being promoted as something that could be used between music tracks by, say, McDonald's to play part of its "I'm lovin' it" jingle or Intel to play its chime or NBC for its bells between music tracks. Clear Channel VP-Creative Jim Cook says the one-second format is part of an effort "to find new uses of radio for advertisers who are continually asking us to demonstrate that our medium can successfully extend brands, can successfully reach the consumer with touchpoints that are new and surprising." Critics suggest the format is likely to fit a very small number of advertisers and is too restrictive for meaningful creative. What do you think?

I think it's a natural evolution. Everything has been moving to smaller, faster, cheaper, better. The human mind/ear can discern and recognize melodic fragments, textures, harmonies in a millisecond. And as the article suggest, it's probably best suited for marketers who have already had media exposure to their audio mnemonics such as NBC or Intel or McDonalds.

I'd love to work on one of these if anyone wants to try it out. I've done some short audio mnenonics for HP in the past that were never sold through. Anyone?

Keeping Your Film's Action Moving With Music

A great thing to keep in mind whether you are using a song or score with your film scene is to be mindful of closing cadences. A cadence is a musical term to describe an ending point. In classical era music you often hear a series of chords that set up the final resounding last chord. Pop songs also usually have clearly defined endings or fadeouts which signify the end.

If you want to keep propelling the dramatic action forward, edit your music so that it never ends on a finality. It stops the dramatic action and subconsciously closes the curtain. This may be useful for the end of Act 1 in your screenplay, and yet it also may stop the action too early.

Martin Scorsese is currently working on a film called "The Departed", (a remake of a 2002 Hong Kong film entitled Infernal Affairs) and Howard Shore is scoring. According to Tim Starnes (one of Shore's right hand men) Scorsese is very much attuned to the "curtain calls" in the music. Whether it's song or score, he often edits the piece to start after the beginning and end in the middle.

If you are working with a Composer, you can bring this up in conversation early in the process.

One way Composers can avoid the "dramatic finality" is to avoid the use of the tonic (the root note) in the bass. As orchestrator Deniz Hughes likes to say, "putting the tonic in the bass is the dramatic equivalent of sitting in a chair. You're not going anywhere. You're static."

Audio Branding the AARP

Today's New York Times has a great article on audio branding with the AARP as the client.

Bourne Again

So the culmination of my 2 weeks at the ASCAP/NYU Film Scoring Workshop in memory of Buddy Baker was to rescore the final scene from the Bourne Identity.

We spent a day sketching, another to orchestrate and then checked it by conducting a piano reduction with a rehearsal pianist

(conducting the pianist)


and then the big day with an outstanding 23 piece orchestra. 3 takes and there we were.

Here's the clip without any music.

Here it is with my take on the score.

(A portion of an early sketch - it changed continuously until 3am the night before the recording!)

And I don't remember what the original by John Powell sounded like. What was really interesting was seeing other Composers versions of the same scene (we had a choice of 4 scenes.) No one sounded alike and everyone had their own voice/thumbprint.

A great exercise and highly recommended for Composers and anyone interested in Film Music. You can audit the program as well which may be useful for Producers/Directors wanting to know how the whole process works - and having a pick of 18 amazing composers to work with in the same room!