May 2007 RAP
May 2007 Highlights
Feature: Notes Off the Napkin - Now, It's Personal
by Andrew Frame
Personal expression. Cars, clothes, footwear, tattooing, piercing,
spandex, overuse of makeup, jewelry, gaudy jewelry, hideously gaudy
jewelry... Personal... branding? I have a fondness for tropical shirts. Not
just any garden-variety tropical shirt. Rather, richly hued shirts, the kind
that require polarizing sunglasses to prevent catastrophic retinal
implosion. Normally, when I see someone wearing a particularly optically
stunning garment, I will compliment the wearer on his or her choice of
wardrobe. They will see mine, and we’ll often share a nerdy chuckle.
Interview: John Frost, SonicPool, Hollywood, California
by Jerry Vigil
No, not that John Frost. There’s yet another John Frost on the West Coast
making his living behind a DAW. John, and partner Patrick Bird, are
co-founders of SonicPool, a Hollywood-based post production house for audio
and video finishing. The company offers such services as online video and
color-correction, duplication, offline and online editing suite rental,
production office space rental and more, including radio production.
Recently, the company has been providing mixing and sound design services
for all of the radio spots promoting ABC Daytime Television’s programming.
These include spots for "One Life to Live," "The View," "All My Children"
and "General Hospital." Mixing TV promos is a job John and company know
well. This month’s RAP Interview takes a peek at this fast growing
post-production house, and we get some tips from John on how he goes about
mixing the audio for those "wall of sound" promos we see on TV and hear on
the radio. Be sure to check out this month’s RAP CD for a sampler from
SonicPool.
Technology: Re-thinking Your Website for Web 2.0
By Steve Cunningham
Many of you who read this feature have your own websites, as a quick trip
to this issue’s Producer’s Market or even to Google will confirm. If you
offer VO or production services outside the confines of your station
cluster, you would no more be without a website than you would be without a
business card. But your website requires fresh content on a regular basis to
keep current and potential clients coming back, and keep your name active in
their minds. Besides, nothing says “I’m not a happening business” faster
than a home page that hasn’t changed in a year.
Q It Up: The RAP Network Speaks! - What's the Method to
Your Mix? - Part 1
Q It Up: What’s the method to your mix? Do you just
throw all the elements on their tracks and begin adjusting levels as your
ear dictates? Do you start with the VO and adjust everything else around it?
Do you use EQ to bring elements out in a mix or subdue others? Do you use
compression on the stereo master to minimize all the tweaking, or do you try
to retain as much dynamic range as possible? Do you use compression on
individual tracks to reduce the dynamic range of a VO track, a music track,
SFX? Do you switch between different monitors and tweak accordingly?
Describe your method, and feel free to add any other approach that gets you
to your ultimate goal.
Production 212: Pay It Forward
By Dave Foxx
I’ve been stewing about this month’s column for several months now,
mainly because it’s about something that really needs saying, and I’ve been
trying to come up with just the right way to say it. A couple of emails,
both in response to my last column, “Sex And Production,” finally got the
ball rolling. For that I give a big thank you to Matt Damrow at Entercom/Denver
and Robbie Green, an engineer with Cumulus in Midland/Odessa, Texas. Robbie
reminded me that I’ve been doling out free advice for several years now. In
fact, it was 12 or 13 years ago that he and I had a regular email dialogue
going about his production skills and whether he should pursue a career in
production. He even began his email with the statement that “…this email is
probably going to make you feel a bit old.” He was right. It did…a little.
Of course, it didn’t help that it was early on a Monday morning when I got
his email and I always feel old, early on Mondays.
Radio Hed: Feel, Felt, Found
By Jeffrey Hedquist
Feel, Felt, Found is one of the ways salespeople overcome objections when
they’re meeting with prospects. Now the abbreviated sales interaction we
call a commercial is slightly different because we don’t hear the person’s
objection directly. But we can anticipate the objection and counter it as
part of our 30 or 60 second sales call. The shorthand version of this
technique is: “I know how you feel, I felt the same way, but what I found
was…”
...And Make It Real Creative:
By Trent Rentsch
In which the author concludes his time-tripping visit to the milestones
that made modern synthesis possible and prepares to begin a journey
concerning what knob does what on modern noise-makers.
The year is 1887. You’ve just taken your weekly bath, you’ve had a shot of
Laudanum (for medicinal purposes only, of course), and it’s time to kick
back and relax, perhaps with some good music. So what are your options? A
Phonograph? Annoying… the neighbors have one, and they keep playing that
same tinny song over and over (the wax cylinders aren’t cheap, nor widely
available, after all). You could make your own music, if but for two
problems: you had to give up piano lessons at age 10 to work in the coal
mine, and more importantly, you’re lacking some of the required fingers
(damn that slaughter house job. You really should find a safer position…
perhaps in the gas lighting trade). What is a talentless, digitally impaired
music lover to do?
Feature: Did You Ever Have That Dream?
by Ed Thompson
Okay, I’ll ‘fess up. It has taken a long time, but I am a firm believer
in the fact that words matter, and words matter most in the radio production
world. Cool music beds, fancy production techniques and sound effects, all
blended together by the latest and greatest software in a big hairy state of
the art computer are all great fun to play with, but the words move the
target customer into action. The most effective way to move someone with
advertising or station imaging always involves the right script, performed
by the right voice, delivering the right emotional connection.
The Monday Morning Memo: How to Buy Word of Mouth
By Roy H. Williams
Businesses don’t fail due to reaching the wrong people. Businesses fail
when they say the wrong things. And they say the wrong things when they
believe what the public tells them. Conduct a survey. Ask the public to
describe in detail the kind of place they’d like to shop. Then build that
place, exactly as described, and see if they ever show up.
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