Andi's Commercial Sound Design Adventures

Plug your music, photography, graphics, shows of any kind or other creative works.

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ultratwin
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Andi's Commercial Sound Design Adventures

Post by ultratwin »

I reckon I might as well funnel it all into one thrad.

Presently burned out and burnt out, coming close to 48 hours in the studio but am slowly creeping out from the bunker. The Samsung MX7 Printer Series launch/promotional videos, Galaxy S6 World Tour content, Hyundai's Truck/Bus Launch at the Seoul Auto Show, somehow handling Moollon accounts, Lecturing at a university 90 minutes away, and arranging 7 tracks for FROMM. It's been the busiest month of my life and I'm ready to disappear. Did I mention two weekends gone from my bro in law's wedding with us down in Busan and on Jeju?

Fortunately the NX500 Introduction video music and sound design was a cinch...The client asked me to do a track like the one I did for the Samsung Ultra HD display at IFA last year, so I took a deep breath and tried not to plagiarize myself...The good news is that all I had to adjust for was a few measure and transition points and the new track was pretty much a go from the start (whew, thank you Mr. Reasonable Client Man!). I probably pulled out every cliche my default mode employes, and this thing sounds so stereotypically Andi you can practically hear me breathing.

[youtube][/youtube]
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Piano: Soundiron Emotional Piano
Short Strings, Celesta, Tubular Bells: VSL
Legato Strings: 8Dio Adagio VN/VA/VC/DB
Woodwinds: 8Dio Claire Clarinet/Flute Oboe, VSL Bassoon
French Horns: Cinesamples Cinebrass Pro
Drums: NI Studio Drums (Session Kit), Toontrack Roots/Sticks

Samick acoustic 6
Fender ST68-TX
Ric 360/12
Moollon J-Classic

Benge 3x trumpet
Clarke Penny Whistle
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ultratwin
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Post by ultratwin »

The work we did for Hyundai at the 2015 Seoul Motor Show this week was a rather unique one for the company that involved roughly of our 30 staff members really pounding out an incredible amount of material in just 6 weeks. Albeit the launch light-use diesel truck (And van, not shown below) our robotics team worked closely with the motion graphics staff and myself to do a little display dancing, which we've doen a lot of previously but never before that required so much synchronicity between audio, visual content, robotic movement of the two machines that controlled the two sets of displays, and lastly a timed turntable that had to rotate at just the right speed to give the right impression of truck's angle/position when the "x-ray vision" was shown on the displays.

Apparently the toughest thing to eventually overcome was stuttering effect created by the the 24fps video work, which became noticeable by the human eye especiallty when the displays were in quick motion and the lights were out. This was overcome by rendering to 48fps (and a load of other video editing things I have no knowledge about), and soon the whole thing was synced without much trouble.

It was also my first (sloppy) attempt at dubstep, which actually featured me heading more or less down the path of progressive trance synth sounds. Still, the stuffy beat combined with plenty of yahyahyahs (thanks to a few sources the 8Dio Dubstep bundle) nonetheless kept things er...trendy and 2010-ey. Sadly, like all unveiling events it was shown just once to a select few media bods and Hyundai staff, but other videos we did for the week-long motor show are still playing.

The party starts at :10

[youtube][/youtube]


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Synths: Spectrasonics Omnisphere
Additional synth sounds: 8Dio Dubstep
Drums: NI Battery
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Thomas
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Post by Thomas »

That must have been so difficult to pull off but well worth the effort.
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ultratwin
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Post by ultratwin »

Indeed, Thomas. So far, so good.

The truck's turntable construct and additional foundation/mounting hardware for the robots actually put the company way in the red on this project (we're talking well in excess of six figures of additional expenses), but we're somewhat betting on the impact to be significant enough to garner additional clients that would request this kind of visual presentation from a one-stop-solution such as our company. Time will tell, but so far the press proved to be mildly excited about the whole thing.

In a world of yellow journalism and heaps of paid ads disguised as the objective press it was refreshing to find one article written up by an individual who had nothing to do with us (which featured the above video), who had huge amounts of praise for the whole deal. Translate page if you please: http://www.autoherald.co.kr/news/articl ... dxno=14408
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Post by lorez »

Great work Andi, I love hearing about you work & processes you go through. Can't wait for more instalments
plopswagon wrote:I like teles and strats because they're made out of guitar.
robroe wrote:I dont need a capo. I have the other chords in my tonefingers
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Thomas
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Post by Thomas »

Essentially you guys pulled off something in the live arena that would have looked amazing in an TV ad. When you keep in mind that said TV ad would have been all computer generated it's kinda mind blowing.
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ultratwin
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Post by ultratwin »

Thanks again guys...I've got about five years of projects to blab on about but I'll try to keep this thread most current and somewhat on the entertaining side.

And that's so true, Thomas. The real deal in person with the music blasting is a totally different feel and experience, and just watching things at our studio where all of the robots and assembly were programmed/tested even got the ol' blood pumping muscle going in ways that graphics can't really do. And to tell the truth, the biggest of the five we have (named "Goliath", not used in this display) stands 4 meters tall and is almost terrifying to see/hear in action doing 3 meters/sec at full speed...The thing can lift up to a ton, too.

In related news (probably won't be that much robot talk in this thread, on the whole) we're going to be having a few robotics demonstrations at the upcoming annual KOBA exhibition across the street from our office, and are considering what kind of fun to advertise. One will likely involved moving displays, and another may be an automated dropbox synced with a camera on a robot to do the old "follow the high speed cereal dropping into the breakfast bowl", although it may involve Skittles or plastic gems falling from the height of 2 meters, instead. A synthetic semi-opaque liquid being squirted horizontally was also considered (can be impressive to see a camera follow the path in slow motion), but so far has been deemed too "racy" by the staff...for a-hem, certain reasons ;)
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ultratwin
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Post by ultratwin »

BOTS.

We decided to show some goodies from our robotics team (Maverick) at the 2015 KOBA show, which is a fairly boring trade show across the stereo from our office at the bustling COEX Trade Center here in Gangnam-gu. I say fairly boring in that the sound-related companies are mostly local distribution firms (although Yamaha has a decent display space) and lighting/camera/tech booths on the other floors are, well…boring. Of course, Canon, Toshiba, and other big shots do a great job building and displaying things with the only place to find new technology here after any kind of annual debut, so it can be fun to check out the latest in the lens dept. A lot of drone builders have the like have started to pop up as well, seeing how the world of video work has continued to evolve and develop.

So anyway, we trucked in a few of our industrial robots, and although they're German/French units and very difficult to work with, the 15 peeps at Maverick have done a brilliant job designing special software for syncing them with both each other and also with other moving hardware units they've built over the past 3 years or so now. Above all, we just wanted to come up with something that would be an eye-catcher and show very simply a few things we could do, all while playing video clips on some displays that show the big projects we've done for Samsung Mobile/TVs and the recent Hyunday Mighty unveiling at the Seoul Motor Show.

The Maverick staff even bought a bigass Millennium Falcon model (press the buttons for laser effects, Chewie gurgles, and more!), assembled it, and even had it very nicely aged/painted for…er, realism. It was attached to one of the (fixed base) robots and synced in motion with another unit holding a camera on a moving rail, with the video'd content viewable on the side of the booth. On the other side was a smaller unit that moved around quite briskly (kinda scary to be around, to be honest), that did a sudden vertical drop and was synced with a bead-dropping tray, to show how high-speed video work can be done with robots.

The fact that it was all automated and worry-free made the entire display a huge hit for us, and upwards of 100 people gathered around to watch and ask questions several times over the course of the week…I somewhat felt bad for the CCTV camera developers, Chroma-key display dudes, and studio backdrop folks in nearby booths, who pretty much showed others' content on their screens and walked around passing out brochures and stuff. We're still getting email inquires from dozens of potential clients, and we'll see what it all can do for us for 2015...


TL;DR, this clip of the booth popped up last week. If you turn down the cheesy music and cue a DRASTIC PHYSICAL ALTERATED Dots singing F@&# AUG it may be slightly more enjoyable to watch.

[youtube][/youtube]





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Last edited by ultratwin on Fri Jun 05, 2015 12:44 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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ultratwin
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Post by ultratwin »

What I didn't mention is how close we were to the massive KBS/SBS/MBC displays, along with Ikegami's large camera booth, all manned/womanned featuring some of the country's most in-demand "narrator models", who double as racing models as well. Truth be told, I never go to the Seoul Motor Show out of respect for la wifey, since the models bear so much more skin and get loads of eyeballs enough as it is. That said, they were all there and dressed mostly in casual mode, some of which have a bit of a celebrity status and were signing autographs all day.

I for one am not a fan of the common nosejobs and silicon bosoms that so many have, but will admit that walking by a 175cm model standing even taller in heels can be mildly overwhelming. Here are some of them, as they were video'd right around the corner from us.




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