Featuring flying football players migrating away for the winter, the sound design called for creating believable man-sized bird sounds.
Nailing what a flying football player bird might sound like when it lets loose with a caw isn’t your usual Super Bowl spot brief. But that was the heart of what Alt_Mix had to do when coming up with the sound design for “Migration,” the hilarious “NFL Sunday Ticket” ad that ran right before kickoff of Super Bowl LVIII.
Created by YouTube Creative Studio and produced by MJZ, the spot shows what happens when football players take to the skies in their annual, end of season migration. YouTube Creative Studio turned to Alt_Mix (www.altmixstudio.com), the New York-based audio post studio founded by veteran mixer Cory Melious, for the second year in a row to provide complete audio mixing and sound design services for their Big Game commercial. To view this year’s spot see below or go here.
“Migration” opens with a seasoned birder raising binoculars to his eyes. “Beautiful, isn’t it,” he says softly as an orchestral score from Walker rises in the background and we hear the far-off cawing of the flying gridsters. “Each year they must follow the path of migration, but never fear, they’ll be back,” he says as we see the players swooping in to grab a fish from a lake or alighting gently just outside a cabin.
Alt_Mix handled all aspects of the spot’s final audio, including sound design from the ground up, voiceover recording and mix.
The greatest challenge was figuring out what a football playing ‘birdman’ should sound like. “There was a lot of testing and experimentation in coming up with just the right sound to their calls,” says Melious, who’s something of an amateur birder himself. “The creative team had a really good idea of what they wanted us to achieve, and it was our job to help them articulate that with sound. We did lots of variations, and in the end we mixed humans making bird sounds with actual bird calls to get just the right pitch and tone.”
The spot features a number of star players, such as D’Andre Swift, the running back for the Philadelphia Eagles; Baltimore Ravens tight end Mark Andrews; and Seattle Seahawks wide receiver Tyler Lockett. Also appearing at the end of the spot, watching “Sunday Ticket” in the cabin scene, are the popular YouTube Creators Deestroying, Pierson Wodzynski and Sean Evans.
There was an interesting interplay between the artists doing the edit, effects and finishing and the soundscape his studio created, Melious adds. “They recognized that the sound had to be strong in order to sell the idea of a football player-sized bird that migrates. For instance, they were editing the Tyler Lockett scene with no sound on him. But once they laid the soundtrack on, it became a laugh out loud moment. For the story to work, we needed to connect the details seen in the visuals to make them believable, so we worked really hard to bring those tiny movements alive with sound, like when the tree branch snapped after a player landed on it, or the dust and debris kicked up when they landed by the cabin. It’s all about elevating the viewers’ experience.”
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“Ǝvolution” Comes Full Circle At The Chelsea Film Festival
The Chelsea Film Festival, running from October 16th through October 20th, 2024, at Regal Cinemas here in Union Square, is set to host the East Coast premiere of Ǝvolution, a thought-provoking experimental micro-short film that proves big ideas can come in small packages and in perfect circles.
In just 1 minute 16 seconds, this cinematic gem by Award-Winning Director Romina Schwedler, with original music by Argentine Composer Ignacio Montoya Carlotto, explores a cycle as old as time: life leads to progress, progress leads to destruction, and destruction, well, leads back to life. But is this vicious circle unbreakable? Ǝvolution suggests the answer is yes, unless we decide to open our eyes.
Inspired by the overwhelming number of recent events that threaten human existence, Ǝvolution, possibly the shortest film in this 12th edition of the festival, plays out entirely through the symbolism of circles, cleverly illustrating —in the blink of an eye— the repeating patterns of history, and confronting viewers with the uncomfortable truth that our so-called “progress” may, in fact, be guiding us to our own ruin.Premiering at the Regal 14 Union Square, New York City, on October 18, 2024, at 11 a.m., Romina Schwedler's micro-short, featuring Leah Young with cinematography by Alan J. Carmona, will be sure to spark conversations longer than the film itself! Forcing viewers to reconsider the true meaning of evolution, not just as a biological process, but as a reflection of our collective journey as humans.
With a string of festival appearances across the globe, including CineGlobe at CERN (Switzerland/France), Oscar®... Read More