As the ad biz extends beyond the traditional broadcast :30, so too are music houses diversifying their lot into varied new media fare, facilitated by alliances and collaborative pursuits. In this Music Series issue (see Top 10 Tracks Chart and accompanying Music & Sound story, as well as Chat Room exploring the musical progression of the United Airlines campaign), SHOOT offers a sampling of some of the more interesting new wrinkles in the marketplace.
These developments range from scoring for a prominent commercial production house’s soon-to-be-launched comedy/entertainment web channel and a music firm’s ongoing relationship with Internet mainstay JibJab, to ferreting out bands and performers for commercialmaking, the brave new media world and the coming together of two music shops in a mesh that in a sense reflects the evolving convergence between the advertising and entertainment communities.
The latter is New York-headquartered Bang Music, best known for its work in commercials, joining forces with the Los Angeles area-based Media On Demand (MOD), which is well established in the entertainment landscape, currently handling sound design and audio post for Spider-Man 3, as well as music and audio post for assorted TV series. The new joint entity operates under the Bang/MOD banner.
MOD principal Aaron Green–who now becomes executive producer of Bang/MOD, West–noted that the combined company “helps us on several levels, including bringing an advertising industry perspective and knowledge that will enable us to move into some of these new branded entertainment forms that are developing in the marketplace.” MOD’s coterie of talent has also “ghost written,” said Green, for a number of commercial music houses. Thus MOD has been involved in some high profile ad assignments while having to maintain a low profile. By connecting with Bang, that MOD talent can shed its cloak of anonymity in the spot world and contribute to creatively worthwhile projects for agencies and advertisers.
There’s also the appeal of extending one’s geographic reach as MOD gains footholds in New York via Bang’s longstanding office there as well as Europe where Bang artisan Espen Noreger moved a couple of years ago. Noreger is based in office and studio facilities in Stavanger, Norway, an operation that is overseen by senior producer Havard Hana.
Conversely, Bang gains a West Coast base through MOD’s studios in Santa Clarita, Calif. (just outside Los Angeles), with access to an additional facility on the Sony Pictures lot in Culver City, Calif.
“This isn’t simply a pooling of facilities,” related Bang founder/partner Lyle Greenfield. “It’s an expanded pool of talent that can collaborate and that gives us as Bang/MOD that much more to offer for our commercial clients.”
Additionally MOD’s entertainment chops could open up more opportunities in that sector–as well as in the branded content arena–for the Bang ensemble. For these projects–as well as commercials–Bang/MOD has talent and facilities on both coasts so that it can work face to face with agencies, producers and clients. “This represents a quantum leap in terms of size and scope for us, jointly extending our reach across the country and overseas,” said Greenfield.
The relationship between Bang and MOD evolved in practice before it began developing in theory, noted Greenfield, who explained that Bang composer/partner Brian Jones has teamed with Green and MOD on music soundtracks for several TV series, most notably Scrubs, over the past couple of years. MOD’s Green said this experience demonstrated that the companies are like-minded and that their artists have a healthy collaborative rapport, leading to the mutual decision to launch Bang/MOD.
Greenfield, Jones and Green are founders of Bang/MOD with Greenfield serving as its creative director, East-West, and Jones as exec producer/composer, East. The combined shop brings together such talent as MOD’s music supervisor/music editor Richard C. Stewart (Ghostworld, Smallville, Platoon, Driven), supervising sound editor/sound designer Paul N.J. Ottoson (Spider-Man 2 and 3), supervising sound editor/sound designer/field recordist Rob Nokes (The American President, Seabiscuit, The Insider, and TV show Bones), composer/musician Darby Orr (Fox’s Drive, trailers for Buena Vista, soundtracks for Time Warner, DirecTV) and engineer/mixer Francis Buckley (Alanis Morrisette’s “Jagged Little Pill,” Quincy Jones’ “Q’s Jook Joint”), and key Bang spot artisans such as composer/musician Jane Mangini, Noreger, composer/musician Derek Menzies, senior producer/account exec Sara Russo, senior producer/new media strategist Julian Duff, engineer/musician Winston Philip and DJ/producer/mixer Jean Cabrera.
Currently Bang/MOD is working on original music and audio post for several new TV series such as The Riches on FX, Drive and Dirt on FOX, Shear Genius for Bravo, Sunset Tan for the E! Channel and an as yet untitled MTV reality series.
Diversification Indeed music houses are diversifying into new media forms, a prime example being Venice, Calif.-based Beacon Street Studios which wrote and produced full-length songs for the four opening episodes of Undercover Cheerleaders, the debut series on production company Hungry Man’s entertainment/comedy web channel, which is slated to be up and running on May 22. Hungry Man’s Bryan Buckley directed Undercover Cheerleaders, which will be the first of five series debuting now through the summer on the channel. Plans for the channel were earlier reported on in SHOOT (4/20), part of the initiative being spearheaded by Hungry Man Entertainment (HME), a recently formed division being headed by Mark Grande, former director of development for Howard Stern’s production company.
Beacon Street principals, composers Andrew Feltenstein and John Nau, teamed on Undercover Cheerleaders with producer/composer Colin Wolf and performers Biff Chitlin and Lady G. While the series plays like a comedy, the humor is a poignant social commentary, which is what drew Feltenstein to the project. He described each episode as a short morality play.
Beacon Street is also foraying into network TV series, with Feltenstein and Nau composing the theme and score for Driving School, an NBC series set for a summer run, with director Phil Traill of Paranoid Projects. The show is being produced by Reveille Productions (The Office). Feltenstein and Nau are additionally doing the theme and underscore for Schooled, an ABC summer series (three hourlong episodes) inspired by the special of the same name out of DDB Chicago for client OfficeMax (SHOOT, 9/22/06), which premiered on ABC Family Channel in August ’06. The new series is from the Chicago firm Escape Pod.
And Beacon Street is producing an album for the band MOB (Message of the Blues), the centerpiece of which is the single titled “L.A.” Portions of that song constitute the global music theme for the BP campaign, done by Beacon Street. which retained the rights to “L.A.” and is currently in discussions with three different labels about the CD album deal.
JibJab A new media collaborative tradition that started in ’04 continues with What We Call The News, the latest JibJab Media animated spoof, which again features an original song from Wojahn Bros. Music, Santa Monica. Brooklyn online animation studio JibJab became best known for the ’04 election parodies This Land and Good to Be In D.C., which became part of pop culture after generating some 80 million hits on the Internet. In late ’04, Wojahn and JibJab began teaming on shorts, the first being the animated holiday cartoon Santa Clause, which premiered on Yahoo! Entertainment.
Subsequent collaborations included the ’05 Sundance Film Festival opening trailers, then Roll Out the Barrel and Twisted Sister for Budweiser, Big Box Mart and 2-0-5.
Most of the projects that Wojahn Bros. have done with JibJab have been similar in terms of the working process. JibJab comes to Wojahn with a script of parody lyrics to an existing song. They then team and figure out what type of instrumentation will work the best with the piece. They then record the music, the vocals, the voiceover and sometimes the sound design. Wojahn also does the final mix.
The relationship was cemented by brotherhood–two pairs of brothers, Roger and Scott Wojahn, and Jib Jab’s cofounders Gregg and Evan Spiridellis–and the whacky sense of irreverent humor they share.
What We Call The News–driven by a variation of Battle Hymn of the Republic–is a sendup of journalism today, or the lack thereof, where serious stories never see the light of day as news anchors and reporters instead give us a steady diet of Britney Spears and Anna Nicole Smith.
Rock on
Longstanding New York-based Crushing Music has teamed with industry vet Tom Mooney–who recently launched Mooney Marketing, New York–to form a division specializing in offering independent rock bands and performers to the ad agency community not only for spots but also emerging forms of entertainment content.
Mooney and Crushing Music president Joey Levine went to last month’s South By Southwest (SXSW) Festival in Austin, Texas, to scout prospective talent.
They already have a roster of independent bands and are seeking out music acts and performers on both coasts, in the Midwest and in London. Among the bands already in place are Salt & Samovar and The X’s as well as singer/writer Luke Schurman. Levine believes their talent will translate well into the ad discipline in terms of licensing their material for spots and branded content as well as for the writing of original compositions and songs.
