Metatechnik, music and sound, completed all audio components for a quirky and hilarious Sierra Mist Ruby Splash (Goodby, Silverstein & Partners) campaign, which began airing in the spring, featuring the voice over talents of Ton Loc, Rob Corddry and Tom Papa. The animated spots feature a lemon and lime (Corddry and Papa) “chillaxing” together in a bubbling sparkly lemon lime beverage when grapefruit (Loc), with boombox in hand, appears appropriately blasting banging funk, and comes crashing in on their mellow vibe, to give it his “splash”. The bright and obscure animation is just as refreshing as the new beverage promises to be. “Its liquid sunshine, baby”, as the tag line suggests. Metatechnik recorded and produced the voiceovers in Los Angeles. The music, sound design and final mix were done in New York.
“Working with GS&P is always a treat, because right from the start you know you are working with an agency that has a very clear vision,” explains Wallace. The process of completing the audio for the Sierra Mist campaign began with recording the voiceover talents of Ton Loc, Rob Corddry and Tom Papa. The sessions were done in Los Angeles. “A couple of the creatives came down from San Francisco, including Cindy Fluitt, the head of production, so we were super excited to get going. In order to give the animated characters personality, originality, spirit and life, we really had to get talents that could make that work.” After many auditions and reads, GS&P selected these three guys, as they each have the feel of the personality of each character.
Corddry and Papa were great playing off of each other as the lemon and lime. Erik Engberg of GS&P, really encouraged the talents to improvise during the session. “It was so much fun to listen to Corddry and Papa play off of each other. In the end, some of those improv lines actually made the final mixes. We all really had some great laughs,” shares Wallace. Ton Loc’s famous and raspy voice really made the character of Mr. Grapefruit come alive. His heavier bass tone provided a wonderful contrast to the lighter and thinner tones of Corddry and Papa. In the end, we had hundreds of takes to sort through to create the perfect final reads. When you are editing the dialogue, and comping reads to really make the hits and jokes fly with an animation, you really have to examine every single little breath and chuckle. Everything has to work perfectly, feel natural, or it does not translate,” says Bissen.
When it came to the music for the television spots, Meta started off composing a heavier hip-hop beat. The music commences when the character Mr. Grapefruit walks into the scene. The animated walking and talking grapefruit is carrying a boombox when he walks into the backyard where the lemon and lime characters are playfully floating in their pool. His startling entrance, disrupting their pleasant frolicking seemed like the scene would call for a deep thunderous banging beat, pumping out some crazy hip-hop. But, after experimenting with different styles and grooves, the hip hop vibe was not working,” explains Bissen. Once we opened up the genre, and started to try out lots of different things, it was funk music in the end that made the cut!” Funk music, the groovy pleasant head bopping jam allowed for Mr. Grapefruit to be friendlier and funky, truly fitting his personality. With this piece of music working so well, it also became a track the client ultimately wanted to own, and would be recognizable for the spots.
When it came to the sound design, there were several key moments in the TV spots that really had to translate, and since the spots are all animated, the sound design played a very key role in allowing the action to occur in each exact precise moment. The timing of sound design is always key, the execution and the creative brilliance that goes into finding sounds that will work for certain actions. Even when one is scoring a door slam, or a key turn, things have to “sound right” or they simply do not work, and stick out like a sore thumb. Bissen comments, “the splash (when the grapefruit does a cannon ball into the pool joining the lemon and lime) had to be over the top. So I layered about five different splash sounds and EQed them differently, blending them to create one full and thick splash. When he (grapefruit) moves in the glass, that was a sound of balloons rubbed together, and pitch shifted.” Creating a drastic contrast in the audio sphere from a very peaceful opening, to a thunderous startling transition into a place of total disarray was achieved through the sound design and precise vocal edits, which happens in all of three seconds. However, Bissen was able to pull it off with his clever sound design creations and his tedious and diligent edits.
In working on the radio spots, the Lemon and Lime characters are in a recording studio, recording radio promos, when in comes Mr. Grapefruit, again (similarly to the TV spots) – disrupting their session and bursting in on their fun playful time. The radio spots also required long hours of sorting and sifting through hundreds of voice over takes, to ultimately edit the perfect reads – to create a live sound, a natural believable sound. The sound design became almost similar to radio theater, with placing sounds to happen at the right moments without picture, to sound right on. “Timing is always an issue when working in sound design, but when you are creating an entire true to life scenario, you really have to again, get creative, and find the exact sounds (which usually come from something totally different than what the actual “sound” is happening) to make it work”.
In the end, all of the Sierra Mist Ruby Splash commercials are excellent. The vibrant original (and hilarious) animation, the character voices, the sound design and music really all came together in that wonderful, and very rare, way things do. Visit http://www.metatechnik.com/_site/portfolio.php?id=1&view=01 to watch/listen to all of the spots.
MetaTechnik has bicoastal offices headed by co-founders Georg Bissen (New York) and Victoria Wallace. Together the two have developed a cross country writing relationship that allows them to co-compose, co-produce and co-arrange on each others tracks. And, also compose as the unified writing team they established themselves as. After years of writing together in the same studio, it was only a matter of “location” when Wallace headed to Los Angeles two years ago. Now, the team works together online, in various capacities. So when it came to Sierra Mist, which was seven spots (including radio and several different edits) in 9 days, MetaTechnik knew it would be tough, and cross-country to boot, but the team was up for the challenge.
About Goodby, Silverstein & Partners
Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, a unit of the Omnicom Group, is one of the worlds most respected and most awarded advertising agencies. Founded in 1983, the company is based in San Francisco and has over 500 employees serving a broad array of national and international accounts. For more information on GS&P, please visit www.goodbysilverstein.com
About MetaTechnik
MetaTechnik was founded in 2000 by Georg Bissen, Shahin Motia and Victoria Wallace, and has gone on to win hundreds of national spots and produced the music for several big hit television shows. From Jell-O, to AT&T. you can hear Meta’s music across International networks and advertisements. In addition to their commercial successes as a music production facility, composers Bissen, Motia and Wallace also have multiple international hit singles and records from the dance world to the indie art epi center. Visit www.metatechnik.com to listen to all of their work.
