The Legend of Korra

From time to time, I have the privilege of working on some fairly high profile projects. Whether it's the launch of a new product like HBO GO, rebranding a network, or mixing a documentary on fallen soldiers in Iraq, there are some opportunities that come along that remind me that creativity and content creation can impact our lives in profound ways. Sometimes it's disruptive, sometimes it's fun, sometimes it helps to make us think and make us better people. It's a great feeling to be part of these moments.

When I was asked to mix some spots to promote a new Nickelodeon show called The Legend of Korra, I knew that this was a moment that would affect millions kids around the world. The Legend of Korra is a follow up of the critically acclaimed and widely popular series Avatar, the Last Airbender. I knew that the mix on the spots that I did for Korra were very important to help sell the excitement in the series so I really tried to push the envelope and make a dynamic and powerful mix on the promos. Here is one of my favorites.



The back end of the spot has a lot of loud/soft/loud/soft to increase the excitement and energy of the spot. Although the FX and music tail off a little bit, there is mostly absolute silence and dialogue right before the Polar Dog burst through the window. Hopefully I will knock some kids off the couch with that one. :)

Although a lot of the sound effects were from the series (and all the great music is from the show), I did add quite a few. Here is the SFX split.

Lost Girl

I'm not quite sure what this show is about. A girl who seems to have some sort of special powers. It's a little creepy, a little dark, a little eerie. Is she dead? Is she magic? Is she a lesbian? The world may never know the truth.

As always, here is the SFX only.



The sound I used when the light is coming out of her mouth is blended cymbal scrape, some whoosh action and a little electric guitar feedback.

Storage Wars Sweeps

Storage Wars. Reality television at its finest [note sarcasm]. Whatever, it was fun to make the sound effects.

No really! Here's the FX only mix.



I have been especially enjoying using the Sound Toys "Speed" plug-in to modulate whooshes and other FX to give them a little more movement and doppler feel. Sound tends to have a lot of pitch involved when moving quickly. Listen to the last sound effect on the SFX pass when the endpage comes on and you can hear some of that Speed working it's magic.

Nick Holiday Giveaway

500 iPads????!!!!!!



I had plenty of time to work on this spot but somehow it came down to the wire. Still, it's nice to be able to really explore the sound to go with such cool looking 3D graphics. And as always, for your listening please, the SFX Splits:

Spike Sports Sizzle

It's always fun to work on a Sizzle spot that is not for air. You get to use cool music tracks like The Beastie Boys "Sabotage" Here's the SFX Split:

Contact Mic Recording with Hiss and a Roar

CONTACT MIC RECORDING from tim prebble on Vimeo.

Tim Prebble never ceases to impress me with his obsession with cool sounds. I picked up Pressure Max and Vegetable Violence a while back but this contact mic library looks like a must have. Such a variety of cool sounds that can be applied all over the place to give a unique stamp to any piece.

CONTACT MIC PREVIEW by timprebble

Winx Club

Just wrapped a long week with my friends at Nickelodeon putting together the finishing touches on the promos for a new show – Winx Club. Toward the beginning of the campaign, we spent a few days looking for the perfect piece of music and never found it so I offered up to compose something. In the end, we used two pieces of music – it started off with drop music and then went into my piece. This is the music track by itself:



Here's the full music track I composed:

Nick WinxClub ID Music Full MSTR by noisepatterns

And as always, here is the sound effects split out: