The first ‘Battleship’ movie trailer earning Michael Bay comparisons made me think about the art and sound departments for the ‘Transformers’ franchise today. While the storytelling for those films has been all over the place, the art and sound design has been consistently exciting to me.
This SoundWorks Collection featurette exposes some of the work behind the sound design and effects for ‘Transformers: Dark of the Moon.’ Key crew members, including supervising sound editor Erik Aadahl, talk about mixing the film for 7.1 surround sound and a few of the experiments done to capture and create initial ‘wild sound’ for the film.
Recording the sound of dry ice against different metals still strikes me as especially cool. If that movie didn’t have a runtime of half my life, I’d watch it again to try to nail down some of these elements.
50 Cent Camwhores for Sleek Headphone Sales
People in the music industry have been looking for a way to either counteract the reign of mp3s or at least make up for record sales starting near beginning of the century. One of the more recent and most notable ways industry giants have tried to engage listeners is to bring them new headgear, partly constructed and fully endorsed by famous artists. That is, in 2008 Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine launched the headphone line Beats by Dre. Instead of trying to win people over simply by telling them to stop listening to illegal digital music, listeners could at least do better than iPod earbuds.
Since then more celebrities and audio companies have jumped on the train to offer competition. Ludacris is the latest to get in the game with his new line of Soul by Ludacris, joining musicians like Diddy and Lady Gaga. But, for me, none of them have come close to the marketing tease 50 Cent has organized for his own headphone line with Sleek Audio:
Why waste money and time on elaborate press schemes when you can get it done with low-quality MySpace shots in your driveway The target audience for these isn’t only other sound engineers and studio musicians, so he has to communicate with consumer in ways they appreciate most, right? This is simply practical marketing.
[via Endgadget]
