Following this blog posting will be a complete list (five items) of of what we need to have ready for class next week (Week 3).
THE BLOG.
Find articles to report on from web or periodical searches on the following topics: Audio Branding and Magnolia the movie (directed by Paul Thomas Anderson.
Find out all you can about the two topics and give us on the blog a rundown of what you find. Come to the blog more than once during the week and respond to each other's thoughts and findings.
OTHER ASSIGNMENTS.
1) For Game Art Designers-
• Create profiles of 3 games and/or interactive entities that use audio as their key element. Research their history and development. Use analysis techniques and points of discussion that will be introduced throughout the quarter to build this research. This is research that will help you design your final project: An interactive game that focuses on audio.
For IMD/Web Designers-
• Try to find a client for whom you can design environmental or 'ambient' sound. The only requirements are that the building or business has more than one space/room. Think outside the box; 'spaces' not rooms, 'sound' not music. We will work with this client through the design process for the rest of the quarter. This is research that will help you design this space as your final project. Remember: INTERACTIVE.
• The class will work together on certain aspects of this process, role-playing client/designer relationships and the client profile and needs analysis (more on this later).
2)On Week 1 I handed out a hard copy of the project brief for The Audio Log. That is due Week 5 and the brief is also in the drop off in the Week 1 folder.
3) What is your favorite sound? Frito Lay project.
4) Get on a Mac at school this week and open up Garage Band and get familiar with its workings. There will be an assignment that starts in class next week using that application. There are some good online tutorials as well as the help section of the app itself.
5) Get access to equipment you can do some easy recording with: digital voice recorders, iPods, digital camera, cell phone. anything you can get an mp3 clip from so that you have options for making your own original recordings taht you can manipulate in your designs (this is not due next week, just something you may want to have for your projects).
Off you go.
P.S. Make use of this website: http://studio.odeo.com/create/home
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I know this has nothing to do with the blog but I figured it was important. The following article is about the Orphaned Works Legislation and how it could affect us. Its kind of f*%@ed up. Take a read everyone and good luck with our blogs.
http://mag.awn.com/index.php?ltype*pageone&article_no=3605&page=1
Audio/Sound Branding
So, I guess I knew what "Audio Branding" was, but it didn't click when I heard the term first. ^__^; Audio, or sound branding is the use of sound to aide in reunforcing the recognition of a product or brand. They said that people only gotta hear the very beginning of a jingle or melody and they will already know how it's gonna end. They called them "Sound Logos," and really that's exactly what they are. On TV, we see the McDonald's logo and hear that "I'm Lovin' It!" jingle at the same time. But McDonald's commercials are not restricted to television. Even while listening to the radio commercial, all you have to do is hear "Para-pa-pa-pa!!" and you are already thinking, "I'm Lovin' It!" My source cited the Intel processor's 'fanfare' as another item we can immediately identify by hearing its sound.
Sound Branding doesn't strictly relate advertising either. Your item can have its own entire soundtrack. Take cell phones for instance. They have different sounds for when you power them on, turn them off, navigate through menus, take pictures, receive texts, miss calls, and so on. Those sounds vary from one brand of phone to the next, and having unique sounds helps to establish the phone's beyond its physical appearance.
So, in a nutshell, sound plays a key role in creating an identity for a product/brand. It gives us a secondary sense through which to perceive and recognize/remember the product.
Magnolia
I learned a little bit more about the movie Magnolia. There were 9 stories going on at once (didn't know how many exactly but I knew it was a fistful) and they are all connected in some way (I thought only a couple were connected, but we didn't see it from the beginning... Well, that, and I'm slow @ movies. -__-; ).
Anyway, about the music, I thought all of the music was written before the movie was released, but I learned that the songs "You Do" and "Save Me" were written AFTER that the music lady, Aimee Mann, was handed a copy of the script for encouragement by the director/writer, Paul Anderson. Paul was interested in working with Aimee after he learned that they both wrote about the same kinds of characters. Anyway, aside from those two songs, the rest of them were either demos or works-in-progress of Aimee's. One of her pre-existing songs was "Wise Up," which plays at the end of the movie where the various important characters sing different parts of the song, even though they are alone "in their own worlds."
An additional award-winning music video was created for the song Save Me where you see Aimee Mann herself singing to ther characters in the movie. While this is usually done digitally, Aimee was actually recorded in the real locales of the film alongside the actors (who were asked to remain after the movie's filming was completed). Click the link above to see that music video.
I hope the links work. I made this whole post from my Wii, clicking on one letter at a time. >.<
Audio and Sound Branding
Sound branding is another way of describing the musical tune that one hears either at the beginning or end of a commercial. This tune signifies a “stamp” or “logo” of the company onto the product that is being advertised. Many different companies such car insurance companies, television companies, consumer products, brands of toiletries, and so on all have a melody that is played during their advertisement. This helps the viewer or listener distinguish each company from the rest. This system functions similarly to a trademark in that no two companies have the same melody during their advertisement.
Whether or not the advertisement is televised is not an issue. Due to the fact that audio doesn’t need to be seen, a company can just as easily play their melody over a radio to reach its listeners. An example of this would be the Autoway. When a person is listening to the radio and hears the phrase, “who ya gunna call…” the person listening, automatically knows the ending is “Autoway”. Although this particular company stole their theme song from the ghost busters, they are just about the only people that still use it today.
So it is a way of life that we as a society use these melodies to entice our listeners and viewers into the product that is being sold. To do so, we create clever little jingles to aid us in the remembrance of particular companies.
Magnolia (film)
I found the movie very interesting in that it had several people with their own agenda that is linked in some way or another to another person in the movie. Although it is a little hard to follow when starting in the middle of the movie, I was able to slowly pick up certain relationships.
One of the songs that were used in the making of the movie was Aimee Mann's "Save Me" which was awarded Best Original Song. A music video was made of this song shortly after the movie Magnolia was made. It was Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson, and uses many of the films actor, such as Julianne Moore, Philip Seymour Hoffman, and Tom Cruise. The music video show Mann in separate scenes of the movie.
Link to music video:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=bNbTC6xLVg0
Another song that Magnolia had used in its movie, which was also created by Aimee Mann, was called “One”. I believe this was played at the start of the movie. I believe that this song was used to describe or set the field of characters as separate people, when in reality they were all linked by one person or another at the end. The scene clip which I had found shows (what I feel) is the beginning of the movie.
Link to Scene clip:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=6O1Y8RhhAYc
Link to song “One”:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=-aBYzqJ0L28
by: Joseph Kresz
Game Art and Design
Audio / Sound Branding
I found a great article on Audio Branding and techniques.
http://www.aiga.org/content.cfm/building-brand-value-through-sound
There is a portion of the article that talks about using specific music in retail shops to entice people to purchase certain products or buy more in general.
This is an exert from the article.
"In 1998, Adrian North, David Hargreaves and Jennifer McKendrick ran a test in a British wine shop to determine the role of background music in purchase decisions. For a number of days they piped in French and German music, alternating between the two. The results: on French-music days, the French wine outsold the German wine by a ratio of four to one. On German-music days, German wine outsold the French by a ratio of three to one.
The same team also discovered that customers are likely to tolerate long waiting times (both on the phone and in the real world), if and when the hold/background music is enjoyable and fits our expectations."
Reference:
-Building Brand Value Through the Strategic Use of Sound
April 26, 2007
by Noel Franus
http://www.aiga.org/content.cfm/building-brand-value-through-sound
Magnolia (film)
Director: Paul Thomas Anderson
Writer: Paul Thomas Anderson
The movie is about nine separate yet connected storylines, about the interactions among several people during one day in California.
Awards: Magnolia was nominated for 3 Oscars.
- Best Actor in a Supporting Role
(Tom Cruise)
- Best Music, Original Song
(Aimee Mann)
(Song "Save Me")
- Best Writing, Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen
(Paul Thomas Anderson)
Genre: Drama
Sound / Music: Aimee Mann
"Paul Anderson produced a music video "Save Me" which featured Aimee Mann in the background of scenes from the film, singing to characters. Unlike in many such music videos, there was no digital manipulation involved; the video was shot at the end of filming days with Mann and actors who were asked to stay in place. The video, which contains exactly seven cuts, won the Best Editing award at the 2000 MTV Video Music Awards and was nominated for Best Music Video from a Film."
"The soundtrack album, released in December 1999 on Reprise Records, features the Mann songs, as well as a section of Jon Brion's score and tracks by Supertramp and Gabrielle that were used in the film. Reprise released a full score album in March 2000."
Refernce:
www.imdb.com
(internet movie database)
(n.d.)
www.wikipedia.org
(wikidedia)
(n.d.)
Audio Branding
Audio branding would be simply using as an idenity for a company like a company would us a logo to make themselves identifiable from other companies producing similar products as them. This is usually mixed in with text to further enforce the company name into some mind.
Magnolia
Ok after reading on this movie, I must say there is to happening at once. Just read from the few sites I did read, the movie seems to be more like very interwoven short stories involving characters that exprience everything from short term fame to guilt. This movie might make a little more sense if I actually watched it.
Alright I read the synopsis on Magnolia and a couple reviews. In essence it's a very deep movie and one of the reviewers called it an "emotional roller coaster." It involves a lot of main characters, like 10 or something (don't feel like going back to look) and all of these people are connected through a web of relationships. Some are connected directly, while others are connected through other characters. I believe the point of the movie is to show that everyone is connected in some way, whether or not they know it and sometimes fate can be confused with coincidence and vice versa.
It made me realize the connections I know of in my life. My best friend in elementary school had a brother who also had friends that went to a swing dance studio studio. One of my highschool friends took me to this studio and I met my former best friend's, brother's friends who became my friends. I met some other guy at the studio and dated him for a while and met his relatives and their friends. After breaking up with him I met someone new through another friend at the swing studio and have met his family and friends. But one of his friends has a friend who is friends with my ex's cousin whom I met years ago. So yeah, that might not all make sense but it just goes to show that we all have relationship webs in our lives.
I intend to rent Magnolia along with The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford tonight and let you know what I think later.
As far as audio branding goes, it's the use of a sound or jingle in advertising mostly in order to recognize a product by that sound. Examples of that would be the goldfish jingle (which tends to get stuck in my head a lot) and the band-aids jingle. But examples outside of advertising is pretty much some things you would see in movies. Take for instance, the sound that girl makes from The Grudge. Everyone thinks of that movie the moment they hear that sound.
Oh and my favorite sound: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5gqDmR6lCh8&feature=related
Audio Branding is when a company uses audio to help push a product or name. Audio branding is used on a daily basis that if you here a certain sound you know exactly what it is be it a certain tv station, tv show, cellphones or computers they all have distinctive sounds. During my research i found a site http://blog.futurelab.net/2007/12/by_roger_dooleymarketing_campa.html
which talks abouts people doing tests on how when playing french music in a wine store more french wine is purchased and when playing German music more German wine is purchased. They also did a study on how having music playing in the background while a person is on hold will make the person stay on hold longer if they like the music that is playing.
On the movie Magnolia i found it very hard to understand catching it towards the end and missing the beginning after doing some reading up on it i found that the movie had nine separate stories going on at once and that everybody was connected to each other in some way. The movie had to do with several themes which include regret and loneliness. I also read that the movie had really good reviews and was nominated for several awards. Some of the music for the movie was actually written by Aimee Mann before she even saw the script for the movie. The song "You Do" was based on a character that later got cut from the movie.
AUDIO BRANDING:
Several things prominently pop into my head when I think of the concept of audio branding. Firstly, jingles, and how I think it would be such an awesome job to write jingles. Jason Bateman's character in Juno wrote jingles for a living, as did Charlie Sheen's character in the show Two and a Half Men.
Secondly I think of the soundtrack to Star Wars. The music is obviously very recognizable but I argue that the sound effects from the movie are even more so. Everybody knows the sounds of a lightsaber or Darth Vader's breathing, or R2-D2's beeps and boops.
MAGNOLIA:
I haven't see the movie but what I can gather from it is that no matter how self-absorbed a person may become, they never cease to have an effect on others in large and minuscule ways.
I am another one that thought that audio branding had meant something different. I thought it meant something along the lines of copyrighted music or laws that "BRAND" the music with ownership. But it actually means- Sound branding (also known as audio branding, sonic branding, acoustic branding or sonic mnemonics) is the use of sound to reinforce brand identity. Sound branding is increasingly becoming a vehicle for conveying a memorable message to targeted consumers, taking advantage of the powerful memory sense of sound. SO the use of melodies and music to help brand an item with a musical tone or jingle helps people almost instant remember a product just by sound. Oscar Meyer hotdogs is a song that sticks in my brain. there are so many more out there but its 2 in the morning and i cant think of shite. (Wikipedia has a good def that i referenced also with a few examples).
Magnolia is a wierd movie to me. There is so much going on in it that it can almost be hard to follow. The one thing i noticed is that the music in the movie never stops. It is playing from start to finish in the movie and changes a few times with different scenes but still stays playing. With all that is going on with the kid on the game show and his money hungry father, the cop with the coke attic, Frank mackey with his father on his death bed and is a huge woman hater and the cheating wife of franks father i just almost lose intrest because there is so much going on at once. There is just so much struggle going on in the movie at one time that no one really stops to think about what they are doing and why. So as everyone else has already referenced the Save Me song written by Aimee Mann i wont mention any more about it. I just thought it was weird that everyone broke out into song at the same time singing that song. unrealistic with whats going on in the movie as everyone is dealing with so many problems to just break out singing.
and you can watch this movie on the internet at
www.watch-movies.net
all free movies here
Matthew Garbatini
Game Art & Design
I have come to find that there are many definitions for what audio branding can actually be. I feel the purpose of audio branding in this movie however, was to reinforce an idea and or an emotion. Wikipedia states that audio branding is meant to take advantage of the sound aspect of human memory. Things are much easier to remember if they are not only identified visually, but also phonetically. Towards the beginning of this movie the music was non-stop until the part where Stanley Spector (that child genius) was refusing to get up because he went pee pee in his pants. At that point in time the music became more rapid and then ceased for a vast majority of the movie until almost the ending. Then frogs rained down which kind of lost me but I could only imagine that this is referenced to a plague in the Bible. To get back on topic, I feel that audio branding was used to amplify the drama in many parts of this movie. It is as if the music in this movie directs the audience on what emotion they should be feeling at certain times. Using the timbre wheel of Max Lord, the author of “Why is that thing beeping?,” I have come to identify a lot of metal (piano), skin (drums), pure (electronic), and woody (guitar/violin) sounds throughout this entire movie. Woody sounds were used anytime there was a sad scene where the actors would cry. The use of metal sounds kicked in towards the middle where they all sang the, “Nothing is going to change” song together. Pure sounds were in the beginning credits and towards the end after the frogs dropped. Skin sounds were present whenever the pace of the movie increased. This movie was very interesting and made it apparent that there are a lot of people out there who hide behind a facade. Bad things tend to happen to everyone even if they are good. It also informs us that the lives of many different people can intertwine with each other even if they do not know one another. Humans are very relatable as well.
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