Promos, Trails production.

BDM--

Here you go----I wanted to play around with your voice in AA.  Im not at my machine at home--which has a lot more bells and whistles.  I wanted to give you an idea of a different sound.  I clipped the first part of your demo--

comments?  

smiles,
mm

That's cool Marty! There's a 4MB Zip with the original Wave on it's way to you....  

Marty and Emmett you both are fantastic!!!!!!!!!!
BTW I want to learn how to do this too.....

From what I've learned already listening to Marty's production demos....I'd Script it like this:

Rock!!! Live Forever Will Live Forever  Forever - The Angels of Rock will Live Live Forever Forever Rock!! Rock Rock!!! .....

Playing with Marty's Clip of Emmett (I hope it's ok):    What do you think? First attempt at editing a promo ....

Liquid--

sounds like you might be onto something....just remember, when you add FX and such onto the voice--listen like the listener--you DONT wanna drown the actual message of the piece with too many FX--the message is the most important part of the piece!

Play around with it....post it when you get done...Im anxious to listen...

smiles,
mm

Liquid--

can you email me again?  Ive left your email addy at home.

look forward to hearin from ya

mm

so what.....OK im dumb...LOL  I just realized I can click on his email link onthe forum.

jeeez

 

mm

Sorry for the wait.

Here is a cleaner mix. Added A Vox V846 Wah Wah I just got today!!!
The V846!!!

Marty - sent you the files + session so you can work on it and so I can learn more of how you see it.


Brewer

I like those FX Brewer. A very important aspect of promos and ads is the duration. Usually these have to be a strict 20, 30, 40, 50 seconds etc. I played around with some FX and found that it made the promo too long, longer than the 30 sec duration I had set. The task here then, is to make it sound interesting, but keeping it as a 30 sec spot. Give it a go ....

Don't most stations prefer to use their imaging and ads in the same way in terms of length? If they ask you for a 30 second slot, your stuff has to be exactly 29.5 seconds duration? I know that with trails and imaging it's not quite so important as it is for people who are paying for time, but for convenience, this has often been specified in the past AFAIK.

Yes, the client is always trite er right .. and how long is a reverb on the last word?  . If the duration was measured to the end of the reverb to silence you'd need to allow 10 seconds for it.

If the duration was measured to the end of the reverb to silence you'd need to allow 10 seconds for it.

We've always been heavily discouraged from 'soft' ends...

How long would you like it? I am learning so much from you amd Marty.
I will get on this Sunday night...

Okay, here's the entire rationale:

The basic situation is that stations with automation quite often want to play spots back to back, and they want the programming to be easy - which is why they like hard starts and ends. If you end dead on 30 seconds, you effectively 'crash' the next segment, and you won't get a lot more work! The idea is that you start dead on zero, and leave a single beat at the end, which is about 1/3 to 1/2 a second.

So what you have to do when you are making this stuff is think about something extremely up-front happening immediately at the end of your spot. Do you want to trail off in reverb? Probably not, unless you are using it as an extreme effect - and even then, I'd compress the length of the tail. But it's okay to leave a reverb tail running until almost the very end of your 30 second slot, as long as the dry sound ends leaving a single beat - which pretty much constrains the length of the tail, doesn't it?

It has often been said that what people remember is the last thing they were told, and quite often this appears to be true - so it's always worth reinforcing the important part of the message at the end of a trail or promo. There are other ways of ending as well - musical stabs and SFX work quite well, for instance. But as far as the overall content goes, probably the most important thing is to listen carefully to the station at the time this stuff will air - if what you are doing doesn't blend in with the format, then they're not going to use it. And Marty is so right when it comes to FX on the voice - the one thing you should do with anything like this is listen to it on a cheap tranny radio when you've finished it - often this will bring you down to earth with a bump. And don't play it to your mom for approval - play it to the bloke over the road who's always complaining about the state of your front yard - you are more likely to get an honest opinion from him.

I may post an alternative example of the genre when I've finished re-doing it. It started out as a real program trail, and it's been aired loads of times, but I was never 100% happy with it, despite the fact that the clients were delighted with the result, which was exactly what they'd asked for - I don't think that they asked for quite the right thing. And I have to say that it didn't fit in with some of the other stuff on the station too well, either - it was far too much like the breakfast show it came from, and it still will be when it's redone. But it does demonstrate an alternative ending!

I disagree that soft endings should not be used.  Many stations today would prefer some soft endings, as the EOM tone that triggers the next event can easily be set over a reverb tail or fade.  This creates a nice segue sound from spot to spot...or in this case, from imaging to music.

Ideally, you will be able to communicate with the program director and come up with a system for programming imaging elements the same way the music is scheduled.  

For instance:  When you have an uptempo number going into a slow song (which should never happen, but some PD's are weird), you would want a sweeper that comes in hard and transitions into soft, and ends with a tail or fade.  For a slow song into an uptempo, it would be the reverse.

It's much the same idea for commercials or promos.  Promos will often be aired on one side of the commercial stopset.  Most often before the commercials...Either way, there will be music on one side of a promo.

For commercials, if I make one with a soft ending, I will make it about 31 seconds, with only a tail or fade in the last second so the EOM tone can be set at 30 and there will be enough sound remaining to nicely seg into the next spot.

It also rather depends on the formatics of the particular station.  A rock station will have very different rules than a classical station.

It's certainly true that the advice will vary according to the station, and also the degree of automation they use, and probably the best advice is to talk to the PD concerned about what the station actually wants, or can use. Ultimately though, the critical thing is to ask the right questions, I would have thought...

At least if you go in there and bring up all the right issues, you're likely to get a more sympathetic response when you submit work, anyway.

I must admit that I get to see a relatively narrow range of practices from this POV in the UK, where automation is generally frowned upon at a licensing authority level - and if you are doing adverts, most advertisers want as much as they can possibly get in the time they've paid for unless they've got money to burn - then they might go for the arty stuff.

But for reasons that I won't go into here, this may be about to change slightly over the next few years - we'll see. In the past, a lot of stations have used sustaining services for overnights, not automation, but I think that changes in the way the business is regulated may also bring about changes in the rather odd attitude to this.