A new series that dissects projects that One Thousand Birds has been a part of. We hope to provide insight into the process on sound projects, from pitched to produced, through the perspective of OTB’s producers and engineers.
This article is the first in a series that dissects projects that One Thousand Birds (OTB, the sound design studio behind Hii) has been a part of. We hope to provide insight into the process on sound projects, from pitched to produced, through the perspective of OTB’s producers and engineers. In this first installment, Hii sat down and discussed Welcome to Winona, a Squarespace commercial aired during the 54th Super Bowl in February of 2020.
Viewing it purely from the perspective of content creation, the involvement of One Thousand Birds on Welcome to Winona, starring Winona Ryder, began with a voice over and ended with a mixdown. However, before OTB’s work could begin, the contest for the job itself had to take place. Vouching and communicating on behalf of the OTB team was producer, Alex Berner Coe (ABC).
“There was a long sort of bidding process where we were presenting them with our budget and timelines and we were all figuring out how it would work logistically and then they awarded us the job”
As a producer at OTB, this is a typical aspect of ABC’s day to day operations. Doing outreach, negotiating with clients on potential projects, getting the documents and files in order to get that process along, needless to say it requires wearing a variety of hats, sometimes many all at once. The most important aspect, generally speaking, is,
“communicating with our clients so our engineers don't have to deal with that so they can do their jobs”.
Across the board, this dynamic doesn’t find itself changing so drastically from project to project. However, this particular commercial did bring about certain changes with it airing during the Superbowl. On ABC’s end this met her with a bit more obscurity than usual.
(Source)
“Sometimes if its a project for a more high profile client or something like this, the commercial that we’re talking about which was for the Superbowl, they'll be a little bit secretive about it so we’ll have to sign an NDA before they can tell us any small details about what we’re getting into.”
While there was secrecy, familiarity was still present. Squarespace was and has been a long time client of the NYC office. An established relationship comes with a basis of understanding that is quite helpful.
“Having worked with the same people at Squarespace, with Ben, the main creative guy over there who was with us on sessions and calling the shots in all these sessions. I’ve worked on web spots with him and the Superbowl ads 2020 and 2021, that helps knowing him and knowing what he’s into. But this was our first bigger job with him.”
Torin is one of the sound designers at One Thousand Birds New York who handled the mixing for this project. In this particular project the sound design and music was outsourced, by Squarespace, from Q Department, another sound studio. However, the process at times requires involvement in this part of production as well:
“So a lot of the time when we’re “just doing mixing” we end up doing sound design too because we might be in the middle of session and be like, can we swap that sound out actually, maybe we can find something better or like, it should be more of this ambience doesn't sound quite right can we add something or take something away?”
Connectivity, streamlining the process, was also a present factor internally.
-- Bicoastal Workflow --
One Thousand Bird’s New York Office
Operationally OTB has four offices worldwide, NY, LA, Lisbon and Bogota. Each of these different studios operate on their own, producers and engineers respective to their locality for the most part. However, the connectivity often goes beyond shared message boards, with there being opportunities for cross collaboration. Elaborating on this aspect of the process for sound is Jackie! Zhou, lead designer and mixer at OTB Los Angeles, who ultimately handled the recording of the VO and the ADR.
“It’s really nice because our workflows are so similar. Its pretty streamlined to just hop onto each other’s sessions and do a little work and then send it back.”
In this case the bicoastal collaboration was an even easier adjustment with Winona being based in Los Angeles at the time.
-- High Profile Clientele --
Working with high profile talents can often pose difficulties in regards to being able to reach people.
“It happens mostly with celebrity talent, celebrities will be all over, in Toronto, San Francisco, Los Angeles. Maybe 5 projects a year require us to do a lot of shuffling around other studios.”
It also can make workflow a lot more hectic as a result of over-involvement.
“There were a lot of people involved, probably too many people, than were necessary. But I feel like that can be the vibe with a celebrity record. Everybody wants to come be a part of it on the creative side”
Luckily this shuffling was absent with this particular job, with the locality of the talent allowing for the recording to be done in-house at the Los Angeles office. Spatial and scheduling specifics aside, working with high profile talent has its advantages.
“A lot of times with high profile talent, the recording of the voice over is not actually that complicated. Its more just about setting up a really comfortable environment for everyone and their team.”
This hospitality extended beyond the recording booth, with Winona and her team taking the opportunity to shoot press photography prior to recording the voiceover.
-- The Voice Over --
The act of recording, by extension, is very simple as well. Welcome to Winona was a narratively driven commercial which allowed for more improvisationally expressive recording.
“With commerical voice over if it's ever challenging or hair brained its almost always because they’re changing it from like “oh we recorded 50% off but we actually need to say 50% off sale items”. Its like really miniscule stuff...this was less VO “50% off squarespace” so this really fell into that nice hybrid zone where it was just really about her performance.”
Relatively, the more complicated aspect was the ADR that was done. ADR (Automated Dialogue Replacement) is audio done in post production in an attempt to get a better, clearer recording. In this case it was the scene from the Superbowl slot in which Winona is speaking back and forth with the police officer who is investigating why she is so strangely lying on the ground. In this case of recreation, what Jackie! pays most attention to is the way in which the sound is projected.
“When I do chime in for voice over its typically about evenness or, “Hey you’re actually like really close to the mic and this is not going to actually sound as if you are talking this person across from a booth”
While Jackie! contextualizes their involvement as quite a minor one, this is a result of familiarity and expertise. Beyond simply pressing record, it is being aware of the context the sound is taking place in on screen, and how that translates onto audio recorded after the fact.
-- Pre → Covid Workspaces --
The LA involvement demonstrates the ease brought by having offices at the epicenters of the coasts.
“Not everyone can meet in the same space and audio, thankfully, for the most part can be streamed pretty easily. It gets tricky once you are trying to sync something complicated.”
This common use of remote working, prior to the pandemic, resulted in an easy transition into that environment, however nonetheless there are things that are missed.
“People often have trouble—everybody sometimes has—trouble communicating their ideas about sound with language and that is made only more difficult with the internet.”
-- Communication Across Digital Lines --
As it had been mentioned, part of the streamlined nature of this particular project was working with a client that had been a consistent player in the rolodex. On a more personal level this meant beginning at a baseline of comfortability and understanding on both sides.
This comfort is also apparent in the dynamics within the studio. For ABC, the interpersonal dancing involved in communicating across groups and networks makes team reliability crucial. This manifests itself in reliability in communication across the board, but also an attentiveness to others projects.
“Maybe I’ll be like, oh Kira [NYC’s Managing Director] ‘oh, have you heard back yet about this whatever Toyota job’, and she’ll be like ‘oh I forgot about that let me check in’. So there’s a lot of back and forth there that lets us keep on top of things”
-- Preparing the Mix --
It is all a matter of organized and active communication.
“In these collaborative projects I just take more care of like, I don’t want to hand someone something that is a grenade or like totally confusing. I think it's just speaking the same language as different teams.
Having systems in place in order to keep track of both progress and time, as well as the work itself. A lot of it ends up becoming a natural means of operating.
“I've just gotten pretty good at finding a rhythm, just like “Oh I need to check in with this producer at whatever company because they said that they were getting prep done for later today for this project so let me check in. A lot of that stuff just sort of lives in my head”
[Is there anything about working collaboratively that affects the way you go about doing what you are doing?]
“I don’t think its anything that is actively on my checklist, but it is very similar to how all of us have adjusted to covid, I’m not actively thinking about grabbing a mask but I always do, its now these routines that happen, that come with ‘these are things we have learned to be important in this world so I will do them’, almost like care tasks like doing the dishes.
This juggling of responsibility in a streamlined manner becomes especially crucial when it comes to more time sensitive communications.
“I have to get back to the client immediately if there's a problem and be like hey we actually need you to fix this, and then we’ve lost an hour of work. So it really does require everyone communicating and me being on top of communicating.”
The collaborative process often results in certain tasks bleeding into each other. So just as Torin had implemented some of his own sound design as a mixer, Jackie! also took care of some post production alterations:
“We did really light comping just so the director could hear it played back with the production audio but nothing so elaborate, it was really just making sure we had what we needed and then zipped them off to Torin to mix.”
ABC also participates in the shared workload, in regards to keeping in order file handling between producers and clients.
“That's the first part of getting the project done, making sure the files are correct and what we need, like if there's music in the spot we want to make sure that we have the highest quality file of the track not the lowest quality file, that sort of thing for example...then I’ll circle back with the client manage their expectations for how the project is gonna go”
-- Making the Mix --
Just as Jackie! had a hierarchy of sound during recording, Torin did as well going into the mix.
“For this, the hierarchy was simplified a bit because there’s no music,right? Obviously dialogue is number one and that's generally where I start with every mix cleaning up the dialogue, making sure you can understand what is being said, assuming that's the intent.
This type of clean up is par the course for most recordings, but especially so in this particular environment in which the sound exposure primarily consisted of rough Minnesota winds. The presence of the ambience itself in comparison to the dialogue, even with a narrative piece like this is second priority:
“The environment is always generally, pretty much always at the bottom of the hierarchy, just kind of like an anchor.”
However it is this very silence which grounds the essence of the story
“emphasizing those little awkward silences to really punctuate the phrases”
As a mixer, Torin’s late involvement is foundational towards grounding the sense of sound—compiling not only in the material but also the tone—emphasizing what the writing of the scene has already established.
“This piece was a comedic piece and so that's always the #1 thing, how are you mixing this to be funnier, and that's pretty easy on this specific Superbowl spot because they wrote it to be this quiet awkward thing”
[People don’t think about how the comedy is also constructed or at least emphasized with the mixing. The mixer themselves also has to be a certain comedian of sorts.]
“Definitely, and timing is so important too, although that was mainly sorted for me, I don't think I changed much timing but I have, I mean a lot of this was also tied to on-screen action so the jacket sounds and stuff were fully there.”
-- The final result --
[What is an aspect of this project that you think people unfamiliar with commercial sound production would find surprising?]
“All the sound I was talking about, the jacket moving all that, someone will be rubbing a jacket together, its not recorded on set”
“I believe pretty much everything was either rewritten or zhuzhed, because we just re-recorded that whole thing from a booth in Los Angeles. So I think most people who have a semblance of post know that that stuff’s re-recorded and it's not the real thing.”
