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Adding Audio to Your List of Services

Nov 10, 2009 12:00 PM, By Gary Eskow

Find out where the racket comes from.

Interactive scoring is one of the truly great advancements in the audio industry that was developed over the last decade or so. We've reviewed SmartSound Sonicfire Pro in the past, and I won't rehash that document, but I strongly suggest that you visit the SmartSound website and study the possibilities that this remarkable program offers. In brief, you select an audio cut (which sits inside the shell of your workstation), tell the program the length of the scene, and answer a few other questions, and Sonicfire Pro will work behind the scenes to tailor a track for you. The results are generally quite good—good enough to make me think I made the right decision getting out of the scoring business when I did. Other companies offer similar products, so get out there and learn about them.

Bob Gioia runs Pro Video Multimedia out of his home in Suffern, N.Y. An industry veteran, Gioia has followed its trajectory. In the salad days, the business was housed in a large facility, and Gioia had a partner and staff. Streamlining operations has been the ticket to his long-term viability, and the work keeps coming in.

"We offer full-service production to our clients," Gioia says. "In some cases, we'll handle everything: write the script, shoot and edit the video, put the content on the desired distribution format, and design and execute all of the print work.

"We're currently producing five videos for Thinkpath Engineering. FedEx is a client of theirs, and we're shooting at a FedEx facility in North Carolina. We went down there to shoot the project from scripts they developed themselves. We're also working on a video for Avon. Inter- and intranet work is a growth area in our industry that we're tapping into. We just shot 17 or 18 snippets for a lawyer who specializes in estate planning, which he'll put up on his website.

"Almost every project we're involved with uses music, at least for intros and outros. We have a number of music libraries inhouse, but the ability to access clips from the Internet has made things much easier for production companies like ours," he says. "We no longer have to order 50 CDs and find a place to store them inhouse."

Gioia runs Final Cut Pro but generally farms out his audio post work to freelancers. "I'm mostly the guy who writes and produces at this point," he says. "There are five or six audio guys in the metropolitan area that I use on a fairly regular basis. Right now, four of them are working on videos for me."

Using YouSendIt.com, Gioia says he no longer burns CDs for shipping. He uses the basic $10/month package that YouSendIt.com offers. It gives him a maximum file size of 2GB per transfer and up to 40GB of total transfers per month. "We're getting to the point where we might need to bump up to the next level," he says.

Bottom line

You're in control. If you're not comfortable adding music and sound effects to your project, perhaps your budget will allow you to head off to a major-league audio post house such as SoundHound. Are you confident that you can one day learn to be as comfortable cutting audio as you are working with video? If so, study the stock music library world. Learn about the content that's out there and how distribution streams work. Decide which video editing platform handles audio in a way that best suits your workflow. If you don't think you can handle audio on your own and also can't afford to work in an established facility, explore the community of freelancers who specialize in this area. There's more than one way to trim a track.

Your project deserves excellent audio. With a little legwork, you're sure to deliver a quality product that will keep your clients knocking at the door.

Search Reel-Exchange for stock music options and audio post houses and professionals.

Continue the discussion on “Crosstalk” the Millimeter Forum.
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