Santa Monica, CA, July 9, 2012 — Award winning music company Endless Noise has wrapped up the 2012 Awards Season with Four Major Industry Honors, all for its work on behalf of client Volkswagen on the critically acclaimed and highly popular viral spot entitled “The Bark Side” (with close to 17-million YouTube views to date.)
Those award wins were a Bronze Cannes Lion in the category “Film Craft/Sound Design,” an AICP Award for “Best Musical Arrangement,” and a Gold Clio in the category “Music (Adapted”). Endless Noise’s work also won a Bronze Clio in “Sound Design” for “The Bark Side,” and shared Silver Clio honors in the category “Music (Licensed)” for the VW spot entitled “Rocketman” where the company served as music arrangers for the licensed track.
To View “The Bark Side,” and other examples of Endless Noise’s work in the arena of musical sound design or “Rendered Noise,” please see:
http://www.youtube.com/user/renderednoise
ABOUT “THE BARK SIDE:”
In early 2012, Endless Noise crafted the infamous “Darth Vader Theme” as a piece of music emanating from the mouths of a dozen barking dogs for “The Bark Side,” a Volkswagen TV and viral web spot. This musical work, with over 16-million hits on YouTube to date, is just the latest in this genre of “rendered noise” TV and film projects for which Endless Noise and its founder/composer Jeff Elmassian have become renowned as pioneers.
Volkswagen and Deutsch, Los Angeles, unveiled “The Bark Side,” a 60-second 2012 Super Bowl teaser on YouTube and then on broadcast TV during an episode of “The Middle” on ABC. The spot stars a variety of dogs barking a canine rendition of “The Imperial March,” aka “Darth Vader’s Theme,” the track featured in last year’s VW Super Bowl darling, “The Force.”
The ad was directed by Keith Schofield of Caviar Content, who said the dogs were shot together and then separately on the set, barking to a temporary track created by Endless Noise’s Jeff Elmassian, who was also behind the arrangement of John William’s original Vader march for “The Force.” Prior to production, “we talked about how this should probably be handled like a music video,” said Deutsch Director of Integrated Content Vic Palumbo. “We needed to create the track first and then figure out who the dogs are, what notes they’re going to be singing.”
For the final track, Elmassian created a mix of archived dog barks and yelps recorded on set, rounded out by newly recorded woofs and howls-a number of which were later pitched to match the actual tune. One of the biggest challenges was the balancing act of using unaltered dog barks and digitally enhanced ones. The final mix featured a combination of both. “The human ear is discerning enough that even a lay person can tell when something is synthetic,” said Elmassian. “You want a certain amount of barks to not be effected. Your ear will anchor onto enough of those and start to forgive some of the sounds that do border more on the effected side.”
There was also the problem of matching yelp to snout. “We wanted the barks to sound like they were actually intoning a pitch, but it’s also important that we needed them to sound like the specific dog,” said Elmassian. “You may have a great Labrador with the right pitch, but at that moment it’s the Chihuahua barking. You can’t put a Lab’s bark into the Chihuahua voice.” Assembling it all involved a very delicate dance between sound and edit. The barks themselves start out sounding a bit cryptic and random, until they build into something really familiar.”
CREDITS FOR “THE BARK SIDE”:
Music and Sound Design: Endless Noise
Endless Noise composed
the all-canine chorus arrangement
of John Williams’ “The Imperial March”
Agency: Deutsch LA
Director: Keith Schofield
Production: Caviar
Editorial: Union Editorial
Editor: Nicholas Wayman-Harris
Audio Post: Lime Studios
Mixer: Mark Meyuhaus
Special Effects: Method
ABOUT ENDLESS NOISE:
Based in Santa Monica, CA, Endless Noise is an award-winning music and sound design company founded by renowned musician/composer Jeff Elmassian. The company specializes in Original Music, Sound Design, Remix/Mash-up, Sound FX Library, Musical Arranging, and Music Licensing. The studio composes and produces innovative music and sound design for commercials, TV programs, the web, feature films, interactive/multimedia projects and video games.
Clients of Endless Noise include Nike, Coca-Cola, Audi, Lexus, Honda, American Express, Motorola, MasterCard, Nissan and Kyocera to name a few. Building on its Grammy, Cannes Gold Lion, Clio, AICP, D&AD, London International Advertising, ANDY and One Show awards, Endless Noise continues to wow the sonic senses with its mastery of composition, versatility, and fearlessness of pushing the boundaries of music.
The company’s address is: 1825 Stanford Street Santa Monica, CA 90404, and the phone is 310.694.8251 or 424.268.4102.
For more information, please see: www.endlessnoise.com
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