we listen
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"If it weren't for Philo T. Farnsworth, inventor of television, we'd still be eating frozen radio dinners."
Johnny Carson
Eighty-six years ago, three musical tones, "G-E-C," were played on a fledgling network of radio stations. What started as a technical cue for local stations, has become an instantly recognized trio of notes woven into the American identity. Learn about the chimes, and find out what's been happening at Dynamix lately.
Read the newsletter here.
"Podcasting - I swear to you - on its worst day, the podcasts are better than our best films. Because they're more imaginative, and there's no artifice, and it's far more real."
Kevin Smith
"Science is magic that works"
Kurt Vonnegut
Researcher Dr. Diana Deutsch at UC San Diego has been studying the psychology of sound since the mid-1960's. Her findings illustrate how people can hear musical tones wildly different from each other. These "illusions" can cause great disagreements between listeners, even highly trained musicians. And interestingly, one group of stereo illusions has right-handers and left-handers perceiving them differently. Find out more about these illusions, plus what's been gong on at Dynamix lately.
Read the newsletter here.
"If a tree falls in the forest, and hits a mime, does anyone care?"
Gary Larson
Have you been hiking lately? Where'd you go? Red River Gorge? The Smokey Mountains? Yosemite? In the last 10 years, have you ever experienced a place devoid of all human sounds? Gordon Hempton, an Emmy-Award-winning recordist, claims there are less than a dozen places left in the continental U.S. that are "quiet." Hempton defines "quiet" as a natural environment that has no human-intrusion sounds for at least twenty minutes.
Plus, find out what's been going on at Dynamix lately.
Read the newsletter here.
"In radio, they say, nothing happens until the announcer says it happens."
Ernie Harwell
Legendary Detroit Tigers Announcer
There was a time when Americans who wanted to sound important and upper class spoke with a half-American, half-British accent. It was dominant in movies, on radio, in theaters, and on early television. Today, it sounds pompous. Why did they speak like this, where did it start, and why did it die?
Learn more and find out what's been going on at Dynamix lately in our newsletter here.
More about our up and coming neighborhood. We recorded Tom Martin interviewing Greg Walker in our studio. Audio clips from this and other interviews are featured throughout the week on 88.9 WEKU-FM.
"Y'all know who run the block right now
All we need is a mic and a beat
And a couple of speakers
And some turn tables out in the street, come on!"
Will Smith
"Block Party"
"Words mean more than what is set down on paper. It takes the human voice to infuse them with deeper meaning."
Maya Angelou
"What the eyes see and the ears hear, the mind believes."
Harry Houdini
The NSA is listening to our phone calls. The FBI is using face detection to catch wanted criminals. Apu at the Kwik-E-Mart is watching Bart Simpson with surveillance video. And now the police are listening for gunshots in neighborhoods across the nation.
Like GPS, radar, and the microwave oven, technology developed for the battlefield has found itself on Main Street. Gunshot detection is another military trickle-down technology that police are using to protect our citizens.
Read more in the newsletter.
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
Arthur C. Clarke
To the average person, audio can be a mysterious "myth-terious" thing. Many people don't want to admit that they are intimidated by the technical side of it, and that makes sense. The closest most people get to manipulating audio is adjusting the volume on their stereo.
People probably have more experience manipulating visuals. We create a picture with a camera, crop it, make it brighter, sharper, more colorful. We may even shoot a video and trim the beginning, cut clips together, or add a title in a simple movie editing program. But manipulating audio can be challenging and mystifying. It's rare that someone has competent audio equipment or software in their homes. Even some musicians with home recording gear will admit they know just enough to kill feedback or get something recorded on disk.
Read the newsletter here.
First broadcast on HRTV in 2012, “Unsung Hero: The Horse in the Civil War” is coming to KET in April. A Telly Award winner and an Emmy-nominated film, Unsung Hero chronicles the story of how horses and mules were obtained and utilized by the armies during the Civil War.
BROADCAST DATES:
April 14th at 9:00 p.m. (KET)
April 19th at 8:00 p.m. (KET2)
Find out more about the documentary by Witnessing History LLC here.
Variety reports that Amazon has greenlit 5 new series, including “Mad Dogs.” Dynamix worked with Steve Zahn on the pilot for dialog replacement.
Learn more about the project.
Learn more at Amazon Prime.
"It is a cliché that most clichés are true, but then like most clichés, that cliché is untrue."
Stephen Fry
Audio Clichés
You're watching a movie and somebody rides by on a bicycle. What do you hear? Ring-ring! Yep, it's a tried and true "audio cliché." I'm guilty of using it. Or how about when the scene shifts to London, we see the House of Parliament and hear Big Ben striking it's bell. Or a jet touches down on the runway and we hear the screech-screech of the tires. In film or television, audio clichés are normally the domain of comedy. But we've seen them crop up in serious programs as well.
Plus, find out about recent projects at Dynamix including a Superbowl spot, another audiobook, and…ZOMBIES!
Read the newsletter here.
With all the buzz nationally about which Superbowl spot would be the best, we can't forget about great spots produced for fans in and around Kentucky. Team Cornett recently partnered with Dynamix Productions for the latest Kentucky Football season ticket ad. The music track from A J Hochhalter starts off ambient as we see various scenes around Kentucky shot by Kong Productions. It then slowly rises in energy as we see Kentucky fans, until we hear Coach Stoops ask "Are you with me?"
The music track then takes on a heavy beat as we see various stylized game action shots from the 2014 season. The spots end with an impassioned cry from Coach Stoops, "Are you with me!!!???" Then a resounding "Yes Sir!!!!" from hundreds of voices ends the spot.
In order to create the non-music elements, we had Coach Stoops come into the studios of Dynamix to give us several dozen versions of "Are you with me?" We also went to the UK campus and recorded a few hundred Army ROTC cadets saying "Yes sir!!!" We then layered 4 different takes to create more than 800 voices.
Like last year's spot, it has been a big hit regionally. We look forward to working on next year's!
Watch the video here
"Mad Dogs" is now on Amazon Prime! Back in November, actor Steve Zahn was in the studios of Dynamix recording a significant amount of dialog replacement lines (ADR) for the new series.
Many television shows and movies require dialog to be re-recorded because of noisy locations, script changes, or performance tweaks. ADR involves the actor watching the scene to be fixed on a video screen while performing the new lines again. Precise synchronization, count-in cues, and microphone placement are paramount to success. During the "Mad Dogs" session, Dynamix was connected in real time over ISDN with director Adrian Shergold and Sony Pictures. Using timecode, video playback was simultaneously synchronized with Zahn's dialog in both Kentucky and California.
Mad Dogs synopsis:
When a group of underachieving 40-something friends gather in Belize to celebrate the early retirement of an old friend, a series of wild events unfold, exposing dark secrets, deception and even murder. Starring Ben Chaplin (The Thin Red Line), Michael Imperioli (The Sopranos), Billy Zane (Twin Peaks), Steve Zahn (Dallas Buyers Club) and Romany Malco (Weeds). Executive produced by Cris Cole and Shawn Ryan (The Shield).
Learn more at Amazon Prime.
"Before anything else, preparation is the key to success."
Alexander Graham Bell
