The 26th R.A.P. Awards - Call For Entries!
Time to gather your best Promos, Commercials, Imaging and Feature Productions from 2015, or create your award winner before the year is over! ENTRY DEALINE: JANUARY 19, 2016 Updates in the RAP Community and on Twitter @radioprod.
Production 212: Thanksgiving Leftovers
by Dave Foxx
I’m pretty sure a few of you are now wondering when I’m going to talk about my big news of a few weeks ago. I’m getting to that. I have so many things I am grateful for this year and I wanted to tell you about some of them first.
Q It Up: What’s the oldest piece of audio equipment or software you still use?
The Q It Up panel responds to this Q: What’s the oldest piece of audio equipment or software you still use, even if only occasionally? Maybe it’s an old compressor or external reverb or effects processor that has a sound you just can’t find anywhere else. What do you like about it? What use does it still serve? Maybe you have an old DAT deck, turntable or reel-to-reel that still serves a purpose! What about old software that’s still in use, like Cool Edit or some early plug-in that still does the job for you?
Radio Hed: Misdirect Attention for Commercial Success
by Jeffrey Hedquist
Here’s another form of exaggeration that you can use to break writers’ block, to get attention from an ears-glazed-over audience and to bring results to hungry advertisers.
Misdirect attention by making the advertiser’s product, service, location or event more important, urgent, or compelling than a major event that your audience would think of as life changing.
The Commercial Chronicles: When Clients Voice Their Own Spots, aka Kill Me Now!
by Dennis Daniel
There are few things more horrifying in our business than the times we have to work directly with the client. No middleman. No buffer. No net. Mano-e-mano.
At the advertising agency where I work, I basically do all the TV and radio commercials for our automotive dealership accounts. We have tons of them! It is rather inevitable that there will be occasions where the owner, the owner’s son or daughter, wife… whoever nepotism dictates… wants to be in the commercial.
Feature: Do You Remember Your First Spot Ever?
by Richard Stroobant
Hockey players save the puck when they score their first goal. Football players save their first touchdown ball. But do you still have your first commercial? Do you even remember it? Or even who the client was? Likely, the answer is sadly… no. It was probably just a voice over music, single voice commercial. But even if we can’t remember that first spot, I bet you do remember one of the first “creative” spots you produced. Maybe you still have THAT one somewhere. And you probably remember the first spot or promo that wowed you on the RAP Soundstage or RAP CD, or even the RAP Cassette. It hit you like a ton of bricks and you said “How the hell did they do THAT?” And then you immediately tried to replicate it. I remember mine!
139th AES Convention: the Product Wrap-up
by Nate Austen
The AES convention is the place to be if you want to see, hear and touch the future of audio recording and production. And as I’ve said before, it’s not a radio-specific convo, as it brings in pros and students alike from the music industry, TV and film production, Web multimedia and academia -- and a few celebs here and there too. But other than the NAB conferences each year and maybe the Consumer Electronics (CES) gatherings, this is probably the best place to be to grab the gear and give it a spin...
"...And Make It Real Creative!": Wrapping Up 2015 and a Certain Angel
by Trent Rentsch
Everyone seems to take time during the holidays to reflect… about the past year, the people we care about, our accomplishments, our failures. This year, the process started early for me. It’s been a year of incredible highs and painful lows, of wonderful gains and numbing losses. Somewhere in the midst of it all, I began to try to pull some meaning out of the roller coaster that has been my life in 2015, but mostly all I could come up with was, “What the hell?”
The R.A.P. Soundstage
Up first is this month’s Editor’s Choice Award winner, a different kind of commercial to say the least. Luke McPeake at UKRD is the producer and Mike Bersin the writer on this three minute commercial. That’s right, three minutes to be creative, and they did just that. Track 2 is audio from Dave Foxx referenced in his Production 212 column. Track 3 is the commercial Dennis Daniel talks about at the end of his Commercial Chronicles column this month. Track 4 is the spot Richard Stroobant writes about in his article on page 17, Do You Remember Your First Spot Ever? This spot is the one his student produces. But Richard also references a Beatles promo he heard years ago, and we were able to locate that one as well. It’s on track 5, a promo Steve Hunt did 25 years ago!
...and more!