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Jimmy Neutron - Boy Genius
G&E
Music and Baccus Films Join Forces on 20-Spot Nickelodeon Campaign New York, NY (February 4, 2004)--To call all Jimmy Neutron fans to their
television stations for the recent hour-long movie installment, "Jimmy
Neutron: Rescue Jet Fusion," Nickelodeon called on two special agents
from the design and music community to produce 20 promotional spots.
Baccus Film and frequent Nickelodeon producer Kwesi Collisson and sound
designer/mixer Brian
Quill of NYC's G&E Music joined forces to create a series of promo spots,
counting down to the movie's premiere. The action-packed series of spots and
show packaging included a curtain raiser, :05 bumpers, as well as many :30 and
:60 installments, recruiting kid agents to tune in.
With experience producing promos for Nickelodeon programs
like "The
Fairly Odd Parents," "All That," "SpongeBob Square
Pants," "Dora
the Explorer," and " Little Bill," Collisson produced the visual
elements of the promo
series from his NYC Baccus Films facility. With designs provided by the Nickelodeon
in-house
art director, Collisson completed the editorial using Final
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Cut
Pro 3, running
on a dual Mac G4. "Graphically, we wanted create a mix of the 1960s style
of design with a modern flare using 3D elements as
well as the 3D space that
After
Effects offers us in compositing," offers Collisson. The 2D and 3D graphics
were animated and composited by his freelance team using the new dual 2 GHz Mac
G5s with After Effects and a Windows machine using 3D Studio
Max.
To execute a full-throttle, action-packed series of promos, with an energetic
blend of visual and audio effects, Collisson did some interesting prep work. "We
rented almost all of the James Bond films and watched the trailers that have
been
released over the past 40 years," Collisson shared. "
Because the 'Jimmy Neutron: Rescue Jet Fusion' movie was a parody of the James
Bond franchise, this research inspired and guided us with the sound design."
While a dramatic score accompanied the segments, most of the individual promos
were otherwise without audio when delivered to Quill. Over a six-week production
schedule, the producer and sound designer worked on a few spots each week. "I
had general ideas about how I want each spot to sound; Brian helped me focus
my
ideas by creating specific sound design and library searches at lightening speed," Collisson
remarks. "We finished the
entire project almost 5 days ahead of schedule due to this work-flow. We also
had no revisions, which can be rare."
Collisson ordered a sound design equally as dramatic and intense as the visual
elements so that as a full package, the spots would really capture the essence
of adventure, building suspense in sequence. In addition to providing sound design,
Quill recorded the Los Angeles-based voice-over talent, Jonathan Cook, via ISDN
to G&E's Pro Tools studio, and mixed each spot. Quill started out each spot
uploading the OMF file right out of Final Cut Pro via Collisson's FireWire drive,
and dialing up the VO. Having created a sound library specifically for the "Jimmy
Neutron" series,
Quill was able to quickly sound design and mix the spots in Pro Tools.
Quill's "Jimmy Neutron" sound library included a variety of his own
sounds, recorded raw on DAT, and then layered and processed in Pro Tools. "I
had
a lot of raw material, like a faucet running or a subway racing by, and I'd suck
them into Pro Tools and, for example, run them through a delay with some modulation,
to give the sounds an electric wetness," says Quill. "
Throughout the project, I was able to pull from that library I created in the
beginning, so that the spots had a similar flavor."
"I hardly ever use a solitary sound effect," continues Quill. "Usually
I'll combine several, stack them on top of each other to create a different sort
of
texture. A couple of the 'Jimmy Neutron' spots have copy that sort of melts away
on the screen in an electric, smoky dissolve. We used sounds which were very
electronic--I'd
combine whooshes with the sound of somebody welding, that crackling, into an
electric
sting that I made using the effect--to bring a real crispiness to the sound."
Aware of the excessive sound design often heard on TV, Quill spent time thinning
out the spots in the mix, while certain to give them a consistently rich high-tech,
sci-fi adventure feel. "I took a lot of effects that were stereo and went
mono with them, thinning it out so that you get a sense of an actual changing
soundscape," adds Quill. Mixing in Pro Tools, Quill used the Waves 4.0 plug-ins
extensively, noting that the Waves C4 Multiband compressor, "really made
the mix jump out of the speakers."
Comprising many of his own sounds, and multilayered effects, Quill's unique sound
design played a large role in the success of the "Jimmy Neutron:Rescue Jet
Fusion" promo campaign. The intensity of the VO and soundscape grabbed the
attention of so many Nick Agents, eager to catch the movie premier. "One
sonic
detail which runs through all the spots is this really low rumble (which started
out as a stampede of cows). I rolled off all the high end, so it has this deep
rumble," describes Quill. "It really makes you antsy,
gets you worked up--you know that something big is about to go down."
Having worked together on quite a few projects, including the 2002 independent
feature 'Alma Mater', Baccus Films and G&E Music proved the perfect team
to
get the message out to kid agents everywhere. "The event
was one of the highest rated shows on Nickelodeon, for a tentpole event," says
Collisson. "This
is directly attributed to the success of the promos and
the overall campaign. I read posts on the Nick.com website in which the kids
were
talking about some of our spots. It really excited them!"
G&E Music
www.gemusic.com
Baccus Films
baccusfilms.com
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