Audio for reality TV: audio pros are finding these programs challenging on multiple levels

Post, Jan, 2005 by Christine Bunish

Groove Addicts also recorded this season's musical tool kit, composed primarily by Brad Chiet, with the 50-piece orchestra. "The previous season, which was scored by another company, sounded very electronic and thin. The producers felt the cues needed to be more natural and warm" to better reflect the participants' gamut of emotions from anxious to euphoric, Blair reports.

Pre-scoring a show with a tool kit means "you have to see the future and anticipate needs," Chiet explains. To give the Extreme Makeover editors maximum flexibility, he wrote charts for the Prague Symphony that offered variations on the same themes: a fully-orchestrated cue might also be available in piano-only, strings-only or acoustic guitar-only versions. Chiet also took care to make the arrangements modular and to let fade outs go long, for example, to give the editors more control. "The composer needs to think about what the editor needs and give him the tools that make it easy for him," he says.

"Acoustic and live instruments really bring out the emotion in these shows and take them to the next level," Chiet concludes. "They capture all the drama of making dreams come true."

RELATED ARTICLE: Sony Music Studios reshapes Hey

NEW YORK -- Sony Music Studios (www.sonymusic.com) is recreating the hit Japanese game show, Hey: Spring of Trivia for cable's Spike TV, re-editing, re-voicing and reshaping 26 half-hours for an American audience. A high-speed procession of fascinating trivia and outrageous information, the program features video demo segments--when an eraser is suddenly frozen it explodes, no matter how far an ant falls it won't die, the Frisbee's inventor requested that his ashes be pressed into a usable disk--which a panel of judges awards "Hey" points by slapping a Hey button. The more interesting the trivia, the more "Heys" it gets.

"The Japanese producers are into the minutiae and the science of the trivia," says Andy Kadison, executive producer of the show and head of Automatic Productions, a division of Sony BMG Music Entertainment. "The trivia demos are shot around the world to prove the trivia's validity. The unique challenge for Sony Music Studios is to recreate the voiceover (which can be heard underneath the American track)."

"It's like mixing three shows at once," notes Sony Music Studios senior sound designer and recording engineer Mike Fisher. "We have to remix the Japanese show from split elements, do the English-language show mix and blend them together."

Fisher records the new announcer in a comic monotone, which plays off the spirit of the show, and tries to get the American cast to sound as spontaneous as possible with their re-voicing. He records into a Pro Tools HD system through a Grace mic pre; Neumann TLM 170s or 103s are the mics of choice. "The performances have to remain funny and on point, and match into the lip sync," Fisher continues. "The cast has become very adept at this, telling a joke or throwing in a one-liner." Sony Music Studios' mixers also replace the show's extensive sound design.