The Default Weekly Blog Assignment: Audio Articles and Designing for Clients. Any information on designing for clients does not have to be exclusive to audio design.
Also, for those of you who were in class, I want you to blog about the DVD we watched in class- Blade Runner. What can you say about the sound effects and soundtrack (its o.k. to websearch for info on this one as well). A good site is www.brmovie.com
I also wanted to give you the assignment for next week here as well as on the drop off:
IM3307 Audio for Interactive Design
Instructor: Tim O’Donnell
E-mail: todonnell@aii.edu
Assignment for Week 4
In conjunction with audio branding, write up a brief artist's statement for yourself as an artist, and then based on that mood/style/artistic signature, select what would be YOUR theme song or sound (the song/sound that would play every time you walked into a room). Bring a recording of the sound to class. This needs to be an original song/sound for one sample, but also find a second sample, which is a song or sound effect, etc.
The statement and the two audio samples should all fit together analogously.
Bring to class for presentation Week 4.
Off you go.
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5 comments:
My article: http://www.sitepoint.com/article/designing-for-clients-made-easy
Summary:
I took notes of some key points of this article while reading it. One important thing is gaining the trust and respect of your client. If you do this, then your client will trust you to make the decisions they can’t. A quote I liked was: “However, if you do establish that respect, it will be much easier to walk clients down the easy road rather than let them lead you down a long, windy and tortuous road.” The client also needs to know what is going to happen during this project design. Providing them with an exact timeline and design process will help rid you of the pestering, but you also must stick to this timeline. You need to do your best to accommodate the client; he/she needs to be with you, not against you. When you are designing this project for them, you must remember that you are not designing for yourself, you are designing for them. Make sure you know as much as possible about the client and what they like to save both you and them money and time of redoing miscommunicated designs. “You’re not designing for yourself, you’re designing for others.”
And in regards to Blade Runner:
The main issue with trying to judge the sound quality of the movie is how differing every one's personal sound system is. Now, I don't know if this was just my computer being funny or what, but when I put in the DVD it was considerably much quieter than my other programs running at the time. I had to turn the program to max volume and turn up my headphones. But other than that, for the age of the movie in comparison of video quality to sound quality, the sound was very nice. All of the sound effects seemed to have hit their desired point. Some of the voice acting seemed a bit weak, in terms of the audio track though. And despite using headphones, I ran the program in 5.1 and it was very interesting to see how that was done. I was able to hear certain things and unable to hear others; some sounds would go through 1 headphone and disappear rather than continue. So it seems as though the 5.1 was done quite well.
Tabitha
I agree with Tabitha, it is all about respect and the detail that we as designers need to give out to the client to create that trust. And looking at her expression for "You're not designing for yourself, you're designing for others" I found an article that basically tell us that not only when we're designing for a client but when you are also designing for yourself, you have to think about future clients or current clients that you have. The author of the article gave some pointers on when designing your own stuff, to put yourself in a client's shoes and try to think what would "they" like? and also to not be intimidated to ask other people (old clients or just complete random strangers) about the design and how it can improve on it.
Let's face it nobody thinks alike and everyone has their own opinion, but being in the field that we are our opinions are valuable to us.. not to the client. We have to design to meet the customers needs and sometimes it may not be to our likeness.
I had a client before and I explained some of the reason that the view that she had in mind would not work, but being the client, she insisted and I had to do it that way. I did not like it.. but in the end, the client did.
It all goes back to what tabitha was saying, we have to create a trust with the client, that way they could be more open minded to new different things.
my 2 cents. :)
Here is the link to my article:
Don't Design for you.
Joel
Clicky linko
I believe that this company has got it down. They state that "Each client relationship is a true business partnership that grows stronger through our firm's knowledge of our client's goals, our pursuit of design excellence and, above all, our desire to produce exciting solutions that communicate a clear message in a unique way." You have to treat each and every client like they are family , not someone that you are just getting money from. With that principle in mind if you do treat every client like this you will have a client base that will recommend you to as many people as they know who need work done.
Blade Runner:
I love this movie to begin with so IT is amazing to start. Well I rented this move and watched the entire movie without sound and it just doesn't have the same effect as when you watch it and listen to the music. The French Say that we Americans rely on music to create mods far to much in the movies, instead of using the actors performances to create moods. I agree that CURRENT movies have this problem but older movies like blade runner Need both elements to create that suspense.
I agree about everything that has been said. Gaining a clients respect is a key feature to gain. This holds true in every aspect of Business, not just audio.
More than likely you will have to do a job that you will not like. It is just something newly graduated students have to go through. But you will eventually (hopefully) be in a position someday where you can be more free and open to express yourself how you want and get paid to do so.
I found a long article about different ways people in the sound business work with their clients to make certain audio the way they want it.
Sound Design: how the pro's paint their clients' world with audio
again it's a long read but has some good tidbits. One being, which was stated in class, to start your own sound library that you can just draw from later on. This really isn't my cup of tea but I know some in class really enjoy this kind of work. But the article also has some things about how the sound maker went about his process in doing what they did to suit the client's needs.
About BladeRunner:
Well it's a kick ass movie to start out with, visually. But last week, when you started playing it without sound it was completely dull. Sure it still looks cool but without sound to back it up it just loses all the attention it deserves.
Found the basic ambient music/sound in the city to when the flying cop car took off and jettisoned smoke, it is all necessary to draw the viewer in to make them believe they are actually there during this time. Basically completes the whole movie experience.
The movie makers, and anyone else for that matter, have to take into account what their media is going to be viewed on. In this case it is a movie so they attended it for the big screen with secondary notions of being released to VCR (this movie was made before DVDs!). Now a days you wont be caught dead making anything for video cassette, but we have DVDs, Blue Rays, iMAX, all different ways to view video and sound.
I better stop typing because I think I am just confusing myself.
-Jason
Ha! I completley forgot about Bladerunner!
Have to say that the movie was amazing, and basically the sound of the movie is what is one of the most important things in it. When we watch it with no sound.. I was so desperate that I wanted to leave the room.. But when we saw it with sound, it was engaging grabbing my attention and distracting me from the computer :P
So sounds play a big role in movies, not just Bladerunner but a bunch more out there.
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