Tuesday, November 17, 2015

Axial scale Trophy Trucks get a voice with Tom Clifford


It's Tag-Time again. Been a while and it's nice work for a few words typically at the bottom of a spot.


The folks at Axial happened on my BLOG and called me to voice a short tag line with a brand theme: Outdoor lifestyle – Jeep, camping, rat rods, motorcycles, mountain biking, hiking, King of the Hammers, rock crawling, Baja 1000.

Not being all that familiar with Axial's products, I was gettin set for the likes of a client with some sort of rumble tumble, hang gliding, parachutin - Manly Man stuff...well, sorta. Just a scaled down version. We're talkin; Radio Control Off-Road racing RV trophy trucks. And these aren't your father's 'toy trucks' either.

These trucks are actual to the real deal (albeit at 1/10 to scale) in almost every way. These RTR's have independent front suspension (IFS), functioning shock absorbers, solid rear axle, drive trains, electric 4WD and the list goes on.


Now the funny thing here is, with a tag of just so few words, the tendency is to over-emphasize almost as a (knee jerk) compensation for so little copy... to make every single word stand out. 'Course there's always the 'throw-away' approach. Which will it be. I did tough & raspy - regular, regional - young/older. Did a few with just a hit of a word or two and let the rest speak for itself. About 20 to 30 takes of just (7) words. Click to Play Spot


The Yeti™ SCORE® Trophy Truck® RTR is THE ONE that Axial has been working towards for a long time! We’ve always wanted to build a Trophy Truck®, but we first had to build a successful platform. For authenticity, it had to be solid rear axle versus the commonly accepted independent suspension all the way around. Some would consider this “going backwards.” But Axial didn’t just accept what the establishment said was the only way, we wanted true scale looks with the functionality to match. When we delivered the Yeti™ Rock Racer with its IFS front end and solid rear axle, we knew then we had the key ingredients to deliver the vehicle of our dreams - our very own solid rear axle trophy truck!


516.488.8840

Monday, November 9, 2015

Voicing the Beat of David Guetta's Peppermint Experience for New Year's Eve

A lesson in international DJ worship backed up with 55 million " Like's " on FaceBook.



After the folks at Media Mold Skyped about doing a techy VO for world class DJ, David Guetta in Dubai, I had to admit, wasn't all that sure who 'Pierre' David Guetta is. Turns out that David's a French DJ, record producer and remixer that has sold over nine million albums and 30 million singles worldwide. This is what DJ's do these days? He does - with his production company, The Peppermint Experience and a mega following. In 2011 Guetta was voted as the #1 DJ in the 'DJ Mag Top 100 DJs' fan poll. 


The Dubai Media City Amphitheater is doing a special New Year's Eve promotion and wanted all the stops pulled out. This guy fills stadiums like Billy Joel and they wanted an excited VoiceOver take to go along with the techno rock sound track. I checked out some of the pics from David's concerts around Europe and the Mid-East and guess what also popped up - Miami. And it's a sea-of-people at every venue. Techno-Rock partiers all the way, so we used not only a forceful delivery, but changed it up with the Clint Eastwood tracheal rasp and textured them with extensive voice effects for stand-out bullets. We also bill-boarded David's - Listen Tour 2015.

There were some early morning Skype sessions to pinpoint where the breaks in the music were for the VoiceOver to go. The timings were down to the seconds and did some on-the-fly voice recordings to match patterns in music. The time difference is seven hours ahead of us. So, to be somewhat relavent to their time zone, it was up and at 'em at the crack 'O dawn.

Aside, from a few possible tweaks, the video on the below link is slated to run for their event promotions in several areas of the UAE, Lebanon and Kuwait. When you look at a map of the region, Dubai, UAE is a few thousand of miles from let's say - Lebanon. 1500 km's from Kuwait. People think nothing of hopping on a plane to experience a major happening, especially for a New Years gala event.

 Click to Play Video

Here are some photos from the New Years Eve Gala Event on David's Facebook Page:
Click for NYE Concert Pics

516.488.8840