I work as a composer in the film, tv and commercial world. On any given day I may be writing jingles about diapers, snack cakes and or toothbrushes. The rotating cast of characters at Jingle Punks studios is a constant source of amusement for me. Sometimes funny shit happens...this is my outlet to share these experiences with my friends, clients or anyone interested in what really goes on at a "fancy" NYC studio on a daily basis.
Friday, October 31, 2008
So the past couple weeks for me have been nothing less than insane...As many of you know, Jingle Punks launched an online search database for use in TV shows, commercials and films. We have spent countless hours taking meetings with MTV, FUSE, FOX, SPIKE ect and have spent even more hours working out the kinks of the player.
Fortunately, its not always all work and no play for us...For example, during CMJ my friend D.A. from Chester French found time to swing by Jingle Punks to do an in house shoot for their video blog (see below). We also found time to have one last Group Sounds show. We sold out The Cake shop on NYC's Lower East side (see pics here) and had a crazy ass pre-halloween bash. Last but not least, I even found time to record a cover of the Kenny Loggins classic "Danger Zone" with my friend Phil (who happens to be one of the funniest and most talented metal singers of all time).
In the 3 days the Jingle Player has been active I have received quite a few requests for an online how to video. I figured making a series of these would be easier than taking every frantic phone call coming in about how to get rolling.
People who know me may ask "why are these so serious?". Well, you see, this one is purely informational and once I hit my stride I assure you the tone of my web pieces for Jingle Punks related products will return to its jovial state.
Without any more apologizing and excuses...here is tutorial #1...I call this gem "Getting Started"
After 8 years of composing music for TV, film and commercial projects I have finally found time to do what I said I would from the beginning...Organize the tracks in a web based searchable player.
Today, is a happy day for me. With the help of my programming team (cudos to Dan Demole and Jim Martinez for being so goddamn smart!) we are un-officially launching the Jingle Player (official release date is Oct 30th and we are having a big party at CAKE SHOP on the LES to celebrate...you are all invited...more on that soon)
Anyways, version 1.0 of the Jingle Player .. Here it is...
Try it out and let me know if this is an effective, helpful and cool tool for your production needs. This is version 1.0 and version 2.0 is going to be coming out very soon. We feature almost 10,000 cues that can be purchased as needle drops or licensed as a fully cleared library.
OK...now for some cool news. Anyone out there who watches Food Network should tune in this weekend to catch the premiere of the Chef Jeff project which is our largest Jingle project to date. This show is sure to be a hit and we were thankful to be part of this creative process. Anyone who knows the backstory on Chef Jeff is sure to be inspired. He's Oprah approved and really is a great person who I think will become a huge star. (thank you Adam Z and Mike M for bringing Jingle Punks onto this amazing show!)
BTW. this would not have been possible for me without the help of my amazing production coordinator Ricky Sanchez whom I highly recommend to anyone who will listen. He diligently entered thousands of song titles into a database and entered in reams of information that it would have taken a full team to do.
My new friends at RGA digital hired me to make some sports cues for a cool NIKE project.
In this NIKE campaign it teaches wanabee football players (such as yourself???) some super duper skills.
Below is a link to the first 4 videos (feat. James Harrison, Hines Ward, Lofa Tatupu, and Marcus Trufant). Enjoy...learn all these skills and you may or may not end up in NFL?!
I tried some of these moves in my office today and broke all my stuff by accident...oops
OK...I worked on this show called Next Food Network Star for Food Network and the episode I edited aired recently. I've wanted to discuss this show for some time now. Essentially nothing ever happens on this show. I'm not kidding. Nothing ever happens. People are told to cook food and do challenges and they run around. In a way its a lot like Amazing Race but with Food. It was a pretty silly show to work on, but I always try and take something away from my experiences in the production trenches (aside from my salary). The main thing that I took away from my experience on this show is that Music plays a bigger role than one would think in these shows. As a composer, time and time again I see producers underestimate the value that stock music plays in the role of the show. In this case, I worked with a producer who was so meticulous about his music choices, it opened my eyes to a whole new realm of possibility in narrative structure.
As a simple experiment I suggest you watch the clip from the show with sound on then rewind and watch it with sound off. When you watch the below clip with sound off you will see a bunch of people cooking and walking around at a leisurely pace (or sometimes in a state of panic as time runs out). When you watch it with sound on, you will notice that the Michael Bay type music cues and totally over the top dramatic stings used as a counterpoint to peoplewho are essentially cooking and this creates a sense of tension and drama that never fully releases until someone is dismissed from the competition for not being a good...um...cook or star (I worked on this show and still don't understand what the point of the program is.)?
The point is that while many people just throw any sort of musical junk into their timelines when creating TV, the whole genre of reality TV relies on strong musical choices that bring to the forefront what amateur actors, contestants and or regular people have a hard time communicating in this genre.
I have nothing new to post today so I thought I would post some clips from my (soon to be released DVD of children's material). This project is being produced by Jingle Punks in conjunction with Al Roker Entertainment.
I'm very excited to be working with a really cool team of animators on this project (including Frank Drucker, Andy Smith, Joe Epstein and Jose Fuentes...if you haven't seen their work before just google them).
If you have any little ones at home play these clips for em and send me some feedback. We are still ironing out the wrinkles on these so any help would be appreciated.
So, I also do VO's. Wait that sounds really cheesey doesn't it? Well, it's true. See below. I just finished my second season of a Food Network show called "Heavyweights". Like many of the opportunities I've had recently, this was yet another happy accident.
Last summer, I was editing the show Heavyweights for Al Roker Entertainment. When we delivered a rough copy to the network, my voice was the scratch audio track. Al and the network thought it worked and that was that. During my brief stint on that show as editor I also somehow convinced them to let me compose the theme song as well. Check it out...the cool thing about working on this show is that now I am a pseudo-expert on the topics of:
-Coffee
-Snack Cakes
-Cereals
-Soft Drinks
-Pizza
-Chips
Which technically makes me smarter than the current president of the US. So hooray for me!
Jared Gutstadt (a.k.a. "Jingle Punks") began his career as a composer creating original music for the branding and launch of FUSE Network, and in a very short time his client list has grown to include Comedy Central, Vh1, CBS, MTV, NBC, Sundance Channel, Discovery Channel, TLC ,and Moxie Pictures. Jared has played in 2 very popular "indie rock" bands in NYC that have taken him across the world . The Izzys and Group Sounds earned Jared substantial street credibility and industry-wide attention, further inspiring him to pursue opportunities as a composer.
In the commercial realm Jingle Punks has worked with clients as diverse as Huggies, Lipton and Geico.
At any given moment one of Jingle Punks humorous and catchy theme songs are being transmitted across the 1000 channel universe and getting lodged in peoples brains. His ever growing client list includes a who's who of the TV, film and commercial industry.
