Music Can Make Something from Nothing

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.

Next Food Network Star: Ep #3 (excerpt) from Jared Gutstadt on Vimeo.

Jingle of The Day

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.

Have a good Friday!

Links to Get Down With Nouns Vids:

Shushy The Cat from Jared Gutstadt on Vimeo.

I Love You Baby... (Go to Sleep) from Jared Gutstadt on Vimeo.

My other, other career...

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!

LINKS (music and V.O. by Jingle Punks):

Heavyweights : VO and Music by Jingle Punks from Jared Gutstadt on Vimeo.

Jingle Punks takes LA!!!

Not really...but it makes a good headline?

OK. If anyone caught the premiere of The Hills last night they were probably asking themselves many, many questions.  "Why is Heidi so smart?"  "Why is her boyfriend so handsome?" And possibly..."Why is there a ton of Jingle Punks tracks being played non-stop during the live component of the premiere?"  OK, you may not have asked yourself any of these questions...but facts are facts and we can thank MTV (specifically Amanda and Kyle at MTV) for choosing some juicy jams to include in last nights festivities.

Here are some links to the madness..I'm only putting up a few because there are like 30 scenes that used cuts from the library (including tracks from my old bands Group Sounds and Generals & Majors). 

More info and bio at:

www.jinglepunks.com

My old Blog can be read here:

Old Jingle Blog (R.I.P.)

JINGLE CLIPS DU JOUR (ENJOY!!!):

Jingle Punks - Hills Premiere from Jared Gutstadt on Vimeo.

Jingle Punks - Hills Premiere Part Deux from Jared Gutstadt on Vimeo.