BAM Studios News

ReelChicago.com – News 12/10/09

A 10th Anniversary for audio engineer Brian Reed’s, BAM Studios. Since opening on Dec. 1, 1999, Reed estimates that he has worked on an 30,000 projects – mostly broadcast commercials, but also many docs, corporate and interactive.

Reed opened BAM! Studios with one assistant a month after the closing of Skyview post, where he had worked for several years.

Current staffers are engineers Dave Leffel, associate engineers Philip von During and Matt Sauro, and studio manager Johnathon Karcz. They occupy a 5,000-sq. ft. studio at 1 E. Erie.

Claims to fame: BAM is the go-to ADR studio to record talent in the Midwest for the likes of Pixar and Disney. In fact, Joan Cusack recently recorded ADR there for Sony’s new playstation game, “Toy Story 3.”

The BAM Dream Server is a revolutionary search engine for 20 terabytes of music and sound effects.  - Ruth L Ratny

BAM’s Jeff Quinn, Lou Piniella, BAM’s Dave Leffel

BAM Studios had the hometown advantage for the latest Chevy campaign, “Confidence,” featuring Chicagoland sports heroes and award-winning sportscasters.  Masterminded by Media Nexus, the all-star lineup went to bat for Chevy on their TV, radio, and web spots.

In addition to mixing the whole roster, it was a doubleheader for recording voiceover at BAM.  Chicago Cubs manager “Sweet Lou” Piniella made a switch from the bullpen to the booth, lending his voice to the spots. Sportscaster Pat Hughes, the voice of the Cubbies, then gave the play by play for the campaign.

Other sports greats featured were White Sox manager Ozzie Guillen, Cubs sportscaster Ron Santo, Bears Hall of Famer Dan Hampton, and Blackhawks president John McDonough. 

BAM’s Jeff Quinn, Pat Hughes, BAM’s Dave Leffel

ECU: Johnathon Karcz

Birth Date: August of 1982

Grew up in: South Side of Chicago

Years in the business: Soon to be my 9th year, amazing how time flies.

Presently working on: Multitasking.

What my parents wanted me to do for a living: They always wanted me to do something I was interested in, fun and creative.  Easier to answer what my parents DIDN’T want me to do for a living.  My dad had a small list of jobs he wanted me to steer clear of.

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Media Process Group is producing the Chicago Urban League’s new 13-week, half-hour entrepreneurship TV series “nextTV,” which airs Sundays on two local TV channels.

The show, hosted by the League’s executive director Cheryle Jackson, follows the experiences of local African American small businesspeople as they go through the Urban League’s Next One entrepreneur support program.

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Wherever your travels may lead, may your Holiday Season be filled with Warmth and Joy.

Foundation recently conceived, produced/directed, edited, and handled the visual effects/motion graphics for the AICP Chicago Regional Sponsorship Reel (http://foundationcontent.com/aicp). The reel was designed to showcase over forty regional sponsor logos and was screened to as many as 1100 Midwest attendees of the AICP Show.

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TeamWorks Media takes its seven-year-old partnership with the Big Ten Conference to a new level, with a massive PSA series bowing during the opening games of the NCAA football games over the Labor Day weekend.

The PSAs air under the banner “Big Life. Big Stage. Big Ten.” – airing for the next year on ABC, ESPN and the Big Ten Network.

The “Big Life” spots move beyond the Talib Kweli-fronted “Big Stage” spots TeamWorks made for the Big Ten in past years. They highlight alumni both within sports, like Jesse Owens and Magic Johnson, and in other arenas, like Neil Armstrong, Ang Lee and Gerald Ford.
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BE PREPARED

Brian Reed, president/sound designer of Chicago’s BAM Studios, started working on commercials using DAW technology long before Pro Tools was an industry standard. He sheds light on why a mix might work for TV broadcast, but not for the cinema. “Commercials can sound poorly mixed in the theater. That’s because I might mix a commercial just for TV, for example, and then after the fact, the client wants to run it in the movie theaters. At that point, the advertising agency will often just hand it over to be placed in movie theaters right away. The problem is that no one comes back to me and asks ‘Do we need to do something different to this? Or, maybe we should do this in surround?’ I find this happening more and more.”

         He says that, ideally, “the agency should go down the line of the producer talking to the creative and the creative talking to us. They have to ask, ‘Do we need to remix this, and are these levels okay for the theaters?’ And I see the same problem with the video. Sometimes aspect ratios are wrong on the commercials in the theaters. So yeah, there is a lot of repurposing going on. It just doesn’t translate.
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These days, there’s no better way to keep friends and colleagues in the loop than to blog about life, work or a combo of the two, which is exactly what BAM Studios (Chicago) is doing with its blog, “BAM Studios News.” Sound designer Dave Leffel talks about a few of the recent projects that BAM has blogged about.

First off, Leffel says BAM has been involved in quite a lot of ADR work lately. He notes Baz Luhrmann’s new film “Australia” and a Chevy campaign featuring Ozzie Guillen and Lou Pinella – the Chicago White Sox and Cubs coaches  – performing a South Side/North Side rap.

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Filmmaker Phil Koch’s salute to the American flag airs over PBS July 3, and on two local stations.

The American flag, that proud and enduring red, white and blue symbol of American heritage these past 232 years, will be on display just about everywhere this July 4th celebration week. That includes Ch. 11 and Ch. 20 July 3 when both stations air a PBS encore of filmmaker Phil Koch’s definitive documentary, “The American Flag: Two Centuries of Concord and Conflict.”  The one hour doc of untold stories of the flag’s history is based on a book by Howard Madaus and Whitney Smith, both respected flag historians. Read more…