Sleepwalking Introduction
Sleepwalking was a spec commercial produced by Kai Krause and directed by Ignacio Sepulveda. Ignacio initially approached me to do the sound design on the project, but I ended composing the score as well.
Sound Design Concept
The concept behind the commercial drove the sound design. There needed to be a big contrast between the dream sequences and the real world. Towards this end, I knew I needed to record some beefy BMWs. Luckily, a friend of mine knew the right people and a quick phone call landed us an M3 and an M5.
Recording
We needed a quiet place where we could put the cars through their paces and grab some great sound. So, we met up an undisclosed location and begin miking up the cars. I wanted to capture the car from several angles, so I would have enough material to layer up and work with. We decided on the following locations;
- Engine Intake
- Interior
- Exhausts
I taped a lav microphone just above each exhaust, as well as one on the intake manifold. The interior stereo mic was provided by the built-in XY capsule on the Zoom H6N recorder.
Tuning the BMW
The exhausts and the engine mics provided all the sound we needed for the mix. We ended up ditching the stereo internal microphones because they were mostly just rumbling and driving sounds. Listen below and hear for yourself.
Auxiliary Sounds
I also wanted to grab the correct sounds of the door opening and closing, so we grabbed those sounds as well.
Dialogue
The dialogue was recorded a bit dirty on set. As a result, I ended up having to use quite a bit of Izotope RX to get it to sound good. The voice of the little girl driving was actually provided by my wife, Jenny, who channeled her inner Mario Andretti.
Score
I had originally created a temp score to help with timing, but after getting the score back from the original composer, Ignacio decided to go with the temp. We flushed it out with some upright bass and piano.
Shifting Effects
The shifting effects were pulled from my sound effects library as the BMWs we recorded were all automatics. By carving out the low end on the BMW sound, we were able to get these shifts to sound pretty aggressive.
Ambiences
The heaviness of the M3 needed to be balanced with some airiness. Cue some birds recorded right in my neighborhood in Sherman Oaks.
Foley
Foley was the final touch that brought out all the finer details of the piece. Recorded at my studio, we wanted to match the sounds of the hands-on steering wheels between the girl and her mother.
Wrapping Up
There’s a lot that goes into making something sound good. I really wanted to make this project stand out with some original sound design. It was a blast to work on and I can’t wait to mic up the next vehicle!