production — Blog

Throw Out The Playbook

When we see the same basic formula over and over, it all becomes easy to forget. But there are a few stand out Super Bowl commercials that viewers may remember. Plus haikus.

Creative Aeronautics

It’s not enough to simply tell someone who you are or what you stand for. Actions speak louder than words. And a nearly 40 minute video dissecting the details of a production music track just scratches the surface.

Hidden Gems & Where To Find Them

Knowing what’s new is exciting, but what about the thrill of discovery? If you’re familiar with the venerated history of library and production music, you know that there are countless treasure chests full of hidden gems still waiting to be discovered.

Josh Gudwin’s Magic Flow

TLL founder and creative director Daniel Holter is still hard at work behind the mighty mixing desk, but now he’s also getting in front of the camera on his YouTube channel, beginning with a quick demo of Josh Gudwin’s new plugin called Magic Flow.

Bound By Sound

Bound By Sound is a podcast that features interviews with industry professionals working at the intersection of music and film. The conversations are, in their own words, “casual, inspiring and a little geeky.” If you’re anything like us, that’s a combination that will always pique your curiosity.

WordLess

The best podcasts are often built on great conversations. And the best conversations we know are built on the universal language of music. With that in mind, we’re thrilled to introduce you to… WordLess — an experiential music podcast from The License Lab.

Music Supervisors Unite

Some people become divided, some people become united. Now music supervisors unite as they make the push to unionize.

Distinguishing Descriptions

What makes someone stop scrolling to audition a track? While the reality is that taste is subjective and everyone has their own venn diagrams of reasons, track descriptions regularly show up as a primary reason editors and music supervisors push the ‘Play’ button.

Hometown Pride

The entire License Lab team is quite literally all over the map with composers in cities like Nashville, New York, Portland, and our internal team in California, Washington, and Wisconsin. In that spirit we wanted to highlight a few Milwaukee artists who have spread their wings and are making waves on a national scale.

Sound Advertising

With millions and millions of dollars spent on Super Bowl commercials and weeks of build up and teasers, it’s no wonder folks are analyzing these ads in an academic fashion. But no matter the tone of a spot, shouldn’t all music used be an integral part of the storytelling?

Capturing Room Tone

We’re all familiar with the concept of “quiet time.” While this may conjure up images of a toddler being told to go to their room for a time-out, our friends in film and television production know it as something else entirely. There is a process called “capturing room tone” and it is one of the most essential tools in an edit.

To K-Pop And Beyond

K-pop is taking over the world. And while some production music companies may have jumped on the bandwagon when they noticed everyone dancing to “Gangnam Style” at weddings and bar mitzvahs, our K-Pop album was released just a few short weeks prior to the horse dance phenomenon of 2012. We got trend-setting game.

StoriesNathan HonoreNovember 17, 2020production music, production, music licensing, k-pop, hypekit, BTS, #HK, #HypeKit, #MOPM, #ModusOperandi

Iconic Moments In Sound Design

INDEPTH Sound Design shares the stories behind incredible sound design by breaking them down into digestible bits for directors, screenwriters, aspiring sound designers, and anyone who finds this kind of aural experience interesting. Witnessing the narration along with the visuals allows for a deep appreciation of the marriage of the two mediums.

The Rise of Vinyl: Choice & Intentionality

For the first time in nearly 30 years, CD sales have been eclipsed by vinyl sales. But this is no coincidence. Vinyl is one of the most inconvenient ways to listen to music in 2020. So why would this become the predominant physical product?

StoriesNathan HonoreSeptember 29, 2020production music, production, music licensing, vinyl, choice

Palpable Stories and Invisible Lines

What does segregation feel like? In 2018, NPR Member station 88Nine Radio Milwaukee created a feature-length documentary called Invisible Lines to try and answer that question. We worked with their creative team to assemble a cohesive score while supporting the raw and emotional moments of the film.

Using Unexpected Music In Your Film

Sometimes there are those ads that you know exactly what music you’re going to get. Predictable and uninspired, you’re lulled into a commercial sleep, glassy-eyed until your show comes back. So what happens if you do the opposite?

Exploring the Sonic World of Story

In a recent episode of Working Class Audio, Matt Boudreau brings on outspoken sound designer Dallas Taylor. Taylor is the Creative Director at Defacto Sound and in the episode he outlines how opinions on sound have traditionally been dictated by an elite group of people (maybe the wrong people), the democratization of technology, how we live in a talent driven creative world, and of course his incredible podcast, Twenty Thousand Hertz. We dive into this episode of WCA in addition to two highlight episodes from Twenty Thousand Hertz to explore the sonic world of story.

The COVID Effect: Managing Remote Production

We highlight a panel discussion that Catch&Release hosted on the topic of Managing Remote Production During COVID and Beyond. Members of Post-Production community discuss how they’ve adjusted their workflow, communication, and expectations.