LOS ANGELES, CA – May 7, 2013 - Gobbler, the purpose-built cloud for musicians and audio professionals, has launched its first-ever Gobblerama Contest, offering over $10,000 in prizes from Universal Audio, Telefunken, Focusrite and others.
Throughout the month of May, Gobbler customers who invite the greatest number of friends to sign up for the online media transfer and backup service will win audio hardware and software prizes every week. The grand prize, a Universal Audio 1176LN Classic Limiting Amplifier, will be awarded when the contest ends, May 28th. Daily prizes from Summit Audio, Slate Digital, SONiVOX, and others will also be given away randomly for anyone who enters.
To learn more about Gobblerama, please visit www.gobbler.com/gobblerama, or for more information about Gobbler, please visit www.gobbler.com
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I arrived in Austin, TX excited and surprisingly well rested for my first ever SXSW experience. Equipped with a nearly all-access Badge and a couple of cameras, I headed into the unknown…
Day 1: Tuesday
After taking a nearly 45 minute bus ride that my host had previously promised would “Take ten minutes. Tops! I take it all the time…”, I got off the bus and headed east on 4th Street. Remembering I heard someone say most stuff was on 6th, I started up to 5th and stumbled upon Antone’s. Having heard of the legendary venue, I poked my head inside and luckily caught the entire set of Akron/Family. Their blend of jammy, folk-rock was just right the thing to start off my first day and take some stress out of not knowing what I’m doing.
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Directed by Danny Madden, Euphonia follows a bored, K-Mart employed high school boy, Will (Will Madden) who for some reason or another hates every minute of his white, suburban existence. The film, which was well done, is a must watch for any sound recordist or designer and that’s why we’re so interested in it here at S&P.
As the minutes pass closer to the all conclusive fade to black, Will’s days of hanging out with his friend (Bejnamin Papac) and trading notes with a female classmate (Maria Decotis) become bleak. So he turns to what any teenage boy does to fill his loneliness-porn (kidding, but just a suggestion, Will). Nope, he actually buys a sound recording device, a Zoom H2, to be exact and starts to capture the audio world around him. Now consumed with his newly found obsession it eventually becomes so intense it slips him into a world of discontent.
Shot outside Atlanta, Georgia with a near zero dollar budget, Danny Madden, created a plot through sound imagery that’s engrained with inventiveness and passion. Though Will is center stage, the real characters are the sounds that begin to take over his life. Besides directing and writing the project, Madden also cut the film and looked to Steve Bissinger for additional sound re-recording and theory. We were able to sit down with the two storytellers to see what it was like creating a character we could only hear.
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Being my first visit to both SXSW and Austin, TX, I was a little overwhelmed by the number of bands playing at different bars spread across the city. I planned to forgo many of the known bands who were playing at the festival to check out some up and coming bands and hang with some friends. Despite my best efforts, I didn’t even come close to seeing everyone I wanted to see. However, the many acts I did manage to see didn’t disappoint. Here are some of my best and worst moments from SXSW 2013:
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Valley Cottage, New York, February 20, 2013 — A major portion of director Todd Robinson’s submarine thriller Phantom, starring recent Golden Globe Award-winning actor Ed Harris, was filmed in the confines of an actual Russian submarine. “While Todd and I spent a considerable amount of time establishing a look and feel that we wanted to accomplish in Phantom, I have to credit gaffer Steve Lundgren with the innovative lighting approach,” says cinematographer Byron Werner. “He built a lot of custom lights, but Litepanels® bricks were the best and only movie lights we could use in many parts of the sub.”
“We had to approach the lighting for the sub from a very minimalistic standpoint,” says Lundgren. “Whatever units we decided to use needed to provide versatility as well as concentrated output. Litepanels became one of the most obvious choices, because of the amount of light they put out and their diversity. Since we were in confined spaces that could get uncomfortable for the actors, the fact that Litepanels run heat-free was also a plus. Also important was that we needed to be able to put lights in areas where standard rigging procedures would not prove possible. Litepanels made all this easy.”
Blocking became extremely important for Werner and Lundgren while down in the cramped sub. They had to have a very precise lighting approach. If an actor missed his mark by inches, he would be out of his lighting. Being able to add a last minute, battery-operated Litepanels MiniPlus™ was often their lifesaver.
“In one scenario, we had six of our main actors sitting around a table in the mess hall of the submarine,” recalls Lundgren. “The room was actually built on a stage but Todd wanted it to still feel as cramped as it was on the real submarine, so we faced some real challenges lighting the actors individually. We ended up rigging ten Litepanels MiniPlus units to the ceiling using 5/8” rods. Each panel had a diffusion and color package we designed for the front of the units. They were then ‘sided’ off from light spilling on the walls or onto the actors in an undesirable way. We would not have been able to reach the result we got with any other units.”
“One of the most beautiful Litepanels lit moments was a stirring scene with star Ed Harris as he sits on the bed in his stateroom trying to make sense of the challenge he faces in this nothing-is-what-it-seems-to-be underwater drama,” says Werner. “A mini grid of MiniPlus units was our only lighting. Throughout the whole movie, Litepanels fixtures were always the perfect main key lighting for Ed.
“Steve and I both own Litepanels MiniPlus kits,” Werner adds. “We always have them as our ‘go to’ tools. They are versatile, give off great light and produce a tremendous amount of light for such a small footprint.”
Battery-operated, Litepanels MiniPlus is a compact, dimmable LED softlight, available in daylight (flood and spot) and tungsten (flood) models that run cool and provide soft, directional output and smooth dimming from 100% to 0.
Written and directed by Todd Robinson, Phantom is inspired by actual events. The story follows an emotionally haunted captain (Ed Harris) of a Soviet submarine who holds the fate of the world in his hands when he’s challenged by a KGB rogue group bent on seizing the ship’s nuclear missile. It opens in theaters across the U.S. on March 1, 2013.
For more information on Litepanels, part of Vitec Videocom, a Vitec Group company, contact Litepanels, Inc., 16152 Saticoy Street, Van Nuys, CA 91406, Email: info@litepanels.com www.litepanels.com
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