Behind
the
craft
10 Questions With Charlie Cooper
In this Behind the Craft series our Sound Designers answer 10 questions to reveal the craft that goes into recording, designing and mixing sound for brands.
Here Charlie answers the questions about his recent work with Gravity Road for Hotel Chocolat.
Q1. What was the initial brief for the ad?
We initially received a treatment doc that was very ASMR focussed. We then had a call with the agency to chat over our plan of action. We were all in agreement that it would be difficult to achieve an immersive journey with ASMR alone, it would need the addition of hyper-real sounds, beefed up sound design and a little over-dramatisation.
Q2. What story needed to be told other than what is being shown visually?
The story is that we are looking through the lens of a Hotel Chocolat engineer, getting a sneak peak behind the curtain in their inventing room, seeing the new Velvetiser form from inception through to completion, seeing all the individual components and attention to detail which make this product unique.
The sound needed to focus on the build quality of the new product, the innovative components and the luxurious taste and texture of the hot (or cold) chocolate as a result. It also needed to feel fully bespoke, like we’re witnessing a new invention.
Q3. What was the initial brief for the ad?
The ASMR-led moments play a pivotal role in creating sensory sound. The glass forming with ice, the chocolate flakes falling and reforming, the crema forming after demonstrating whisk velocity.
All of these sections contain the actual finished products or ingredients, so they’ve all got to sound accurate and appealing. It was about evoking a natural human response. At the end of the day – it needs to make people want to drink it!
Q4. Walk us through your process
I started by recording as much foley as I could with different mics.
I always find it funny how not all recordings translate how you expect or want them to. Like the chocolate flakes, dropping them on paper (which is what we’re actually seeing) sounded smaller and weaker compared to the zoomed in visuals we’re seeing. When this happens, you just have to think of other ways of achieving the recorded sound you want. Getting extremely close in and moving the flakes between my hands gave a cleaner, fuller sound in this instance.
Though not all worked as well as I had imagined, I had some great larger than life recordings. However, as we envisaged in our briefing call, most needed sound design embellishment.
I then moved onto adding to these embellishing spot sound effects, finding appropriate sounds to add movement, weight (or lack of) and speed etc.
Finally, I included synthetic elements to add a different dimension, touching on the technical side of the product.
Q5. How did you approach the ASMR moments?
For the glass forming I combined recordings of different sized glasses hitting, dropping and scraping along a few different surfaces (testing how they translated as I went), ice clinking and hitting the sides as it span (dry and in liquid), subtle movement taken from the Velvetiser product recordings themselves (so the movement was within the same sound palette) and recording dragging a glass with a contact mic. Reverb was added to make the segment feel a little bigger and more momentous.
The chocolate flakes were the actual Hotel Chocolat flakes, dropped and moved on paper, other heavier surfaces and between my hands. I then added processed sounds in the world of earth, mud, rocks and earthquakes for depth and drama.
The crema forming was a combination of real recordings of the hot chocolate forming inside the Velvetiser, oat milk froth, plus massively altered, heavier sloshes and splashes for the movement that transitions from the fast vortex into the stationary crema.
Q6. Were there any moments where you used sound to heighten the sensory experience?
Yes, take the spinning whisk for example - I needed to sonically demonstrate its speed and power, so I experimented with strimmers, small motors, drone blades, that kind of thing, I then affected pitch and speed to fit the visuals.
Another moment that uses a stylised approach is the dissipating and reforming of the Velvetiser. A light touch was required to differentiate the lightweight animation style against the more intense sections that follow. It was still full of detail though, so I crafted a combination of busy but light textures.
Q7. How was sound used to aid storytelling?
The important tool that I haven’t mentioned is the glue that stuck it all together! Once we had all the individual sections nailed sound design wise - the final piece in the puzzle was to connect all the sections and make it all feel like one continuous journey.
Adding layers of whooshes, bassy passes, whomps, and lots of movement SFX, some were created fresh and some were simply adjusting sounds with pitch shifting, filtering, time stretching and reverb.
Q8. What role did music have to play?
The final thing to experiment with was adding some musical elements. This was a pretty subjective one as to what might compliment the piece without taking over the sound design and VO.
The composer made some great demos based on a few briefs, then it was a case of seeing what worked best when adding it to the sound design. Once we got closer with the style and vibe, we got the stems and I intertwined the music with the sound design, and vice versa, changing the sound design to work with the music, so that they supported each other in telling the narrative.
Q9. Was there a role of silence or negative space in your mix?
Both! It definitely needed negative space to give the spot light and shade, to give the the key moments impact. The key moment of silence was in the pause/rewind section. The silence helped convey the message that the journey had fully come to a stop.
Q10. Which sound in the mix was the hardest to get right and why?
A few were challenging but potentially the motor whisk. This was the busiest section by far, so highlighting this within the mix proved tricky!
I hope that people feel like it contains all the stylistic references that have influenced it and gone into it, working well together. I hope they notice the little details that have been crafted and that it feels bespoke, premium and has its own unique sonic identity.
Final mix
