Zelig Sound

0:17My name is matthew this is alia we're from zelic sound we produce boutique music. And sound design for commercials tv and film we've been going nearly six years. And we started off briefly in manchester for a couple of months then. I got a freelance gig down in london got fired like a month afterwards on the day on the day I moved into my house I got laid off.

0:44So I had like crazy amount of rent to pay and no job.

0:46So I quickly created a portfolio piece rang around a bunch of production companies and got asked to pitch on the bafta award I dance frantically pitched on that for like 24 hours and won it.

0:57And then me and al kind of rolled zelig off the back of that I was teaching like part-time for about nine months while we got started then six years later we've just moved into our new studio our third studio just our fox street so within that time we've done 512 projects which roughly is about 85 a year.

1:17But we didn't do that many at the beginning so we've just done a lot more recently we've done 12 short films one of which won a palm door last year. And we've also done three feature films two of which we're currently working on and also three docudramas for tv these are some of the people we've worked with during that time oh and this is a short video of some of the music we make ♪

2:07you're shaking ♪

2:26[Applause]

3:35and to complement that. This is some of the sound design we do ♪

3:59now I'm system oracle ♪

5:09another ♪

5:41[Applause]

5:49so that's the sound design reel as well so how do we how does that work. Basically people come to us when they want sound design or music composed and that can be at different stages sometimes it will be a storyboard sometimes it'll be the first whip sometimes it'll be a script very rarely do we get the final project sometimes we get people coming to us and they're like oh we've finished this project.

6:14But we've realized it doesn't have any sound or music. And we need sound or music.

6:16So that's quite rare but that does happen as well also people will come to us when they're pitching for a job and they want some inspiration for the music so for example we'll give them music.

6:28And sound audio boards so it's kind of like mood boards and that helps them with their pitch as well. So it's quite different with regards to how we actually get involved in a job but generally the earlier we're involved in the project the better I'm going to talk very briefly about like my process of starting a project then al is going to talk briefly about her process we could spend like hours talking on about one specific project.

6:56But we've just got one slide usually we'll start by going back and forth with music references with a client and based around the concept of the film or the piece or whatever it is and they'll send over as an animatic which is just like grey polygons and lines of things that are going to be there eventually you probably all know what animatics are but as soon as I start watching the animatic or the early rough edit I'll hear usually here like the perfect version of the piece in my head and then the whole week's leading up to the finishing you're just trying to constantly get that version down into the computer out of your head but then after watching it a few times you start to like feel the hit points and the overarching structure of the piece and then you then I'll be playing things in on the keyboard arranging them and tweak them in logic we use logic for loads of the short form stuff we do and pro tools for the more long form like post heavy pieces really all the time we're trying to replicate human playing but using the computer to extend that and do beyond what really you can do with live instruments for example in this nvidia project there's like 13 different drum parts which to record as an ensemble would just be a massive pain in the ass and cost quite a lot of money and as soon as the edit changes all that work would be kind of useless as well but like we're doing it like this we can go in and pitch pitch shift things tweak eq till our heart's content basically.

8:18And that's the kind of a very short picture of the back end of the project with some things.

8:25This is ali's process oh no this is not a nice process this is a quick video of it's not that quick of the nike of the nike flyknit process which people tend to like so ♪

9:35so [Applause]

10:58that shows you a bit over how everything was put together with that particular project my process is quite different just because for many reasons but I'm from a classical background so I kind of approach things quite differently so for example when I first look at a piece like this I mean I tend to walk around daily with music in my head which is quite annoying and makes me sound a bit insane but when I've got animation in front of me it happens even more so with this particular piece it sort of starts off.

11:24And it's quite an intimate scene and then there's a music box so obviously I'm immediately thinking music box but then this dragon sweeps in and this is obviously where I would imagine a musical motif of some sort happening and then it pans out. And it's back to not necessarily as intimate as the beginning but it's still not this big sweeping dragon.

11:43So there's a clear beginning middle and end there.

11:46So the next stage I do is I'd set the tempo so because the worst thing is when you you see a piece and then you start writing music and you're like going off on one and it's like 140 bpm and actually it should be half the speed and so then you have to resync everything.

12:04So I set the tempo and then it's just a case of a sitting down with a piano and I play whilst this is playing and then. That's being recorded and I'll go back.

12:14And I'll edit it. And I'll cut it up and the melody comes sort of at the very end and that's much more intuitive and sometimes it gets a bit too complicated and a bit mariah carey I'm going off on one so I have to reel it back in and cut it up into little bits so that it's a bit more memorable so my process is quite different but I think that's probably why when we collaborate with each other we work quite well together as well so alongside zelig then what we also do is basically I can post my own music as well.

12:45So I've just released a piano album and the reason I did that was just because I couldn't like I said the music in my head needs to get out. And it can't get out with every project. So it's an opportunity for me to just do what I want and this is what I did with the piano album and it's ended up being a bit of a musical bibliography about my own experiences and how I ex and my emotions and things like that so each piece has a story attached to it as well which were inspired by photographs my friend's a great photographer and he inspired me.

13:20So that's a bit about my personal project you can listen to it on soundcloud it's also on spotify yeah outsides are like as well I make music under the monika model 86 and it's kind of like hip-hop indietronica like bass music.

13:39And I've been doing this project about a year. And it's kind of a bit like alia wanting to do more than what our brief could give you like musically and basically just do what the hell you like and kind of explore yourself as an artist and a couple of tracks of this ep have been featured on radio 1 and radio 6 and a bunch of other places and yeah I'm just trying to with this process of doing model 86 stuff trying to just learn something about myself as an artist and kind of just make stuff I just find interesting and hopefully people will eventually like it you can find out more at model 86 and we've been zelic sound and thank you you