John Graham, Taylor Fortes

Cogswell College

SIGGRAPH NOW Branding intro/outro

ACM SIGGRAPH is the world's largest and most prominent annual conference on computer graphics and interactive techniques. ACM SIGGRAPH's latest media platform, the SIGGRAPH NOW Production Sessions video series, featuring talks and workshops from the leading directors and graphics industry professionals from all over the world, needed a fitting and highly professional-looking and sounding audiovisual branding piece. As a matter of fact, since SIGGRAPH's plan for the piece was to be used as an intro at the start and and outro at the closing of each talk, the tasks resulted in two thematically consistent, yet differently executed branding pieces.

The task required lots of concepting work, and a high-level production,given the media industry of client, the projected audience (millions of YouTube and social network views), and the long shelflife of the branding piece (3-5 years). The new SIGGRAPH NOW brand had to belong under the long-established, internationally recognized SIGGRAPH brand, yet it had to reflect the current and future direction of the industry, namely VR / AR / hologram. Also, it had to convey the message in a typical SIGGRAPH conference setting, and inspire viewers to subscribe to the SIGGRAPH NOW video series - all this in less than 10 seconds!

When SIGGRAPH approached the MediaWorks program at Cogswell College to conceptualize and produce this challenging intro/outro branding spot, the work started with several client meetings with the SIGGRAPH board and with their PR Agency, Smith & Bucklin. After about 10 days of brainstorming and pitching concepts, the MediaWorks team had an approved direction, which would well express the complicated, multi-faceted message in a concise, stylish and effective way.

Sound design and musical sound design were an enormous part of accomplishing this, as there was no narration needed in the spot - and going beyond expectation, it established a unique feel, setting up the mood for the many talks following the intro video.

The sound designer and composer had to work hand-in-hand, to ensure that these two elements don't step on one another's toes. This involved purpose-driven sound design, frequency-based musical sound design including sound synthesis and sampling. The post-mixing phase further refined the overall impact, while helping to avoid conflict among the many layers of the rich sonic experience.

The MediaWorks team created every pixel and every bit of audio; original sound design and original music - no previously existing media were used. After multiple rounds of reviews, the client was extremely happy with the outcome, which is about to be launched on the official SIGGRAPH YouTube channel and website.

The MediaWorks team included a Visual Team of six storyboard artists, motion graphics / animation specialists, lighters and project manager Michael Young. The main sound designer / audio post mixer, John Graham worked with composer / musical sound designer Taylor Fortes in accomplishing the unique sonic feel. The Audio Team also included seven additional Digital Audio Technology students, who were competing against the winning team in a friendly competition within the framework of a collaborative project between three Cogswell College departments (Audio, Art and Business). The production team was supervised by two faculty members, one of them being an ex- audio industry professional.

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