I was working as a glorified janitor at a health club and just playing in bands. I met a guy who oddly enough now works at Funimation. We hit it off and stayed in touch. Several years later I noticed this ad campaign all throughout Dallas called “I Am Second”. It looked like it was [the employee]’s work so I reached out to him and asked him if it was. Sure enough a few days later I’m at his office and he’s showing me this I Am Second commercial he’s working on and mentions that he’s unhappy with the direction of the music. I asked him what he was looking for. He played me a song. I said “I can do that! I’ll have it in your inbox tomorrow morning.” So all the sudden I was a dude working at a coffee shop seeing a commercial with my music come on TV multiple times a day.

I wrote/produced my first album under the name Our Winter which gave me more experience producing. Then for about a year nothing happened. One day my best friend Todd Blankenship (who worked at Funimation for about 5 years  as a videographer/editor) told me there was an opening for a composer, and he thought it’d be perfect for me. I sent in a couple tracks I had done, but got a response that my work didn’t quite show enough diversity. The job here requires the ability to compose for so many different tones and genres because we have such a diverse ranges of shows/movies.

So I spent that night composing a bunch of different styles that I had never done before. I did like a happy pop song, an orchestral song, a hip hop track, and a few others that just showed I was capable of different styles and emotional tones. Got invited for an interview… 6 years later I’m very fortunate to have such a wonderful job working with some amazing and talented people.

GU- Lets get into the meat of things: How would you detail your work processes? Also what tools do you use?

Austin Black – 

Hmmm… I could go many directions with that. Well first and probably foremost in my process is that I’m really not afraid to let my subconscious do the heavy lifting. I am fortunate that I work with people who understand I need some time to simply connect with the emotional tone and aesthetic of the brand and story. Which is a lot of just going on walks or reading or watching funny youtube videos until or strumming guitar until something pops into my head. Sometimes that’s immediate and the song is written within the first couple hours, but other times it can take several days before it really clicks and I have a sense of how to express the story musically. The moment It clicks though it is usually downhill from there. Whether it’s strumming my guitar and finding the right chord or going on a walk and a melody pops into my head there’s always a turning point where it becomes clear what will work. From that point I then just try to really focus on the feel, quality, and texture of the production which to me has as much if not more effect on the efficacy of the song in the trailer/spot. What that looks like often is emulating and/or creating a new band in a sense. Every band/artists/composer makes a lot of smaller decisions that stack up to their sonic aesthetic. So we’re talking choices like equipment, playing style, editing vs non editing, rawness vs tightness, distortion vs cleanness, hifi vs lofi, sampling, layering vs minimalism, live drums or drum machines, effects, instrument choices, scales/music theory, mixing style, mastering I take in to consideration all of these kinds of elements and many others so that every track I write can be as specific to that style as possible. But often all those kind of decisions come immediately in the moment I connect with what the song will be so all of this is ultimately happening within a 3-7 day period.

Andrew Manson – 

I start by assessing what elements I’m given for each project and go from there. An average project comes with music, sound effects (sfx), dialogue, and occasionally Voice-Over (VO) that we need to mix together so they coexist without trampling on each other. Available project elements can vary wildly for various reasons. Sometimes, I’m given a finished edit with temp music that I need to replace; sometimes, it’s just a mix, where all the materials already exist and are ready to be mixed together; and occasionally I might need to write the music in advance for the editors to have something to edit to, and it’s up to me to watch the show and write something that works. For a project that will require original music from me or Austin, the musical direction is decided by brand managers and the trailer editor to fit a marketing vision. Once I’m given a set of parameters or a genre and/or an edit to work with, I generally start by either listening to a bunch of genre-specific music to find some inspiration, or more often, the specific track the editors picked that I will need to emulate in some way. My writing process can vary based on the project, but it often starts with a tune on the piano to build around and assign instrumentation to. I also often start with an instrument that might best represent the intent/style/genre of the music (like a fiddle for a jig, or the bass line for a hip hop beat). My next step after figuring out a tune, is figuring out timing/tempo. Then there’s phrasing, programming of effects and dynamics, and a mix to make it as clean, dynamic, and effective as possible. I show the music to the editor in steps to make sure I’m on the right track, and make adjustments as I need to. Once the music is finished, I mix it in with SFX and dialogue, and send the whole thing off for approval. Once it’s approved, there might be additional mixes for variants of the trailer, loops for the blu-ray/dvd, and button sounds to be created. It sounds like a lot, but you get used to the process and deadlines.

GU –  Finally where can fans find your work?

Andrew Manson – 

My soundcloud page: http://soundcloud.com/AndrewManson  (There’s a playlist called “Anime Trailer Music” :D)