Plank Productions completes technology upgrade

by Maria Hoover

Inside Business Editor

mhoover@sbj.net

From a studio in his historic center-city home, Ralph Plank operates Plank Productions, a sound studio for which he recently completed a technology upgrade worth about $10,000.

What drove the upgrade, which was finished last summer, Plank said, was his desire to upgrade to ProTools 6.1, Digidesign's music and sound production digital audio workstation.

While has used ProTools for seven years, he said that he wanted to upgrade in order to improve services for his clients.

Calling the program "an industry standard," Plank said that Digidesign announced earlier this month that it will receive an Academy Award of Merit from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for its design, development and implementation of the ProTools workstation.

"ProTools is the platform it's a high-quality platform in the industry it's a big-time, world-class, sound platform that has generated a lot of business for us," he said, adding that as far as he knows, his is the only studio in the area offering the ProTools program.

In order to upgrade ProTools, Plank had to purchase a new Mac G4 dual 1.42 gig processor computer.

"I got it in July, and right at that time, Apple announced the G5. But I talked with a whole bunch of people and this has always been my philosophy wait a year and let them get the bugs out," Plank said.

Also included in the upgrade is Native Instruments Reaktor 4.03, a music synthesizer and audio production processing system.

For Plank, 2004 marks his 25th year in the business, though Plank Productions wasn't an entity until 1982. "I am counting to 1979 as my start, because that's when I sold the first jingle that I wrote," Plank said. The jingle was for Ebenezer's, where his band played.

Plank services

Plank Productions records for bands some of them local, including Radio Flyer and Uncivil Servants. The studio which employs only Plank and his wife, Paula Ringer, who's his marketing manager also records voiceovers.

Plank does some of his own voicework, and sometimes, he provides the singing for the jingles he writes.

"But I always let the clients choose. I don't push my voice," Plank said. "I've got on my Web site, and on my CDs I think it's 47 voice talents that they can choose from, speaking or announcer talents so they can choose what voice they would like to record their commercial."

He also keeps a list of singers for clients to choose from. "On the singers, we'll usually make a suggestion to the client," Plank said. "I'm like a small talent agency."

For jingles, Plank said, the words and the music are chosen strategically.

"A jingle is like a sign that you would have alongside the road or it's like an audio logo," Plank said. "It's not just a catchy song. What we do is, we work with the business to try and make the instrumental portion to fit the image of the business."

Plank Productions operates in two areas. One is an acoustically designed room where the live talent bands and announcers for voice-overs and singers for jingles do their work. That room is soundproofed and it has both reflective and absorbent surfaces.

"This is what they would call a live-dead room because there's reflective surfaces in here, like the glass, the wood, the wood doors the wood floor. But then there are dead areas, like the ceiling, the walls, the carpet. That's kind of the trick to making a great sounding room for a recording studio," Plank said.

Having a proper mix of absorbent and reflective surfaces in the recording room prevents an echo, which "sounds horrible on a recording," Plank said.

There's also a control room, and that's where the technology that allows Plank to do his job is housed.

Finding clients

Plank Productions works with local clients, but Plank said his studio also draws people from all over the country in part, he said, because of the technology he uses.

One of Plank Productions' clients or at least his voice is probably well-known to children across the United States. Jim Cummings, who is the voice of Walt Disney's Winnie the Pooh, does some recording with Plank Productions.

Cummings has a summer house in Mt. Vernon, Plank said.

"He records here, voiceover. We've recorded Winnie the Pooh audio for the dolls," Plank said. "He's also the voice of Nissan. We did some national Nissan spots here and he also does voiceover for Cartoon Network just here and there he'll call a couple of times a year."

Plank said clients find his studio because it's listed in trade magazines. Also, he said, a new Web site at www.plankproductions.com, which was launched in May 2003, has helped.

That his studio offers the same quality expected by out-of-town advertising agencies and by big-name clients, including Cummings, is important for local and regional advertisers, Plank said.

"Audio gets processed over and over before it gets on the air and you want to start with a high-quality sound for it to maintain that quality throughout you just want to start with high quality so you finish with high quality, because it gets mangled and converted all the way along the process," Plank said.

Plank Productions has a two-way phone patch that enables out-of-town clients to call in and hear the voice talent in Springfield and the voice talent can hear them.

"So they cut the audio with ProTools, while the producer's on the phone. Then we just make it an MP3 and the client has it within minutes of the session. Or we can send it in whatever file format they want," Plank said. This enables him to work with voice talent all over the country.

Time-saving technology

While the new technology makes Plank's job easier and improves sound quality, it also saves time. One way that ProTools saves time, Plank said, is that it can automatically convert files to the desired format. Time is important, since Plank's fees are often figured on an hourly basis.

"We generally bid the jingles for clients up front, so that's more like a project price, but radio commercials are on an hourly basis. We bid everything up front, so we're always happy to give clients an up-front bid," Plank said. Bid prices vary by job, he said. Recordings for bands also are done on a bid basis, which covers the varying prices charged by voice talents. However, he noted, for bands especially, there's a $55-per-hour fee assessed.

"One band can come in and cut it real quick, and another band I think my record is (a band) spent 22 hours on one song," he said.