Synchroness
Our music supervisor, Carter Butler, recently
launched Synchroness.com, a blog that catalogs
those magical moments when sound and image
work together perfectly. We asked him a few
questions about the thinking behind his site.
Why did you start Synchroness?
The idea for the site definitely wasn't a light-bulb, flux capacitor sort of "a-ha" idea. Alex and I had at first been talking about a blog concept for Expansion Team and I said "what if we took a sort of creative community angle on it and featured work from other people, including competitors?" We decided it could have a bigger life if it was indepenent-- a Motionographer.com for music sync, if you will. But after I started thinking about it more, I realized it wasn't enough. The scope was too small. The audience for a thing like that would be such a tiny one and it didn't seem to have much opportunity for growth. Once we expanded the concept to what it is now, considering all the great places music is used, I was a lot more excited to put some work into it. I talked a good friend of mine, Julie Arsenault, into designing it for me, which also upped the responsibility for me, because if she was working that hard, I had to work hard, too.
Who's your target audience?
Everybody. I wanted the site to be a place where non-music junkies could come and find material they wouldn't normally across; people who don't want to spend hours trolling the music blogs.We're a multimedia generation and I think that so many of us listen to music contextually. We don't think of it anymore as this self-contained thing. It needs a setting. If a song doesn't fit into the "workout mix" or the "party playlist," often we have no use for it. But you look at how well soundtrack music still does, in films and tv-- that's where all the small artists are breaking. It's like giving the music a stage on which to be heard, giving it meaning, validating it. So that's what Synchroness aims to do. It's just trying to create a different way to receive music.
What are your criteria for selecting contributors?
I kind of just went with anyone who was interested and who could write well. If you know anyone who likes to write and likes great music, please put us in touch. Right now we don't have many contributors, but I'm hoping that will change.
What about the name? Is Synchroness a real word?
We tossed around ideas for the better part of a month and that just stuck. I liked how the "ness" gave it a slightly feminine quality to offset the techie "sync.”
How does working for Expansion Team influence Synchroness.com and its content?
I think music supervision is all about getting over your own personal tastes and realizing why a certain song could appeal to someone else in a way that's special and meaningful to them. So I guess working at ET keeps me constantly in that frame of mind, which means that a lot broader range of content is fair game for Synchroness. It also, obviously, taught me the difference between real, artful, truly interactive sync and just slapping cool music to picture.
What are some of your bigger goals for the site?
I'd like to interview some big name directors. [Synchroness contributor] Sue Apfelbaum already interviewed Mike Mills, so I don't think it's a far-fetched goal, it just takes a lot of time hunting people down. I’ve realized how tough it must to be to be a journalist! I have some major newfound respect for those guys.
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