Earlier I asked for expert input on the audio effects the new Obama ad uses to give Mitt’s voice a creepy, foreboding quality as he sings “America the Beautiful.” Knowledgeable TPM readers were quick to respond, including a longtime reader who works in film:
I’m not an audio engineer but a movie director. But I can tell you that they are using reverb and echo and ambience tracks (creating the spacial feeling of open air, closed offices, factory floor, etc) and “PA” and “Speakerphone” filters to alter the tonality of his singing track with each environment change in the video. I find the spot very effective in exactly the way you guys have defined “bitch slap” politics. More than the issues it presents, it is a searing and humiliating portrait of Thurston Howell from Gilligan’s Island running for president.
In a strictly technical sense, this sounds for all the world like a non-military coup — although if we’re being technical about it, I suppose they would say the real coup happened back in the 1870s, and this is merely a restoration of the rightful government. Or maybe the better historical parallel are the Avignon antipopes? Yeah, I’m overthinking it.
In today’s brutal new Obama ad, they monkey with the audio of Mitt’s singing to give it that echo-y, tinny yet very foreboding sound reminiscent to me of the announcer in LBJ’s “Daisy” ad in 1964. It’s almost like a vibrato. Is there a term for this among audio engineers?
Benjy Sarlin explains why Mitt Romney and all of his campaigns of the last decade have been so intent on making 1999 the end of his tenure at Bain.
Honest question: does anyone think Romney helped himself with this round of television interviews? This is more fact-finding than rhetorical. And the people whose opinions I’d be most curious to hear are those of Republican operatives — people who want the answer to be ‘yes’ but are politically sophisticated enough to know if it’s not.
The headline in the Times is “Romney Seeks Obama Apology for Bain Attacks“.
In the Journal “Romney Defends Bain Capital Tenure“.
This is ‘bitch slap’ politics played with a gusto and coldness seldom seen from Democrats, at least since the Bill Clinton days. Asking for an apology is losing. Saying you want something you clearly have no power to get is losing. Read More
Continuing policy of calculated disrespect, Obama team says it’s ‘not satisfied’ with Romney’s new answers on Bain.
Lawyers say George Zimmerman has lost faith in the judge in his case, wants him removed from the case.