The Story of Power-Haus Creative

Born from more than 15 years of sync licensing experience across TV, film, advertising, games, and VOD content, Power-Haus Creative is the dedicated arm of A&GSync, dealing with custom music production. Its in-house creative team manages and curates the work of an exceptional group of composers and recording artists,creating original and impactful music for its custom music library as well as theater productions and TV show advertisements for Netflix, HBO, Hulu, and many others.

Power-Haus Creative’s tracks have been in trailers of Bruce Miller’s award-winning “The Handmaid’s Tale” and Ryan Murphy’s “Dahmer – Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story” – a dominant No.1 series on Netflix globally.

Recently, Power-Haus Creative has won the “Best Use Of Production Music In A Film Trailer” Award from the Music+Sound Awards for its works on “All Quiet On The Western Front” – Oscar Winner and “The Whale,” Oscar Winner.

Managing the projects before Pibox

Power-Haus Creative has a main composer Christian Reindl and works closely with several other composers on a project basis. The company has some recording artists signed to it that also crossover into the custom trailer side. Power-Haus Creative rarely makes one album with one composer as it strives for the highest standard. Achieving the highest standard under their creative brief and guidance means getting the best work possible from each composer the company works with. Thus the Power-Haus Creative team critiques and collaborates on each individual track.

Challenges

Review Process

It takes Power-Haus Creative five to twelve rounds of review from when a composer delivers their first version, and to the time it’s considered approved and ready for exploitation. That’s a lot of back and forth, and that’s why the team needs to be able to move quickly and explain exactly what they’re looking for in each production they’re dealing with.

Sound quality

Is also crucial for composers and creators. They’ve got to get the highest production sounds they can because it’s impossible to win placements on demos in this field, as the team is pitching up against the best in the world at this. When delivered, the track has to be ready to cut and stick on a multi-million dollar production.

Scattered Communication

With so much attention to be paid to detail, the collaboration was quite challenging for Power-Haus Creative. Work communication was scattered, and the production process was manual and simply overwhelming. To enter edits, the team had to write emails with time codes, and constantly go back to the track if they forgot the exact time code, for example. Due to this, the production was also quite lengthy – after sending an email, the team had to wait for a reply, or have a phone call instead, and make notes that were regularly lost. There was a delay in getting anything done.

When Power-Haus Creative switched to the Pibox music collaboration app

As Roy Lidstone, Managing Director of Power-Haus Creative says, from the creators’ point of view, Pibox is a creative environment that facilitates their process immensely. The composers get much more specific info and comments. To make the communication even more synched, the team uses one person to liaise the creative process in Pibox and keep comments clear and concise. Power-Haus Creative has also added a guest role, especially for those involved in a particular project – this way, guests add linear comments and go. And there’s no need to pay for them.

Striking music over visuals

Most times, Power-Haus Creative isn’t editing films or commercials, but editing the music to fit a film. However, an existing musical piece rarely fits the film perfectly. The team might have to cut something out, move it around a little bit and find out where the start points are, and then print that as a guide reference. That’s when being able to expand the wave and come down onto a timecode on a note in the Pibox music collaboration app comes in handy.

Remixing

Not only does Power-Haus Creative work on custom music productions, but the team is also good at what they create covers. Covering means taking an existing recording, like a Frank Sinatra, for example. Then using a technique to remove the vocal, remix the track, and then add the vocal back in. It’s not an overlay in a traditional sense because an overlay could be a drumbeat across the top to give a Frank Sinatra track a bit more bounce. What Power-Haus Creative does is restructure the track, rearrange it, and lift it. The only thing missing is the physical stems, so the team uses various tricks to achieve that as well. One of the remixes Roy Lindstone and the team at Power-Haus is most proud of is – The Perry Mason Trailer remixing the song  “I’ll Take Care Of You.”

Jamming

According to Roy Lindstone, working in Pibox is the next best thing to being in the room with other creators. With the Pibox music collaboration app, the team is often virtually live. So an extra exchange of comments can be done one after the other: "Can you try that? Can you bridge this to that? How do you want me to do this?." Pibox facilitates an active flow of conversation and exchanging ideas on the spot that no email can. 

The Results

Switching to Pibox fundamentally changed the creative process in the team. By listening to the tracks in detail, working with the waveform, and making comments bar by bar, note by note if necessary, the team sped up the overall review process. It also improved the accuracy and quality of that process. All the data has been collected in one place, so there's no need to switch between file sharing, communication, and project management tools. 

Besides saving time, working in Pibox also helps avoid confusion and misinformation. With email or phone conversations, with hundreds of comments and replies, it's easy to lose track of what's happening. Whereas within the Pibox music collaboration app, the conversation about a particular production stays in one place and gives an exact understanding of what needs to be done to a specific tune or beat. This removes the friction in the team and enhances project communication.