Creative Media Recording Sweetens Blimp Hangar Documentary

Creative Media Recording was recently tapped to provide complete audio sweetening services on a half hour documentary on the history and construction of the World War II era Tustin Blimp Hangars on the site of the now closed Tustin, CA Marine Base. The program, entitled “Titans of History,” was created and produced for the California City of Tustin by Orange County filmmaker Peter Buffa of Petrone Productions. It featured interviews with a former base commander and the son of the owner of the construction firm that originally built the massive hangars in the 1940’s after the start of World War II.

CMR was asked to provide a production music score, historical sound effects and ambient sound as well as narration for segments throughout the video. The challenge was to replicate the sounds of construction to match the footage from the 1940’s. Historical airplane engine sounds were used to simulate the sound of flying blimps for footage shot from the ground and in the cockpit.

The documentary took Buffa months of extensive research to complete. The historical footage he discovered had little to no sync sound and CMR combed their extensive sound effects library and other resources to enhance the audio elements. The production music used in the program came from several different production libraries at CMR and matched the mood of video.

While originally created for local use in Tustin as part of the Marine Base Reuse Project, Buffa hopes to find airtime for the documentary on local broadcast outlets as well.