ABOUT

We were tapped as audio partners for Deutsch LA x Taco Bell’s “Unofficial Halftime Show” during the Women’s World Cup.

This campaign came about as a way to reinvigorate and reintroduce Taco Bell’s Feed the Beat program — which not only provides free food for touring musicians but also helps boost exposure for artists by providing them with a stage at various events around the country.

Due to the lack of halftime shows during soccer matches, Taco Bell seized the moment to create their very own “unofficial” halftime show for the Women’s World Cup which was broadcast this past July 2023. Taco Bell selected 3 of their Feed the Beat artists — indie-pop powerhouse MUNA, viral TikTok singer-songwriter Claire Rosinkranz, and the West-coast-based hardcore band Scowl — to be featured for an “Unofficial Halftime Show” that premiered alongside the Women’s World Cup.

But how do you prepare a halftime show performance featuring sets from 3 musical artists within one month? And how do you make that record and performance happen in just one day? Enter BUTTER.

Our team was brought on to the campaign about a month out from the shoot to produce, record, and mix the live performances of our 3 musical acts. In an ideal world, this timeline would have looked more like 2 months. Once we were given an overview of the concept, our audio team traveled to the Steelhead soundstage (Deutsch’s in-house production studio) where the performances would occur, to tech scout the location and assess equipment requirements. This was as blank as a canvas could be for a recording studio/performance space - a white box.

After assessing what this would require, we solidified that our task would be to plan the build-out of a soundstage for the “live performance,” essentially creating a music venue set up at Steelhead and providing all of the gear to make this possible. This meant deciding what variety of mics to use, what was the best audio interface to tackle our 30+ input list while being transportable, how many mixing consoles would be needed, what type of in-ear setup would be needed to provide monitoring for up to 10 people including performers and on-set producers and creatives, how many XLR cables this required (Answer: A LOT). The final spreadsheet for the gear and how it paired with which band/artist is enough to make your head explode, all told we sourced $30,000 worth of gear (which we fit into our total budget to pull it all off.) The additional complication was that this would not air live - we wanted to simultaneously record the bands so that we could mix their performances for studio-quality recordings. To capture a performance worthy of a Super Bowl halftime show, we assembled a 5-person audio team comprised of a lead engineer, monitor engineer, tech supervisor, and two assistant audio engineers to help assemble equipment and backline, creating a fully remote recording studio and capture the on-set audio performances from our 3 artists.

Our audio team worked closely not only with the brand and agency team but also with artist management to ensure proper equipment was provided and proper protocol was followed for the shoot. In addition to multiple pre-production meetings held with the agency producers, the BUTTER team organized and led pre-pro calls with each artist’s management team to assess equipment and technical needs for our backline for the day of the shoot and performance. This was a fun added challenge because each band/artist had very different setups, so nothing was plug-and-play. We game planned how to break down and set up for each unique performance, and what gear would allow us the most flexibility across the board.

We had 8 hours to run set up/sound check and then one 14-hour day for showtime. In an ideal world, we would have done a sound check in 2 days, and then 2-3 days for the record, but this is advertising. Working closely with the agency production team, we transported and built out our extensive recording setup on the day of rehearsals and led line checks for each artist. After 8 hours of set up amidst the build-out of an entire commercial soundstage set, we were ready to record our artists. The next day, our team assembled once more to conduct final checks before capturing 3 separate 2 hour long sets from each performer, with breakdowns/setups in between.

Once the shoot was over, our team dove into creating final mixes of the 3 performances in tandem with the edit. Fielding requests from editors, artist management, and the agency, we made final tweaks within a week as we raced toward the start of the World Cup, leading us to the final versions that you see today.