GUILD BLOG

Supervisor Spotlight: Dan Neale


By The GMS Team


Dan Neale is Managing Director of Native Music, the supervision and production company who work on bespoke compositions, re-records, music placement and searches and more. He’s has been working in the music and advertising industries for many years and specifically working in sync for close to 14 years. We spoke to Dan about his career and how he got to where he is today.

What was your background before moving into sync and supervision?

For a couple of years at the start of my career I worked in advertising production by day and I played in bands by night. I saw an opportunity to make a career out of music within the advertising industry, I went full-time as a media composer.

How did you get into the industry?

While I was a composer I also started pitching music from the the artists I had met on the live circuit and from the studios I was based in. I landed a couple of spots and the experience made me realise that sync was a fast developing industry that I wanted to be a part of.

What is the most interesting project you have worked on?

I was very lucky to work with Elbow to create the music for the BBC London 2012 coverage. With the combination of the project being for the BBC, the Olympics being back in the UK for the first time in years, and getting a band who don’t do much sync involved – it was a really exciting project. I was involved with a lot of aspects of the music from briefing the band, to sourcing the orchestra, arranger and choir to doing first rough edits against the offline as the animation progressed, so it was interesting in that it needed a full range of skills to manage the project. We recorded the BBC Philharmonic in Manchester, and a twenty strong choir in Abbey Rd Studio 2 (my first time in that amazing place) – and the amount of deliverables for the project was huge. I learned a lot on that one!

What is the best use of music in Ads that you have ever seen?

I remember being amazed by the BBC’s promo featuring ‘Perfect Day’ (watch it here). It’s a concept that still comes up as a reference today (in fact there is a BBC Three Promo just out that harks back to it). The amount of talent they managed to get involved is incredible, and at the time it felt really original.

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