SOUND + MUSIC FOR FILM
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“CLEAN CUT”: ORIGINAL MUSIC, SOUND DESIGN + MIX FOR COMEDY/ HORROR SHORT
Above: This short spent the year of its release vacuuming up awards across North America. The film's audio is almost entirely post sound; for the most part sound was not recorded on set, and even the (sparse) dialog was mostly "wild". I followed the Roomba around my house with a field recorder to provide the bot's engine whir and assorted glitches; the rest of the sound design was accomplished with a combo of original Foley and library sound effects. I created an original music score based on the temp tracks provided. A cautionary tale about a Roomba gone rogue, “Clean Cut” was a great experience in seeing what director Andrew Hunt could pull off with a dream team of collaborators.
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“PRESENT TENTS”: ORIGINAL MUSIC, SOUND DESIGN AND MIX FOR SHORT COMEDY/ DRAMA
From director Kevin Obsatz: “A man wakes up one morning to find an unfamiliar tent in his front yard, and all of his self-professed progressive pieties come crashing down. Filmed in South Minneapolis in the summer of 2020.
“This film was an opportunity to examine my own privilege as an artist and a homeowner, and to explore areas of friction between the professed beliefs of myself and my neighbors, and our feelings and actions when, in the middle of a summer of strife, a 300-tent city appeared in our park, on our collective front lawn.”
Thanks to my intern Sam Carlson for FX editing on this one!
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“50 ML”: SOUND EDIT + MIX FOR DRAMATIC SHORT
Above: “50 ml” is a dramatic short film, directed by Vanessa Powers. “A young man struggles with his sobriety while he and his wife host a holiday dinner with her dysfunctional family.” Heavy on dialog. Sound edit, Foley, and mix by Mike Hallenbeck at Cool Cat Audio.
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"ELIXIR": FOLEY, SOUND EDIT AND MIX FOR SHORT FANTASY/ HORROR FILM
Above: Equal parts magical fantasy and undead horror, "Elixir" is a short film by director Justin Staggs. We provided Foley, sound edit and mix. Picture lock arrived at the studio completely silent, with no audio recorded on location whatsoever. Every sound you hear in the movie was created and/ or cut in by yours truly and composer David Gerald Sutton. Voice talent Molly Ryman provided ADR performance for the protagonist’s vocalizations throughout the piece. Staggs brought in a variety of SFX to get me going, and I ransacked my library for more. But many elements-- like the blood drops, the woodsy footsteps and the dangling necklace-- are custom cues created just for this production.
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ORIGINAL MUSICAL SCORE (SCI FI/ DRAMA): “INTO THE VOID”
Above: highlight reel of my original musical score for "Into the Void", a feature-length sci fi adaptation of "The Sea Wolf" by Jack London, directed by Wayne Johnson. My score involved equal parts strident orchestration, melodic delicacy, psychedelic rock, and ominous atmospherics. Here’s a Soundcloud playlist of cues from the movie.
The spacecraft in the film is entering the Void, a region of space that bounces back all the radio waves ever transmitted throughout Earth's history. So I also created a variety of "antique" music cues to exist in the diegetic reality of the narrative, heard by the characters within the scenes. To simulate music of varied vintage, I futzed the mix with an appropriate amount of distortion and crackle. Here’s a reel of these source cues.
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“THESE IMPERFECT GIFTS”: SOUND EDIT + MIX FOR DRAMATIC SHORT
Above: “These Imperfect Gifts”, directed by Vanessa Powers. “What a gift a new baby can be. A grieving young couple struggles to move forward in the aftermath of a loss.” Sound edit, Foley, and mix by Mike Hallenbeck at Cool Cat Audio.
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“CONTACT TRACES”: MUSIC EDITING, FOLEY/ SOUND DESIGN, AND MIX FOR DYSTOPIAN SCI FI SHORT
Almost devoid of dialog while heavy on music and subtle Foley just on the horizon line of perception, Kevin Obsatz’s “Contact Traces” takes place in a timeline oriented toward ours either as near-future or as an alternate present to the 2020 during which it was shot. The actors were COVID-cautious to the point where they could interact with minimal risk, and the camera crew never entered the cabin in which the film was shot.
Composer Andy McCormick sent over multitracks of the score for me to edit and mix together; this amounted to such an extensive process that I eventually exported a collection of commemorative music mixes including outtakes, as well as some “de-mixes” that wound up part of the score.
Thanks again to my intern Sam Carlson for his help with FX editing and Foley on this film! By the time we were working on this one, we were far enough into vax days to do a Foley session in person.
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