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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“BOOMTOWN”: ORIGINAL MUSIC, SOUND EDIT AND MIX FOR DOCUMENTARY
Above: Highlight reel from "Boomtown", a short documentary about the proprietors of a fireworks shop in Nevada. I served as sound editor and rerecording mixer, and I composed all the music you hear here. Production supplied some fireworks audio with their deliverables, but I was able to sweeten that with some field reocrdings of fireworks that I'd captured a few years earlier. See the full film here.
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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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"PERSONAL SPACE": SOUND EDIT + MIX FOR SHORT THRILLER
Above: Andrew Hunt’s short film “Personal Space”, a short thriller featuring my sound edit and mix, won Best of Fest and a host of other honors at Z-Fest the year of its release; my work earned a nomination for Best Audio/ Sound Design. The film builds from a sense of silence through layers of tension to a twist ending. Other than breaths and gasps from its protagonist, the film contains no dialog. Actress Molly Ryman's vocalizations were recorded "wild" and synced up with the visuals later. Many of the "hero" sound effects arrived in the cut after picture lock; my sound design work focused on the grit and textures in between the main audio events. To this end I employed a variety of objects I keep around for such needs. My trusty squeaky hinge came in handy for the latch at 1:20, as did the block of stone I often use for rough, scratchy textures. And I performed original Foley effects for small moments like plugging in the phone cable and dropping the phone on the glass table surface (with the cable rattling in between) at 2:26.
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