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News – Fall 2011

Been wrapping up a busy summer here in Santa Monica.  One recent project was a music video for a new artist and long time friend of this blog Neara Russell.  Neara has just released a wonderful new album called Noise and Silence you can preview it here.  I helped her create a music video to her track Shattered Glass.  I directed it and edited the picture among other things.  You can watch the video here –

http://www.vimeo.com/29121652

I’m still on my “Audio Tour 2011” which Wendy Woodhall has spent a great deal of time planning, coordinating and managing.  The first leg of the tour, earlier this year, I went to Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) and spent some time with the students and faculty there.  Great place, great people – I’ve never been there before and it was a wonderful experience.

They invited me to their annual “Entrepreneurship Forum” where I was asked to speak about my professional organization, “The Los Angeles Post Production Group” as well as my experiences creating and running my own audio post studio Allied Post Audio.   They put me up in a wonderful old converted house owned by the school and I had the pleasure of hanging  not only with the students but also with their faculty who includes some amazing folks like David Stone and Peter Damski.  Many thanks to Gregory Renda for the hospitality!

Another piece of this year’s tour was a presentation for Marcelo Lewin at his FilmmakingWebinars.com website.  It was called “Audio Post Workflows for Video Editors” and I detailed many workflows and strategies for the ultimate delivery of a soundtrack.  I find this a blind spot for video editors who haven’t spent a lot of time exploring audio exporting, split tracks and encoding.  We had a huge worldwide audience and it is still available as a download on Marcelo’s site.  The teaser for it can be found here –

DV Expo 2011 here in Pasadena was another amazing experience.  Many thanks to Cristina Clapp for all of her help and hospitality.  We hosted our September LAPPG meeting there this year with Daniel Kramer, the Visual Effects Supervisor for “The Smurfs” for Sony Imageworks.  It was a terrific presentation with Daniel explaining and defining all things Smurfs – from skin and blood color to height and movements.  A fascinating discussion about bringing 2D characters into a 3D world.

As another leg of my audio tour I also presented on the main stage at DV Expo 2011- a discussion on “Audio for Content Creators.”  It was a standing room only crowd as I buzzed over the main aspects of audio post from edit to outputs and delivery.  A great time with a very enthusiastic crowd!

We are also beginning a new project called “LAPPG Presents” which will be classes, workshops and events produced by Wendy and I for the post community here in LA.  Our first event will be a full day workshop with my colleague and friend Dr. Fred Ginsburg, CAS.  It will be held here in Los Angeles and if you’d like to get a full day intensive on audio – location and post – this is the class for you.  It is normally $149.00 but with my super secret code – LAPPG – you can get 50 bucks off!  It is on Oct 15th in Westwood at the ShowBiz Store and Cafe.  If you can’t make this one, drop me a line and I’ll tell you when Fred and I will be doing it again.

Another aspect this year as part of the “Audio Tour” has been participating with local colleges in various ways.  I am a part of the Industry Committee Panel for the Musicians Institute and a part of the Program Advisory Committee for The Art Institute Los Angeles.  I have been a part of workshops, meetings and student events for audio education and I’ve met with students from both of these fine schools and presented on audio post.  I also spent an evening speaking with the students at Video Symphony for one of their monthly “Pizza and Post” nights.  That evening was dedicated to finding and keeping work and it was called “Ten Tips for Successful Employment in Hollywood.”  No magic bullet there – hard work, showing up and participating were the main themes of the evening.

The final stop on my audio tour will be in Connecticut and presenting on audio post at Production Conn.  They asked for an introductory video and I have that posted here.  If you are in CT please come on by.  Keith Larsen is the man in charge and it will be a wonderful event.

I’ve also joined the company of filmmakers who call themselves BrevityTV.com, headed by Deron Sedy.  I have joined as a producer and I have also spent some time providing post as well.  I did the visual effects in Photoshop and After Effects for “Alien Lesbian Sexbot” and few others projects are just getting ready to come online.  They have some pretty funny stuff and understand clearly that “brevity is the soul of wit.”

Of course I’ve also had a busy year designing, editing and mixing sound.  I did a terrific pilot for FuseTV called “Popped” which chronicalled the rise of rapper Nelly.  I also edited and mixed the first season of “Storage Hunters” for truTV.  I did a great piece for Intel Visual Life, a bio piece called “The Sartorialist” on Blogger Scott Shumann.  I won two Telly Awards for Best Sound – one for “Best Worst Movie”, which also landed on Roger Ebert’s Top Ten List for Documentaries 2010 and one for the Meat Loaf episode (the singer – not the food!) of a series I mixed for Food Network called “Private Chefs of Beverly Hills.” I recorded lots of voiceovers as usual; all the way from Michael York  for the animated feature “Flatland” to Playmate April 2011 – Jaclyn Swedberg for Playboy TV and many others in between.

I have a new version of my sound reel available.  Take a look at some of the fun projects I’ve been doing with audio.