Muscle Milk

Upwork

Crunchy Roll

Mind City Terror: Epic short kaiju film! Monster vs Robot.

Mind City Terror has been a long time coming! The Kickstarter began almost 3 years ago and the film has finally had its debut and is finding its way around the indie festival circuit! It was a real thrill to see and hear this epic battle projected in 5.1 surround sound at the Castro Theater in San Francisco last year. I spent a long time designing sounds for the robot and the monster, recording a good deal of new foley and combining it with special SFX packs director Curtis Jaeger had purchased for me to use exclusively on the project. You can follow announcements about the film, read recent reviews (they're positive!) and more at the MCT Facebook Page.

Orchard Supply Hardware: 85th Anniversary Train Video

Here's a really touching story about a company that has persisted through many generations, told with the metaphor of a train moving through time. I love trains! This spot was shot with a real working antique locomotive and automobiles. Costumes progress through 60's and 70's to today. It was a lot of fun to work on this with director Lisbon Okafor, who is always very articulate about sound design and detail in the audio. We had lots of actual train and car sounds to work with, so it was a real joy to put this piece together.

Mafia 3: 2k Games exciting gangster drama!

EA Origin Access with Bill Nye!

I got to record one of my childhood heroes, Bill Nye! SF Agency FCB created a series of videos promoting EA's online gaming service Origin Access. This series of spots was also sound-design intensive. We created a palette of futuristic sci-fi sounds for all the crazy floating graphics around Bill in the spots. There's also a few sections where multiple video game screens are floating around. It was a complicated task to keep it from sounding too messy. You may notice different sounds each time you watch! I also created most of the music for the campaign: The agency had an excellent piece of stock music for the beginning of each spot, but I composed the sound bed that lays under the majority of Bill's act, through to the end. Watch Bill's other spots for Origin Access as he explains The Theory of Relativity, and Darwin's Theory of Evolution (as they apply to video games, of course!)

Bleacher Report: Sports remix of classic 1999 Blackalicious hit

Barrett SF brings exciting new life to this classic hip hop hit from 1999. The song runs through the alphabet and gets faster and faster towards the end. Now it has a new twist - all the lyrics are sports-related, to promote sports app Bleacher Report. The video is fantastic as it changes animation styles 26 times (once for each letter, two bars of the music). Visually stunning and musically entertaining, this ad is actually getting great feedback on YouTube. The "remix" is even available for purchase on iTunes, or download on Spotify. We mixed and remixed this music for a month or so, going through different versions of the lyrics and incorporating gobs of sound design for each little micro-vignette. We also produced a handful of cut-downs which posed the biggest audio challenge: editing music that gets faster and faster with every bar! Shoot Online gave us a charming write-up.

Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate -- Cinematic TV Spot

Barrett SF has been doing some incredible work for video game producer Ubisoft. This spot introduces the next chapter in the Assassin's Creed franchise with motion-capture animation, breathtaking fight scenes and a cinematic score that is sure to motivate the game's fan base. The mix for this spot was built on over 100 separate audio tracks! We received very thorough sound design and music stems to balance out. I added some additional sound design for our taste, and had to execute some clever music edits. The dialog lip-sync was a challenge as well but in the end, the spot looks and sounds incredible. We got a write up with full credits in The Next Gag. Interestingly, the spot I actually mixed for Barrett was a full :60, which was later cut down to the :45 that ended up being broadcast.

WWE 2K16 Featuring Arnold Schwarzenegger as The Terminator!

Apparently in the new WWE game from 2K Games, you can not only play as all your favorite WWE wrestlers, but also as THE TERMINATOR! Barrett SF did an excellent job making that announcement, by re-creating an iconic scene from Terminator 2: Judgment Day, replacing the cast with WWE celebrities and starring Arnold Schwarzenegger reprising his role as The Terminator. Together with my college Eben Carr at One Union Recording, we had the task of matching the sound design and mix from the original cinematic sequence. Buzzfeed did a great side-by-side comparison with animated GIF's showing off the accuracy of the re-creation. AdWeek / AgencySpy gave us a review with full credits.

EA Battlefield Hardline: Bank Heist 360º Video Experience!

You've got to see this! San Francisco agency FCB is making advertising history with this innovate video experience to promote EA's new release Battlefield: Hardline. This short film is about a bank heist, shot in a first-person perspective, from the point of view of the bag of money! What makes it truly amazing, however, is the ability of the user to pan around the environment in 360º as the video plays. We put in more than a few late nights on this one, conforming music splits and sound design to get the most impact from the edit. Some additional sound design was added, but this was mainly an edit and mix job.
Click here to experience the amazing 360º video!
Or watch the "linear" version below:

Sensitive 70s Turtleneck Tough Guys! Amazing short action/comedy film

Writer/director team Jose Montesinos and Brett Stillo put together this hilarious 70's exploitation satire based on the cliché of the tough cop. Imagine Charles Bronson or Shaft with a crippling sensitive side. I participated in multiple departments of this effort: I played guitar on the score (edited and composed by Brian Rodvien), designed the sound and mix, and even played a role! Yes... that's me getting blasted into the swimming pool. Watch the FULL SHORT FILM below, and follow the movie (and possibly the SERIES!) on their Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/SensitiveTurtleneckmovie

The Sims 4: You Rule!

I worked with SF agency FCB on their second full campaign for The Sims 4, this time targeting a new audience of players that were unfamiliar with the franchise. The clever effects driven spot was shot and finished in Australia, while we worked on the music edit and sound effects here in SF. The music is an interesting composition with noisy beats and band of light-hearted theremins magically floating around. I used a hybrid timeline in protools with seconds/frames for sound effect placement, and bars/beats for the music edits. This way I was able to throw parts around quickly and remix the music stems to match our video better. Sound design was intentionally subtle and gets more magical and abstract as the picture moves forward.

Dragon Age: Inquisition - So epic.

I am incredibly proud of this series of videos. I spent over 2 months working with SF agency FCB dialing in a perfect mix. We explored a ton of alternate routes - music options, edits, picture changes, and sound effects until everything was absolutely the best. The mixes all had to be loud and powerful from beginning to end. The first spot below "The Breach" also had a catchy pop song driving the mix, and it took a lot of meticulous engineering to fit all the sound effects in there with limited dynamic range (hint: side-chain compression and multi-band compressors are my best friends). The protools session had well over 100 tracks! Everything was loud, but nothing clipped. I sound designed these spots with a combination of our own library at One Union, and a library of proprietary game sound effects provided by EA. I've always loved sound designing animation, and now the opportunity to work on giant sky explosions, medieval sword battles, magic spells, dragons - wow! The videos were all very well received by the fans, and I'm confident we did better than the best job possible promoting this highly anticipated video game.

The Sims 4 featuring Charlie Day and Oingo Boingo

This is a big campaign by EA to promote their new iteration of The Sims. We recorded voice over from Charlie Day, co-star of It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia, one of my favorite TV shows! EA licensed the 1985 song "Weird Science" from Oingo Boingo genius Danny Elfman. It was incredible to work with both Charlie, and the audio splits of this quirky rock classic. This spot was conformed for US and European TV with cutdowns. We also produced 6 shorter "The Sims 4 Academy" videos for the web, also with Charlie Day. My favorite is #3: Changing Moods featuring the "Cowplant." The rest of these silly, wacky, absurd and otherwise fun videos can be seen on The Sims 4 Trailers video playlist on YouTube.

Sounds Like a Showdown! (Short film)

At One Union Recording, many clients don't realize we can do sound design as well as just mixing. We decided to produce a series of short films that would highlight sound design. For this piece, I hired my friend Baxter Smith and his Soul Fire Pictures to produce a modern-age western-themed sound design showdown. Starring two of One Union's former interns: Craig Northrop and Elliott Peltzman from The Stone Foxes. The juxtaposition between raw crappy built-in mic camera audio and pristine post-production sound design should drive home the point that "Sound Design makes you awesome!" Baxter and I also composed the score together.

Cicada Princess: Magical fairytale now online

This is one of the most magical projects I have ever been a part of. Produced during 2012, it was finished and released to festivals all over the country in 2013 including BAM Cinematek, Cinequest, South by Southwest, and SF International Film Festival. I had the pleasure of recording British comedian, actor and overall superb human Stephen Fry as he read the voice over for the film. The sound design took a few weeks, and the final mix was supervised by director Mauricio "Mauchi" Baiocchi and composer Jesse Clark. This is some of my best work to date. I was in the booth recording foley of dirt crumbling in my hands, metal scraping together, and pieces of scotch tape flapping together like wings. Tons of the finest SF Bay Area talent worked on this amazing piece -- camera operators, model builders, and puppeteers. It was an amazing team. It recently got some press on io9.com now that it is finally viewable on the small screen. I definitely hope the team sticks together and continues more amazing work like Cicada Princess! Mauchi is definitely a talented guy, and someone you want to keep your eye on.

XBOX: Forza Motorsport 5

I didn't get to do the sound design on this fast-paced, dynamic and explosive TV spot, but I did mix it in stereo and 5.1 Surround for HDTV! Working with SF Agency 215, I mixed a :30, :20 and :15 cutdowns for their client Microsoft. I wish I could post the surround mix on YouTube! It's definitely a fun one. Cars are zipping by from all sides, towards you, away from you, across the screen. The race-car sound design was combined with rear-channel reverb for the music and some ambient sound effects. It's nice that this spot had essentially zero voice over! We could just let those explosive sound effects totally dominate and surround the viewer.

Skype: "The Born Friends," lovely and emotional...

When I started mixing this series of videos for SF agency Pereira & O'Dell, I knew right away it was going to be the most emotional piece I've ever worked on to date. It took a few hours of mixing before I could get through it without choking up! We tell a story of two best friends, in Indiana USA and New Zealand, who have never met except over Skype. They both grew up with the same unique life challenges, and so when they finally get a chance to meet in person, well, it's flat-out tear-jerking. The :60 version also appeared on a dramatic episode of the Katie Couric show where Sarah was again surprised by a visit from her best friend Paige live on the show. Technically, the documentary format presents its own audio challenges, mixing audio from tons of different locations and editing dialog from "real people," giving unrehearsed testimonials. A lot of background noise filtering, the subtle addition of ambience sound effects and music balancing. We also earned AdWeek's Ad of the Day on Nov 4, 2013.

Strings (Short film): A psychedelic, modern western

This was my first project with San Francisco writer / director Baxter Smith and his Soul Fire Pictures. A western theme, set in modern times, with a David Lynch sort of twist that makes everything deep and mysterious, but also funny and brilliant. This film was featured in Action On Film festival in LA. Not only did I provide sound design and mix, but Baxter and I also composed most of the music together. We produced sound-alikes for the radio sequence, and also score for other parts of the film. The on-set recordist did an excellent job getting footsteps and wild sounds of all those amazing vintage guns. Due to the minimal dialog, this film was more about creativity and less about fixing production problems. A real treat I enjoy watching again and again!