December saw me swing away from music and back into audio post production for film in a big way. I took on Sound Design for a feature length drama called Candiland with a deadline in mid January. The film is a dark drama based on an Elizabeth Engstrom novel and features powerful performances from Gary Busey, James Clayton, and Chelah Horsdal. It was a long term passion project for the director Rusty Nixon, so it was really exciting to be involved with something where everyone was so enthusiastic and supportive. The release date has not been announced yet, but if you get a chance I’d really recommend checking it out.
In this photo you can see a section of my Pro Tools edit of the film. Dialog is along the top, sound effects and foley scatter through the middle, and background ambient layers fill in the bottom. I teamed up with my good friend Stephen Falk to get through this project. I focused on the dialog edit, while he tackled the BGs, foley, and SFX. The film features a few altered states sequences as the characters gradually descend into madness, so there were some good opportunities for interesting sound design. Once we wrapped up our edit, and got approval from Rusty, we handed it over to DBC Sound for mixing. I still haven’t heard how it turned out, so I’m pretty eager to see and hear it on a big screen!
Update: Candiland has received some sweet accolades! It debuted at the Julien Dubuque International Film Festival and won Best World Premiere. At the LA Independent Film Festival it won Best Director, Actor, Actress and Supporting Actress. James Clayton also received an Award of Excellence from the Indie Fest Awards for his outstanding performance. Great to see the team’s dedication paying off!
SUBLIME SOUND 