‘Buffalo Girls’ Documentary Premiering at 2012 Slamdance Film Festival

I’m very excited to have contributed to the success of the feature film, ‘Buffalo Girls’ which will be premiering at the Slamdance film festival in January 2012.

The film was shot over 5 years by director Todd Kellstein who lived with and documented the story of Stam and Pet, two grade school aged girls who competitively fight.  It’s a touching story that chronicles the struggles of the families and the young girls who fight to support them.

From a sound perspective, the film was a challenge.  My background with reality television mixing definitely came into play on this one.  Much of the dialog was recorded with camera mics.  Even when properly mic’d much of the dialog was drowned out by background noise from farm animals or crowds depending on the locations.  For better or worse, the production sound quality gives the film an authentic realism.

I worked closely with the editor, Zimo Huang, on the project.  He had some strong ideas about where he wanted the sound to go.  With his guidance as well as the Director, Todd, and Producer, Noah Haeussner, we created some interesting sound design moments.  Some fight scenes were highly stylized with reverberated crowds and soft music — punctuated by reverberant body hits and grunts.

We were also very lucky to get Dakota Fanning to narrate the film, whose youthful soft voice and tender read provided beautiful counterpoint to the sometimes violent story.  Because she lives in NY, we patched her in via ISDN and recorded all the VO for the film in a matter of four hours while the producers and director coached her from LA.