EXCERPT: “For Stam and Pet, the two young Thai subjects in the provocative documentary, Buffalo Girls, recreation means facing off against each other in a boxing ring in pursuit of winning the national Muay Thai championship and a life-changing cash prize.

They’re among the nation’s estimated 30,000 child boxers competing in a centuries-old sport that recently has become trendy for wagering on young female combatants who aren’t required to wear protective headgear and whose tender limbs are often subject to broken bones.

But, as first-time longform director Todd Kellstein discovers, a practice that would understandably come across as disturbingly exploitative from a Western POV grows more complicated when taken in the harsh socioeconomic context of rural Thai life.”

To read the full article on THR.com, click here.

EXCERPT: “Filmmaker Todd Kellstein’s provocative documentary “Buffalo Girls” (buffalo is a pejorative term for poor Thai people) explores the riveting stories of Stam Sor Con Lek and Pet Chor Chanachai, eight-year-old prize fighters in the rural areas of Thailand. In the country, people are penury and a widening class division between Bangkok’s rich and rural farmers makes it difficult for these families to survive.

Little girls are supposed to be made up of sugar and spice and everything nice, but Pet and Stam are fierce little girls with abs of steel. They are so ripped, the ongoing joke in the film is they have the physiques of little boys. Kellstein spent three years in Thailand chronicling the girls’ family dynamics and championship matches, all the while portraying their “jobs” not as exploitative fodder but as a means to keep food on the table and a roof over their heads.”

To read the full article and interview with the Director on WSJ.com, click here.

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.

Check out a sample clip of my work below.

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‘Five Fingers’ was unique in that when it was turned over to me, no music had been arranged to picture.  In fact, it’s so unique, I’ve never heard of any other film working this way.  But alas, it was my job to take a library of musical elements and create a score from scratch.  Vernon Reid (formerly of the band Living Colour) provided an amazing collection of drones, hit, stings, drum loops, weird piano scraping samples, as well as some great ethnic guitar motifs for me to work with.  Having all of these elements at my disposal and having the freedom to create my own vision of the soundtrack was one of the most gratifying creative experiences I’ve had working on a film.  I relished the opportunity, realizing I probably would never be given this amount of creative freedom again on any other project.

There was one logistical issue though.  Vernon was based out of New York and I was working in LA.  While I was responsible for cutting everything, he needed to sign off on it.  Sending cues over the internet for approval, while feasible, wasn’t necessarily efficient.  And as I’ve discussed before, the nuances of music editing can be infinitesimal.  So, I created a setup that streamed the video and audio from the Pro Tools at my studio via iChat, allowing Vernon to audition my edit with synchronized picture, in real time, from the comfort of his own studio — across the country.

We spent a couple of months re-working the music as the picture changed.  The producers felt that it needed a little more embellishment so they brought on a second composer, Noah Agruss who recorded some additional amazing music cues.  We ended up using a combination of cues that Vernon and I had created, and cues that Noah had scored to picture.

After spending months on the music edits, we unfortunately had some severe last minute musical change notes come in while we were on the mixing stage.  Many of the cues that we spent months perfecting had to be completely re-arranged rather hastily.  It was a shame because while I liked my original edit, I wasn’t very happy with the final cut.  Because of that, I’m posting the original “sound editor’s cut” version below.  I wasn’t the fx editor or re-recording mixer on this film, but out of necessity I edited all of the sound fx in this version as well as dialog edit and mix.  The clip below is representative of how I would have liked it to sound.

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The Supernaturalist was an hour long special following magician Dan White as he travels through Nepal, in an attempt to discover real Tibetan Magic.

I did all of the sound post for this show — VO Recording — Dialog, Music, and Sound Effects editorial as well as 5.1 mix.

Check out a clip from the show below.

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The half hour 22 episode series followed a group of 5 teenagers as they explored paranormal hotspots.

I was responsible for all sound post — including Dialog, Music, and Sound Effects Editorial, as well as Dolby Pro Logic mix.

Check out a sample of my work from the show below.

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I was responsible for all sound post on the show. This included Dialog, Music, and Sound Effects editorial as well as 5.1 mix.

It was a pleasure working closely with Marcus on this project.  We mixed the piece in one very long night — starting at about 6PM and leaving the studio at about 3AM.  Once the soundtrack was married to picture, we had it uploaded to Cannes where exhibitors pitched it to buyers, playing it off their iPads.

Obviously iPads aren’t the greatest for sound playback, but from what I heard, it did extremely well — garnering interest from Lionsgate as well as Paramount.

I just recently completed post on the short film ‘Remember Alice Bell’ directed by Nathan Parker, the screenwriter of the acclaimed film MOON. The short also stars KaDee Strickland of ABC’s Private Practice.

Looking forward to its success as it makes the 2012 festival circuit.

(WARNING: turn your speakers down before you play this)