EXCERPT: Hiding deep in the forest may be your modus operandi, Bigfoot, but Hollywood and Madison Avenue are pushing you — however reluctantly — into the spotlight. A slew of documentary, TV and film projects including Animal Planet’s current hit “Finding Bigfoot,” and a Sasquatch film trilogy from “Blair Witch Project” director Eduardo Sanchez are poised to get past the old grainy images of yesterday and give the hairy 800-pound bi-ped a high def close-up.

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

‘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.

I had the amazing opportunity to work closely with one of the films Producers, Edward Norton, who also stars in the film. Edward is the epitome of aperfectionist (in a good way). It was working with him on this film I learned the career changing importance of the 1/4 frame.

Let me explain: In the post production sound world most of our work is ruled by the frame marker. There are 30 of these little frames per second. Usually, as sound editors, we nudge things a frame here, a frame there til we get sounds to sync up. But as I was working with Edward on the film he would repeatedly have me move things around — experimenting with what sounded best. He’d say “move this a 1/2 frame to the left.” We’d watch the scene down and make our assessments on tonality. Then he’d say, “lets try it 1 frame to the right. We’d watch it down again, assess the scene. Then he’d say let’s move it another 1/4 frame to the right. Part of me thought, “are you serious — a quarter frame? That’s 120th of a second” We did this a couple more times, inching cues 1/4 frame by quarter frame. Each time we’d watch it and make our assessments. Sometimes certain moments were highlighted by a certain sound in the song, then we’d move it another 1/4 frame and all of a sudden, the scene would take on a subtly different feel because that same sound “hit” slightly different — highlighting some different action on screen.

We obsessed for hours finally landing the proper placement for each cue.

In the midst of working with Edward, I realized I was learning something significant. It was his keen attention to detail that taught me — 1/4 frames matter. It’s this attention to detail — that 120th of a second, that informs my work to this day. From that point on I changed — becoming obsessed with cinematic timing and hitting the story beats with appropriately timed sound elements. The look of an actor, the movement of a hand, the wane of a head. If significant to the scene, getting the score and other sound elements to fall in line with these moments was what created a perfectly orchestrated scene.

As I write this, I remember one scene we spent nearly two hours retiming. It was the following scene where Evan Rachel Wood is swinging on a swing:

While time constraints on some projects don’t always allow for such attention to detail, it’s something I carry with me in all of my work. If there’s one lesson I will never forget, it’s that 1/4 frames matter!

The “tub scene” clip below ranks really high as one of my all-time favorite film moments. Check out the clip below. I used a combination of drone sounds that Peter Sallett created using a slide guitar and layered it with a tempo’d down guitar lick that is the theme used throughout the film. I find it to be a magical, touching moment — visually and aurally.

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.

Explore Destination Truth on SyFy’s website.

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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