We are very excited to announce that we were nominated for two Daytime Emmy Awards this year! Many of our team members were part of these nominations, and we are ecstatic to share their good news with the world!
Our Nominations
Outstanding Sound Mixing and Sound Editing for a Preschool Animated Program
Mickey Mouse Mixed-Up Adventures
Re-Recording Mixer: Eric Freeman, CAS (Disney Television Animation)
Supervising Sound Editor: Kate Finan, MPSE
Dialogue Editor: Xinyue Kirsty Yu
SFX Editor: Brad Meyer, MPSE
Foley Editor: Carol Ma
Assistant Sound Editor: Sam Busekrus
This episode of Mickey Mouse Mixed Up Adventures was particularly thrilling to design sound for because it included farm equipment, which is a departure from the usual high-octane racers featured in the series. From the chicken coop egg sorting machine to Mickey’s new diesel tractor, we were challenged with making machinery that is typically industrial and uninteresting into fun, kid-friendly mechanisms that fit into Mickey’s world. We accomplished this by giving these mechanical devices, motors, and engines rhythmic, almost musical qualities. For example, we designed an old diesel tractor engine entirely with custom mouth sound effects and old-school toon-inspired components.
The second half of this episode was incredibly fun to create because we had the opportunity to design tons of high-tech lab equipment from scratch. With the added challenge of making explicitly dangerous scientific equipment kid-friendly and non-threatening, we developed everything from synthesized lasers to the outrageous helicopter helmet. We also fleshed out the encompassing laboratory environment, and even brought to life the whacky robotic lab assistant!
This year, with COVID, all of our actors recorded themselves at home, and these recordings needed to sound studio-quality. During post sound editorial and mixing, we got out the big guns to EQ, RX, and de-reverb.
We would like to thank our clients over at Disney for allowing us to be a part of this fun show!
Shoutout to: Disney TVA and Disney Junior! Check out a portion of this episode:
Outstanding Sound Mixing and Sound Editing for a Preschool Animated Program
Muppet Babies
Re-Recording Mixers: Kate Finan, MPSE & Jacob Cook
Supervising Sound Editors: Tess Fournier, MPSE
Dialogue Editor: Xinyue Kirsty Yu
SFX Editors: Jacob Cook, Brad Meyer, MPSE, & Sam Busekrus
Foley Editor: Carol Ma
At its heart, Muppet Babies is an adventure show which needs to sound appropriate for the children watching at home. In this episode, we designed a lot of magical and adventurous sounds from mystical “guard dog” appears to detailed pirate ships, all of which are rich enough to support the story, but friendly enough to connect with our child audiences.
Our first challenge was to create dragon vocals that were frightening enough to support the plot, but tame enough to not scare the audience. Creating preschool-friendly monsters is always tricky, but we hit the perfect sweet spot with our somewhat silly dragon groan-yells. Next, in The Spoon and The Stone, we used sound to transform the babies’ tricycles into trusted steeds. Incorporating hoof trots and horse vocals into the tricycle sound effects helped to support the medieval plot.
And finally, we faced many mixing challenges this year, with COVID. Al of our actors recorded themselves at home where they had to have a crash course in double-duty as actor and recording engineer! But, despite their lack of experience, these recordings needed to sound studio-quality by the time they made it into the final mix. Thus, we did massive EQ-matching, RX clean-up, de-reverbing across the board.
We want to give a huge thank you to Oddbot Animation and Disney Junior for letting us be a part of the team! We have loved every moment we’ve spent on this reboot of the classic.
The episode we submitted isn’t available online, but here’s another great one!
We also want to say congrats to the other nominees in our categories. There are a lot of great shows on the nomination list and some very talented crews!
Congrats to our talented clients!
We are full of shoutouts today! We want to give one final congrats to our clients for receiving several nominations in their own categories. We are so incredibly lucky to be part of these amazing shows:
Amphibia
Outstanding Children’s Animated Series
DuckTales
Outstanding Casting for a Daytime Animated Program
Muppet Babies
Outstanding Performer In a Preschool Animated Program, Eric Bauza as Fozzie
If you are interested, you can check out the full list of the Daytime Emmys nominations here!