A COLLABORATIVE POST
WRITTEN BY BOOM BOX POST
"Holy sh*t, one year?!" - Brad Meyer, Supervising Sound Editor
March marks 1 full year of lockdown and WFH for most of the world, including the Boom Box Post team.
Audio post production can naturally be a solitary work environment, and working from home only heightens this. Our job includes a lot of sitting and staring at a screen all day, and while that has stayed the same over the past year, now it’s sitting and staring at a screen all day in the comfort of our living rooms. This greatly increases the lack of daily social interaction that goes hand in hand being in an office.
Here at Boom Box Post, we have always valued teamwork. We pride ourselves on our team's close connection. Back when we were all in the office, we always tried to take time to spend with one another. This usually meant a lot of Jenga tournaments during lunch hour, bagel days, tipsy Fridays, and monthly chalkboard competitions. I like to think it’s part of the BBP brand to have fun and enjoy each other’s company. With team building being such a large part of the Boom Box Post experience, missing out on those in-person experiences made this past year of quarantine even more difficult.
It took some creativity and planning, but over this past tremulous year our Boom Box Post team was able to virtually come together for some fun! Let’s take a look at some of the activities we held to help close the gap of working from home.
Lunch & Learns
Lunch & Learn’s are a tradition at Boom Boom Post. Once a month an editor is chosen to teach a new plugin or skill to the team. These lessons are also transcribed into blog posts for all you readers. These meetings are a great time for our team to come together and catch up.
Since WFH began, we have been holding these events over Zoom. It’s always the highlight of my month to see everyone's faces. The only thing I’m sure we all miss is the catering!
Here’s a list of all the Lunch & Learns that have taken place during quarantine thus far:
Our Favorite Projects, Completed From Home!
We worked on a lot of really cool and exciting projects from the comfort of our homes this past year. Here’s just a handful of our favorites!
Waffles + Mochi - Coming to Netflix March 16, 2021!
2. Gabby’s Dollhouse - Premiered on Netflix January 4, 2021! Check out the full first episode for free!
3. The Mighty Ones - Dropped on Hulu November 4, 2020! Here’s a clip from the pilot, one of our favorite episodes!
4. Archibald’s Next Big Thing Is Here - 6 new episodes of one of our favorite shows to work on are now available to stream on Peacock. Guess what!? You can watch them for free! Check out the trailer for the new season! We are really proud of episode 6 :)
5. DuckTales - The Last Adventure - a 3 part 1.5 hour series finale scheduled to air March 15 2021! We are super excited about this special, which was done completely from home.
6. A Very Casagrandes Christmas - This Christmas special was a blast to work on and really put us in the holiday spirit. Here’s a fun little clip from the episode!
7. Rugrats - The baby gang is back! Wow are we excited to be working on the Rugrats reboot coming to Paramount Plus in 2021. Check out this first look at the all new series!
“I can’t help but feel extremely lucky that we work in animation. So many small businesses were hit so hard by this pandemic, and while there were setbacks, our industry was able to quickly pivot and continue creating content working from home. I’m thankful for our medium and how fortunate we have been every day.” - Jeff Shiffman, Boom Box Post Co-Owner
2021 Boom Box Post Showcase
The 3rd annual Boom Box Post showcase will be taking place virtually this year! This is yet another event that allows our whole team to come together and celebrate all the super cool work our editors have been doing over the past year. Bonus, there is always some delicious food and beer to go along with the show! This year we are opting for a special DIY pizza kit delivered to our team members front doors!
Photo from our first ever showcase in 2019!
Photo from our 2020 showcase (pre-pandemic!)
The past two showcases have taken place on our mix stage; however, this year we are planning to utilize Airmeet. We are excited to continue this tradition, as the showcase has easily become a night our team looks forward to the entire year. We definitely won’t let quarantine get in the way of it!
“It’s been hard to have had the team spread apart for a year. I miss both the formal and informal gatherings that happened daily here at Boom Box HQ. I also miss our clients, which have naturally become friends over the years. I miss our conversations before playback on the mix stage, catching up, and hearing about everyone’s lives outside of work. It’s not impossible via Zoom but it’s certainly not the same. I look forward to when we can all be back together, safe and sound and in person.” - Jeff Shiffman, Boom Box Post Co-Owner
Pet Party!
In May 2020, all BBP pets were invited to a very special Zoom Pet Party. For an hour we hung out and stared at everyone’s pets. It was definitely the cutest Zoom call I’ve ever been a part of.
“Best year ever for my dog.” - Natalia Saavedra Brychcy, Sound Effects Editor
Every pet was even awarded a certificate for participating! Here’s two of my favorites:
Bake Off & Cocktail Contest
Cinnamon—that was the only rule when we announced the virtual bake off to our team. Check out Jeff’s winning bake!
Don’t you wish you could try one? Well you can! Click here for the recipe!
Around the same time as the bake off, our team also participated in a cocktail contest. Katie was our winner! Check out her picturesque concoction.
We even dedicated a whole blog post to this fun little competition. Check it out here!
BBP’s Annual Holiday Party!
To wrap up 2020 we held our annual holiday party over Zoom. We decorated gingerbread houses, sipped fancy holiday cocktails, and hauled our secret santa gifts! It was a fun filled night that had us all reminiscing about the days we were able to be together in the same room.
