A COLLABORATIVE POST
WRITTEN BY BOOM BOX POST

It’s that time of year again! The Children’s and Family Emmy Awards have accepted submissions, voting has commenced, and nominations are coming out soon. Boom Box Post was fortunate enough to submit 16 projects for consideration this year. Here is a sneak peak of three of those submissions. We are excited for this awards season journey!

Highlights from Our Submissions

STORYBOTS: Answer time

OUTSTANDING SOUND MIXING AND SOUND EDITING FOR A PRESCHOOL ANIMATED PROGRAM

Supervising Sound Editor: Tess Fournier, MPSE
Re-Recording Mixers: Jeff Shiffman, CAS MPSE, Jacob Cook, Ian Howard
Sound Effects Editor: Ben Gieschen, MPSE
Dialogue Editor: Xinyue Yu
Assistant Sound Editor: Tim Vindigni

The sound editorial on StoryBots: Answer Time is an exercise in comedic timing and skillful usage of dynamic range. Throughout each episode you will hear soft, quiet effects timed off of heavy, violent and destructive sounds to enhance the comedy of the story. Choosing our moments of intensity and manipulating these quiet-to-loud moments also gives more weight and power to our sound climaxes. In addition to the comedy, we are also highly detailed in our sound editorial. We filled out the ambience of the factory where keys are made with lots of factory, construction, and vehicle sounds to tell the story of what the off-screen workers were up to. We’re also detailed in our organization of our sound editorial. This series has many repeated elements from tube traveling to steampunk mechanics. By exporting 5.1 sound effects from the first mix and incorporating them into our editorial for each subsequent episode we were able to ensure cohesiveness among episodes.

We would like to also give a huge thank you to our clients for allowing us to be apart of this fun show! Check out a portion of this episode:

Waffles + Mochi's Restaurant

OUTSTANDING SOUND MIXING AND SOUND EDITING FOR A LIVE ACTION PROGRAM

Supervising Sound Editor: Tess Fournier, MPSE
Re-Recording Mixers: Kate Finan, CAS MPSE and Jacob Cook
Sound Effects Editor: Ben Gieschen, MPSE, Jessey Drake, MPSE, Tim Vindigni
Dialogue Editor: Logan Romjue

“Waffles + Mochi’s Restaurant” presented a number of exciting challenges to its sound team. The show uses puppets traveling the world engaging in a number of whacky food adventures. To serve this theme we created a sound palette that combined realistic foley elements with fantastical cartoon sound effects that add fun without compromising the story or educational value. For example in “Bread” the ever-growing dough starter is over-fed and we used many variations of fart, air release and monster sound effects to add humor and excitement to the unusual situation. We also sweetened the educational sections to augment the lesson, such as the punching and impact sound effects when kneading the Honduran bread.

The series also presents a number of unique mixing challenges as we were served with dialogue material of widely varying quality, new songs and musical moments and new puppet characters each episode. We were careful to mix with the ultimate goal of story clarity while still sweetening each moment with sound effects and music that would keep the young audience interested throughout the lesson.

We want to give a thank you to Netflix for letting us be a part of the team! We truly loved working on this movie. Please check out the trailer for it below:

Rise Of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Movie

OUTSTANDING SOUND MIXING AND SOUND EDITING FOR AN ANIMATED PROGRAM

Supervising Sound Editor: Jeff Shiffman, CAS MPSE
Re-Recording Mixers: Jeff Shiffman, CAS MPSE and Jacob Cook
Sound Editors: Jessey Drake, MPSE & Brad Meyer, MPSE
Foley Editor: Carol Ma
Dialogue Editor: Xinyue Yu
Assistant Sound Editor: Tim Vindigni

This 75 minute ninja turtle adventure is epic in the truest sense. Putting all our creative sound editorial and sound mixing skills to the test, Rise of The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Movie was a once in a career project. Our sound effects editors created a post-apocalyptic warzone for the cold open; designing all new creatures, robots and vehicles. We kept the war alive with distant explosions and laser blasts. The detailed foley work accentuated the creative design and added much needed grit and texture. This all comes together to create a harrowing sequence that culminates in time travel through a mystic portal. And that’s just the first four minutes.

The design challenges continue as the scope and scale of the film continuously ramp up. The main villains are aliens, two of which are sweetened with original sound design, putting both our dialogue and effects editorial teams to the test. One creature is voiced entirely in sound effects. The action of the final climactic battles runs nearly nonstop for a heart-racing twenty two minutes! Keeping things interesting while continuing to build with each new sequence was a major challenge for our effects editorial team. As the scale increases, so does our use of low frequency design elements, creating a sense of size as well as elevating dread. Sound mixing a project this bombastic and creative takes a very balanced hand. Leapfrogging from comedy to action, makes clarity of dialogue a key factor in the mix. The jokes won’t land and the plot won’t continue forward if we can’t understand our characters through all the insane action. Balancing the dialogue over a very thick score and intense sound design build was the ultimate challenge for our mixing team; a creative puzzle that was as entertaining to mix as it is to watch!

To say our team had fun facing all of these challenges together is an epic understatement to the scale of the film itself. We brought every skill to bear on a tight timeframe and budget and the result is a showpiece in sound editorial and mixing of which we could not be more proud.

We are very proud of the final product. A big shoutout to Netflix for letting us be apart of this awesome show! Check out the trailer: