COO/Managing Partner/Sound Designer
Sound Lounge
2) In the past year, Tom Jucarone and I teamed up with McCann New York and students from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School on a terrific project for March for Our Lives. “The Most Vicious Cycle” was a 3 1/2 minute film depicting the endless cycle of gun violence. Set to Kesha’s “Safe”, they creatively illustrated the endless loop using the Rube Goldberg machine as a storytelling device, and at the end, it begins again, playing three times. It’s powerful.
As a sound designer, I’ve worked on three anti-gun spots in the last year. It is important to work on projects that serve a greater purpose than just selling a product. This film struck a chord with me because of my passion against gun violence. Over the 30+ years that I have been making sounds, I feel my best work has been on PSAs that dealt with very important issues that we face every day of our lives.
3) “The Most Vicious Cycle” for March for Our Lives was short-listed for AICP Post Awards, AMP Awards, D&AD, and won a Webby Award for Public Service and Activism this year. Whenever you work on a PSA, you learn something. That’s what they’re all about. They teach and they give you something to think about. I am as much a viewer, as I am an artist on these projects. This film had no production sound so everything was created through sound design and foley. But at the end, I’m like everyone else. When it’s finished, I sit in my room, and I watch what we’ve created. Not as an artist, but as a viewer and a person who’s passionate and compelled by the subject.
Receiving recognition from our peers is very gratifying. However, the key takeaway is to always put everything into your projects. We have the ability to move people and educate people. We put our heart and soul into the work because that is what we have done and continue to do in careers that have spanned over 30 years.
6) I am very proud that, historically, Sound Lounge has always had strong and creative women heading most of our divisions. More than half of our management team is made up of women, and 40% of our company is women. Over the 20 years that Sound Lounge has been in business, many of our mixers started as interns and in the machine room. Through our open door policy and willingness to share, they have opportunities to learn how to mix and be mentored by artists who have been in the industry for a long time. We believe that the only way to get great at your craft is through practice. I am a big believer that our young mixers should and do work with filmmakers from our local universities like NYU and Columbia.
Google Opens Its Defense In Antitrust Case Alleging Monopoly Over Online Ad Technology
Google opened its defense against allegations that it holds an illegal monopoly on online advertising technology Friday with witness testimony saying the industry is vastly more complex and competitive than portrayed by the federal government.
"The industry has been exceptionally fluid over the last 18 years," said Scott Sheffer, a vice president for global partnerships at Google, the company's first witness at its antitrust trial in federal court in Alexandria.
The Justice Department and a coalition of states contend that Google built and maintained an illegal monopoly over the technology that facilitates the buying and selling of online ads seen by consumers.
Google counters that the government's case improperly focuses on a narrow type of online ads — essentially the rectangular ones that appear on the top and on the right-hand side of a webpage. In its opening statement, Google's lawyers said the Supreme Court has warned judges against taking action when dealing with rapidly emerging technology like what Sheffer described because of the risk of error or unintended consequences.
Google says defining the market so narrowly ignores the competition it faces from social media companies, Amazon, streaming TV providers and others who offer advertisers the means to reach online consumers.
Justice Department lawyers called witnesses to testify for two weeks before resting their case Friday afternoon, detailing the ways that automated ad exchanges conduct auctions in a matter of milliseconds to determine which ads are placed in front of which consumers and how much they cost.
The department contends the auctions are finessed in subtle ways that benefit Google to the exclusion of would-be competitors and in ways that prevent... Read More