Post house Company 3, a subsidiary of Deluxe Entertainment Services Group Inc., recently provided a variety of postproduction services to its first game project, “Call of Duty๏ฟฝ: Black Ops II,” and concurrently announced the opening of a division dedicated to offering color grading and other high-end post services to the game production community.
“The creation of Company 3 Games represents a new level of collaboration between game developers as well as publishers and providers of feature film-level post services,” said Stefan Sonnenfeld, president and founder of Company 3. Sonnenfeld, who has color graded assorted feature films and commercials, worked with award-winning game developer, Treyarch, to color grade Activision Publishing Inc.’s next installment of the blockbuster “Call of Duty๏ฟฝ” game franchise, “Call of Duty: Black Ops II,” set for worldwide release next Tuesday, November 13.
Malte Wagener has been named VP of Games and oversees the division’s work from its offices at Company 3’s Santa Monica headquarters. “With the amazing level of sophistication in games and the immense talent pool in the feature film world, a tight collaboration of the two spheres is a natural development,” he said.
Wagener comes to the position following an extensive career in the video games business. As the director of global business development at Koch Media in Germany, he led that company’s global business development and brand management for products including the international game sensation “Dead Island.” At WEG, a division of CJ Media, in South Korea–the third largest media company on the continent–he led all EMEA gaming efforts, as well as the massive, international eSport cross-promotion known as the World eSport Games.
Wagener added “With the talent and resources of Company 3 and its affiliated companies, we plan to set the new standard for game postproduction.”
Craig Henighan Sounds Off On “Deadpool & Wolverine”
Hollywood lore has it that character actor Edmund Gwenn--while on his deathbed--quipped, โDying is easy, comedy is hard.โ
The second part of that darkly witty utterance remains all too true today as Craig Henighan--a Best Achievement in Sound Mixing Oscar nominee in 2019 for Roma--can attest in that he had to grapple with the sonic of being comic for this yearโs box office hit, Deadpool & Wolverine (20th Century Studios/Marvel Studios).
The degree of inherent difficulty was ramped up even further because Deadpool & Wolverine had to seamlessly bring together high action-adventure exploits with moments and dialogue that tickled the funny bone. Thereโs a mesh of humorous banter--a staple of the franchise--along with major spectacle replete with explosions, fights, an impactful score and off-the-wall musical numbers.
Henighan explained that among the prime challenges for him from a sound perspective was having to make sure every joke landed within the construct of a superhero film. The tendency for a tentpole movie of this variety, he noted, is to gravitate towards big, loud audio spanning music, dialogue and sound effects. But the unique comedic element of Deadpool & Wolverine necessitated that re-recording mixer and supervising sound editor Henighan strike a delicate balance. โYou need to get out of the way for the comedy,โ he related. The jokes in a superhero film become โa real danceโ as Henighan had to establish a rhythm that did justice to both the comedy and the action as the narrative moves back and forth between them--and sometimes the funny and the high energy, high decibel superhero dynamic unfold simultaneously in a scene or sequence. The โsonic fabricโ has to... Read More