President | Composer | Music Supervisor
BANG Music + Audio Post | New York + Prague
1) We were asked to produce a 3 part symphony for a live event at the Musée Du Louvre in Paris which would be performed in timed-relation to animation which was being generated by the music. Every aspect of the production needed to be coordinated with the client, agency, event producers, film production company, animation company, a 52-piece French orchestra, a studio recording and live recording, all to happen over the course 2 days. Through the many challenges we relied heavily our experience, honed over several years of work with Spotify at SXSW. Thankfully the event was a big success we were asked to produce a second performance in Munich. Pretty gratifying.
2) In the early part of 2017 we were hired to compose the score for Year Million on NatGeo. My fellow NY-based composer, Timo Elliston, and our Prague-based composer, Viliam BéreÅ¡, teamed to write an hour of original score-to-picture per week for the series. It was incredibly challenging because of the compressed production schedule as well as the show’s multi-genre format, which was essentially four kinds of shows rolled into one. It made for many late nights and weekends, but the end result was definitely worth it and wildly rewarding creatively. Figuring out how to do that and maintain the spur-of-the-moment, on-demand advertising work kept us on our toes, to be sure.
3) I first joined BANG as a producer but started to write consistently for advertising projects within the first couple of years. At the same time we were beginning to work more in TV & Film and as those areas started to grow, I began managing more aspects of company with our Founder, Lyle Greenfield. After becoming his partner and eventually our President, I found my time pretty evenly divided between writing music and running the business with Lyle and our partner, Brad Stratton. I really like the excitement and challenge of developing our business, both creatively and intellectually. But there are certainly days when wish I could just hole up in my studio and write music without being interrupted by “the business.”
4) While every year seems to have a new paradigm in terms of budgets and deliverables (i.e. additional versions you’ll be asked to do for the same budget), it does seem like things have leveled out somewhat and that clients are starting understand that online projects require the same amount of work and skill as broadcast projects. As more and more things are produced for both traditional & non-traditional media, I think we’ll continue to be asked to iterate more and more content for multiple platforms within the same project.
5) Creatively, VR & AR are now fully developed art forms that can radically change the way a viewer interacts with a creative execution. It’s never been more visceral and immediate. I do still wonder how it will scale audience to engage enough people to make the production cost and timeline work for brands. In that sense, AR may have a better chance than VR since there’s likely more flexibility around implementation and degrees of interaction required to move the needle. We’ve done live concert binaural recordings as well as AR sound for large live & animated installations and the effect can be really incredible. Monitoring and implementation is still a challenge in this space as is presenting VR & AR work-in-progress to clients so they “get it” without being able to really see and hear things in their final form.
Alec Baldwin Urges Judge To Stand By Dismissal Of Involuntary Manslaughter Case In “Rust” Shooting
Alec Baldwin urged a New Mexico judge on Friday to stand by her decision to skuttle his trial and dismiss an involuntary manslaughter charge against the actor in the fatal shooting of a cinematographer on the set of a Western movie.
State District Court Judge Mary Marlowe Sommer dismissed the case against Baldwin halfway through a trial in July based on the withholding of evidence by police and prosecutors from the defense in the 2021 shooting of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins on the set of the film "Rust."
The charge against Baldwin was dismissed with prejudice, meaning it can't be revived once any appeals of the decision are exhausted.
Special prosecutor Kari Morrissey recently asked the judge to reconsider, arguing that there were insufficient facts and that Baldwin's due process rights had not been violated.
Baldwin, the lead actor and co-producer on "Rust," was pointing a gun at cinematographer Halyna Hutchins during a rehearsal when it went off, killing her and wounding director Joel Souza. Baldwin has said he pulled back the hammer — but not the trigger — and the revolver fired.
The case-ending evidence was ammunition that was brought into the sheriff's office in March by a man who said it could be related to Hutchins' killing. Prosecutors said they deemed the ammunition unrelated and unimportant, while Baldwin's lawyers alleged that they "buried" it and filed a successful motion to dismiss the case.
In her decision to dismiss the Baldwin case, Marlowe Sommer described "egregious discovery violations constituting misconduct" by law enforcement and prosecutors, as well as false testimony about physical evidence by a witness during the trial.
Defense counsel says that prosecutors tried to establish a link... Read More