MN STAR AWARD!

Congratulations to Walk the Moon Media on winning in the Event Filmmaking (Videography) category at the International Live Events Association’s recent virtual MN Star Awards ceremony! Junior Birdman Audio was pleased to provide music editing, sound design and mix on Walk the Moon’s video content for The One Forum, an annual meeting produced by Be The Match for the bone and marrow transplant community. Way to go, folks! Well deserved.

See/ hear some of the pieces we created here.

More work by Mike Hallenbeck for corporate video

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BEN AND DOPEY: SOUND + MUSIC CONSULTING

Lately I’ve been serving as a sound and music consultant on the feature film “Ben and Dopey” by animator John Akre. It’s a lot of fun listening to the original songs John’s been writing and making arrangement recommendations, plus suggesting areas where his homespun sound effects work might come in handy. I’m enjoying helping an artist realize an aesthetic through sound and music, using his own visual sensibility as a style guide.

The film tells the 1987 story of a Minneapolis street musician and his relationship with an animated duck created by his mother, an underground animator who seems to have disappeared. The movie takes place in the neighborhood that used to be where the Minneapolis Convention Center is now, as well as the original Nicollet Mall.

More work by Mike Hallenbeck for animation

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FX EDIT + MIX FOR FILM: "RELENTLESS" DOORKNOB CUE

Above: A layer-by-layer exploration of my sound design depicting a single action from the feature film “Relentless”, directed by Barry Andersson and starring Rachel Weber.

The film follows the psychological journey of a woman who winds up trapped in her basement during a thunderstorm that turns into a flood. The event depicted here turns out to be pivotal, since it cuts her off from a means of conventional escape.

I’ve broken down the sequence to isolate various sonic elements that come together to form the final mix.

The “dripping water” layer should be self-explanatory; water is seeping into the basement from the storm outside. The “production audio” segment depicts what was actually documented live on location, while the camera was rolling. The “Cut FX” pass features sound effects that I assembled from audio library assets, dropping them into the timeline in sync with the action onscreen to complement what had been recorded on set. And “final mix”, of course, demonstrates all of this as I blended it together, with a smidge of Andrew Joslyn’s wonderful score taking us out.