For those interested in what I’ve been doing musically as of late, there is now a Bandcamp page for one stop shopping, free streaming and downloads of number of compositions.
https://handsonsound.bandcamp.com
Music Out Of Thin Air
While Sheltering In Place for the past couple months, I’ve been working on some techniques to create ambient music tracks and have put together a few compositions. In particular, the task has been to make music using items that interact with air movement in some manner. Currently this involves a 4 string aeolian wind harp placed in an open window, some sensors with Arduino boards and a theremin that I built from a kit. All of these are interfaced with Logic Pro X and software instruments. It’s a very organic process which is as simple as capturing wind generated signals and then playing the theremin live to the recordings.
Without any further explanation, here Is “Music Out Of Thin Air #1 and Music Out Of Thin Air #2.
enjoy….
Project Tiny Home
Back in February, a film crew from StudioB and I joined forces with the production team from Project Tiny Home to shoot the tail end of an episode of their web series.
Project Tiny Home is a venture between Sutter Home wines and Operaton Tiny Home that helps build homes for those in need. The show we worked on focused on a traveling nurse, her getting a tiny house and moving it from Oregon to San Jose. As someone who moves every 3 months or so, this housing choice was a good fit and also a new lifestyle to get accustomed to.
As with these reality shows, host Zack Giffin, had surprises for our nurse, including some great gifts and a grand reveal featuring a surprise visit from her mother. All in all, a real feel good experience.
Post Sound Mixing-Globally (Update)
It’s always nice to see a project get completed and then made available to the public. One such example, which I discussed in a blog post back in 2018, is the French short Zero One. While doing some updates on my IMDB page, I found that the film has been released and well received on the festival circuit. With a Sound Mix and Sound Design by moi, Zero One was indeed a global collaboration having been filmed in Paris, edited in New York and mixed in California.
Enjoy the trailer.
Corporate Video Sound- Google Cloud Platform
A few months ago I got hired on by Google to help them kick up the audio quality of some of their web videos for the Google GSuite channel and the Google Cloud Platform channel on YouTube. A combination of experience, knowledge and properly selected gear has been the recipe for delivering Google solid production sound and Post-Ready deliverables. Here is one the pieces, this one from the series “Get Cooking In Cloud”.
Production Sound For A Comedy Short
It has been just about a year since we spent 3 long cold nights out in the woods of Northern California, shooting the comedy short Grave Digging. This fun little tale came from Tommy Jordan of Fade To Black Pictures. He wrote, directed and edited the film. So far on the festival circuit, Grave Digging has been picking up awards and mentions on almost every stop.
As with most of these types of projects, I was a one person Sound Dept. carrying the load of recordist, mixer and boom operator. What you’ll hear in the edit is mostly the boom work coming from my trusty Sanken CS-3e microphone.
enjoy…..
Lightboard Videos
Along with Mystic Productions, I did some production sound work on a few corporate videos recently for Veritas. What made these videos more interesting then usual was the use of the Revolution Lightboard. It’s a real handy visual presentation tool where content is drawn onto the camera side of the glass board and then the talent adds their contribution on the other side, during filming. For multiple takes it is as easy as erasing what is on the talent’s side and letting them have another run at it. Pacific Light Studios in Sunnyvale , CA has a space all set up and lit for their Lightboard and made our work super simple.
Here is one of the Veritas pieces from this shoot:
Interviews? A 36 Interview Day!
Here in the San Francisco Bay Area we get call upon regularly to provide audio recording services on interview shoots, but I broke a personal best on October 8th during the PAC12 Mens Basketball Media Day. DP extraordinaire Zack Reed and I chugged thru 36 interviews with players and coaches from each of the PAC12 schools for FOX Sports. Look for this work throughout the season during matchups that the network is covering.
Production Sound- Kaneko's Owl
September was a very busy month for Hands On Sound this year. In addition to ongoing work with The San Jose Sharks, Bay Area corporate clients and doing some film mixes, I had a 14 day shoot on the indie feature Kaneko’s Owl. Featuring a great story, cast and crew, this project was a joy to be part of.
i got to be known on set for my deployment of various plant mics and other specialty placements to complement boom and lav coverage, plus each day I would arrive early to record background ambiences and SFX (while the locations were still quite). Fun!
The production takes a bit of a breather now to do some editing and go thru another funding round to finance the remaining shoot dates and post work. More on Kaneko’s Owl as it moves forward.
Along For The Ride
On Sept 23rd, in conjunction with WWE Wrestling’s Monday Night RAW show at The Chase Center in San Francisco, I had the opportunity to work on an episode of their web series “Ride Along”. On the show, some of the wrestlers drive around a city in an SUV, chat, get involved in some shenanigans and see the sights around town.
I’ve had a lot of experience with driving scenes and vehicle related shoots, so this was right in my wheelhouse. Sound coverage for this show was concealed Lav mics and a pair of trusty Sanken CUB-01 mics on the driver and passenger’s visors. The producer and I hid in the back of the SUV during the 1 1/2 hour ride thru the streets of San Francisco, behind a black curtain that the crew installed. He monitored his array of Go Pro cameras and me the audio recordings. Once this episode airs, I’ll post it on the Gallery Page.