monkeylandaudio

Monkeylands 2019 Year In Review

Wed, 01 Jan 2020 10:50:00 GMT

01 January 2020

Hello and Happy New Year Clients, Colleagues and Friends!

Now that 2020 has arrived, we’d like to share some highlights of the past year. As always, we feel blessed and honored to be working with such wonderful and creative talents. We are fortunate to be able to be a part of your projects and to continue to do what we love for a living!

2019 began on a high note with Chinonye Chukwu’s CLEMENCY (starring Alfre Woodard) winning the Grand Jury Prize (Dramatic) at the Sundance Film Festival. Now in limited theatrical release, it has been nominated for three 2020 Film Independent Spirt Awards and currently has a 92% rating on Rotten Tomatoes . Another film that was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance was Britt Poulton and Dan Madison Savage’s THEM THAT FOLLOW which later received a theatrical run. We are proud and humbled to be a part of bringing their visions to life!

The start of 2019 also saw the debut of our second Dolby Atmos Stage, Plata, which we christened mixing season 1 of the new series TRINKETS and the original feature SECRET OBSESSION, both for Netflix. We look forward to working on season 2 of TRINKETS in the new year!

Other feature film projects in 2019 included: Robert Luketic’s comedy THE WEDDING YEAR for Lakeshore Entertainment; Chris Nelson’s THE PERFECT DATE for Netflix (winner of two Teen Choice Awards and a People’s Choice Award); the Eric Andre prank movie BAD TRIP from the makers of Jackass and Bad Grandpa, scheduled for an MGM theatrical release in April 2020; the distinctly European-styled, multi-award winning SHOW ME WHAT YOU GOT from Svetlana Cvetko and David Scott Smith; William Bindley’s THE LAST SUMMER for Netflix (nominated for three Teen Choice Awards); the Arabic language comedy RASHID & RAJAB; Angel Kristi Williams’ romantic drama REALLY LOVE; reuniting with Don Michael Paul for Universal’s BULLETPROOF 2, scheduled for release later this month; GO KARTS for Netflix; Allison Burnett’s drama ANOTHER GIRL; and HOLLER from Nicole Riegel (named one of 10 Directors to Watch For 2020 by Variety ). Other highlights included Riley Stearn’s THE ART OF SELF-DEFENSE which had a nice theatrical run in 2019, the animated feature NORM OF THE NORTH: KING SIZED ADVENTURE for Lionsgate (our third in the Norm franchise) and the feature-length Melanie Martinez music video K-12.

2019 saw Monkeyland continuing to expand into the scripted TV / series realm as well with the recently released first season of DOLLY PARTON’S HEARTSTRINGS for Netflix; the highly acclaimed series PEN15 (season 1) for Hulu; Gregg Araki’s NOW APOCALYPSE (season 1) for Starz; DARK/WEB (season 1) for Amazon, the who-done-it IN THE VAULT for Complex Networks; the supernatural thriller LIGHT AS A FEATHER (season 2) for Hulu; BRAIN GAMES (season 6) hosted by Keegan-Michael Key for National Geographic premiering on January 20th; season 3 of the Kevin Hart sports interview series COLD AS BALLS; and the ensemble family drama THE BAXTERS (seasons 1 and 2) for MGM. We also have three series currently in progress for Jeffrey Katzenberg’s new streaming service Quibi.

We were also busy on the TV movie front with titles including Doug Campbell’s MY DAUGHTER’S RANSOM for Lifetime; Mark Gantt’s MODEL CITIZEN; SLEEPING WITH MY STUDENT directed by Tom Shell; THE AU PAIR by Joe Russo, and A CHRISTMAS MOVIE CHRISTMAS.

Ever the fan of documentaries, we teamed up once again with Director Stephen Kijak and Producer Diane Becker on the Judy Garland biography SID & JUDY for Showtime, as well as Warren Miller’s TIMELESS and the gritty I’VE GOT A MONSTER.

Every year we welcome our fellow colleague to our facilities to mix their projects as well. Highlights this past year include THE 11th GREEN mixed by our long time friend Mark A. Rozett; the Mayday concert feature MAYDAY LIFE, sci-fi feature SOUNDWAVE and ROUGHNECK all mixed by another friend Tom Marks; season 2 of the Sundance TV series THIS CLOSE mixed by Roland Vajs; Agustin Castaneda’s RUTA MADRE; Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman’s LINDA RONSTADT: THE SOUND OF MY VOICE for CNN Films mixed by Milos Zivkovic; and Alex McAulay’s thriller DON’T TELL A SOUL mixed by William McGuigan; Barry Jay’s horror feature KILLER THERAPY mixed by Richard N. Shapiro. Our doors are always open to our fellow post sound professionals!

Other highlights include our friend, filmmaker and teacher Rory Kelly of UCLA with his short DOWN TO NOTHING starring Sheryl Lee; Zoe Ward with her UCLA student thesis SOFT & PINK; continuing our relationship with Brian Knight and his dramatic crime short THE PEACE OF WILD THINGS; and finally, the ground breaking 360 degree, first person POV VR project AGENT EMERSON by Ilya Rozhkov, now available on VR platforms everywhere. We look forward to continuing our work together!

Now on to 2020, where we are excited to have started off the year with a cool slate of indie features, as well as a new 4 part docu series for Amazon! We are also excited about the expansion of our facility which now includes available picture editorial space in our new building next door!

As always, you can check out our website for more details and we’d also love for you to follow us on Facebook and Twitter where we regularly post interesting Monkey news, pictures and other fun project-related stuff. The Monkey crew and I would like to wish you all a very safe, prosperous, and creative New Year. Happy Holidays and happy filmmaking! Until next time...

Monkeyland's 25th Anniversary: 2018 Year In Review

Mon, 31 Dec 2018 10:46:24 GMT

31 December 2018

Hello once again Clients, Colleagues and Friends!

2018 marked a milestone for Monkeyland as we've just wrapped up our silver anniversary celebrating our first 25 years! It’s been our pleasure and privilege to work with such creative talent which allows us to continue to do what we love so much. 2018 has been a fun, busy and rewarding year and as is our custom, we’d like to share some of the highlights from our corner of the audio world.

January means the Sundance Film Festival. We are proud to have two features we recently completed in competition next month: CLEMENCY by screenwriter and director Chinonye Chukwu and THEM THAT FOLLOW by screenwriters and directors, Britt Poulton and Dan Madison Savage. Also making its world premiere as an Official Selection this year is Gregg Araki’s new STARZ Original series NOW APOCALYPSE. We’re thrilled to continue our long standing creative partnership with Gregg and are grateful to be part of this groundbreaking series. In addition, Stuart Swezey’s music documentary DESOLATION CENTER has been nominated for the Grand Jury Prize for Best Documentary Feature at the 2019 Slamdance Film Festival. We wish all of our talented filmmakers the best of luck!

Another highlight at the beginning of each year is the annual MPSE Golden Reel Awards. This year, we were honored with a 2018 win for the HULU documentary BECOMING BOND (by Josh Greenbaum) as well as being nominated for the Netflix Original Feature IMPERIAL DREAMS (by Malik Vitthal) and the Netflix Original documentary series FIVE CAME BACK (by Laurent Bouzereau, produced by Amblin Television). Receiving the accolades from our fellow post sound colleagues is especially meaningful, and we are grateful to be in such wonderful company.

This year we’ve been lucky enough to have completed post sound editorial and mixing for the following features: Jodi Scurfield’s SPEED KILLS starring John Travolta (we will be working on a second Travolta feature in the new year); Cuba Gooding Jr.’s directorial debut, BAYOU CAVIAR; Perry King’s multi-award winning THE DIVIDE; Director George Gallo’s BIGGER; Riley Stearns’ THE ART OF SELF DEFENSE; Matt Aselton’s LYING AND STEALING (starring Theo James and Emily Ratajkowski); Giorgio Serafini’s comedy SENIOR MOMENT (starring William Shatner); Raymond De Felitta’s STANO (starring Sofia Vergara); Danny J. Boyle’s KILLER IN LAW; Lane and Ruckus Skye’s RECKONING; Jon Knautz’s Horror/Thriller THE CLEANING LADY, David Jay Willis’ Holiday Comedy I’LL BE NEXT DOOR FOR CHRISTMAS (Amazon); Adam Randall’s thriller I SEE YOU (starring Helen Hunt); Colin and James Krisel’s “LAST MOMENT OF CLARITY; Micah Gallo’s ITSY BITSY; Malik Bader’s KILLERMAN (starring Liam Hemsworth) and continuing our collaborations with Keoni Waxman on THE HARD WAY: Felix Limardo on his latest thriller JUST BREATHE, Michael J. Gallagher’s latest THE THINNING: NEW WORLD ORDER (YouTube Original feature); and Youssef Delara’s drama FOSTER BOY.

Our lineup for TV and scripted episodic increased this year to include: LORE season 2 (Amazon); the aforementioned NOW APOCALYPSE 10 episode series (Premiering March 10 on STARZ); the critics recommended new comedy PEN15 season 1 (Premiering on HULU February 8); OVERTHINKING WITH KAT & JUNE season 1 (YouTube Original); PLAY BY PLAY seasons 2 and 3; DARK/WEB season 1; T@GGED season 3 (HULU); SIDE SWIPED season 1 (YouTube Original); IN THE VAULT season 2 (Complex Networks); Kevin Hart’s COLD AS BALLS (Laugh Out Loud); THE UNSETTLING season 1; as well as over 10 television movies for Hallmark and Lifetime with our friends at MarVista and Cartel.

We have always been a supporter of documentaries and this year is no different with Cristina Costantini and Darren Foster’s SCIENCE FAIR (winner of the 2018 Audience Awards for both Sundance and SXSW); Stephen Kijak’s Lynyrd Skynyrd doc IF I LEAVE HERE TOMORROW (SXSW 2018 Premiere, now playing on Showtime); The Netflix feature documentary STRUGGLE: THE LIFE AND LOST ART OF SZUKALSKI (produced by Leonardo DiCaprio, premiere screening at LACMA); Tiller Russell’s OPERATION ODESSA (Showtime); Yanfeng Zhang’s WE ARE TRIATHLETES; the aforementioned Stuart Swezey music doc DESOLATION CENTER; Isaac Artenstein’s TO THE ENDS OF THE EARTH; and Michelle Paymar’s FROM CAIRO TO THE CLOUD: THE WORLD OF THE CAIRO GENIZA. We are also proud to have hosted the annual Warren Miller ski feature documentary mix again this year, making it 13 years in a row, with this year’s installment, FACE OF WINTER, mixed on Stage REPOSADO by Mark A. Rozett.

In a similar vein to documentaries, we love to support up and coming filmmakers with their short format film projects including Kendell Courtney Klein’s GINGERBREAD; director Micky Levy’s UNION; 88 by Thembi Banks who was featured in The Hollywood Reporter’s article featuring a discussion by Black Women Who Brunch and Christopher Daniel Collins’ VALCORIAN. Congratulations and we hope to have the opportunity to work with you all on your next projects!

We always welcome our fellow sound colleagues onto our mixing stages and some highlights this year included mixing seasons 2 and 3 of the Duplass brothers’ ROOM 104 (HBO) with our friends at Ear Candy; Universal 1440 ’s latest SCORPION KING installment with post supervisor Jan Kikumoto; NORM OF THE NORTH: KING SIZED ADVENTURE for Lionsgate; the new series DEADWAX with Graham Reznick and complete Foley packages for the series DIETLAND (AMC) for Zach Sievers and Snap Sound, and THE QUAD (BET) for Ken Johnson at Artistry in Sound.

Finally, we are proud to announce additional expansion at our Flower Street facility with a complete upgrade of our stage PLATA to Dolby Atmos™, as well as expanding our editorial and Foley staff into a new building next door. Not only will we now have two Dolby Atmos™ stages, we’re sure our clients will welcome the additional parking as well! In addition, we are pleased to announce that Monkeyland Audio is now a member of the Netflix Post Partner Program , with a few very exciting new series and film projects currently underway.

Now onward to 2019! For more info you can check out our soon-to-be revealed new website where you can see details on our new Atmos™ Stage and editorial building as well as other changes happening. We’d also love for you to follow us on Facebook and Twitter where we regularly post interesting Monkey news, pictures and other fun project-related stuff.

The entire Monkeyland crew would like to wish you all a very safe, prosperous, and creative New Year. Happy Holidays and happy filmmaking! Until next time…

Monkeyland 2017 Year In Review

Mon, 01 Jan 2018 10:41:58 GMT

Monkeyland Audio 2017 Year in Review

31 December 2017

Hello once again Clients, Colleagues and Friends,

It’s hard to believe our 24th year has come to a close! As is our tradition, here’s a look back at some of the past year’s highlights shared with you all.

In our line of work, the beginning of each year means awards season and gearing up for Sundance! We were proud to see the CNN feature documentary “Legion of Brothers” get it’s premiere at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival. This was our 6th feature documentary we have posted with Primetime Emmy Award Winning Director Greg Barker and his team.

The Monkeyland team was proud to be nominated this year for three Motion Picture Sound Editors' Golden Reel Awards for Best Sound Editing for their work on the feature films “Rattle The Cage” and “The Thinning”, as well as the feature documentary “Passage To Mars”. We were also thrilled to have been nominated for a Best Sound Ariel Award (Mexico’s equivalent to the Academy Award) for our work on the feature film “Me Estás Matando Susana” starring Gael Garcia Bernal.

2017 marked the completion of Monkeyland’s newest mixing stages including our purpose built dual operator, Avid S6 equipped Dolby Atmos™ Stage Anejo and the newly updated Stage Reposado. In July, our friends at Pro Sound News featured us in the article: “ Monkeyland Audio Grows In Stages .”

Some of the feature films we completed mixing this past year include: Columbia Picture’s “All Saints”, Universal’s animated Christmas feature “All I Want For Christmas Is You”, Sony’s “Devil’s Whisper” and “Cover Versions”, director Harold Cronk’s “God Bless the Broken Road”, Perry King’s “The Divide”, Jeremy Ungar’s ride-share thriller “Ride”, off-road racing film “Dirt”, Collin Schiffli’s “All Creatures Here Below”, Jason DeVan’s horror/thriller “Tell Me your Name”, Jeffrey Johnson’s “Captain Black”, Clive Tonge’s Crime Horror Thriller “Mara”, Frederick Cipoletti’s “Desolate”, Thomas Konkle's noir thriller "Trouble Is My Business" and Jason Shirley’s family comedy “Elbow Grease”. This year we also finished mixing our 3rd feature collaborations with directors William Dickerson and Kyle Rankin on their latest films “No Alternative” and “The Witch Files”, respectively.

We’ve been quite busy this past year on the television side as well, with scripted and documentary programming alike. We had great fun posting the creepy new Amazon original series “Lore”, the 3-part Netflix original doc special “Five Came Back” as well as the hilarious Hulu original documentaries “Becoming Bond” and “Too Funny To Fail: The Life and Death of the Dana Carvey Show.” Other series we completed this year include the first season of the new comedy “Liberty Crossing”, new CNN series “Unmasking A Killer”, the Rhonda Rousey exec produced sports docu series “Why We Fight” and Blackpills’ new original series “Urban Nightmares”. We are also currently posting seasons 2-3 of the Verizon Go90 series “Play By Play”, as well as a few other new high tech and throwback series which we will share more information with you soon.

In addition, we’ve also enjoyed sharing our mixing, ADR and Foley stages with our friends and colleagues on such shows as the new Duplass Brothers HBO Series “Room 104” (Ear Candy Post), BET’s “The Quad” (Artistry In Sound), Disney Junior’s series “The Lion Guard” (Disney) and the 2018 Sundance Bound feature “Catcher Was A Spy” (King Soundworks).

Some of the other feature documentaries we completed this year include Tiller Russell’s “Operation Odessa”, the East L.A. high school football doc “The Classic”, Dennis Hopper doc “Along for the Ride”, Isaac Artenstein's “Challah Rising”, as well as “Line of Descent”, our 13th Warren Miller produced high octane sports doc mixed here at Monkeyland by Mark Rozett.

We were also extremely busy on the Television Movie front this year thanks to our friends at Cartel, MarVista and ACI. In the past year our team completed full sound editorial and mixing on 16 Lifetime and Hallmark tele pics including: “Love at the Shore”, “Switched for Christmas”, “The Wrong Nanny”, “Runaway Romance”, “Ex-Patriot”, “An Uncommon Grace”, “Christmas Connection” “Sun, Sand & Romance” and “Ex-Wife Killer”.

Other cool projects this year included custom Foley recording for Epic Games’ “Fortnight”, our first virtual reality project “Agent Emerson” for director Ilya Rozhkov, some cool short films, commercials and trailers and we cannot forget Kevin Hart’s new short format interview series “Cold As Balls."

As the year comes to a close, we are currently putting the finishing touches on the feature doc “Science Fair”, which will get it’s world premiere next month at the Sundance Film Festival and Yanfeng Zhang’s doc “Roth Triathlon”. Other films currently in post at Monkeyland include Cuba Gooding Jr’s directorial debut feature “Louisiana Caviar”, Micah Gallo’s horror/thriller “Itsy Bitsy”, Mika Boorem’s “Hollywood Hustle” and the Arabic language “On Borrowed Time”, our 3rd film with Abu Dhabi based production company Imagenation.

And now onward to 2018, our 25th year! For more info you can check out our website as well as keep up with us on Facebook , Instagram and Twitter where we regularly post interesting Monkey news, pictures and other fun project-related stuff.

The entire Monkeyland crew would like to wish you all a very safe, prosperous and creative New Year. Happy Holidays and happy filmmaking! Until next time…

Monkeyland Audio 2016: The Year In Review

Sun, 01 Jan 2017 10:37:43 GMT

31 December 2016

Hello once again Clients, Colleagues and Friends,

As our 23rd year comes to a close, we would like to look back at our whirlwind 2016 filled with great projects and wonderfully creative clients. We are extremely grateful that we can continue doing what we love to do with equally passionate filmmakers. As we look forward to another successful year, we would like to reflect back on some of the highlights from this year.

Sundance 2016: The year got off to a great start with a few of our films headed to Park City. “First Girl I Loved,” our 2nd film for director Kerem Sanga premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and won the Audience Award for the “Best of Next" category. Also making it’s premiere at Sundance was Stephen Kijack’s rock doc "We Are X," which follows the legendary Japanese rock band 'X Japan’.

In February, the Monkeyland team was honored with two MPSE awards for Best Sound Editing, both in the Direct to Video- Live Action category when Michael Johnson’s “All the Wilderness” and Jay Martin’s “7 Minutes” tied for the win!

In March, Director Anne Hamilton’s 1980’s Fairytale Thriller “American Fable” premiered at the SXSW Film Festival and was subsequently picked up for distribution by IFC Films with plans for a February 2017 theatrical release.

Monkeyland Stage #Anejo

Mid-year also brought the next phase of our studio expansion with the completion of our purpose built Dolby Atmos® Stage Anejo featuring dual Avid S6 M40 consoles and a one-of-a-kind vibe! We are proud to be one of the first boutique, non-studio facilities to offer both theatrical and television atmos services to our clients. Director Ali F. Mostafa’s post-apocalyptic thriller “The Worthy” was the first native atmos mix on the new stage. Read more about our stages and why we name them after types of tequila in a recent interview by Post Perspective: Quick Chat: Monkeyland Audio’s Trip Brock

Our feature film work also kept us busy this year, completing full post sound editorial and mixing packages on Alan Rudolph’s “Ray Meet’s Helen,” Mark Rosman's "Time Toys," Soham Mehta's "Run the Tide," Robert Gordon's "I Know You're In There," Jake Helgren’s Lifetime movie “Honeymoon From Hell,” Michael J. Gallagher’s “The Thinning” for Legendary/YouTube Red, Felix Limardo’s take on Tolstoy’s “Anna Karenina” entitled “Love Kills” (our second collaboration with the director), Courtney Balaker’s “Little Pink House” starring Catherine Keener, the Mickey Rourke boxing drama “Tiger” by Alister Grierson, Sean McNamara’s period piece “The King’s Daughter” with Pierce Brosnan and William Hurt, Jennifer Arnold’s comedy “Fat Camp,” Will Raée’s “Lost In Austin,” Dan Glaser’s “Valley of Bones,” Harold Cronk’s inspirational “God Bless the Broken Road,” Michael O. Sajbel’s “Wraith,” Alex Ferrari’s “This Is Meg” and Keoni Waxman’s action-packed films “End of a Gun,” and “Contract to Kill.”

Our relationship with MarVista Entertainment and their talented creative teams continued this year with full sound editorial and mixing on a bunch of diverse TV movie and feature projects including: “Missed Connections,” “Great Plains,” “Cup of Love,” “The Watcher,” “Her Last Will,” “Love Always, Santa,” “One of Us,” “Antisocial.app,” “My Christmas Love”, “A Cinderella Christmas,” “12 Feet Deep,” “The Archer,” “The Rachels,” “Wicked Love,” “Ex-Patriot,” and “The Detained.”

Among our feature documentaries are Tyler Hubby’s look at avant-garde artist “Tony Conrad: Completely In the Present” which was an official selection at the DOC NYC and the Venice Film Festival as well as being the winning Prix D’argent at the prestigious Festival International du Livre d'Art et du Film (FILAF) in the south of France, “Legion of Brothers” our 6th film for Director Greg Barker, which will be premiering next month at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival, and “Here, There, Everywhere”, our 12th Warren Miller produced high-adrenaline sports doc mixed here at Monkeyland by Mark Rozett.

On the Television and short format side, we completed full post sound on the 2nd season of "Snapped: She Made Me Do It" for the Oxygen Network as well as the first season of the upcoming "Three Days To Live" for NBC/Universal. Both true- crime series are produced by our talented friends at Joke Productions. We also posted the Showtime documentary "Miles To Go Before I Sleep" about the lives of roadies, as well as a number of really cool web series this year including the Sci-Fi "Miss 2059" for Verizon go90, A&E's 56-episode "Fall Into Me", and the recently completed "Junior" for director Zoe Cassavetes.

Monkeyland also played host to many of our post production colleagues in 2016, providing mixing stages, Foley and support for a wide variety of television and film programming including ABC’s “Once Upon A Time” (Season 5), Disney Animation’s “Lion Guard” (Season’s 1-2), HBO’s upcoming new series “Room 104”, BET’s new series “The Quad”, “Startup” for Crackle, Netflix feature “America’s Most Hated Woman” as well as the feature films “Revelers,” “What Still Remains” and “Thumper”. We also supplied ADR recording services to over 40 other film and television projects during the year including "Nature Cat," "The Layover," "Message From the King," "King of the Dancehall," The Last Word," "True Memoirs of an International Assassin" and "Sidney Hall."

Our year is ending up just as busy as it started with our crew in various stages of finishing the sound design and mixing for Alex Ranarivelo’s racing film “Dirt,” Jason DeVan’s suspenseful “Tell Me Your Name,” David Mackay’s TV movie “An Uncommon Grace”, and a great new Netflix Documentary series we are really excited about- stay tuned for more on this one...

Now onward to 2017! For more info you can check out our newly revamped website . We’d also love for you to follow us on Facebook , Twitter and Instagram where we regularly post interesting Monkey news, pictures and other fun project-related stuff, and stop by and say hello anytime!

The entire Monkey crew and I would like to wish you all a very safe, prosperous, and creative New Year. Happy Holidays and happy filmmaking! Until next time…

Monkeyland Brings Home MPSE Award, Festival Season Recap

Mon, 29 Feb 2016 10:32:22 GMT

Congratulations to the entire Monkeyland Audio staff and creative sound team for the BEST SOUND EDITING: Direct To Video Live Action Feature Golden Reel Award they received this past weekend at the 63rd Annual Motion Picture Sound Editor's Awards.

Actually, in a rare occurrence, the winning category provided a tie! Of the 7 films up for the award this year, Monkeyland had two nominations, and are happy to report both their films have tied for the top honor: Bank Heist Drama/Thriller "7 Minutes" and coming of age drama "All The Wilderness".

A special thank you to all the filmmakers involved with these films who have once again entrusted us with their post sound: "Wilderness" Producers Andrea Sperling, Jonathan Schwartz and everyone with Super Crispy Films; "7 Minute's" Rick Rosenthal, Bert Kern and everyone at Whitewater Films, our directors Michael Johnson (Wilderness) and Jay Martin (7 Minutes), as well as the entire cast and crew of these 2 great films! Thank you as always to the MPSE and all of our colleagues and friends... It is so nice to be held in the same high regard as all of the other talented professionals in our field and to be recognized for our hard work and dedication to the craft we love so much.

The Monkeyland team is honored to have been nominated for at least one MPSE award for the past seven years in a row, with their last win coming 3 years ago for their Sound Effects, Design and Foley work on The Weinstein Company's "Seal Team Six: The Raid on Osama Bin Laden", for which they were also nominated for a Primetime Emmy. Coincidentally that year also produced a tie for the MPSE Long Form Television Award which they were extremely proud to have shared with the talented sound team for HBO's "Game of Thrones Season 2: Valar Morghulis".

Speaking of awards, we are proud to announce some of our more recently completed film titles that have been striking gold on the festival circuit as of late and headed to theaters and televisions near you soon: Director Valerie Weiss's "A Light Beneath Their Feet" has been on a non-stop tour of the festival circuit, picking up the "US Cinema Indie Gold Award", "Best Female Directed Narrative Feature" and the "Stubbornly Independent Award" among others. And just back from their world premieres at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival, director Kerem Sanga's "First Girl I Loved" picked up the "Audience Award" in the Best of Next Category, and Stephen Kijak's feature music doc "We Are X" took the "Editing Award" for World Cinema Doc.

Up next: Look out for the world premieres of director Ti West's Western "In A Valley of Violence" and director Anne Hamilton's fairytale thriller "American Fable" next month at the SXSW film festival, both mixed at Monkeyland Audio.

Monkeyland 2015 Year In Review

Wed, 30 Dec 2015 10:28:10 GMT

As has been our end of year tradition, we look back on another busy year filled with great projects and clients. Once again we find ourselves extremely blessed and grateful to continue to work and grow in this field we love so much. As we prepare to embark on our 23rd year in business, here's a quick look back at 2015.

2015 started out fast and furious as we were mixing two films headed off to Sundance: the Romanian film "Pioneer's Palace", and Director Bobcat Goldthwait's feature documentary "Call Me Lucky". In January, the Monkeyland team was also nominated for an MPSE award for their sound work on the 2014 release of the film "Wer". This year's nod marked Monkeyand's 13th MPSE nomination in the past 6 years, including 2 wins.

March 1, 2015: Mix Stage #Reposado comes online at Flower Street:

The beginning of 2015 also meant continuing expansion at our main Flower Street facility, as Stage #Reposado, our latest 7.1 ICON Dcontrol equipped Re-Recording Mixing Stage was completed and immediately put into action with non-stop feature mixing work including "A Light Beneath Their Feet", " Alison's Choice", "Powder & Gold", "I Spit On Your Grave 3", "Edge of Seventeen", Night of the Living Deb", "Most Likely To Die", "The Bandit Hound", "Edibles", "Satanic", "Killing Salazar", "Run The Tide", "Bob Thunder: Internet Assassin" and many others, including the much talked about top-secret Will Ferrell/Kristen Wiig Lifetime TV Movie "A Deadly Adoption."

Speaking of TV Movies, Monkeyland was happy to team up again this year with our friends at MarVista Entertainment, as well as all the filmmakers involved to provide full sound editorial and mixing services for another great slate of movies including "Caught", "Girl Missing","Lethal Seduction", "Lost Boy", "The Spirit of Christmas", "A Teacher's Obsession", "A Kind of Magic", "Abducted in Colombia", "The Carpenters Daughter", "Jessica Darling's It List" and "Kill Them All". We also had a great time working with ACI on the TV Movies "Love Find's You In Charm" and "Love Find's You in Valentine", and G It's Entertainment on "A Dogwalker's Christmas Tale", "The Suicide Note", and "Accidental Engagement".

2015 Feature Documentaries:

Besides our mainstay slate of dramatic feature projects, 2015 brought us a wide variety of feature documentary editorial and mixing work as well. Some of the docs we completed included basketball doc "The Drew: No Excuse, Just Produce", Alki David bio "Lord of the Freaks", the latest Warren Miller high octane sports doc "Chasing Shadows", as well as "Live Another Day", "First Contact" and "Don't Tell Kim". We are also working on "We Are X", a doc about the legendary Japanese rock band 'X Japan" which premieres next month at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival. Finally, we are currently mixing the new HBO doc "Homegrown", our fifth feature doc with director Greg Barker.

Episodic Television:

On the TV front, our friends at Atomic Post were here the first part of the year finishing up the final season of ABCs "Resurrection" while continuing to mix season 4 of ABC's "Once Upon A Time", and then finished up the year mixing season 5. Meanwhile, we completed full editorial and mixing for Oxygen's new series "Snapped: She Made Me Do It", as well as season 2 of "Tornado Alley" and season 1 of "Natural Born Monsters", both for The Weather Channel. Disney has also been in mixing the new Disney Channel series "The Lion Guard".

2015 Film Releases:

Some of our other films released this past year include Adam Carolla's "Road Hard", Chris Evan's directorial debut "Before We Go","Kidnapping Mr. Heineken" staring Anthony Hopkins, "Bleeding Heart" starring Jessica Biel and the highly acclaimed recently released "Zinzana". Also don't miss the new Lion's Gate animated feature "Norm of the North", recently mixed at Monkeyland and in theaters January 15th.

Other cool projects completed in 2015 include sound design and mixing on Warner Bros. web series "Mortal Kombat Legacy" season 3, Lifetime's new web series "Fall Into Me", and Blackbox TV's new web series "The Fourth Door".

And just like that almost another year has past! Some feature film projects we are still currently finishing include the family/action/sci-fi "Time Toys", Mid-west thriller "American Fable", horror/thriller "I Know You're In There", horror "Villisca" and director Kerem Sanga's new feature "First Girl I Loved", premiering at the Sundance Film Festival next month.

And now onward to 2016! We've got a lot more to share with everyone in the coming months, including the completion of our largest Re-Recording Mixing Stage #Anejo, coming online the first quarter of 2016 featuring dual operator Avid S6 consoles and Dolby Atmos! For more info you can check out our Blog on the "What's New" section of our website. We’d also love for you to follow us on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter where we regularly post interesting Monkey news, pictures and other fun project-related stuff.

The entire Monkeyland family would like to wish you all a very safe, prosperous, and creative New Year. Happy Holidays and happy filmmaking! Until next time...

Monkeyland Editors Nominated For MPSE Award For 6th Consecutive Year!

Wed, 14 Jan 2015 10:23:13 GMT

Monkeyland is proud and honored to once again be recognized by the Motion Picture Sound Editors with a nomination this year in the Direct To Video Live Action category for the film "WER". Today the MPSE released the nominations for the 62nd MPSE Golden Reel Awards, which honors the best feature film, television, animation and computer entertainment sound work of the year.

After working with the filmmakers on Paramount's 2012 box office hit "The Devil Inside", Monkeyland once again teamed up with Writer/Director William Brent Bell and Producers Matthew Peterman and Morris Paulson on "Wer". Released in 2014 by FilmDistrict/Universal, the film stars A.J. Cook, a defense attorney who begins to suspect that her client, who is charged with the murders of a vacationing family in France, might me more than meets the eye.

This year's nod marks Monkeyand's 13 nomination by the MPSE in the past 6 years. We couldn't be more grateful to our loyal clientele and colleagues who have enabled us to continuously work in this field that we love so much while also being recognized for our hard work and dedication to our craft by our peers.

Previously, the Monkeyland Audio team won a Golden Reel in 2013 for their work on the TV Movie "Seal Team Six: The Raid on Osama Bin Laden", and in 2012 for the Computer Episodic series "Aim High". Monkeyland was also nominated in 2013 for a Primetime Emmy award for outstanding sound editing for a miniseries, movie or special, also for "Seal Team Six".

Congratulations also to our extremely talented intern ShaSha Dong, who was nominated by the MPSE this year for the Verna Fields Award for Student Filmmakers, for the short film "Sin Frontera". A big congrats as well to all of the other extremely talented nominees in all categories. We are looking forward to celebrating with everyone at the MPSE awards ceremony on February 15. You can catch the entire list of nominees here.

Monkeyland Audio 2014: Year In Review

Tue, 23 Dec 2014 10:21:36 GMT

Hello Friends & Colleagues,

Monkeyland's 21st year is quickly coming to a close which means it's time for our annual look back at some of the highlights and moments that made up our 2014. All of us at Monkeyland are extremely grateful we've been able to spend yet another year pursing our love of sound and expanding our craft while continuing to work with both our loyal longtime clientele and new clients alike.

T he year started off fast and furious. Three of our films were headed to the Sundance Film Festival with lot's of mixing still to be done! While Gregg Araki's "White Bird In A Blizzard" had finished mixing in December, we were still mixing "We Are The Giant", our fourth feature doc working with Director Greg Barker, and "Imperial Dreams", all headed to mid January premieres in Park City. Meanwhile, we had just started sound editorial and mixing for 6 episodes of a new ABC mini series "The Assets"

2014’s slate of audio projects proved to be quite an eclectic assortment of mainly feature films, documentaries and television, along with a variety of promos, commercials, trailers and short format projects. On the feature film front, some of the year's highlights included Chris Evan's directorial debut "Before We Go", Anthony Hopkins, Sam Worthington starrer "Kidnapping Freddie Heineken", Adam Carolla's directorial debut Comedy "Road Hard", Indie Comedy/Drama "The Young Kieslowski"and Family Adventure sequel "The Adventures of Mickey Matson: Pirates Code". Our sound team also completed full editorial, design and mixing on Drama "A Sort of Homecoming", Period Drama "Victor", Steven Segal Action Crime Drama "The Mercenary: Absolution", Crime Thriller "7 Minutes", Spanish language Drama "Las Horas Contigo", Drama Horror "Things That Are To Die", Drama Romance "Old Fashioned" and Romanian indie "Limani". We are also currently finishing editorial and mixing on the Taryn Manning Drama "A Light Beneath Their Feet", Horror "Villisca", Drama Thriller "Inner Fear" Spanish language Drama "Ciudades Desiertas", starring Gael Garcia Bernal and Ashley Hinshaw. We also just finished mixing Romanian Period Comedy "Pioneer's Palace" which will premiere at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival. Keep an eye out for all these films coming to theaters and/or home video soon.

ABC Primetime Shows Mixing At Monkeyland, Premiere Sunday Night

Sat, 27 Sep 2014 10:17:13 GMT

Be sure to catch the season premieres of the hit series "Once Upon A Time", followed by "Resurrection" as they make their 2014 fall season debuts on ABC tomorrow night.

Both shows are being mixed at Monkeyland Audio by Kevin Burns and John Chalfant, with sound editorial by Atomic Post. "Once Upon A Time", now in it's 4th season is being mixed on Stage A at our Burbank Facility, while "Resurrection" is mixing on Stage F around the corner at our Flower Street facility.

Also currently mixing at Monkeyland is the hit series "Ghost Inside My Child", which airs Saturdays nights on Lifetime. The show is mixed on Monkeyland's Stage Z with Derek Marcil. And don't miss these other TV Movies we've recently completed editorial and mixing at Monkeyland:

"The Assault" (10/4 on Lifetime)
"Don't Look Back" (10/5 Premiere on LMN)
"The Brittany Murphy Story" (10/8 on Lifetime)
"Naughty & Nice" (11/9 Premiere on UP Network)

Another Busy Month At Monkeyland: August Recap

Tue, 26 Aug 2014 17:14:12 GMT

It's been another busy and exciting month at Monkeyland with a slew of new film and television projects wrapping up and headed for release... This week alone saw the completion of 2 indie features: "A Sort of Homecoming" mixed by Mark Rozett on Stage A, and "All She Wishes" mixed by Trip Brock on Stage F. Meanwhile, mixer Kelly Vandever was putting the finishing touches on the TV movie "The Brittany Murphy Story" which premieres on Lifetime Saturday, September 6. All sound design, supervision, foley and ADR were also handled by the talented Monkeyland staff...

Other films completed this month at Monkeyland include Chris Evan's directorial debut "Before We Go" which premieres next month at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 12, and Mixer Roar Skau Olsen was in from Denmark putting the finishing touches on the feature documentary "The Yes Men Are Revolting" also premiering at the TIFF.

Director Georgia Hilton and Re-Recording Mixer Charles Maynes also spent a week on Monkeyland's Stage A, finishing the final mix for the feature film "Subconscious", while Re-Recording Mixer Jeff Jones visited Stage F putting the finishing touches on the 2014 Sundance film "Cooties", starring Elijah Wood. Both of these films to be released via Lion's Gate soon....

"The Assault", another TV movie recently completed at Monkeyland will see it's premiere on Lifetime September 20, and "May in the Summer", a feature completed earlier this year at MLA expands it's theatrical run this weekend adding additional cities...

We were also happy to have lots of amazing talent in for ADR these past few months working on their various film, television and music projects including Elijah Wood, Lance Henriksen, Diedrich Bader, Weird Al Yankovic, Lou Diamond Phillips, Chris Evans, Gail O'Grady, Madeleine Stowe, Haylie Duff, Taran Killam, Bill Hader, Nasim Pedrad and Sherilyn Fenn. Many more awesome photos for the guestbook, indeed!

Rounding out the month, were Re-Recording Mixers Kevin Burns and John Chalfant back in to finish Universal's "Scorpion King 4: Quest For Power". Starting next month, this mixing duo will be back at Monkeyland as they start mixing the new season's of ABC's "Once Upon A Time" and "Resurrection".... Looking forward to another great month and rest of the year!

Busy Month In Progress At Monkeyland!

Fri, 18 Jul 2014 16:53:39 GMT

It's been an incredibly busy month here at Monkeyland with no end in sight! Barely half way through the month and theres lots of exciting things happening... Re-Recording Mixer Kelly Vandever has been busy mixing Chris Evan's directorial debut "1:30 Train" on Stage 3 and also just finished mixing director Sam Irvin's holiday TV movie "Naughty & Nice"...

P ictured (L to R) below are Kelly Vandever, Producer Carrie LeGrand and Director Sam Irvin. Christmas in July!

Also in on Stage 3 has been Supervising Sound Editor Mike Wilhoit and Re-Recording Mixers Kevin Burns and John Chalfant working on Universal's "Scorpion King 4: Quest For Power".

Editorial & mixing has also begun on the new season of the television series "Ghost Inside My Child", mixed by Derek Marcil on Stage F.

Produced by our friends at Joke Productions, the series will be airing on Lifetime's LMN.

Meanwhile, our incredibly talented editorial and foley crews have been busy putting the finishing touches on Informant

Also in this month recording ADR have been the feature films "The 33" and "A Sort of Homecoming", as well as a special appearance by former astronaut Buzz Aldren, who was in recording voice over for the upcoming "Passage To Mars", which we have been sound designing as well.

P ictured below with Mr. Aldren are Monkeyland's Caleb Hollenback and Rob Embrey.

It truly is a pleasure and a priviledge to continue doing what we love to do year after year, and we can't wait to share even more exciting Monkeyland news with you all soon!