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Monkeyland 2015 Year In Review

Dec 30, 2015

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...

Monkeylands 2019 Year In Review

01 Jan, 2020
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!

Monkeyland's 25th Anniversary: 2018 Year In Review

31 Dec, 2018
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.

Monkeyland 2017 Year In Review

01 Jan, 2018
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 .”

Monkeyland Audio 2016: The Year In Review

01 Jan, 2017
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 Brings Home MPSE Award, Festival Season Recap

29 Feb, 2016
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.

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

14 Jan, 2015
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

23 Dec, 2014
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"

ABC Primetime Shows Mixing At Monkeyland, Premiere Sunday Night

27 Sep, 2014
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.

Another Busy Month At Monkeyland: August Recap

26 Aug, 2014
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...

Busy Month In Progress At Monkeyland!

18 Jul, 2014
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!
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