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Monkeyland Audio 2016: The Year In Review

Jan 01, 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 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…

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 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 2015 Year In Review

30 Dec, 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:

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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