Western wins Sundance Jury Award!
It was a blast to attend the 2015 Sundance Film Festival, having sound edited and mixed two films premiering in-competition there. Both Western and Being Evel premiered to sold out crowds, and incredible praise.
Western was also the recipient of the Special Jury Award for Vérité Filmmaking, which was a tremendous honor. Some of the press reviews below:
Variety – “elegiac portrait of modern frontier life”
IndieWire – “a film that truly captures the essence of a place, and creates an experience of it for the viewer.”
Hollywood Reporter – “Both mariachi tunes and Methodist hymns are heard, and fully felt, in Western, and the movie itself has the feel of a high lonesome country song crossed with a narcocorrido”
Salt Lake Tribune – “The images, along with a stirring sound design and evocative musical score, paint an intensely moving portrait”
Hammer to Nail – “A bona fide Modern American Epic. Western is cinematic nonfiction of a superior order.”
RogerEbert.com – “a sumptuously shot and profoundly told documentary”
The film will be traveling to True/False next in March, followed by SXSW (I’m extremely proud that this will be the 4th year in a row I’ve had a film in that festival, and 6 out of the past 8 years).
Being Evel Gains Distribution
Being Evel also played fantastically at Sundance, receiving good write-ups as well as a ton of social media from the presence of Johnny Knoxville and Matt Hoffman (who both produced and star in the film)
IndieWire – “Evel Knievel documentary ‘Being Evel’ is a death defying treat”
Salt Lake Tribune – “a fast and fun ride”
Deadline – “thorough and thoroughly entertaining”
The film also played this week at the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival in Montana, before it also travels to SXSW next month.
Also this week it was announced that Gravitas picked up North American distribution rights and the film will be coming to theaters this summer!
The Last Season and the Independent Spirit Awards
The Last Season was also playing this week at the Big Sky Documentary Festival, and I am thrilled to be attending the Independent Spirit Awards at the end of this week where it is nominated in the Truer than Fiction category!
More Awards and Recent Projects
It’s been a busy last few months!
The Nightmare Code won the Grand Prize at the Philip K. Dick Sci-Fi Film Festival in New York.
The short film The Moneymaker premiered at the Hollywood Reel Independent Film Festival, and won an award for Best Action Short.
Recent project work includes mixing BTS videos for Riot Games featuring Imagine Dragons, dialogue editing for the SpongeBob Squarepants video game for Paramount Games, broadcast commercial mixing for UC Irvine, and an upcoming ESPN 30-for-30 film which was amazing fun!
I also started my next feature film mix, Tom Swift and His Electric Rifle, which I will be posting more information in future updates closer to its completion!
MPSE Golden Reel Awards
And last but not least I was a judge this year as part of the Motion Picture Sound Editors Blue Ribbon Panel, and I got to attend the Golden Reel Awards ceremony last weekend. It was a tremendous feeling to be surrounded by so many incredible sound editors and mixers in our industry and be part of such an great organization.
Western Sundance Special Jury Award
