Monkeyland 2015 Year In Review

December 31, 2015

Hello Clients, Colleagues and Friends,

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!

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

December 23, 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.

The 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".

Monkeyland Audio Nominated for 3 MPSE Awards: After taking home an MPSE win and Primetime Emmy nomination last year for National Geographic's "Seal Team Six: The Raid on Osama Bin Laden", Monkeyland was again honored in 2014 with 3 additional MPSE nominations for Best Sound Editing in a Long Form TV Documentary, Direct To Video Live Action, and Short Form TV Documentary categories. (For "Manhunt", "Lord of Darkness" and "30 Days In May", respectively.)

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.

On the Television front, we are very happy to welcome sound editorial company Atomic Post, who along with their talented team of mixers and editors are currently mixing the ABC primetime shows "Once Upon A Time" and "Resurrection" here at Monkeyland. Meanwhile, we have recently completed editorial and mixing on the second season of Lifetime's successful documentary series "Ghost Inside My Child", and after completing the first season of "Tornado Alley" for the Weather Channel earlier this year, we are gearing up for season two starting next month.

2014 also presented new working relationships while reuniting with filmmakers from our past. This year we began a new working partnership with MarVista Entertainment, providing complete sound editorial and mixing services for nine of the TV movies from their 2014 slate. We posted Lifetime Bio Pic "The Brittany Murphy Story" and Christmas Romance "Naughty & Nice" while reconnecting with Producer Carrie LeGrand.

We also had the pleasure of working again with Director Sam Irvin on Comedy "Mothers of the Bride" and "Naughty & Nice". It was great teaming up again with Director William Dickerson for Lifetime's "Don't Look Back" and "The Assault". Rounding out our 2014 MarVista slate were TV Movies "Meet My Valentine", "Bad Blood", "All She Wishes" and "12 Dog Days Till Christmas.

Other films which came in for additional editorial and mixing at Monkeyland throughout the year included: "Sabotage" (TV Version), "The Contest", "Drones", and "Refuge From The Storm". Some of the shows that visited our ADR and Foley stages included: "A Haunted House 2", "The Duff", "The 33", "Webcam", "Orphan Black", "Taxi Brooklyn", "The Guest", "The Signal", "Somnia", "All In Time", "Bad Teacher" "The Exorcism of Molly Hartley", "Nature Cat", "Cooties", "Stung","The Great Gilly Hopkins" and "Children's Hospital". Heck, we even had visits by cultural icons Weird Al and the Fonz, and a very special appearance by Buzz Aldrin, one of only 12 men to have walked on the moon!

We also had an opportunity to work on a wide variety of feature documentaries this year including: "Pencil's Down! The 100 Days of the Writers Guild Strike", Adventure Doc "Passage To Mars", Salvation Army Doc "Hard Corps", "Holbrook/Twain: An American Odyssey", Sports Doc "Game Face" and of course the latest Warren Miller high-octane Sports doc "No Turning Back", mixed by Mark Rozett. Other exciting 2014 projects for us included editorial and mixing for many commercials, trailers and promos fpr our friends at Dirty Robber, Coyote Post, Omelet LA, MRG Productions, The Uprising Creative, World War Seven, and Big Boss Creative.

Monkeyland is glad to continue to have the opportunity to meet and work with new up and coming talented filmmakers. We completed quite a few short format projects this year including "Family Escape", "Witch Girl Film", "Brown Bag", Sabre Dance", "Eleven", Celluloid Dreams", Sandboy", and "Nini". We anticipate many great things for the filmmakers involved in these projects. Outstanding work, folks!

Whew! What a year... and now onward to 2015... For more info you can check out the "What's New" section on our website. 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...

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