“Can I Jog Your Memory.” (Post-Production)—Re-recording Mixer, Sound Editor
This dark short from John Pope features a jogger who finds herself stalked by a man on her path and becomes spiritually connected with a young girl some time later.
This production was very interesting as much of the sound design and recording had been already been completed when I joined. The flexibility I found in controlling the tone and intensity curve of the film within the mixing and editing was incredible though, as the score and non-diegetic SFX provided had a lot of power and controlling when to bring them in and out had a profound affect on the tone of the film. Working in a surreal and horror-inspired project was really great as I consume a lot of media similar to this and it was very rewarding to experiment with the genre with John Pope, who shares many similar inspirations.
The film is still seeking release.
“Dude, Where’s My Dad?” (2021)—Music, SFX, Dialogue Editing, Mixing, Foley Engineer
This senior animation thesis from Jon Scheibenpflug and Mac Rosenburg follows two demons, Cho and Phil, as they look for Cho’s dad who mysteriously disappeared from their house after an apparent robbery. The adventure takes them to a mysterious mansion filled with strange and exotic knick-knacks, statues, and portraits as they search for who or what stole Cho’s dad.
For this project, I started very early, spotting sound effects on a printed version of the script after some discussion with the creators on the world and story. Some of the most interesting parts of the sound design were some of my first monster vocalizations for the “baby Kaiju” named Daiquiri. The large, soft-looking creature reminded me very much of an amphibian or marine mammal given its fins and aquatic basement home. I started working on these sounds very early in collecting samples which I thought might be useful, including frogs, dolphins, and sea lions. Combining many animal sounds as well as synthesized elements and machinery for the eventual lazer beam it shoots out was a particularly fun and successful sound design job that allowed me to use a lot more digital sound design techniques I was used to from electronic music like frequency shifters and other modulation and distortion effects.
For the foley, I recorded clothing, Daiquiri’s slimy movements, and many other sounds heard in the film in my apartment with my roommate, Hank Borders. Generally, he would work the computer while I followed the visuals on our TV and performed all of the sounds while browsing around the apartment looking for different objects to use. Luckily, my roommate and I have plenty of hand tools, guitar pedals, audio hardware, and all kinds of clutter to throw in a box and jostle around which was very useful for when Cho and Phil are looking through all of the strange objects in the mansion.
For the music, Jon and Mac had a particular aesthetic they were interested in pursuing from the start of the project which evolved over the course of its production. Originally, much of the reference material was hip-hop and funk music such as Hideki Naganuma and J Dilla, and they reached out to me after seeing my work on Box Girl. While this was music I felt I could evoke, I felt that many of the reference tracks were a bit too high-energy or confident for what was otherwise a more ominous and eerie setting. After some more discussion with them, I developed the soundtrack based on electronic drums and synthesizers with much use of reversed, time-stretched, and re-pitched guitar samples which I felt captured the aesthetic of the dark collage and AI network-based creepy visuals.
I believe this was a very successful project and was a great culmination of the workflows and style I had been developing with my previous animation projects. The music I found to be particularly difficult to get right at times, and I ended up scoring almost all of the music completely within Ableton Live rather than using ReWire, as I found the specific sound design possibilities in Live to be much more flexible and most of the sounds I wanted were within that program. But overall, I am incredibly happy with the sound design and foley work, and the music definitely scratches the itch I worked so long to find.
“Take Out” (2020)—Music, SFX, Dialogue Editing, Mixing, Foley Engineer
This senior animation thesis from Moksha Rao follows a series of murders of delivery people and one hermit teapot who’s television shows him the future demise of his own delivery man. Not heeding the babbling warning of the teapot, the delivery man carries on to his next job and is led to face that fate.
For the music, I worked with Moksha to create a soundtrack which helped enhance the dread and seriousness of the plot while keeping it generally light-hearted and tongue-in-cheek to match both the tone of the short and match the softer visual style. To do this, I looked to use some funk elements one might see on an older sitcom such as guitar and clavinet, and the latter of which ended up being one of the focal instruments in most of the score, carrying a funk theme/motif in the first musical sequence which is referenced later in the score, as well as very effectively adding rhythmic energy to more intense sequences later in the film. The more intense sequences blended the electronic and funk elements from earlier with horn sections and dissonant swells to add tension and severity to the violent murders and final chase sequence.
All of the music was done using Logic Pro X as a ReWire host for Ableton Live, which was my first experience using the two DAWs at once for a single project. Though this provided many challenges along the way, I found once I got the hang of using the software in this way, it was an incredibly powerful workflow as it allowed me access to many of the libraries, effects, and synthesizer plugins I like in Live to work seamlessly into the much more robust timecode-based scoring workflow in Logic. This workflow was eventually re-used and enhanced for my Samurai Jack project I started later during the same semester.
In addition to writing the music and making the sound effects though, I had to determine how best to manage the soundtrack in sequences such as the soda can’s murder that are presented both on the TV and later in “real life”. To do this, I started creating these sound effects chronologically and later made separate folders and busses for sounds that come through the TV or are presented in real life. I used an auxiliary effects chain on audio coming from the television, and used automation to adjust for quick changes and a few situations in which direct sound and TV sound were played at the same time or in quick succession. It took a lot of fine-tuning of this system to get the soundtrack to sound different enough to be noticeable but also subtle enough to not become distracting for long TV sequences. And while most of the sound effects are the same for when a sequence is played on the TV or in “real life,” for the sequence of Chives walking to the delivery spot and going down to the basement, I needed to deal with having a long, scored sequence occurring twice. For this, I stripped the Seinfeld-like sitcom music which was used the first time and replace it with a more suspenseful track when it occurs again,
Though working on this in tandem with “Drinking” and the Samurai Jack projects was very intense for me, I found this project particularly rewarding as it required composing in styles I was less comfortable with and had very interesting and unique challenges with the television sequences and non-linear story-line.
Samurai Jack (NYU Course Project) (2020)—Music, SFX, Mixing, Recording Engineer, Dialogue Editing, ADR Performance
This was a project completed with a partner Joshua Lee for a university course, with a bulk of the work being done remotely during the first months of quarantine. The assignment was to completely recreate all the audio for a 7-minute clip from a film or television show. We chose to work with this tense fight sequence from the last season of Genndy Tartakovsky’s Samurai Jack. With our project, we sought to recreate the original show’s combination of exaggerated sci-fi and action sound effects along with the very delicate and rich soundscapes which were very unique to this show compared to other animations on Cartoon Network and similar channels.
For the project, I primarily composed the music, but also created many sound effects before scoring, including the “eyebrow” sounds (recorded scratching my sideburns), the soundscapes in the wolf’s forest, the monsters’ roars, the machine gun, some of the explosions, some of the motorcycle sounds, and the vocal effects in the hallucination sequence. Additionally, Joshua and I recorded many knife slashes, whips, and other sound effects for the fighting scenes and recorded myself performing the dialogue together before the studios were closed due to COVID.
For the music, I wanted to work on creating action-style percussion patterns which were created on a variety of both electronic and sampled percussion with a lot of compression, distortion, and other processing. On one of our first days in the studio when recording various wild SFX , I had the idea to record many samples of striking a music stand with different implements and materials and created a multi-sample instrument out of those hits in Ableton Live which was used to create a wide range of percussion sounds which I used frequently in the score. For the synthesizer lines, I decided to stay away from melodic motifs and focus on creating very powerful and unique synthesized sounds using FM synths, a Moog Minitaur, and a prominent screaming and rolling sound created using modulated delay feedback and distortion (first appears at 0:56).
Though working remotely with a partner to finish the project was difficult at times, I’m very proud of what we were able to create. I think we were able to successfully support the action on screen with powerful sound design and music as well as ambiences that brought the environments to life. Some of my favorite sounds I created were the roars of the tiger-like monster which were made from various animal sounds combined with an incredibly noisy AC fan in our classroom which was a universal frustration to everyone in the class, so it was very fun to use constructively.
“Drinking” (2020)—SFX, Dialogue Editing, Mixing, Foley Engineer
This senior animation thesis by Adam Mickiewicz follows two friends having some alcohol-driven fun in a playground and the officer who came to shut it all down. In this film, I used combinations of recorded and library sound effects in order to create a consistent and believable world, while also working specifically to emphasize different gags. With Adam’s direction, I sought to make certain moments explode passed the subtle and realistic sounds used generally throughout for footsteps and body movements with many important moments including the door smacking Kartoffel in the face, Boris exploding through the window, and many others, by adding more extreme elements like bones cracking and explosions where. While I didn’t compose music for this piece, I was tasked with mixing in the music Adam provided, from the Erich Weinert Ensemble, which provided musical gags in the over-the-top marching music in the first scene and the mocking tone of the patriotic piece at the end of the animation.
“Boxgirl” (2019) —Music, SFX, Mixing
This animation by Olivia Porretta follows a shy girl wearing a box on her head at school as she chases down a stolen toy through the halls and beyond.
I worked with Olivia starting early in the animation process on the music and sound design, trying to complement her highly stylized action-driven visuals. Based on her suggestions on reference music and my own experience in electronic music, I created a hip-hop and breakbeat-based score with synthesizer and funk elements to portray the film’s tonal shifts between nervous and shy beginning, to bombastic and daring, to heartfelt and sweet. I was very satisfied with the introduction sequence and the small cues at the end, But I am most proud of my work on the main chase sequence, and found the blend of driving synthesizer and drum elements alone with the sampled slap bass melody kept the energy very high and intense while staying fun and engaging. The use of bending chords and trills at the beginning and end of the cue I found to be very effective in ramping up the tension, and the varispeed-like tempo drop at the end also worked nicely to shut down the excitement with the protagonist being defeated by the teacher.
This film won Best Production Design and Best In Show at the SVA’s 2019 BFA Animation screening, and was accepted to the Barnard College of Columbia University’s Athena Film Festival.
Sean Porio's Media Portfolio 