Bye (Trailer) from Anthony Morrison on Vimeo.

Bye is a short documentary about Jayden, a two and a half year old diagnosed with autism. The film follows Jayden as he begins a school program for autistic children in the Bronx.

Bye originally premiered at the Landmark Sunshine Cinema in New York, and broadcast on PBS July 13th, as part of its POV documentary series. You can stream Bye in its entirety from the POV website.

This project features my music in the New Balance 365 online advertising campaign, written for Mother New York. The ad campaign involved a flash website as well as an iPhone app, showcasing 1 video per day for a year (hence, 365).

The client wanted upbeat and quirky, urban-sounding tunes to complement the experimental video of Swedish filmmaker Jesper Kouthoofd. Visit www.newbalance365.com and browse all of the videos created for the NB 365 campaign.

Lastly, click on the links below to read some reviews of New Balance 365:
Hypebeast – The New Balance 365 Project
PSFK – New Balance 365 Campaign Fuses Content And Commerce

This reel highlights 3 selected television promos I did in 2009. My role was the sound FX designer and mixing engineer. The titles included in the reel are USA – Monk, Syfy Insider – Saw VI, and Cisco Technologies – Dialog Cafe.

Generally, the sound design process begins when a client brings in a reference video with a session file containing on-screen dialog, music, and occasional temp voice over track – all prebuilt by the producer and video editor.

Since sound design and mixing is usually the last step for a television commercial or promo, all of the sounds contained within the session file have been placed in sync with the video in what is referred to as “picture locked”. This means the video cut has been approved and the rest of the creative process is up to me to choose sounds and musical elements that will augment the audience’s experience.

Sound designing for horror films is particularly enjoyable, as was the case in the Syfy Insider – Saw VI, because the overall design included layers of effects. For this spot I mixed in a lot of metal scraping and screaming sounds, chosen from a sound effects library and digitally processed with echo and equalization so that they combined in harmony.

Time is usually a determining factor in how deep I get to go into the sound design. In the case of the Monk promo for USA Network, I had an entire day to work with the sound effects because I had recorded the voice over a few days earlier, while the producer and video editor were cutting picture. Because I had time to specifically tailor the sound to the promo, the producer and I were able to “Foley” many of Monk’s intricate cleaning noises. “Foley” is an element of sound FX design, where a “Foley artist” watches the video and records him or herself playing various “non-conventional” instruments simultaneously. The section where Monk is trying to clean bubble wrap with Windex is a good example of “Foley”. We used different plastic wraps and FedEx packs to create the crisp, immaculate squeaking of fresh bubble wrap.

Lastly, sound design is not always about being in the audience’s face. In the case of the Cisco Technologies – Dialog Cafe most of my creative energy was directed towards swelling the music tracks and creating momentum behind the dialog. Subtlety and feeling is at the heart of these types of commercials, and careful attention to the narrative (however short it may be) is the most important aspect of the job.

This project highlights my music composition for Joseph Della Russo’s spec commercial, “Scrabble, Good With Words?” The premise of the commercial is that a guy is caught cheating on his girlfriend but manages to talk his way out of the sticky situation by using big words. Completed in September 2009, I played the drums, bass, guitar, and wah wah pedal – all necessary ingredients for conveying a steamy, yet awkward situation.

This project features recording, mixing, and digital editing for Dvorak’s Trio in F Minor, played by the Moet Trio.

I had been recording the Moet Trio in various locations between New York and Boston for a couple months before our official recording sessions at the New England Conservatory’s Williams Hall, January 2009. The two day session included both Dvorak’s Trio in F Minor and Shostakovich’s Trio in E Minor (not profiled in this project spotlight).

The process of location recording usually starts with an empty concert hall. That is to say, for recordings like the Williams Hall sessions I brought my own equipment and set up a portable recording studio. After testing the sound and adjusting the microphones, we began recording the two pieces.

Location recording can be both exciting and stressful because aside from the general noises made by the musicians playing on stage, it is important to maintain consistent ambient noise in the recording. The weather had not worked in our favor during the week of the Williams Hall sessions. It snowed in Boston, and during the middle of the day we had to schedule our recording takes around the snow plows and car horns. But by nighttime, the city sounds died down, and we were able to get consistent and relatively noise-free recordings.

The Moet Trio is Yves Dharamraj – cello, Michael Mizrahi – piano, and Yuri Namkung – violin. The Williams Hall recordings were co-produced by Jonathan Lewis. Click the play button above, to hear a movement from Dvorak’s Trio in F Minor.

In 2008, I developed a direct to consumer online marketing initiative for the New Jersey Repertory Company. I designed a company podcast which worked in conjunction with the newly official NJ Rep Facebook and Yelp pages, and aimed to drive more traffic to NJRep.org; in turn increasing sales at the box office. The podcast site was created with the WordPress content management system.

I utilized web 2.0 tools like RSS feeds and content sharing, so that users could subscribe to the podcast, get automatic updates to their RSS reader or mobile device, and post the episodes they enjoyed on their Facebook wall, etc.

This case study highlights the production of the NJ Rep Online podcast series from 2008-2009, which in addition to designing, I also wrote, recorded, and edited for the New Jersey Repertory Company.

Please click on the play buttons above to hear two of the selected podcast episodes.

The first podcast episode is Episode 2: Ames Adamson, and the second podcast episode is Episode 3: Interview with Zayd Dohrn, writer of Sick.
(Note: I did not write the first music cue in Episode 3. The first music cue of Episode 3 was written by Schubert, and the second is my interpretation of that same lieder.)

To read more about the NJ Rep Online podcast, click here.

This project highlights my mix on Dawn Metropolis, by Anamanaguchi. Dawn Metropolis is part of the live concert release from the 8bitpeoples 2008 Blip Festival. The blip festival was recorded by Gabe Liberti at the Bell House, Brooklyn. Check out www.8bitpeoples.com for more information on the Blip Festival CD and DVD release.

This project highights my sound FX design and music composition for Sara Manuwal’s 2008 experimental animation, Black Hole. In this project, the lines between sound effects and musical composition were blurred because instead of using conventional instruments, I mapped different sounds to a digital sampler and triggered them with a MIDI keyboard. Some of the sounds I pulled from my FX library, and others I recorded in the studio.

After the sounds were mapped to the different keys on my keyboard, I recorded the score in real-time with the video. Lastly, once the initial score was recorded, I went back and layered more effects over the video transitions.

This project highlights the music composition for the New Jersey Repertory stage production of Poetic License. Written by Jack Canfora and directed by Evan Bergman, Poetic License world premiered September 4, 2008 at the New Jersey Repertory Lumia Theater.

The play is about a poet laureate who is threatened by his dark secret – he never actually wrote the poems that made him famous.

Contrary to the theme of the show, the music was all original compositions. For the show’s climax, I remixed my main theme in the style of a drum&bass track. I wanted this particular music cue to break away from the bucolic folk sounds of the first act, and gain energy for the second act, when the poet’s unearthed past starts to unravel his family and possibly his career.

This project features digital mastering for the 2009 CD release From A Great Height, by The Gentlemen’s Bet.

The mastering process for me usually begins when a band delivers their mixed songs as uncompressed, full resolution stereo audio files. I take a different approach to mastering a full length album than with individual singles.

For The Gentlemen’s Bet, each of the ten songs on the album had slightly different instrumentation. In order to maintain sonic consistency amongst each song, I tweaked the equalization levels and volume of the individual tracks and used different compression settings along with reverb. My main goal, in terms of mastering settings, was to find an average level where all of the songs could sit next to each other and not stick out from the rest.

Click the play button above to hear the selected song Zodiac, off the album From a Great Height, or visit the band’s Myspace page for more details.