During the last week of the dub on "The Fountain", I received a call from my good friend, picture editor Michael Miller, who told me about "an interesting, funny little film he was working on." Michael is a master of the understatement. "Farce of the Penguins" is a not-so gentle spoof on the sensibilities of the fascinating-documentary-about-traveling-penguins-in-Antarctica film, directed by Bob Saget ("Dirty Work", "Entourage", "How I Met Your Mother") and narrated by Samuel L. Jackson. Michael was right - it is an interesting, funny (not so-) little film! In February, Bob and I started tracking down actors (a who's who of the comic world) and recording dialogue in Los Angeles, New York, Boston, Austin, Las Vegas, and other locations around the country. For some of the performers this was a significant task; for others it was just giving us one or two lines. This material alone became a bear of a data management task, handled masterfully by the incredible Sue Fawcett. A foley library was shot by our good friends Steven Baine and Peter Persaud and cut together by Sound Dogs' foley editor, Lan Tran. In Bob's words "the foley track ends up being the component that lends believability to the concept of our film – that the footage of these penguins is actually of them speaking and interacting with one another." Bob was thrilled with the foley track. Kudos to Steve, Pete and Lan. A wonderful score by Peter Melnick was cut together by Sound Dogs' music editor Kevin Banks, who dealt with a few curve balls without breaking a sweat. Comic moments were also underscored by our sound effects department of Nathan Robitaille, Lee de Lang and Tyler Whitham (did you really think you would ever have to come up with the sounds of various penguin "appendages" freezing and falling off?) We finished the film late on a Friday (early on Saturday, really) after mixing at abreak-neck pace, made possible by Matt Harrold who runs our mix rooms here at Sound Dogs. Everyone knows that I am a proponent of "mixing-in-the-box" and I can safely say that this schedule would have been otherwise unmanageable if not for the advantages in this style of mixing. (Thanks also to mixer Brad Thornton for stepping in on our last day to help us deal with one of those last-minute change-this-music-cue challenges.) Farce of the Penguins is distributed by Toronto's ThinkFilm and will be in theatres in the fall of 2006. Stephen Barden "I can not say enough great things about Sound Dogs. What my head mixer, Stephen Barden accomplished for me in my film "Farce of the Penguins," is staggering. In an incredibly short window of time, Steve and his amazing sound editing artist "Sound Doggers" , truly made this film come to life. They are literally 'surgical' in their work. They are incredibly smart, talented, dedicated, and do everything imaginable to get your project done in time and on budget. I can't wait to work with Sound Dogs again. Your film will definitely be well served by having them be a significant element of it. Sound Dogs shares something many of us share... a love of film." Bob Saget < back