Ask our professors what is lacking in most films today, and the answer is almost always the same: sound production. While the other aspects of a film are always meticulously planned, sometimes sound quality falls to the wayside during post production. Thankfully, we have a top-notch team of professors here who teach sound design, making sure the students know the importance of it during the filmmaking process.

That lesson has apparently stuck with some our alumni, as they have went on to work for
MelodyGun
, a post production sound company that specializes in making sure films sound the best they can be.

MelodyGun was formed by Hamed Hokamzadeh in late 2014. Hokamzadeh actually scored a lot of Dodge College films in 2010, including
AMOS
,
Shade of Blue
, and
Damon
. Over the last year, Hokamzadeh has noticed the talent pool of Dodge College is quite prevalent, and wound up hiring three of our graduates to work for him.

Ouziel mixing the film Riding Justice in 5.1. They also do the score, complete sound editing and mix.


Ouziel mixing the film Riding Justice in 5.1. They also do the score, complete sound editing and mix.



Kennedy Phillips (MFA/Film Production ’10), Thomas Quizel (BFA/Film Production ’11), and Kristina Hays (BFA/Film Production ’14) are all valued members of the MelodyGun team these days. They are just three of the seven people who specialize in production sound recording, scoring, music supervision, and post-audio (such as sound design, foley, and ADR) at MelodyGun.

Even before working together in a professional capacity, they had all worked together at Dodge College. In production aspects, especially here at Dodge, you’ll find that the same groups of people tend to work together. That is definitely the case here, as they continued working on projects after they graduated as well.

“Post-audio seems to always be a hassle, and not always understood by directors and producers, so we think having a team of audio fanatics that can take your film from pre-production all the way to DCP delivery is vital in today’s age,” said Hays on the work the company does.

What really shows that is that a lot of budgets for post-production as slashed in today’s world, making it difficult to achieve sound that is professional. Using some of the connections they made while attending Dodge College, the team at MelodyGun is offer to offer package deals to yield more work, get more projects done, and make a living.

The team also have an on-going gig with Awesomeness TV, which was recently bought out by Disney. Now called DreamWorks TV, the new media platform is very exciting for all of them. Being quick, short, and seen almost immediately plays into the indie feature aspect of it.

melody gun logo


“The web content, such as DreamWorks TV, has really tight turnarounds for post sound and music,” said Hays. “But, because we’re a team, we split up the workload. We think our webseries on DreamWorks TV is one of the best, in regards to sound within their collection.”

However, they feel as if branded content is where the future is. They recently did an animated content piece for a chocolate store, and some corporate videos, as well.

“We think this is all the future, and in a couple years, the budgets, deadline, and quality expected of the overall audio in web content will go up,” Hays said. “We’re positioning ourselves to be in that space, while still working on docs and features, because it’s all fun – no one wants to be stuck doing the same thing all the time.”

When asked how Dodge College helped in their careers, it wasn’t all that surprising that it is still helping them today!

“We all have our own studios at home, because you can do a lot of work in your own studio,” said Hays. “But, because we went to Dodge, we can re-record and mix in 5.1 literally anywhere in the world, since Dodge’s professional set-ups helped us learn what was out in the real world.”

For more information on MelodyGun, be sure to
check out their website
.