Telling Your Story with Sound: A Conversation with Alma Har’el and Benh Zeitlin | Presented by the Dolby Institute
About this Event Recording
Great sound design is not exclusive to big-budget studio films--it is something that can be employed by filmmakers with any size budget. Learn the role sound design can play at the conceptual stage of your independent project and how sound can help you tell your story. Join filmmakers Alma Har’el and Benh Zeitlin as they present scenes from their films HONEY BOY and WENDY. The filmmakers, both recipients of the Dolby Institute Fellowship, will recount how they used sound design to establish place and help convey their characters' inner experiences. They’ll discuss how sound connects with music as a creative element, and explain how filmmakers can make use of immersive new technologies like Dolby Atmos at a variety of budget levels.
Event RecordingTeam
Benh Zeitlin
Advisor
Benh Zeitlin is a writer, director, and composer who began his career as an animator working under Jan Svakmajer’s team in Prague. In 2006 he relocated to New Orleans to make his first live-action short Glory at Sea which grew into the four-time Academy Award-nominated, Camera D’or winner Beasts of the Southern Wild. His second feature Wendy was created with a pack of wild children on a remote volcanic island in the Caribbean. His credits as a composer include Mediterranea, A Chiara, Brimstone & Glory. He is also the founder of Court 13 Arts, a non-profit devoted to supporting daring cinema, which produced films such as Burning Cane, Give Me Liberty, and No Kings.
Alma Har'el
Advisor
Alma Har’el is an award-winning director who brought to life visionary work in documentary, music videos, TV commercials and scripted narrative. She is also the first woman in DGA Awards history to be nominated for both commercial directing (2018) and narrative directing (2020).
Her most recent film, HONEY BOY, written by, and starring, Shia LaBeouf, made her the first woman to win the DGA Award for First-Time Feature Film. The film was distributed by Amazon Studios.
In 2016, Har’el founded her non-profit, Free The Bid, which transformed the global hiring practices of female directors in advertising, and then grew beyond measurable success into FREE THE WORK. FTW advocates for, and showcases, over 2,000 underrepresented filmmakers in 21 countries worldwide.
Har’el’s passion for encouraging equality across entertainment, along with her directing work, landed her in Fast Company’s “Most Creative People of 2018”, Adweek’s “Disruptors of 2018" and on Indiewire’s list of leading "Women Who Made the World of Filmmaking a Better Place in 2018."
Sundance Film Festival 2019
Honey Boy
Sundance Institute History
Alma Har'el
Glenn Kiser
Moderator
Glenn Kiser is the Director of the Dolby Creator Lab, Dolby’s initiative to bring education and inspiration to filmmakers and content creators about the creative use of sound and picture in storytelling. Previously, Kiser was the VP & General Manager of Lucasfilm’s Skywalker Sound, where he oversaw sound work on film projects such as Avatar, The Incredibles, the Star Wars prequels, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, the Pirates of the Caribbean and Harry Potter films.
Before joining Skywalker, Kiser was a post-production executive at Propaganda Films, where he worked with directors including David Fincher, Spike Jonze, Jane Campion, and Neil LaBute. Fun facts: Glenn played a mean tuba in high school, and at one time Marlon Brando called him obsessively for two weeks.
He is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.