Yessian Music, a music and sound design company with studios in New York, Detroit, Los Angeles and Hamburg, has brought Matt Nelson on board as executive producer in its NY studio. Nelson has extensive experience in audio postproduction, music supervision, film/TV score production and supervision, advertising agency music supervision and radio production.
Brian Yessian, partner and chief creative officer at Yessian, recalled, “We’ve had the opportunity to work with Matt when he was on the agency side (as a music producer) at JWT (NY) many years ago and have kept in touch since. Matt brings with him broad expertise in music, production, organization and fresh ideas that gel with our team as we continue to expand our audio offerings around the world.”
Though Nelson is based in New York, he will work across all of Yessian’s studios and collaborate with the teams in their work for commercials, live shows, immersive media and themed entertainment. Prior to joining Yessian, he had most recently served as head of production at Found Objects Music Productions,
Career highlights for Nelson include score production for M. Night Shyamalan’s film Old, Charlie Kaufman’s I’m Thinking of Ending Things, Swan Song on Apple TV+ starring Mahershala Ali, Heidi Ewing’s I Carry You With Me (winner of both the NEXT and Audience awards at Sundance), music supervision for Olympic Dreams starring Nick Kroll and Alexi Pappas, and One Cambodian Family, Please for My Pleasure for TNT/R29’s Shatterbox Anthology.
On the advertising front, Nelson’s credits include producing music for the #WannaSprite Cranberry commercial starring DRAM and LeBron James, producing and music supervising YouTube’s Life in a Day Super Bowl promotion, music supervising the international Nintendo Wii U launch, and producing all national audio assets for Burger King from 2016-2017.
Nelson said he’s been an admirer of Yessian’s work for years, sharing, “I look forward to helping the company push the boundaries of audio production even further as they continue to produce best in class music and audio around the world.”
Review: Writer-Director Andrea Arnold’s “Bird”
"Is it too real for ya?" blares in the background of Andrea Arnold's latest film, "Bird," a 12-year-old Bailey (Nykiya Adams) rides with her shirtless, tattoo-covered dad, Bug (Barry Keoghan), on his electric scooter past scenes of poverty in working-class Kent.
The song's question — courtesy of the Irish post-punk band Fontains D.C. — is an acute one for "Bird." Arnold's films ( "American Honey," "Fish Tank") are rigorous in their gritty naturalism. Her fiction films — this is her first in eight years — tend toward bleak, hand-held verité in rough-and-tumble real-world locations. Her last film, "Cow," documented a mother cow separated from her calf on a dairy farm.
Arnold specializes in capturing souls, human and otherwise, in soulless environments. A dream of something more is tantalizing just out of reach. In "American Honey," peace comes to Star (Sasha Lane) only when she submerges underwater.
In "Bird," though, this sense of otherworldly possibility is made flesh, or at least feathery. After a confusing night, Bailey awakens in a field where she encounters a strange figure in a skirt ( Franz Rogowski ) who arrives, like Mary Poppins, with a gust a wind. His name, he says, is Bird. He has a soft sweetness that doesn't otherwise exist in Bailey's hardscrabble and chaotic life.
She's skeptical of him at first, but he keeps lurking about, hovering gull-like on rooftops. He cranes his neck now and again like he's watching out for Bailey. And he does watch out for her, helping Bailey through a hard coming of age: the abusive boyfriend (James Nelson-Joyce) of her mother (Jasmine Jobson); her half brother (Jason Buda) slipping into vigilante violence; her father marrying a new girlfriend.
The introduction of surrealism has... Read More