Alchemy Post Sound co-founder and Foley artist Leslie Bloome has received two Emmy Award nominations.

Bloome was nominated for Outstanding Sound Editing for a Nonfiction Program for the A&E documentary Cartel Land. Alchemy Post sound Foley mixer Ryan Collison and Foley artist Jonathan Fang, were also named in the nomination, as were sound FX editor Mark Filip, dialogue editor Billy Orrico and sound designer Sean Garnhart.

Directed by Matthew Heineman, Cartel Land centers on a physician in Michoacán, Mexico, who leads a citizen uprising against the drug cartel that has wreaked havoc on the region for years. The film received an Academy Award nomination earlier this year for Best Documentary Feature. It has also won numerous awards at film festivals, including awards for Best Directing and Best Cinematography at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival. It is nominated for a total of five Emmys.

Bloome also received an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Sound Editing for a Nonfiction Program for the Netflix mini-series Making a Murderer. He shares the nomination with sound editor Daniel Ward.

Filmed over a 10-year period by directors Moira Demos and Laura Ricciardi, the series tells the story of Steven Avery, a DNA exoneree who, while in the midst of exposing corruption in local law enforcement, finds himself the prime suspect in a grisly new crime. The series is also nominated for six Emmys.

The 68th Emmy Awards will air Sunday, September 18, on ABC.

Pritchett To Receive CAS Career Achievement Award
Cinema Audio Society President Mark Ulano, CAS, announced that the organization will honor multiple CAS and Oscar-nominated sound mixer John Pritchett, CAS with the Cinema Audio Society’s highest accolade, the CAS Career Achievement Award, to be presented at the 53rd CAS Awards on Saturday, February 18, 2017, in Los Angeles.

Pritchett was discovered by director Robert Altman while working as a recording engineer in Dallas. Pritchett made seven pictures with Altman, including The Player, Short Cuts and Kansas City. Pritchett was the second soundman in Hollywood to go digital, with Altman’s Short Cuts in 1993.

Known for his successful working relationships with some of Hollywood’s most noted directors, Pritchett has made four movies with director Lawrence Kasdan, including Wyatt Earp, and French Kiss; four with writer-director David Mamet, including The Spanish Prisoner and State and Main; three with writer/director Paul Thomas Anderson—Magnolia, There Will Be Blood and Inherent Vice; and two films with Oliver Stone, World Trade Center and W. Pritchett was also the sound mixer on such hits as 2006’s The Break-Up, 2000’s Miss Congeniality and 1987’s Dirty Dancing.

Twice nominated for an Academy Award, in 2006 for Memoirs of a Geisha and in 2003 for Road to Perdition, Pritchett was also nominated for a CAS Award for both films and won in 2003. He was nominated for a BAFTA Film Award in 2007 for There Will Be Blood.

Pritchett’s 102nd film Everybody Wants Some for director Richard Linklater continues his reputation for expertise in handling complex technical requirements during production. “People hire me because my team and I are able to get the sound needed with the least disruption,” said Pritchett.

Pritchett joins an illustrious group of past CAS Career Achievement honorees that includes: Don Rogers, Walter Murch, Les Fresholtz, Tomlinson Holman, Richard Portman, Jim Webb, Charles Wilborn, Gary Rydstrom, Willie Burton, Mike Minkler, Ed Greene, Dennis Sands, Randy Thom, Jeffrey S. Wexler, Scott Millan, Chris Newman, Andy Nelson, David Macmillan and Doc Kane.

AES Delves Into Audio For VR, AR
The inaugural International Conference on Audio for Virtual and Augmented Reality has unveiled an expansive program of technical papers, workshops and tutorials for the two-day event to be held on September 30 and October 1, co-located with the 141st AES Conven­tion at the Los Angeles Convention Center’s West Hall. The conference and manufacturer’s Expo will spotlight research institutions, developers and vendors that are providing immersive spatial audio for virtual-reality and augmented-reality media, demonstrably one the fastest-growing segments of the entertainment-audio industry. 

Targeting content developers, researchers, manufacturers, consultants and students looking to expand their knowledge of sound production for VR and AR, a total of 27 technical papers will be offered during the two-day program, in addition to multiple practical workshops and tutorial sessions. Program content will focus on the AR/VR creative process, applications workflow and product development. The companion Expo will feature displays from leading-edge manufacturers and service providers.

Among the papers will be “Object-based 3D Audio Production for Virtual Reality Using The Audio Definition Model” presented by Chris Pike, Richard Taylor, Tom Parnell and Frank Melchior who will describe the development of a virtual-reality experience with object-based 3D audio rendering, and eventual production of an audio mix in the form of a single WAV file. The Audio Definition Model is a standardized metadata technique for representing audio content, including object-, channel- and scene-based 3D audio.

Workshop sessions will include presentations from Fraunhofer, Sennheiser, Dolby, Sound Particles, Technicolor and other companies, addressing such topics as “Audio Production, Mixing and Delivery for VR Audio,” “Immersive Sound Capture for Cinematic Virtual Reality,” “Object-based Audio Mixing for AR/VR Applications,” “Immersive Sound Design with Particle Systems,” and “3D Audio Post-Production Workflows for VR.”