On Tuesday, July 14th, IAR hosted its 2009 Summer Audio for Picture (AFP) Awards Festival. In the fourth quarter of IAR’s program, students take an audio post-production course, one of the school’s most popular subjects and a growing industry filled with lots of job opportunities. They learn to synchronize audio to video. In the course, they then define and produce their own post-production projects from start to finish, and can submit them for recognition at IAR’s AFP Awards Festival.

Students choose any video piece they wish and then they delete all audio content. Using the techniques they have learned at IAR and in the post-production course, students recreate every aspect of audio including dialog, sound FX, sound design, and musical composition. IAR invited Wendell Hanes as one judge for AFP. He has scored over 600 commercials, themes, and promotional spots for television, and has authored the post-production book, “The 30-30 Career: Making 30 Grand in 30 Seconds!” Wendell critiqued every student project and shared his comments and advice with the audience, which included students, family and friends. “Sound design is all about the contrast between highs and lows,” he said. “The sound is intense during explosions and car crashes, but immediately low when switching to dialog. Use volume and reverb. Think about the environment the video is showing and build sounds that match. “Sometimes there will be audio that you do not see on screen. During the fight scene in the movie Gladiator, as the intensity of the fight builds, you have to intensify the sounds of the crowd, tigers, and background music.” This AFP’s projects included Fast and Furious, Wall-E, 300, Gladiator, War, Nine, Drop Dead Fred, Kung Fu Panda and many more.

Thank you to every one who submitted! The Summer 2009 AFP Winners are:

1st Place Bing Jee Ng – ‘Animatrix’
2nd Place Dolo and Jay Hendershot – ‘Up’
3rd Place Saul Ruiz Rodriguez and Max Rudd – ‘Tron’
Runner Up Manny Diaz – ‘Man On Fire’