Assistant engineer Jordan Stalling told his colleagues at Particle Audio that he wasn’t going to enter the 2016 International Camp Kuleshov trailer contest this year because he felt he wouldn’t have the time to create an entry.
He was going to be the best man at his brother’s upcoming out-of-town wedding and needed time to prepare for that.
“We told him, go ahead and just do it,” says sound designer / mixer Steven Aguilar. “He did, and when we saw his piece, it was just incredible.”
Camp Kuleshov judges agreed, naming Stalling’s entry one of three Grand Prize winners in the competition among assistant editors, graphic designers and audio mixers at AICE-member post houses in the US and Canada.
He won for Sound Design, while Lisa Roberts of Territory, Detroit and Thom Reimerink of jumP, Los Angeles won in the categories of Editorial and Graphic Design, respectively.
“It’s a pleasure to be in this contest that showcases the work that the city is capable of,” Stalling says modestly. This was his third entry. In 2014, he was Chicago’s Grand Prize sound design winner.
His 2016 winning entry was a 1:32-minute layered and complex sound design for a segment of the 1967 Jacques Tati farce “Playtime,” a film lampooning the antiseptic feel of modern society that’s largely devoid of dialog.
“He did everything for the trailer,” notes Aguilar. “He wrote the music for it, giving it a very different creative perspective, a score with built-in sound design. It’s a cool song but then it kind of punctuates all the action.”
In addition to receiving The Lev Award (named for Lev Kuleshov, the Russian film theorist and the patron saint of Camp Kuleshov), the three winners will receive a $1,000 gift card, courtesy of Camp Kuleshov sponsor Key Code Media, which has a Schaumburg branch.
Stalling says he’ll use his cash prize to buy Christmas presents for his family.
Hailing from Downstate Effingham, Stalling graduated in 2010 from Eastern Illinois University, where he majored in business administration and music (he plays guitar). Moving to Chicago, he took a post graduate course in audio at Tribeca Flashpoint. After graduating from there in 2012 he received an internship at Particle Audio, a sister company to Larry Pecorella and Brian Rheude’s Comma Music.
He is an assistant to sound designer / mixers Aguilar and Dominic Morris, working on commercials for Weather Tech, GrubHub, Allstate and McDonald’s, among others.
The Chicago Chapter, with 23 member companies, submitted 55 entries — the single largest number received from any AICE chapter.
The three Grand Prize winners will be saluted at the 2017 AICE Awards next May in New York.
