Heard City Makes Impact on the Invisible Front

When Soviet forces occupied Lithuania in 1944, a resistance movement swiftly emerged to defend their homeland. The Invisible Front, a documentary featuring dialogue editing and sound design by the auditory experts at Heard City, tells the story of the resistance and their charismatic leader, Juozas Luksa. The film, directed by Vincas Sruoginis and Produced by Mark Johnston, is ready for public release after a multi-year production process.

Heard City’s Cory Melious took the lead on the complex project, which required an elaborate balance of voice-over narration, music, sound effects and interview dialogue. “There’s no one more fit than Cory to handle a project of this length and complexity,” noted Heard City EP Gloria Pitagorsky. “He has an enormous toolbox, and when presented with a long-form project like this, he really has a chance to show off the range of his creative skills.”

Perhaps the most challenging element was rebuilding the audio from the decades-old archival footage. Melious and his team labored to create the most textured sonic space possible, alternately sprucing up the original audio and creating entirely new sounds to synch with the footage.

Melious worked closely with Sruoginis throughout the edit portion of the project, carefully balancing the voice and picture edit as the timing and script changed. “Dialogue is king in the world of documentaries,” stated Melious. “When I mix I make sure we can clearly understand the dialog and narration first, and then layer in the other elements around it to make the full story.”

The studio teamed up with a few notable names in the audio production world to help music drive the narrative, including Icelandic composer Olafur Arnalds, who struck the exact Northern European sound at the crux of European and American sensibilities that Sruoginis sought.

About Heard City:

Heard City is a boutique audio post-production company located in New York’s Flatiron district servicing the advertising, motion picture and television industries.