We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Forrest Lotterhos. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Forrest below.

Forrest, appreciate you joining us today. Let’s start with a story that highlights an important way in which your brand diverges from the industry standard.

Moon Path Sound has the flexibility to take a deeply personalized approach to every project, offering production companies and independent producers an experience that they won’t find in a larger, corporate studio. My superpower as a sound designer is to bring out the emotional undertones in the film that I’m working on. Achieving the level of emotional resonance I’m looking for takes intentionality, intuition, and a nuanced relationship with the creators / my clients. Anyone who’s taken on a creative endeavor knows that it’s not just about the finished product, but about enjoying (as much as possible) the birthing process of bringing a vision into reality. I show up as a guide on that path, as much as I show up as a skilled technician. I’m consistently working to level up my communication and relationship-building skills. This is one deviation from the corporate norm that makes Moon Path Sound a vital asset to the film and motion community in Denver.

Forrest, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I’m a sound designer and composer and the founder of Moon Path Sound in Denver, Colorado. I provide post-production audio services to production companies, motion graphics artists, and independent directors and producers. I’ve been in love with music and sound design my whole life. For me growing up, experimenting with sound was a mode of communicating emotions that I wasn’t able to express in words. Throughout young adulthood I explored electronic music production, tracking vocals in a bare-bones home studio, experimental filmmaking, and an array of artistic mediums in which I could exercise my obsession with sound. I studied Creative Writing and Film Studies Production with an emphasis on Digital Audio Design.

In 2015, I started working as an assistant editor with Exposure Labs (The Social Dilemma, Chasing Coral, Chasing Ice) as well as with other production companies focused on social justice and climate action. Freelancing in the film industry took me on many twists and turns, and all the while, in my free time I was producing music at my home studio and teaching myself to mix. It took many years into my career to unlock the truth that sound is my entry point into storytelling. All of my creative pursuits that at times felt unfocused, started to align.

In 2022 I became curious, “can I make sound design my full-time career?” Having a solid foundation in post-production workflows from my background as an editor and a community base in the film industry, it felt possible. I kept asking the question and started telling colleagues what my heart wanted — saying the words “I want to be a sound designer.” It was literally within weeks that I began receiving job offers to work on projects in this new role. I immediately launched into learning mode, filling gaps I had in my knowledge base, reaching out to any connections I had in the sound world, and learning by fire, re: taking on client projects.

I founded Moon Path Sound in late 2023. The name Moon Path Sound arrived in my consciousness as a way to encapsulate my experiences leading to that point. The moon represents the deep emotional resonance for audiences that I help filmmakers and animators achieve. The path represents trusting myself and this life-long passion. Whatever phases and cycles I go through, I’m here to play and problem-solve.

Music and sound design is 50% of film/video and is often overlooked in pre-production, so, naturally, issues can arise. Utilizing advanced AI-driven audio plug-ins to repair and equalize dialogue is one way that I assist projects. Another big task is that it’s often necessary to strip an edited film of its original sound (or with animation that has no inherent sound elements) — I must create or recreate environmental ambiences, sync sound effects, and add emotional tonality to achieve the desired mood. Building layers upon layers of sound and mixing it all until it “glues together” can be extremely tedious, yet, extraordinarily rewarding work.

In a world saturated with visual information, I often say that, “it’s not just about how it looks, it’s about how it FEELS,” and sound is the felt sense of visual storytelling. I suggest to producers to hire their post-sound designer when they hire their lead visual coordinator — either the Director of Photography (DP) or the animator. The DP or animator’s task is to design and technically execute the desired visual story; while the post-sound designer’s task is to bring audiences into the time and space of that story through sound. It’s inherently a creative problem-solving role, with a lot of room for experimentation.

Any stories or insights that might help us understand how you’ve built such a strong reputation?

As a creative service-based business establishing a reputation within the market is sixty percent about the quality of work and expertise that I provide, and the other forty percent, in my experience, is about being a genuinely trustworthy human who communicates effectively. I strive to show up to meetings and industry events fully resourced, with an energy of playfulness. I want to remind everyone that this is creative work! We’re allowed to enjoy what we do, even when it’s challenging.

In the film industry, instilling trust and eliminating risk for producers and clients is critical to getting callbacks. Asking people to grab coffee and simply getting to know them, human to human without expectations is a great place to start. The relationships I’ve built organically and genuinely (versus purely transactional) have been such an immense gift in my life. It goes way beyond securing future gigs. It’s about community care, which, for a solopreneur, is groundbreaking stuff.

Have any books or other resources had a big impact on you?

The Win Without Pitching Manifesto by Blair Enns is an important book on my shelf and consistently informs my philosophy around building a viable creative business. As a manifesto, it inspires creatives to value our knowledge, time, and worth by refusing to give away our thinking for free in the pitching process. The alternative, Enns says, is, “deep expertise.” He claims that it’s the “only valid basis for differentiating ourselves.” When we’re able to choose a focus and claim that expertise, then clients have fewer alternatives and we can have more control over the engagement. I felt very seen (and called out!) by Enns when he pins creatives as having more difficulty in choosing a focus than most entrepreneurs because we are “highly curious” and “fascinated by new and different.”

Adopting philosophy from the Win Without Pitching Manifesto has allowed me to get out of survival mode. It’s helped me slow down, take time to reflect, and get clear about where to invest my time and energy. It’s helped me clarify something I already knew deep down. Music and sound design is where my genius shines. So what took me so long to make this decision to specialize? Making a conscious choice to claim my expertise in the work that I love the most seems simple in theory, but in reality, it’s taken a lot of courage. I had to set free endless other possibilities. I had to reach into the unknown, out of perceived comfort. I had to be willing to step up and lead the client engagement to shape the future of my business.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.moonpathsound.com
• Instagram: forrestdwlr
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/forrestlotterhos/
• Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/forrestdwlr
• Other: Vimeo: vimeo.com/forrestlotterhos

Image Credits

Brook Browning, Forrest Lotterhos