Who We Are
a diversified audio team
At Unlock, we harness the power of broader perspectives and unmistakable, collaborative expertise to help our partners make more impactful and engaging games.



Elliot Callighan
Originally a violinist, Elliot began his journey in music and audio on the violin using the Suzuki method at the age of four. While he loved his experience on this instrument, it wasn’t enough. He began playing piano at eight, guitar at 12 and at 20, Daft Punk convinced him to give the computer a shot, too. (thankfully!)
To pursue music and audio, Elliot enlisted in the Army National Guard. This path led to degrees in Music Composition and Sound Design, a commission as a Military Officer, and his work being featured in campaigns for United Airlines, Instagram, Spiderman: Far From Home, GMC, The Godrej Group, Chevrolet Motors, the Goodman Theatre and the Joffrey Ballet as well as many films and games.
Elliot always focuses on creating distinct personality and aesthetic in all audio while maintaining that memorable “hummable” factor in his music. He brings this sensibility to his work in games, film, trailer and commercial projects. He has served as Soundpost Co-Chair for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra Overture Council and teaches as Adjunct Faculty in the Film and Game programs at DePaul University.



Ali Cedroni
A bit nomadic, a lot extroverted, and determined to collaborate with as many talented folks as possible; Ali has all your dialogue needs covered. An enthusiastic networker and dedicated team player, she’ll find you a cast perfect for bringing all your characters to life.
Ali has been traveling the world as a freelance sound designer and dialogue editor since graduating Columbia College Chicago. Her wanderlust and love for meeting new people has brought her to live and work everywhere from Oslo Norway, to Los Angeles California.
As our dialogue specialist, she walks through the whole process: preproduction, casting, directing, editing, and implementation. Keeping a constant stream of communication, bouncing ideas, and making sure all parties involved are able to bring their best work to the table.



John Robert Matz
Best known for his work on video game scores as diverse as the BAFTA-nominated “Gunpoint”, “Artemis: the Spaceship Bridge Simulator”, “For The King”, and the award-winning “Fossil Echo”, John Robert Matz is a Chicago-based composer, arranger, multi-instrumentalist and music educator.
Classically trained, he has incorporated his educational multi-disciplinary musical training throughout his works, performing a variety of wind, brass, string and percussive instruments in his game and film scores, and using his knowledge to stretch instrumental timbres and find new sounds.
John Robert is a member of ASCAP, and the Game Audio Network Guild, and has been honored with a nomination for “Best Video Game Score” for the ASCAP Screen Awards, and in the 2017 G.A.N.G. Awards, winning “Best Interactive Score” for his work on “Fossil Echo”, as well as being named G.A.N.G.’s “Rookie of the Year” for 2017. In his spare time, he enjoys worrying about his Steam backlog, reading good books, and removing cats from his MIDI controllers.



Michelle Thomas
Michelle has over a decade of experience in the AAA Games Industry. She has worked in Account Administration, Quality Assurance, Sound Design and Integration with a player experience first mindset. She’s a certified Wwise End User who also presented on the 2020 Wwise Tour Online discussing the Sonic Storytelling of the award winning audio for Sucker Punch Productions “Ghost of Tsushima”.
She jumped into games as a Games Master for Blizzard Entertainment’s “World of Warcraft” before joining Carbine Studios to provide sound design and implementation for the Massively Multiplayer Online game “Wildstar”.
Michelle was nominated for “The Golden Reel Award” for her work on “Ghost of Tsushima” and recognized for outstanding achievement by the Motion Picture Sound Editors in 2020. She is also a recipient of “Outstanding Achievement in Audio Design” D.I.C.E. Awards (2021) and “Audio Achievement” BAFTA (2021).
When not working, she’s raising and training two wonderful dogs who can communicate using Voice Recorded Buttons! Her thumb has recently been turning green with gardening and landscaping. She enjoys playing couch-co-ops with her spouse and recently sunk over 100 hours playing “Elden Ring”.



Grace Emery
Grace has designed and implemented sounds both in-house at Rebellion and freelance for multiple AAA games spanning realistic and fictional genres, for multiplayer and single player experiences. Prior to working in games, Grace directed the audio for 360 and VR marketing experiences, working on all areas from location recording, dialogue to composition and sound design. She has also co-run an electronic music record label based in South London, spurred by her love of floor-stomping synths.
Grace is a lover of spatial audio and all things VR believing that it is the future of ultimate immersion! She studied spatial audio under an ambisonics guru for the BBC at UCL.
Player of a few instruments, lover of drums. You can also hear her voice on a few Dell ads.



Jon Ruse
Coming from a background of classical music training and electronic music production, Jon has woven a career through the industry gaining experience in Audio Post, Sound Design, Music Production, Mixing, Mastering and Composing.
After multiple top-100 music releases in drum and bass his focus shifted to sound design, where he has been fortunate enough to work on top charting Netflix original animations, high action features and online content for games such as Clash of Clans, Brawl Stars, Boom Beach and Football Manager.
With a passion for all things electronic, he creates rich sound worlds that can be as aggressive as they are delicate. He also secretly enjoys writing in third person and gets annoyed if no comments are made about his beard.



Bonnie Bogovich
Bonnie has her fingers in a plethora of audio pies and has worked on a variety of award-winning educational products, virtual and augmented reality simulations, interactive experiences, and audio plays/radio dramas including “I Expect You To Die”, Sea World’s “Race For The Beach”, “Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood,” “Jurassic World Revealed,” “Cobra Kai: The Karate Kid Saga Continues,” “Bards Tale IV”, KQMP’s “At The Tone”, and “HUSH: In Search of Dominic Ward”.
Her voice can be heard in “Pathfinder: Kingmaker”, “Death and Taxes”, “Water Bears,” “Hell Architect,” “Wasteland 3”, “Codename Blank”, “Mandible Judy”, “The Dracula Radioplay Experience” and “The Call of the Flame: An Audio Play”, and as a singer/vocalist on soundtrack and tribute albums. A singer on live, and virtual, operatic, choral, and musical ensembles, she also co-created and produced “Evenings in Quarantine: The Zombie Opera”, “Super Smash Opera” it’s sequel “Aria Kart,” and herds a choir of ‘chickens’ known, “The Bwak Choir.”
Active on the National Audio Theatre Festivals (Hear Now) board, and the Game Audio Network Guild, she also speaks at a variety of video game and audio conferences, has lectured at the Berklee School of Music, Duquesne University, Teknofonic, and taught audio for games and animation at the Art Institute of Austin.



Thomas Kresge
Thomas Kresge is a composer, arranger, orchestrator, copyist, saxophonist, and educator with credits spanning film, television, video games, musical theater, and live concerts.
His professional credits include orchestrations, arranging, and music preparation for Marco Beltrami (Waiting for the Barbarians, Shadows in My Eyes, Nine Perfect Strangers, Bach by Beltrami), Diana Ross (2019 tour, NBC’s Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree Lighting), Michael James Scott, Disney (The Incredibles 2 trailer campaign), Jacob Yoffee (Kohl’s trailer campaign), and others, as well as fully arranging the scores for the musicals “Way Back When” and “Esther.” He contributes regularly as an arranger for the Game Brass and as producer on their albums since 2018.
Thomas received his Bachelors of Music Composition from George Mason University before going on to earn a Master’s of Film Scoring from the Seattle Film Institute, under the mentorship of Hummie Mann. When he’s not spending time making or playing music, he’s probably busy cooking and mixing drinks with his wife or dreaming about that cat he’s wanted but not yet committed to adopting yet.



Knaddersound
Knaddersound is the collaboration of Mathilde Hoffmann and Felix Barbarino – two sound designers who bond over co-op games, terrible puns and cocoa with oat milk.
Mathilde and Felix met in the Music Academy where they studied Music Design. After graduation, Mathilde worked as a sound designer at Daedalic Entertainment, making sounds on award-winning games such as “Ken Follett’s: The Pillars of the Earth”, while Felix worked in professional recording studios, mixing worldwide commercial spots and designing sounds for some of the largest automotive brands.
When they joined forces to score and design the sounds for the popular couch-coop game “Unrailed!”, Knaddersound was formed, specializing in unique, crispy and juicy sound worlds.



Idiom Loop
Idiom Loop co-founder Jay Clipperton demonstrates expertise and comfort in every aspect of the audio pipeline from asset creation and composition to tools programming, orchestration and full-scale development. His uniquely multi-disciplinary history has allowed him the opportunity to contribute to titles across all platforms, often serving as the communication throughline to merge the creative and technical needs of a project.
Multi-instrumentalist, performer and teacher/clinician he has instructed hundreds of students in song-writing workshops and musical proficiency, served as musical director for the stage and numerous a cappella groups. During his time as a performer, he had the opportunity to share the stage with Ben Folds, The Nylons, The Swingle Singers and many vocal stalwarts while touring across North America.
He enjoys the technical chicanery of VR experiences, and that perfect “aha” moment when a sound perfectly syncs with visuals for the first time. Past projects include: VR bullet-hell “Blasters of the Universe”, AR wave shooter “Marvel Dimension of Heroes”, audio-only RPG “The Vale: Shadow of the Crown”, and comedic firefighting sim “Embr”.
Do you share our passion for creating the best sounding games and pursuing what's next in game audio? We're always looking for folks whose unique and diverse experience will make our team smarter, better, faster, and stronger.
Brand Partner

Periscope is Unlock’s partner for all things game audio. When scope or timeline requires extra hands, Unlock goes to Periscope. With locations in downtown Chicago on the Cinespace lot as well as Los Angeles, Periscope regularly handles audio needs for major network and streaming shows for Fox, CBS, Netflix, Amazon, and Showtime. Series credits include Empire, The Unicorn, Work in Progress, The Chi, feature films like Kickboxer: Vengeance, POOH: The Derrick Rose Story, Come As You Are, and brand advertising for Honda, Pepsi, and Groupon.
Unlock team members contribute music, sound design and implementation to Periscope when a project includes games or more advanced technologies to ensure the end experience is exactly what the client needs.
Between Unlock and Periscope, there’s nothing we can’t handle.