Nashville’s Paragon Studios Names Melissa Kelly Director of Studio Operations & Sales

The multifaceted Nashville audio facility Paragon Studios has a new addition to its executive roster.

Melissa Kelly has been named Director of Studio Operations & Sales at the Franklin, TN-based facility. Prior to Paragon Studios, Kelly was a Digital Intermediate Producer and Commercial Producer at Harbor Picture Company in New York City. She also served as an Executive Producer at Great City Post, and as a Post Producer/Project Manager at Technicolor Postworks.

Melissa Kelly has been joined Nashville’s Paragon Studios as Director of Studio Operations & Sales.

With her extensive post experience, Kelly will be actively seeking to reel in feature and episodic work that often is awarded to LA- and NYC-based facilities. In addition to her managerial and sales duties, Kelly is serving as Post Supervisor for the upcoming Sony/Lifetime feature “Pasty and Loretta Forever,” with the sound editorial and mix taking place at Paragon Studios.  Kelly also handled post on such films as The Upside, released earlier this year, and 2018’s Ocean’s 8 released last summer. She has also managed post for shows including “Nurse Jackie,” “The Men Who Built America,” and a plethora of unscripted programming such as “Moonshiners” and “Say Yes to the Dress.” (Visit here for her full IMDB credits.)

According to Kelly, recently implemented Tennessee tax breaks give Nashville facilities like Paragon Studios a new-found edge. “The Tennessee film/TV tax incentive offers a cash rebate on projects spending a minimum $200,000 in the form of a 25% grant,” Kelly says. “As of last summer, they added the Tennessee Entertainment Commission Scoring Incentive Program, which also offers a 25% cash rebate grant with a minimum spend of $25k-$50k depending on the location in Tennessee for where the work is being done.  A lot of this work has been outsourced to countries like London, Prague, and Budapest, but the aim is to bring it to Nashville with their abundance of musicians in the area.”

See more information on Tennessee film incentives here, and visit here for more information on the state’s music incentives.

Originally a native of North Carolina, Kelly’s move to Paragon Studios signifies a welcome return to the South. “Nashville being ‘Music City’ provides the opportunity to grow musically within the film community in a more unique and organic way than typically done in cities like New York and LA,” she notes. “Having its musical background, abundance of talented musicians, and its increasing tax incentives gives people here the opportunity to meld those two industries under one roof, which is the basis for how Paragon was built. It will be great to see what the future holds with all the potential opportunities at hand.”

Owned by re-recording mixer and supervising sound editor Fred Paragano, the 22,000 sq. ft. Paragon Studios opened in 2003 and was built specifically for music recording and post audio for film and TV.  Some of the recording artists that have worked at Paragon include Carrie Underwood, Faith Hill, Keith Urban, Amy Grant, Kenny Loggins, and Peter Frampton. Additional film/TV credits include “VeggieTales,” “Still the King,” and “Westworld.”

Paragon’s Studio B.

Please note: When you buy products through links on this page, we may earn an affiliate commission.