I've left Greg to post a million things on the blog and been terribly silent for a while. But lots to muse upon not least because I went to the Edinburgh Fringe in August. More of that later. One of the acts I missed while there was the 5 star rave review rated Camille O'Sullivan. Fortunately she's now on a tour and I saw her last Friday at the Town Hall in Birmingham. Never been to the Town Hall before - most impressive after its refurb. Camille was marvelous - amazing voice and utterly potty - going from the heart bleeding sincerity of songs like God is in the House (a Nick Cave song) to invading the crowd and making us all shout 'meow' at her. Very entertaining. Go and see her if you can.
A ye olde friend Rich Pharaoh recently moved out to New Zealand for who knows how long. We used to be in a band together called November Station - yes a terrible name for a band. He's a drummer, and true to form has found himself a percussive role out in NZ in a band called George and Queen. Check them out here... I think they're really rather good!
Some free tunes for your auditory pleasure recorded by Greg & his very talented songwriting friend John Paul Blake. Greg provided the drums and the artwork John Paul did the rest - enjoy.
Coming as we do from the guerilla school of filmmaking we have a tendency to try and do as much as we can in one of our films. That means the story, the design, but also the voices and the music too. Perhaps we are Jack-of-all-Trades, or maybe just control freaks?
In The Moon Bird we made a decision early on that we would make this a non-dialogue film. There were three main reasons: (1) it immediately makes the film more international which is important when you're entering loads of film festivals (2) it presents a challenge to us as filmmakers - we have to create a story that can be followed through visual storytelling alone and (3) initially we thought it would be nice to get a big name actress to do narration and voices, but they were going to cost a third of the budget.
So... this time we're not doing the voices, and neither is anyone because there's no actual talking. But what about the music?
Sometimes we're quite instinctive about our soundtracks and we'll go into the studio quite late on with some ideas and see what emerges on the day. But other times we'll start looking at the music a long time beforehand and try to take a more considered approach.
This was how it worked with Pedro and Frankensheep. We talked with Exec Producer Gillian Scothern and Producer-Creator Phil Cooper about the kind of music we needed for the series. There were titles and credits songs, background music and then feature songs sung by Hector and Hugo the sheep ticks. In this case the music was created over a series of weeks and months. You can listen to some of the Pedro songs on our music player.
And this is also the approach we're taking to The Moon Bird. We've already created seven basic themes for the film. Over the coming weeks we'll test and develop more themes, and work some of them up to finished tracks. The test themes are useful for adding flavour to the animatic which we're creating at the moment.
We've found that music and soundscape should not be underestimated in a film. Sometimes in a comedy, you might have been working on a scene for so long you're not sure if it's funny anymore. Add the sound effects and music and suddenly it comes alive again. And in a piece like Moon Bird, which is darker, we hope that the music will convey a powerful sense of mood and atmosphere.
The music we've created isn't song-based as such. We have gone for a much more expressive form of soundtrack which is really using a few simple sounds and instruments together to create a sense of wonder, or dread, or discovery, or discomfort. Here's a sample of one of the themes we've produced.
To polish the music, we always head down the road to Bidford on Avon to see our friend Paul Johnston at Rhythm Studios. He's been mixing the sound for our films (and bands) for years. He gives that final touch of magic, plus he understands Midi which is like some kind of weird alchemy.
My good freind and guitar genius Toby has put together a new band for which I am providing my drumming 'expertise'. You can download a track here. It could be described as lo-fi psychedelic garage prog - but you make your own minds up.
