ORIGINAL MUSIC FOR FILM (NARRATIVE)
= = = = =
ORIGINAL SCORE (SCI FI/ DRAMA): “INTO THE VOID”
Above: highlight reel of my original musical score for "Into the Void", a feature-length sci fi adaptation of "The Sea Wolf" by Jack London, directed by Wayne Johnson. My score involved equal parts strident orchestration, melodic delicacy, psychedelic rock, and ominous atmospherics. Here’s a Soundcloud playlist of cues from the movie.
The spacecraft in the film is entering the Void, a region of space that bounces back all the radio waves ever transmitted throughout Earth's history. So I also created a variety of "antique" music cues to exist in the diegetic reality of the narrative, heard by the characters within the scenes. To simulate music of varied vintage, I futzed the mix with an appropriate amount of distortion and crackle. Here’s a reel of these source cues.
= = = = =
“THE CAPER”: ORIGINAL MUSIC FOR ROMANTIC COMEDY SHORT
Above: Original musical score for this short film, a romantic comedy directed by Matthew Anderson. As two women bond over dating fatigue and a love of film noir, a story unfolds that inspired me to write bossa nova (2 versions: sprightly upbeat and downtempo lachrymose, each somehow perfect to cover montage sequences), piano jazz, a 1930s horror film score (source from the TV), cheesy beach music, and a bombastic symphonic cue to underscore a detour into the aforementioned noir.
= = = = =
“NOWHERE LEFT TO RUN”: ORIGINAL MUSICAL SCORE FOR EXPERIMENTAL FILM
Above: An excerpt from my original score on Felipe Mafasoli’s experimental film “Nowhere Left to Run”-- an abstract, associative vision of a post-apocalyptic dream world.
I did my best to channel the Flaming Lips on this particular cue, which accompanied a tableaux that evoked equal parts beauty and decay.
= = = = =
ORIGINAL MUSICAL SCORE FOR THE COMEDY WEB SERIES “THEATER PEOPLE”
Above: Samples of original music I created for the comedy web series Theater People, as well as for some spots promoting the show. Styles include mambo, bossa, rock, orchestral, ragtime, Dixieland, music box lullabye, and of course Satanic choral drones. Plus a pit stop along the way to imagine a (fictional) musical theater adaptation of "The Shawshank Redemption", wherein I created accompaniment for director Matthew Anderson's lyrics.
The series is a wide-ranging comedy that uses the Twin Cities theater scene as a backdrop. Anderson wanted an approach to score that commented on the emotional reality rather than inhabiting it; a variety of tongue-in-cheek genre cues fit the bill best.
= = = = =
ORIGINAL SCORE, DRAMATIC SHORT: “JOHNNY DEPP IS NOT DEAD”
Above: Excerpts of my original score for "Johnny Depp Is Not Dead", a poignant short film directed by Dawn Schot Klotzbatch. Atmospheric, ethereal tones highlight the the emotions of an unseen man's wife and daughter as they mourn his death, eventually bonding over a Johnny Depp movie and a bubble fight. Music and sound were central in telling the story-- very little dialogue in this film, for which I also served as Foley artist and location sound mixer.
= = = = =
ORIGINAL MUSIC FOR DOCUMENTARY: “BOOMTOWN”
Above: highlight reel of music from “Boomtown”. A documentary short by Robert Bryant and J.David LeCompte, “Boomtown” examines the lives of the Cassorla brothers, proprietors a fireworks shop in rural Nevada. As well as serving as sound editor and rerecording mixer for the piece, I provided two different arrangements of an original country-rock track. And I got to meet the Cassorla brothers when the film premiered in Minneapolis, which was about as much fun as I figured it’d be.
= = = = =
ORIGINAL MUSIC PLACEMENT: “ASSASSINS TALE” (FEATURE FILM)
Above: An ambient cue underscoring a scene from “Assasins Tale”, a feature film directed by Arthur Louis Fuller about hired killers in search of redemption. My hope for this music was to underscore a sense of spiritual tension as the characters wrestle with the ravages of heroin addiction.
= = = = =