We had a private screening of Robert Rollins’ new film “Knightfall” today, basically a belated wrap party for all of the cast and crew. Since the film composer begins working in post-production it is the only chance for much of the crew to meet the film composer. I feel like I know all the actors and yet I’m a complete stranger to them, which is always amusing.
Love N’ Dancing soundtrack complete
Today I spent the day in the studio listening to the mixdown of my orchestrations of composer David Iscove’s score for Love N’ Dancing. The film is going to sound great, and it will be released some time in 2009. The film is directed by Robert Iscove and stars the beautiful Amy Smart and Tom Malloy.
Knightfall film score finished
My score for Robert Rollins’ film “Knightfall” wrapped today. This film score was a tough one to get my head around at first, but the final product is great.
Orchestrater for Yazawa world tours
In the last few days I orchestrated and did music copyist work on a couple of songs for Japanese pop star Yazawa along with Ruy Folguera. The music will be used throughout his upcoming Asian and European tours, and I believe they will use the orchestrations in album recordings as well. Here is one example with just a small string orchestra.
The Razor screening at LA Shorts Festival
Ryosuke Kawanaka’s film “The Razor” was screened today at the LA Shorts Festival. This is my second screening this year at the LA Shorts Festival. I wrote this film score in an old jazz style reminiscent of Louis Armstrong playing Summertime. Fellow composer Kyle Newmaster played trumpet for me on the score.
Pumpkin Hollow screening at LA Shorts Festival
The score I composed for Robert Rollins’ “Pumpkin Hollow” was screened with the film today at the LA Shorts Festival. The score is dramatic and orchestral throughout, as it’s meant to be a suspenseful and slightly scary Halloween film. This is my first collaboration with Robert, but he’s actively working on concepts for a half dozen other films so I’m sure it won’t be the last.
Working with Lalo Schifrin on Rush Hour III
Over the last few days I made some mockups of Lalo Schifrin’s new score for Rush Hour III which stars Jackie Chan. Lalo is an old school composer and he still prefers to write with pencil and paper, so I was part of the team led by Ruy Folguera which prepared realistic mockups for the director to hear and comment on. It’s a real treat to work so closely with such a legend of film music.
Re-orchestrating Alan Menken music
I am mildly re-orchestrating and doing music preparation for composer Alan Menken and a medley of his music that will be played at the Cinema Expo in Amsterdam soon. It includes sneak previews of his score from the soon-to-be-released film score for Enchanted, which is hotly anticipated at the moment. It’s an honor to work with his music and study it in such close detail.
Alan cut together audio of the medley and gave me the original scores. The job is actually un-orchestrating or reducing. It’s my job to edit the scores to match and then re-orchestrate the huge session orchestra music down to fit the smaller live performance ensemble.
Take A Bow documentary film score complete
The music mix for Becky Doppelt’s documentary Take A Bow, for which I was the composer, wrapped today. I scored it here in Los Angeles, the film will be dubbed in Chicago, and then it’s finished! That’s good news for any documentary, because docs take forever to make. This is my first feature film score, and I’m very proud of how it turned out.