The Wake

This past week I did a short mix for a musical demo entitled "The Wake"
Music by Russ Kaplan
Lyrics by Sara Wordsworth
Book/Story by Russ & Sara

It was really a fun gig. Sounds like it is going to be a really funny show about the sudden death of a dentist who in life turned out to be a cheating spouse and no good father, and after his death his widow and son are determined to seek revenge on his mistress. Along the way they discover that his philandering goes much further than they expected. At least that is what I gathered from the tunes that I mixed. I will be eager to see the show in its entirety.

The tracks were pretty straight forward. Rhythm section of piano, bass, drums, and guitar. Four solo vocalists plus a chorus. Everything was tracked really well which made the mixing go quite smoothly.

Russ seemed very happy with the mixes and is looking forward to hearing good things from his submitting of the demo.

I wish him and Sara the best of luck!

The four songs I mixed will be placed in a Recent Mixes player on my blog shortly.

Snakes and snails and puppydog tails?

So what happens when you mix a purring cat, an outboard motor, a blow torch, a snoring old man, a match strike, bird wings, and a pot of boiling water? Well this week anyway, it all made for a pretty scary sounding monster.

I just did some work on a 30 sec bumper for the 2009 Film Making Frenzy Fantastic Fest bumper competition. http://www.filmmakingfrenzy.com/
The short film titled Boogie Knight features a young boy who slays yet another "Boogie Man" lurking in his closet. It turned out very well, with another great score from Brian Satterwhite which we mixed yesterday as well.

The project was about 12 hours of sound design and some Foley work. Gordon, the director, said "the monsters voice should sound like a flame moving through a tube".

"Ooo K", I thought, and then went to work. Not sure if I captured that exact sound since I didn't want to risk blowing up the studio trying to record a tube full of flames, but he seemed pleased with it out of the eight or more tracks of mixed sounds I used to produce the effect.

The bumper is posted on You Tube at
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SAGxwH7tg0o

Or scroll down to the bottom of the blog pages to the Movies player

Desolution

Just finished a quick Foley gig. A well shot 5 min short film titled Desolution. (don't let spell check fool you)

It was nice getting to record some sfx again. Some of them realistic and some more artistic. Nothing too crazy, but there is a scene in the movie where the main character is shaving his face in a partial slow motion sequence, and the director wanted the effect to be bigger than life, as if the sound is in the character's mind. So with a bit of reverb and close miking I think I captured it. Good thing I had not shaved yet.

I uploaded the files last night and I hope they like the work that I've done. It would be nice if this leads to more work like this as I enjoy Foley and sound design. Though it does make it difficult to watch movies as I am always listening and wondering what the Foley artist did to create the desired effect.