Category: 48 Hour Film

Last night, I trekked up to Silver Spring, MD to the AFI Silver movie theatre to watch the Group D entries into the 48 Hour Film Project site. Running for two Group showings a night for four nights, Group D had I think 12 or 16 entries in the competition\festival….meaning there were perhaps a little under 100 films total for just Washington DC area alone.

Some were pretty good, others not so good… I thought ours stacked somewhere in the middle…certainly not the best, but easily not the worst of the night. We’ll find out next week where all the films placed (we had ballots for our group’s films).

Some of the best? A hilariously and purposefully terrible thriller of sorts about the Watergate break in, a funny sci fi film shot at the futuristic looking master control room of XM Radio, and a goofy horror movie about a scorned and vengeful cupcake making killer.

Anyway, check out our film below, and probably eventually on the 48 Hour Film Project site.

[youtube]L8BwwOujYtc[/youtube]

Well before I provide some final thoughts, I figured I’d share the music I came up with for the film project. (Click on the song names to download, or on the newly implemented audio player!)

In The Dark — This was the first thing that I came up with. After leaving the initial story meeting, I was feeling a sorta serious and mysterious mood was going to be prevalent. While this was not used in the final cut of the film, it did get my mind back into recording. The song is a slow repetition of pianos and atmospherics, then subsequently reversed, filtered, and processed like hell. I like it, though maybe its not quite right for this weekend, but rather more suited for a horror or western or sci fi picture.

[audio:https://hellocomein.com/soundbox/48HourFilm/InTheDark.mp3]

Horror String Orchestral — Another rejected song idea, though this one is clearly rooted in the lo fi 80s slasher movie genre… I picture a really haunting horror movie title opener set to this with plenty of gore and melodramatic overacting. Maybe next time.

[audio:https://hellocomein.com/soundbox/48HourFilm/HorrorStringOrchestral.mp3]

Alex’s Mallets — Named after an old high school friend with the same name, this was by far the favourite of the team. Compared to the previous two, this one is certainly a bit more upbeat, quirky and though repetitive, extremely catchy. At times, especially when used in a particular scene, this theme borders on darkly demonic, like a sicko circus clown theme, but maybe that’s just because I’ve heard it a million times in the last 24 hours. One aspect I like a lot is the shaker, which turned about to be the hardest track to get a good sounding recording from. Makes me wonder how people mic that type of percussion without accidentally hitting the microphone like I did.

[audio:https://hellocomein.com/soundbox/48HourFilm/Alex’sMallets.mp3]

Theme For a Drinking Establishment — One type of music I knew we were going to need was background music for a bar and a party. The former, this theme, is a standard, shoegazey rocker that I thought would be something one might hear playing on the bar’s music system. Intended to be mildly generic wallpaper, it actually came out pretty well when mixed down really low.

[audio:https://hellocomein.com/soundbox/48HourFilm/ThemeForADrinkingEstablishment.mp3]

The Long Walk Home — This one which was also used in an earlier bar scene, was originally envisioned as a introspective, mopey ‘I’m walking alone b\c I’m sad’ noir thing. It has a little of bit of a jazz feel because of the melody on celeste and some faint melancholy strings to fill out the rather simple guitar chord progression on this.

[audio:https://hellocomein.com/soundbox/48HourFilm/TheLongWalkHome.mp3]

There was a last minute drum loop of some break beats that I mixed from samples for the party scene, but it’s not really worth posting because I didn’t really write per se, but just arrange for some background filler noise as if it was music being played at the party. I also have quite a bit of aborted or under-developed themes and scratch tracks but certainly nothing worth showing off in this space.

When all is said and done, I estimate about 60 to 90 seconds of music was used in the near 6minute film… but I think in the scenes they inhabit, it works well. As I wrap up this process, I think the challenge itself is pretty daunting, but a rewarding one — not only for the music creation, which in many ways just felt like crafting songs for our EP series, but for just pulling together so many things to get the project done.

It certainly has made me want to try to make a short film of my own, or at least one that has a plot or point I can actually recognize more clearly. Still cool to be involved.

I decided to minimize the amount of posts devoted to this project… so this thread combines most into one larger captain’s log. This reads in reverse chronology, so the most recent posts are at the top. Enjoy!

Rendering The Day Away. — 04 May 2008, 5:25pm

Well we’re in rendering phase, meaning all the work is finally wrapping up. Spent most of today at the HQ doing final music mixes and figuring out what scenes they would fit underneathe.

I think we used small portions of 4 of the songs I crafted, including a last minute bit of generic drum and bass I sampled and looped for a scene.

In all I think my aspect of the creation process went pretty okay — some music really fit the mood of the story and was generally well received. Hopefully it will all sound okay when all mixed together and the cues work well…we sorta had to rush through that part at the end just to get it done.

More thoughts on the process plus posting of the songs later.

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Melodramatic String Swells — 04 May 2008, 10:04am

Wow yesterday was a terrible day to be cooped up in the house writing music — pretty tempting to ditch this stuff and take advantage of the nice weather. But at least I didn’t have to pull an all-nighter like the rest of the team did.

I worked on a few ideas until about 2am Saturday morning, then had a leisurely morning before hunkering down around 1030am to get to work. Spent most of the day working on about six different themes, in various levels of completion. Some pretty okay, some not so much, and some good but probably not ideal for this project. (Tonight, I’ll post all the music I worked on.)

Overall, the group seemed to like most of the tracks I previewed for them so hopefully that’s a good sign that despite working in a bubble, I was able to capture the mood of what they were going for. I went primarily a bit dark and quirky, hoping that if anything it could be moody background noise if anything else. I think I left a lot of repetition and minimalism in the songs so that it wouldn’t distract from the story. Don’t look for any melodramatic string swells that cue the titular line or anything like that.

Today while the rest of the team recovers from Friday night’s all night writing session and Saturday’s all day shooting and digitizing, I will be putting some final touches and overdubs to what I have. And then final mixing and syncing with the final film. The end is in sight.

More later.

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1, 2, 3 Break. — 02 May 2008, 10:19pm

Some of the various groups are breaking off now to go secure shooting locales for tomorrow and for the writing team to figure out what the fuck everyone just discussed for the last 3 hours.

Which means it was my cue to exit gracefully for the night and get to work.

So far there is a definite notion that since they are able to shoot at some bar and therefore the story will start there, I will need some bar music. Easy enough to make some distant sounding rock thing or some break beat loops. My approach to this is not to have true music cues or dramatic swells that will distract from the movie, but rather diegetic music that will be simply heard as if the audience is the main character … that is if a character on screen is not around a source of music, there shouldn’t be any. We’ll see if that works.

Just ordered some foods, so I’ll be digging in soon enough after that. More later.

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Get Out Your Drama Sauce. — 02 May 2008, 8:16pm

Sitting with the crew of people, most I don’t know. So far all we seem to have is the assigned requirements that must be found somewhere in the film:

Genre — Drama (awfully vague, but uh okay)

Line — “I’ll be glad when he’s gone.”

Prop — Sauce (no labels)

Character — Larry or Lori Gardener

Occupation — Designer

Obviously leaves a lot to the imagination. Right now they are discussing an idea about a guy or girl sitting at bar relating a story… sounds like a romantic, existential story about love or something like that… I would detail more about this aspect but I’m not sure they know just yet. We will probably cut away at some point, or many times as he’s narrating, to show the actual situation he’s in.

We’ll see how it develops…stay tuned.

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Chainsaw Samples and Robot Rom Coms — 02 May 2008, 12:15pm

Getting closer to go time… that is after I go have a post-work drink to wash away the work week tears.

I spent part of today putting together a list of resources for some free, public domain sound effects and music queues… just in case I need something to sample. I am guessing I’ll prob use my own musics, but you never know when you need the sound of a chainsaw or a rocket.

Chainsaw sample Rocket sample

Out of all the genres that we could possibly be assigned, I’m really pulling for something in the horror or sci fi realm… both because I think moody atmospherics are easier to pull off with my arsenal of music things and because I hope I don’t have to play some sappy acoustic emo guitar shite. Not sure if you can hybridize the genres, like say if you were to be assigned romantic comedy but decided to make it a robot rom com instead. Gotta stick with what I’m good at.

Tonight I will start a long weekend of composing music for a short film. The catch is I will be working without seeing the final product. The project is part of one of those “Make a Film in 48 Hours” type competitions, specifically, Washington D.C.’s creatively titled 48 Hour Film Project.

The goal of the competition which kicks off tonight at 530pm and runs until about 9pm Sunday night, is essentially to conceive an entire 5-10min film; everything from writing, shooting, editing (and all the other things that go into a movie shoot) must be done over the course of the 48 hours.

Now I have helped on short films before, and I certainly have taken part in other similar music creation challenges: 2007’s RPM Challenge, not to mention an ENTIRE FUCKING YEAR!!! of making EPs. But this will be slightly different for me since the film will not be finished, therefore most of the music will be created somewhat in a bubble.

During the weekend I will take part in some of the film creation process like idea brainstorming, editing and such, but for the most part will be writing enough music and background noise to hopefully best fit the final film. Throughout all this, I will also be blogging about the process, putting up some early samples and demos and perhaps publicly humiliating myself when I crumble under the stress.

So stay tuned and see you later…