Days in the Life of a Film Composer

For the past month, I've been diligently working on the edit of a short documentary film entitled "The Polish Hotel" directed by local filmmaker Margaret Barry. It has been a bear to assemble but I'm proud to announce that we finally have a fine cut. It still needs another round or two of tightening, trimming and polishing but it's an extremely good representation of what this film is going to be.

After we lock down the edit in early August we'll begin post-production which includes finishing up the end credits, sound design, sound mix and color correction. I'm not scoring this one as we've elected to use the music of a famous Polish jazz artist who is featured in the film. Her music is complementing the movie beautifully!

It's been a long road but we're both really excited to be so close to completion. It's going to be a wonderful little film that both Margaret and I will be extremely proud of. Hopefully, this time next month we'll be done and we can start to push it out onto the festival circuit in search of its audience.

We can't wait.

This past week at Comic-Con 2012, Kevin Smith (director of CLERKS, MALLRATS, CHASING AMY, etc.) introduced two new iPhone/iPad games to an unsuspecting crowd of fans. One of those games featured music I composed just a couple of weeks ago. JAY AND SILENT BOB: LET US DANCE! is a rhythm game not unlike Guitar Hero where you push colored buttons to the beat in order to keep Jay (Mewes) dancing. There are three songs with various tempos you can choose from to play the game. I composed two of the three songs. They're titled "Torque Wrench" and "Tomorrow Knows."

I was offered the gig a mere two weeks ago when Adrian Glover, a producer over at GameSalad (the team hired to create the game) here in Austin, called me up to see if I would be interested in scoring it. He produced THE CHILDREN'S WAR (2010) which I scored several years ago. It was a super-quick turnaround. I was given a week to produce the two tracks but I had some other things to finish up so I only spent about four days working on them. Matt mixed both tracks.

It was a fun project. I had never written music to an iPhone video game before. Plus I was able to really open up and create some fairly intense techno beats which I don't normally get to do in a film. "Torque Wrench" had a strange Depeche Mode/Prodigy influence with a screaming 80's metal hair-band guitar solo thrown in for good measure. "Tomorrow Knows" had its roots in 90s indie rock with some harder beats thrown in. I really enjoy both tracks.

Here is a video showing Jason Mewes demonstrating the game at Comic-Con.



And here is an article written by Billy Garretsen of GameSalad about the story behind the creation of the game.

This past weekend I picked up a rather curious new display piece for my studio. It's an early 70's IBM Executive MUSIC typewriter. It's one of the strangest things I've seen. It's modeled after a very traditional Executive typewriter only it is used for typesetting music manuscripts. Since acquiring it I've done a fairly exhaustive Google search and I can not find any mention of this device anywhere on the internet. It's like it doesn't even exist. The typewriter still works but the ink ribbon is dry so the type is pretty faint. Inside the hood I discovered a maintenance record which dates back to as early as 1971 and ends around 1976.

I'm asking around and still searching for clues as to what exactly this is and what it was used for. In the meantime, it's a really cool display piece for my studio and a conversation starter for sure. I love curious objects like this!!

Here's my newly acquired early 70's IBM Executive music typewriter.
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Here's a closeup of the keyboard.
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Just last month I posted an article about all the things I'm involved in. I do have a lot of pots boiling on the stove. This month I've added another. I got a call from Richard McKay who is the artistic director and principal conductor of the newly formed Dallas Chamber Symphony. He and I worked on a project together several years ago when he was a conducting graduate student at the University of Texas. I hadn't heard from him since so it was nice to catch up and hear what he's been up to.

He called to ask if I would be interested in helping them program some film music related concerts. He wants 25% of their seasonal performance schedule to be focused on film music and called to seek out any ideas I might have. We talked at length about it and explored my role with the orchestra. He sent me over a prospectus and gave me time to mull it over.

We talked again a couple weeks later. This time I had some firm ideas which he responded well too. I was also helpful in reacting to some other ideas he had. He asked if I would be willing to serve on their board of advisers. I said, "of course!" I now have a small list of duties to tend to and along the way will be their contact point for advice regarding the film music portion of their season.

I'm pretty excited about this. Championing film music is a big part of what I do. This definitely serves that role. When I first moved to Austin back in 1998 one of my goals was to earn the reputation for being "the guy" in Texas when it comes to film music. Less than fifteen years into my career, I'm seeing several manifestations supporting this goal including my role with the Dallas Chamber Symphony.

It's going to be a lot of fun for me to work with Richard on this. I applaud him for wanting to include film music in his programing. Before the first note sounds, I'm already a big fan of the Dallas Chamber Symphony.

This is an artist's rendition of the new Dallas City Performance Hall scheduled to open later this year. This will be the new home for the Dallas Chamber Symphony.

Mark Gardener (writer and director of CELL: THE WEB SERIES) is preparing for his next project entitled WEIRD GIRLS (which I will be scoring). He's been helping promote the new web series by producing a collection of interviews with various industry folk who will be working on the show. Mark asked if I would be interested in being one of the interviews and I happily obliged.

McKenna Marmolejo is a fifteen year old actress from Houston who has joined the cast of Weird Girls and agreed to to host these cool interviews. I had a lot of fun showing McKenna my studio and talking with her about what I do. She's very spunky and has a natural love of being in front of the camera. Her personality really comes through on screen.

Here is the completed extended-cut version of the interview...

This week was a great week for acquiring cool new stuff for my studio. For starters, a friend's office was closing down here in Austin and was literally giving away all their office furniture and supplies. I grabbed a great office chair in excellent condition and some supplies but the one thing I was most excited about is a Toshiba 2860 photocopier! It's a mid-90s era copier but only had a 55K page count on it which wasn't too bad. Considering it was free I'm very happy to finally have a photocopier in my studio. When I need to photocopy music for sessions I won't have to go to Kinko's anymore!

My Toshiba 2860 photocopier (click to enlarge)

I also went to an estate sale up in Georgetown. I've been wanting to go to an estate sale for a while now so I just looked up the closest one that was going on this week and found this particular sale. There was one item I was especially interested in (looking at the pictures online). It was a mid 50s to early 60s era red Japanese pay phone! When I saw it, I instantly knew what it was and fell in love with it immediately. Having lived in Japan for three and a half years when I was in high school really made this a nostalgic piece that I had to have.

I went to the sale and saw it right away. They wanted $100 for it. I thought that was a little steep. I packaged up some other items I had my eye on and got the entire bundle for $100 so I was very happy. In the end, this phone cost me about $60. I also grabbed a 50s-60s era Kodak Brownie 8mm film camera (box included) with three rotating lenses. It's in great shape too. The motor works great on it but I'll probably just use it as a decorative piece. I also picked up an early 1960s Hubley die-cast P-38 that was also in pretty good condition. All three of these items are currently displayed on a new drawer unit that I picked up at my friend's office liquidation. Everything looks great and adds even more charm to my studio.

The red Japanese pay phone, Kodak Brownie 8mm film camera, and the Hubley die-cast P-38, all picked up at an estate sale this week. (click to enlarge)

Having just wrapped up the liner notes for my twelfth soundtrack album (and about to start my thirteenth), I thought it would be nice to recap what I've completed so far. I've penned liner notes for three different labels for a variety of different scores and composers. Here's the complete list so far...

La-La Land Records
RUNAWAY TRAIN (1985) by Trevor Jones
CHILD'S PLAY (1988) by Joe Renzetti
BATMAN: THE MOVIE (1966) by Nelson Riddle
YOUNG RIDERS (1989-91) by John Debney
THE BLOB (1988)
FRIDAY THE 13TH Box Set (1980-1988) by Harry Manfredini

Intrada Records
THE CORE (2003) BY Christopher Young
STAY TUNED (1992) by Bruce Broughton
WHISPERS IN THE DARK (1992) by Thomas Newman

Perseverance Records
NO RETREAT, NO SURRENDER (1986) by Frank Harris
PUPPET MASTER CD Box Set (1989-2010) by Richard Band, et.al.

The latest title hasn't been announced yet so it's still under wraps as is the current title I'm just about to start. Both of these are for La-La Land Records. I'm rather proud of my little collection of CDs that I have written for. It's my favorite non-composing side gig that I have and I hope to keep doing it for as long as there are CDs that need liner notes.

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Last week was the final week of my first semester teaching at the University of Texas. It was amazing! I loved every second of it and although I'm mildly sad that it's over, I'm glad to be getting my Tuesdays and Thursdays back until next year. I love teaching, especially for the UT RTF department. It won't take long until I start looking forward to doing it again next January.

I wanted to do something really special for my students toward the end of the semester so I arranged to have my class conduct a live Q&A via Skype with Academy Award winning composer Michael Giacchino (THE INCREDIBLES, UP, RATATOUILLE, JOHN CARTER, SUPER 8, SPEED RACER). It took a few weeks, but we finally scheduled to hold the Skype session on the third-to-last-day of class. When I announced to the class a few weeks before the scheduled date that we would be doing this, they went nuts! They're were pretty excited to say the least.

So the day arrived and we were all set to go. I got confirmation from his office the night before. We were going to do a test just before class started and then conduct the interview about ten minutes after the hour. A few minutes before class was scheduled to begin, I got a call from Michael's assistant telling me that the power just went out in their studio! I could tell the students could tell it was bad news. We waited about fifteen more minutes and again I got a call saying that it had still not yet come back on. We decided to cancel and reschedule the following week on the last day of class.

I was bummed. I could tell the students were bummed. I didn't want to let them down and crossed my fingers that our rescheduled appointment the following week would stick.

The day arrived and just before class began I got an email from Michael's assistant saying he was all set and ready to go. He would be at Pixar that morning and would be conducting the interview from their offices. That's pretty cool! Sure enough, I called him up via Skype and there he was! For the next hour, I allowed the students to come up and ask questions. Michael was great! He has such a positive and unique outlook on life in Hollywood. He really was the perfect inspiration for a room full of starry-eyed ambitious film students. I think the students really got a kick out of that experience. I hope it sticks with them wherever they go.

I projected the computer monitor onto the screen as students asked him questions (foreground left)

Here is how the computer was set up so that the students could ask Michael their questions.

On Sunday, May 13th, the most recent short film I scored, "The Midwife's Husband," will screen along with a dozen other graduate pre-thesis films at the University of Texas. I'm excited to see this beautiful film projected on the big screen as well as the other films on the schedule. I hear this is an especially good class and the films are absolutely superb. It's open to the public so if you're interested check out the information below. See you there!

Everybody is busy in their own unique way. It seems we're a nation of busybodies running nonstop all day long. I too feel like I easily fall into this category. I've been told by a friend that I "multitask more than anybody" he knows. Another friend commented on Facebook that I was "hilariously busy." These things are true. I often talk about how many pots I have on the stove and it even amazes me to realize that. I keep busy in so many varied ways it does ring a bit hilarious.

So what do I do?

• I'm a film composer
• I'm a film editor
• I'm a copyist/arranger
• I'm a lecturer in film music at the University of Texas at Austin
• I'm producer and host of "Film Score Focus," an hour long weekly film music radio show on 89.5 KMFA
• I author liner notes for soundtrack albums
• I interview composers for various web sites
• I'm a film music journalist and soundtrack reviewer for various web sites
• I'm a blogger
• I'm a board member, Assistant Conductor, Artistic Advisor, and emcee for the Cinematic Symphony
• I'm director of the praise group and pianist at my church
• I'm a member of the International Film Music Critics Association
• I'm an assistant T-ball coach for my son's team

...and I'm also a husband and father of two boys.

The white board in my studio is getting impressively full. Here is where I chronicle all my goings on and keep track of what I have to do. Each one of these line items represents a task that is currently on my schedule. I only have so many hours in the day so I just try to knock out as many as I can before starts to grow quicker than it shrinks.



The priority for me (outside of my family) will always be composing. I'm glad I'm able to do so many extracurricular activities outside of composing. They all feed a different aspect of my passion for film music which together add up to fuel my desire to compose music for film. I never intended to gather so many "hobbies" on the path of my career but I can't help it. When a door opens, I have to go inside and take a look around.

You never know what you'll find waiting for you...

This past week I had the extreme pleasure working on UT grad student Déjà Bernhardt's 35mm short film "The Midwife's Husband." This is easily one of the best short films I've ever worked on. It's written with a high degree of sensitivity and creativity, shot with a keen and expert eye, and the performances are top notch. The real stars of the film are two songs that bookend the movie: "Reborn Heart" written by William Hemmerle and "I Love You" written by Leonard Arnold. My job as the composer was to support the drama and help tell the story nestled between these two songs while being sure I stay mostly out of the way. I didn't want my music to detract from the power of these two diegetic songs.

This could be one of the more fragile and delicate scores I've written. Truly a "less-is-more" approach. The tiniest changes in the music has huge narrative implications on screen. It's like trying to walk on a tightrope. You dare not tip the balance one way or the way else risk falling down. It was a fun score to write and I'm proud of it. I can't wait to see the screening of it along with a collection of other UT graduate student films on Sunday, May 13th.

A couple of weeks ago I had the honor and privilege of working with two-time Olympic Gold Medal swimmer Garrett Weber-Gale composing music for his new web series (and health food movement) entitled AthleticFoodie. Aside from being an Olympic swimmer, Garrett is passionate about cooking and teaching others to cook and eat healthily. He's focused his passion on producing a new web series that gives tips, hints, and helpful instruction to those who want healthy eating to be easy, fun, and tasty.

I composed music for the pilot episode and a general branding video that they will use to seek out sponsorship. I'm hoping somebody picks it up. Aside from the opportunity to perhaps write more music for him, it's truly a great idea and I'd love to hear more of his tips. (I can't wait to try kamut!)

Having Garrett in my studio the last couple of weeks has been a real honor for me. Remember the Beijing Olympics where the USA won the 4X100 freestyle relay by a fingernail at the last possible hundredth-of-a-second? It was probably the highlight of the entire 2008 Olympics. Garrett swam the second leg of that race! I remember watching that live.

That's Garrett on the left next to Michael Phelps after winning the gold in 2008!
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Garrett and I have talked about doing an upcoming episode of Film Score Focus together where we talk about great Olympic film scores! That's going to be a blast. In the meantime, I'll look forward to the prospect of working with him again.

This is a short film that I edited (and scored) back in 2009. It was the first time I worked with Mark S. Hall whom I would work with again doing additional editing and scoring SUSHI: THE GLOBAL CATCH (2011). I'm very proud of this little film. It's about the film collection housed on the seventh floor of the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas. David O. Selznick and Robert DeNiro are just two of the juggernauts who keep their entire collections there. It's extremely interesting and was a lot of fun to work on. Enjoy!

Last night I attended a screening of Mel Gibson's new movie GET THE GRINGO (2012) which is slated for a direct to VOD release on May 1, 2012. What was especially cool about this event is that Mel himself was in attendance along with Kevin Hernandez (The Kid), Adrian Grunberg (director) and Stacy Perskie (producer). The film was quite good. I enjoyed it a lot. There is a nice Peckinpah vibe throughout the entire film which I really appreciated.

From left to right: Grunberg, Hernandez, Perskie, and Gibson.
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The Q&A was lead by Harry Knowles of Ain't It Cool News and Mel was pretty cool. This was the third time I saw a movie with Mel Gibson there. I also saw PASSION OF THE CHRIST (2004) four months before it came out and APOCOLYPTO (2006) a month before it came out.

I noticed Mel was leaving pretty quickly after the Q&A ended but I headed his way with my BRAVEHEART CD cover in hand just in case. Sure enough, he was just about to slip out the back door when he turned to tell somebody one more thing. In that instant, I was right there and asked him to sign my cover. I might have been only one of three people who snagged an autographed. Pretty cool.

Here's my cover that Mel signed...

I hope it says "Mel Gibson"
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Here is the second episode of the web series "Imagination Situation" written and directed by Roby Brown called "Tea Time at Table Five"...

Intrada Records announced a new release today featuring liner notes written by yours truly. I am especially excited about this title. It's an early score by one of my all-time favorite composers...Thomas Newman! WHISPERS IN THE DARK (1992) is such an exceptional score. I had a lot of fun writing about this one. This is the eleventh album for which I've penned liner notes.

Yesterday I returned from a very quick trip to Lansing, Michigan where I attended a screening of MAN ON A MISSION (2010) as part of the Capital City Film Festival. About a month ago, Mike Wolfe (director) sent out an email to principal crew asking if anybody would be interested in going to Lansing for a screening of MOAM. Neither he nor Brady (producer) could go so he offered it up to one of us. I immediately replied back that I would go if the spot was still open. Mike immediately tabbed me as the lone representative and contacted the festival to let them know I would be coming.

The trip was so much fun. I left around 8AM Friday morning, arrived in Lansing around 3PM (they are 1 hour ahead of us), checked into my hotel, relaxed for about a half hour, then was off to the screening. Dan Hartley, the festival director, drove me around where I needed to go. He was extremely gracious and was a very generous host.

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The screening started around 6:30PM and it was fairly well-attended. It was hard to tell but I'd say around a hundred people showed up. This was a small festival and only the second year of its existence so it was a respectable audience to say the least. The screening was magnificent! The audience really loved the film and I had a blast with the Q&A afterward. I was pretty wiped so after the screening I went back to my hotel to change. I decided to take a brief walk around the area and find a bite to eat.

Michigan State University was only about a block away from my hotel so I walked along the outside perimeter a bit. It's a gorgeous campus. I quickly found a grungy college sports bar where hockey playoffs were in full swing so it was pretty packed in there. I grabbed a burger and fries, washed it down with a delicious beer, and headed back to my hotel to watch a few hours of "Storage Wars" before hitting the hay.

The next morning I woke up, showered, packed, and checked out of my apartment. Dan and I grabbed lunch at a nearby deli and I bought some gourmet popcorn at a nearby store to bring home to my boys. After that, I went to the airport to get back on the plane home.

It was about 36 hours door to door. A very quick trip indeed but a lot of fun. it's not very often the composer gets to attend a festival on the their dime. In fact, that could realistically be the last time that happens, but if it does happen again, I'd welcome it with open arms. I don't get to travel nearly as much as I would like so if any festival calls...I'll certainly answer.

Thanks Lansing, for putting me up for the night. I had a blast!

Here is where the screening of MOAM was held.
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This past week I've been composing music for a pair of pilot episodes for a new web series entitled "Imagination Situation" written and directed by Roby Brown. It's a fun series for parents giving tips on how and when to turn boring situations into imaginative ones. The first episode was just posted today. I've got one more to compose this week and then it'll be up to Roby and the production team to raise the necessary funds to complete the series. He's got a lot of great ideas for shows. I'd love to see more get made.

Here's the first episode, "Intrigue - Aisle Nine"...

Here is the poster for a short documentary I scored called "A Day In Our Bay" directed by Mary Katzke of Anchorage, Alaska. I've done probably seven or eight films for Mary who focuses primarily on local Alaskan stories. Apparently it's been screening A LOT up in Alaska these past few months. It was a pretty clever idea. She gave out 150 small video cameras to folks all over Alaska and asked them to film a day in their lives. Then they edited all the footage together. It reminded me of the "A Day In the Life" series of photograph books that were big in the 90s.

The global energy documentary I scored called SWITCH (2012) is racking up sold out screenings in theaters all over the country. It won "Best of the Fest" at the first film festival it premiered at and is currently scheduled to open in over a dozen cities around the country. It's one of the more important films I've scored and I'm really proud to have been a part of it.

The film takes a hard look at our usage of energy around the world, lays out obstacles to improve it, and paves a few pathways to ensuring the people of the world have affordable and efficient energy for generations to come. Right now the picture isn't too rosy. It's one of the more comprehensive and entertaining documentaries I've seen tackling the subject of global energy. Anybody interested in making the "switch" to something other than oil or coal should take a look.

There are screenings scheduled all over the country. Chances are there will be one near you soon. The web site is pretty cool. It's not just a site set up to talk about a film but it explores in great detail more information the film didn't cover. It's an educational supplement to the film where audience members can explore further. It's pretty cool. Check it out!

http://www.switchenergyproject.com/