From the Stage to the Screen – The Music of Miss Finknagle Succumbs to Chaos

Hey all,

It’s been a LONG time since i’ve posted, but i’ve really been inspired by articles that Deane Ogden, Russell Bell, Filmandgamecomposers.com, SCOREcast and many other articles that people have written in the film scoring community. I wanted to add to “the conversation” in my own way.

Since my Lockwood article I’ve worked on more scores and I would love to share my experiences with you. I want these articles to come not only from the standpoint of a composer; but from someone who is open about their process and wants to open a platform for discussion from all aspects of the creative process.

Recently I had the pleasure to work with Bay Area filmmaker Amy Harrison on a commissioned project titled Miss Finknagle Succumbs to Chaos. The short is part of a 6 film lineup for the 2nd annual Playground Film Festival here in San Francisco. As you can guess from the title, all six shorts were adapted from stageplays and will be shown from May 1st at Rialto Cinemas Elmwood in Berkeley and will have additional screenings in San Francisco, Palo Alto, San Rafael and Berkeley up until May 25th. To find out more info click here.

Miss Finknagle Succumbs to Chaos is a short narrative that tells the story of a high school librarian’s mid-life crisis as seen through the eyes of her students. Each of them hold key elements that lead up to Miss Finks’ disappearance. Though this mystery Kaylee, Tiffany, Edgar, and Morgan not only gain more respect for Miss Fink, but also each other.

For this film I was asked to write from a number of mock-styles while also having a sound for Miss Finks’ character. My plan was two fold:

1.) Write music that is distinctive for each character.

2.) Keep my harmony/melody consistent in each cue/style.

The easiest way for me to start was to analyze each character and make sure that their music was distinctive. For example, Edgar is a nerdy character and he’s proud of it. He’s kinda wild and his imagination is even wilder. Edgar has his two conversations about Miss Fink, and for those we transition into an awesome comic book sequence done by Jett Atwood. I wanted to really add to the energy from the voiceover and the animated sequences so I decided to write heroic action and bouncy kinetic music for the two animation scenes.

There are a lot of styles I’ve tried weave in here, I hope you enjoy!

Edit: Just had a conversation with Amy and i’m happy to announce that we’ll be putting the soundtrack as one of the rewards for our Kickstarter campaign!  The soundtrack is $5 and comes with all the music from the film plus a bonus track that didn’t make it in. All the proceeds or the track go toward the post production funding and I think that the soundtrack is the least we could do for your support of independent films. You can grab it here!

Homecoming – The music of Lockwood

Hey guys,

It’s been awhile, but now that I’ve graduated collage (yeeeeaaaa!) I’ll have some time to devote to blogging. Besides that milestone in my life, I’ve been working on a bunch of great projects, so to kick things off I present to you; Lockwood.

Lockwood is a short period piece Directed by Donnie McCormick. It follows the story of newspaper journalist Robert O’ Dwyer as he returns to his hometown of Lockwood to solve the disappearance of a missing girl. Along the way he meets up with old friends and family, some of who aren’t happy he’s back. It’s up to Robert to choose between his family and his career to unravel the mystery in this intense 1920’s thriller.

This film has been the longest film I’ve worked on to date and was a great challenge because of the limitations put on the score. Being a musician himself, Donnie understood the desire to write memorable music, and challenged me to write sparsely and to write with a very minimal color palette. To point me in the right direction, Donnie had me watch Paul Thomas Anderson’s There Will be Blood, and listen to Johnny Greedwood’s thought-provoking Avantgarde score. With a firm reference to go off of it was easy to see what he wanted and I even had the pleasure of surprising him with choices in instrumentation and placement of music. Although the film was long and we had many sleepless nights, the film was a success and he hopes to present it in a few festivals – I’ll be sure to let you guys know when there’s a screening.

In the meantime, I present to you the score. I’m very proud of it and I hope that you will love it too!

http://soundcloud.com/jordainwallace/sets/lockwood-ost

Next I’ll talk about my score for the romantic comedy “Only You”. Stay tuned!

~J

Speedway Rock – The music of Two Wheeled Dream

Last quarter, I was brought on board to work on Brett Chatelain‘s short documentary, Two Wheeled Dream. Two Wheeled Dream is the amazing story of one of the first NHRA women drag-racers and her rise to become a contender in the circuit. My biggest concern taking on the project was the lack of time to do it: less than a week to conceptualize, compose and deliver the cues to Bret on time before the screening on December 16th. On top of that, I was finishing up EmVerse and finals were in the same week. So I did what anyone else would do in that situation, I sat down and wrote my a** off. Once the weekend came, I locked myself in my room for two days only coming out to go to show the director the new cues and to sit in on the dubbing session.

Although I hibernated after I finished the cues, I learned to trust myself more. Being on such a short deadline, I had to. Because of that I think I was able to think more creatively and to really get what I wanted from the samples. I’m not saying it’s perfect, but I think I got the essence of the struggles and victories that Karen had to go through to be where she is today. That’s probably was so easy for me, because i’m still driven to do what I do. One of my favorite quotes is from the movie Speed Racer, ( Micheal Giacchino’s score for it is SICK btw, check it out sometime!) “You don’t get in the seat of a T-180 to be a driver. You do it because you’re driven.”

 

The same goes with following your dreams. You don’t do it with hopes of being that one day, you do it because you’re driven to do it.

 

I had a lot of fun with the project, and I hope that you enjoy listening to it!

 

Stay Driven!

 

~J

It’s all in your head – The Music of Emverse

Hey All!

Been a pretty busy quarter so far but I really want to start posting these things so, here goes! One of the more recent projects I wanted to share with you guys is the sci-fi thriller short EmVerse, directed by Vlad Korisheiv. EmVerse is the story about a girl who – through a car crash accident, is able to come to terms with the guilt about her aborted baby.

Initially I was a little lost on where I should take the score because with sci-fi you really can get carried away with what freedom this particular genre can give you. So for me the first thing was to understand what the music was trying to convey. Obviously the main character is the best place to start, so scoring it from her perspective was something I had to adress. But, I really wanted to give the world of EmVerse a distinct sound. Vlad had jokingly said that he wanted 1920’s big band music – which initially i didn’t take seriously. But I came across a particular cue a movie from the 80’s (don’t know the name. spend a ton of time using music identifier software and i got nothing…), and while it’s definitely not from the 1920’s I released that I wanted the score to have the sci-fi vibe and yet still have hints of a romantic/noir score.

To do this I used a traditional orchestration with drone-like elements to produce the bed of the score, while focusing on exotic instruments like the Kora, an african guitar – like instrument and the Duduk, a Turkish wind instrument to help put the viewer in not so familiar territory.

But rather than talk about it, I’d rather show you.

Here’s the trailer:

…and here’s the music!

Looking back, I’ve learned a lot more about conceptualizing, it’s such an important part of keeping continuity not only with each cue, but with the characters and the story as a whole. I also developed new strategies in spotting the movie, which I will be using in the coming weeks for the films coming up this quarter.

Alright, first one down many more to come!

Enjoy!

~J