Cinematic Orchestration News

Yesterday I got Unit 4 of my Cinematic Orchestration course completed and packaged off to my tutor, which is a big relief.

Here are links to the submission track and the associated score.

For the score I've started using Notion3 which my wife bought me for xmas... it's really easy to use though it may not have all the features of Sibelius, it's doing fine for what I need to do right now, and it's a fraction of the cost.

I've also upgraded to Cubase 6 which has some of the best tweaks I've seen in the package yet... like in the piano roll editor, you can select a group of notes and then in the controller pane below, you get little drag-handles that allow you to lower or raise the controller value as one group! There are also drag-handles in the corner of the selection box that allow you to ramp-up or ramp-down the controller values, giving you a quick way of adding dynamics. Brilliant IMHO.

Anyway, I await my tutors response...

LA Scoring Strings

I have the most amazing wife in the world... For xmas she bought me LA Scoring Strings - which has to be the most realistic and expressive sampled string package I've used or heard.

It can be resource intensive to use all the features but the processing power is always creeping up over time... But its worth it as the sound is truly amazing.

My main reason for getting this package was for the divisi sections as I have nothing else that can produce the sound of sub section of the whole string section.

She also got me Notion 3 the music scoring package which is also brilliant, so I have a bit of a learning curve to go thru to get that lot sorted into my workflow.

I'm getting the hang of both now I've had them a month or so.

More strings to the bow... if you pardon the pun :-)

Happy New Year! It's been a while...

Happy New Year!

It's been a while since I posted, so thought I would give a quick update... 2010 was a tough year!

The Point of Regret
The ADR recording for the feature film, The Point of Regret, was completed a while back in 2010, then it was just onto the integration of those parts and the final mixes etc.

That is all done now and the film has been back with Simon Tate for a while for him to sort out the packaging and publication malarkey. The last I heard is that we would be seeing the film released in January 2011, so I'll post again when I get that confirmed.

Break - Switch - Move
After TPOR I decided to take a bit of a break from film projects, to allow me to focus on finishing my course, Cinematic Orchestration which is taking a lot of time - it's tough but good!

I then found myself changing my day job, so that's started to eat into my free time quite a lot whilst I was getting used to the new company and work.

Then to top it all, we finally got around to renovating our home which took us about 3 months in all - so the studio came down and was moved to its new location, but it took a while!

.... and Relax....
Anyway, I'm now in my new studio (I'll try and get some pics at some point) with more room and better acoustics - just a better environment overall.

So, now things have settled a bit with the new job and the studio is sorted, I'm ramping back up to full speed with the composing and looking for some new projects.

I'm also hoping to get the next module of the course done this month - I'll post up some examples of previous units to give you a flavour of what it's about.

Cheers
Stootz.

Working on TPOR ADR editing

Currently working on the ADR integration for The Point of Regret. Been a bit slow going this week but nearly there. Hopefully all finished tomorrow!

The Last Piece - Wins Award in Babelgum Online Film Festival 2010

"The Last Piece" gets runner up in 2010 Babelgum Online Film Festival.

This is a great short film that I provided the musical score for earlier this year for John Dayo of DayZero Productions. Watch the film online here:

http://www.babelgum.com/online-film-festival-winners

Let me know what you think of the film and score.

ADR for The Point of Regret

I hosted the Simon, Chris and Dave from the feature film "The Point of Regret" on Monday for an ADR session. We re-recorded a number of lines of Chris's dialogue where the on-set mic's didn't capture the audio cleanly enough.

It all went really well and it provided a great opportunity to try out my new SE Electronics 2200a mic and the Reflexion filter... and both were absolutely brilliant.

I'll be working on selecting the best takes, treating with the necessary ambience and producing the final mix thru this week and next.

Special thanks to my wife, Sam, who worked away in the background and prepared some wonderful food for us all, so we could concentrate on the recording session.

Stootz Accepted into Screened Music Network

Just got confirmation that I've been accepted into Screened Music Network.

Got some good reviews from the three panel members and one even recommended me, so pretty chuffed about that.

Check out the landing page:

Stootz's Screened Music Network Page

Cheers
Stootz