Scoring short film "Dayplanner of the Dead"

Whew! Closing 2012 and opening 2013 was filled with lot's going on. In December I was contacted by Gary Streiner asking me if I was available to score a short film, "Dayplanner of the Dead", which just lost the original composer. Even though I was about to move into an new studio, I agreed to contact the director. The director sent me a rough cut of the film and some temp tracks. At first I wasn't sure I was the right composer for the job after listening to some temp tracks sent by the director; but I liked the film and I wanted to do a horror/comedy so I sent some samples of my usual stuff. After hearing my work he assured me that if I just went ahead and composed it my way it would sound great! So I accepted the gig and got to work.

I wanted to stay with the flavor of the temp tracks. These tracks would remind one of a quirky haunted Appalachian  or haunting circus music. So I locked on to some key instruments like a dulcimer, snare drum, brass, piano and violin; that became the instrumentation for the main theme. The film also had lot's of narration by the main character, so I wrote a film noir sounding cue as well. The opening sequence had a pack of zombies bearing down on the main character. That allowed me to do my favorite dis-chorded full orchestra type thing. There was a vollyball scene so I grabbed the '64 Guild Starfire for some Rockabilly sounds. I was using Linux in the studio for this project so I was able to use the fantastic synthesizer ZynSubFX for a chase scene. Of course I am never pleased with myself and wished I had more time but deadlines are good.

As I wrote earlier I was moving to a new studio. So a large portion of this score was written and recorded with a portable USB MIDI keyboard and laptop running Linux. In Linux I was using Linux Multimedia Studio, large collection of samples for the sampler, and Ardour for transfer to audio and then mastering the audio.I'd have to say that working in Linux for this project was a risk that paid off.

After the film was complete, Gary Streiner viewed the final cut and was impressed. So impressed that he decided to screen the film before show Night of the Living Dead at the Hollywood Theater fundraising event he was putting together for March. More on that and my performance associated with that event in a later post.