(2007) |
|
| Release Date T-B-D, 2007 |
| Starring Max Minghella, Blake Lively, Joe Mantegna, Marry Steenburgen, David Carradine |
| Written and directed by Will Geiger |
| Produced by Carolyn Pfeiffer, Tom Schatz, John Quested, Nick Quested |
Score performed by London Metropolitan Orchestra |
Conducted by Blake Neely |
Contractor: Andy Brown |
Concertmaster: David Juritz |
Violins: Steve Morris, Andrew Haveron, Maciej Rakowski, Nick Ward, Kathy Gowers, Annabelle Meare, Philippa Ibbotson, Ian Humphries, Debbie Widdup, Kirsten Klingels, Tom Pigott-Smith |
Violas: Garfield Jackson, Andy Brown, Ivo-jan van der Werff, Andy Parker |
Celli: Jo Knight, Kate Gould, Cathy Giles, Nick Holland |
Basses: Enno Senft, Lynda Houghton |
Tack piano and music boxes: Blake Neely, Michael Simon |
Guitars: Grecco Buratto |
Accordion: Matt Rollings |
Aleatoric piano effects: Jacob Neely |
Score recorded by Geoff Foster at Air Lyndhurst Hall, London |
Score mixed by Joel Iwataki at Remote Control Studios, Santa Monica |
Orchestrations by Blake Neely and Michael Simon |
Supervising copyist: Ross DeRoche |
Additional music textures and design by Daniel Heath |
Studio manager: Elizabeth Neely |
Notes
This is a movie I fell in love with the first time I saw it. I immediately wrote a four-minute demo to one of the climactic moments in the film - "The Red Umbrella" - and sent it over the internet to Will Geiger. While he and the producers pondered whether or not I was right for their movie, I kept flooding Will's email with more demos. A week later I got a thumbs up and the final version of the movie. We were off and running.
Except for one spotting session in my studio at the beginning, the score was written, presented and approved all via the internet with Will in Northern California and me in Southern. I would write a cue, record a demo of the cue synched to the scene, and post the scene on my server. Will would watch it on his laptop and send me comments. We didn't see each other again until 2 months later, after I had already recorded, and we began working on the final mix.
Almost immediately came the tack piano idea. I found an old used upright piano from craigslist, and Mike and I shoved it in the iso booth in my studio, prepared it with tacks and screws, and experimented. We bought and disassembled some music boxes from a warehouse by the airport. And we found various toy pianos at Toys R Us, which I used to make my "magical soup" sound. My son even played the "scary piano" parts with a screw driver and his fist, gaining him his first onscreen credit.
The string orchestra and string quartet in London were the perfect icing on this large cake I was mixing, as well as my friends Matt (accordion) and Grecco (guitars). The most daunting, however, was learning that the love scene would be only music -- no dialog or sound effects. Composing this piece - "Still" - was the easy part. But playing it? I got so nervous about it being the only sound in the theater that it took over 30 takes to get it right.
I'm very proud of the score. And I'm very proud of the movie. I hope it finds an audience who will like it just as much.