The Hunt for John Powell

So I'm two months away from my move to CA and I wanted to take this time to start contacting composers to see who may have a need for assistants come the time I get out there. I have the names I got from my fellowship, but there's no such thing as too many contacts and there's no harm in aiming high (as long as you're not afraid to have nothing come of it). So I want to do children's music and why shouldn't I try to work with my favorite children's composers?

Top of my list is John Powell. He does some of the best children's music, and music in general out there right now and I would be the happiest person on earth if I was given a chance to work with him. So I am beginning a quest to find him. Not in a creepy, stalker sort of way, but as a major goal in life. I feel that I could learn so much by what he brings to his music that I would be a fool not to try. So today I began sending emails and asking questions on how do you contact the people you want to work with in the industry. Seeing as how everyone knows everyone else right there, hopefully through the 'Six Degrees of Separation' one of the people that I know, may know how to contact him. It's a long shot, but any dream is worth a reach every now and again. So I begin today. I have no idea where this may take me, and it may lead me to a job with someone I hadn't even expected, but any movement is good movement right now. Wish me luck!

Squeeze Pods

The weeks following my seminar have been full of projects and I'm finally starting to cross some thing off my list. One of them is a web commercial for a new product called Squeeze Pods. Our little film studio was asked to create the quick demonstration for the website to introduce the project. I called in one of my best friends, Lauren Marston to lend her hands for the video. I also got to do a bit of music for the demo. This will be good practice for me, especially if Jack Bradley is able to get some commercial jobs for me once I'm out in LA.

The music for this little video is obviously very different from my usual film-styled music as it has to sound like what you'd hear on television commercials today. Overall I'm very happy with the music. We did 4 versions of the video and what I did was make the music scalable. What that means is I can easily chop the music into smaller bits that still make sense to use in shorter commercials so I don't have to write completely new music. The other great thing was that some of the demos I sent off are a few seconds longer than the first one (I wrote the music to the first one) but my scoring software allows me to change the tempo. So rather than writing new music again, I can just make the music a touch slower to have it match up with the new length so that was a real time-saver for me. I have the first Squeeze Pod commercial attached below.

In other news, I've been asked to do a spoof soundtrack for a parody on Ancestry.com. I've just finished the music today and sent it off to be evaluated. If it looks okay, I'll be able to post that as well, so stay tuned!

The Seminar: UPDATED (With Video)

Today I spoke at the South Eastern Connecticut Film Group. They asked me to come in and speak about my journey to getting where I am now and also to give tips to filmmakers on why an original score is better than royalty free music and how to prepare your film for a composer so you get the most out of your music.  It was such a great group to talk to. I had a full room and everyone had some amazing questions and I felt honored that these people were taking someone as young as myself so seriously. It was a great discussion lasting two hours and it was filmed, so once I get the video, I'll put it on this blog in case it could help anyone. I met some great people there and may have gotten a couple scoring jobs in the process. Overall it was such a great day and if my seminar helped anyone, then I'd call it a great success.

Other than that, I've been asked to score my first film that could be headed to Sundance. I'm so excited about this one. I can't go into details on it yet, but the music should be really fun and a departure from my usual brand of music. I have a sample piece of music that I should also be able to post soon. So I'm definitely keeping busy until the move. It makes the time go by. I started sending emails to a couple composers just to touch base so I hope to hear back soon and see what the 'weather' is going to be like when I get out there.

Here's a video of the seminar. I apologize for the poor quality. I had to greatly reduce the video quality to keep in within the file size restrictions on vimeo. Audio seems fine though. Enjoy!