Rian's Forum

Well hello there, all you digi-friends.
It feels like its been quite a while since I had any significant contact with the outer world. But I'm pleased to announce that today marks the first day of mixing the score for Bloom. Which also means that the score for Bloom is pretty much finished, at least as far as how much more tinkering I can apply to it.

So we'll decamp to a lovely little studio in Burbank and for the next week or so I'll be mixing. Which is to say that our amazing engineer Mr. Wolf will be mixing while I say things like "hmm, more mid-low-end on the bass clarinet, don't you think Mr. Wolf, hmmm." Which is to say I'll have significantly more time to sit in a Herman Miller chair and surf the internet.

SO....

As I extricate myself from the slicing and dicing of the score process, I thought it might be fun to share all these photos I have of said process. Maybe a little online journal or something of that nature.

Anyway, at least I'll throw up some photos each day while listening to the mixes - sort of the way I did with Brick. Don't count on it to be completely sequential. Or even factual, for that matter. I mean, how interesting can it really be to look at just the visual record of a largely auditory process? I may as well tell my own story to make it a bit more interesting. Right.

Thanks for sharing these photos of the "Bloom process", Nathan!

You just made my hour. Thanks!

I see the penchant for unusual shirts is a Johnson thing...

Nathan can go places shirt-wise that I couldn't even read the travel brochure about. (The guy in the other picture is actually Gabriel, our groovy editor)

Well, it all starts with a place.
The first place I read a part of Bloom was Hawaii. Four or five years ago. Rian had written the opening poem - about 10 pages - and I was stunned.

A few years later I was on my way to Belgrade with the rather unique opportunity of being on location to begin the writing process. If I understand correctly, the way composing for a movie-show usually works is that they write the script, film everything, edit everything, and then once the picture is "locked", they hire a composer and he has about 10 weeks to write and record everything.

Of course, we just locked picture last week, so I guess I got my hands dirty a little bit early. This has resulted in a couple of cues that were written and then made their way to cue heaven when their corresponding scenes got cut. But overall, I'm glad I had the extra time... especially considering the way I like to work: slowly.

16 April 2007
I distinctly remember sitting in a Swiss airport on my way to Serbia. Swiss airports have a kind of "clean" that is all their own - you know, the kind of clean that is somehow more about morality than lack of dust. When you read the multi-language "Welcome to Zurich Airport" signs, you're pretty sure the French and Swiss-German translations actually say "Welcome to our country. You sort of suck, don't you?"

I decided to drag my guitar to a hallway in the quiet section of the airport next to the rent-a-rooms and instead of sleeping for an extra few hours, I sat down on a bench and started playing. I often record any ideas I have into my laptop so I can remember them later if I end up thinking they're any good. Here's a little something I captured in my jet-lagged state. In the background you can hear the airport announcement system. I'm pretty sure that the translation says "That music idea kind of sucks, doesn't it?"

I didn't end up using it.

Hey Nathan, I loved the score for Brick. It's a great movie. If I can ever get one of my independent films financed, I'd like to hire you for one of them, but right now it's just the long, slow, slog of raising money which takes *forever*. P.S. Do you have a million bucks I could borrow? (joking)

If you're interested in what I'm working on, we put a video on YouTube. It's cheap and rough but it should give you a general idea.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uH3YERZSygo

my e-mail: jer.vineyard@gmail.com

That made my week... I live a boring life, so please help keep me entertained and keep the posts comin'.

Will these find their way onto the soundtrack or will they be saved for future projects or just scrapped entirely? This is a cosmological question about the nature of cue heaven.

Thanks Jake, looking good!
I hope your funding comes together - I hear that can take a while!



Well, I'm not sure Sullivan. A couple of them were dearly loved pieces of music... like kids in a way. I suppose that if they find themselves charmed enough to make their way out of mixing (or "purgatory") then they might appear on the soundtrack album - like a sort of "birth". But it's hard to take extra mixing time on a cue that isn't crucial.

Regarding music afterlife, I guess it comes down to a theological discussion about whether you think unborn kids make it to heaven or not. As far as this life on our dusty earth is concerned, you'll probably just have to chalk 'em up as a loss to the L.A. Song Abortionist.

(To be fair, he's just as ruthless with his own scenes and dialogue. So.)

These glasses be hawt


and I must say yay to the musicness

Yes, Nathan took this picture himself. He is that double-jointed.

Though evidently not half as much so with my chins...

So, anyway... I was saying that it all starts with a place.
After a month of European Bloomage, which you might have heard about on the Cinematic Underground podcast (Episode 4), I relocated to the Eastern coast of America and began looking for an apartment. It certainly felt like all roads were leading toward New York except for the road that my wallet was driving on, so I zeroed in on a small town a couple hours removed which was home to a certain studio I had been eyeing.

After a few weekends of apartment hunting, an amazing 3-story Victorian HOUSE opened up through the connections of a close friend. Thankfully, it was close to the studio, close to the town, and it was ON the road my wallet was driving on, so I started setting up shop and moved into the place that would house the Bloom music project.


Carrying a gift basket from my Nana.



Front-room/studio (undefiled)

My sister and the fantastic Miss Katie helped me transform the space and it wasn't long before the far-flung members of the Cinematic Underground began arriving.

Last time I picked up Seth and China at the airport was when they came to Heathrow with various instruments in tow... This time they brought a different kind of instrument - meet Fender:


I'm guessing the way this is gonna work is that a) we'll let Fender loose on the instruments, and b) the score will pretty much record itself.