Score Preview

On Saturday, Andy C was kind enough to invite me over to the Darkhouse studio to listen to excerpts from Andy K's Frankenstein vs the Wolfman score. The scoring has been held up for a week or so due to a corrupted video file, and now that a new file has been delivered we can kick it back into gear again. The music that I heard was not synced to picture, so I had to use some imagination as I listened, but what I heard was vibrant, melodic and full sounding. I can't be more happy. Andy K went with my notes and delivered the spooky, the scary, the haunting and the melancholy sound that I had asked for. Since I haven't heard the score against the actual movie itself it's possible that some changes may be called for but I'm happy to report that we are well underway and closer to that magical date when the movie will be finished!

You can hear a sample of the score over at the Darkhouse myspace page. The clip is called Mr. Ridley Revisted.

Getting Closer

The latest news from the haunted world of Frankenstein vs the Wolfman is that Andy K tells me that he's completed the musical score up to the film's final battle, which comprises the final 5 minutes of the movie! We're almost there! I've been trying to get into the studio to hear some of the new tracks but my wife and I are remodelling our kitchen and that's pretty much sucking away all of our time.

In other news, be sure to stop by OpenFilm - a new website offering premium video content in high quality and large viewing areas. My earlier flicks, Raven and Raven 2, are currently available for viewing (as well as two flavors of the Frankenstein vs the Wolfman trailer).

Something to report!

I spoke with Andy K this week and he tells me that he feels he's halfway through the score at this point, and he's very excited about hearing his music coming back at him through a full symphony orchestra. Hopefully I'll get a chance to hear it this weekend or sometime very soon.

Not Dead!

I know it's been forever and a day since the last blog post, be rest assured - Frankenstein vs the Wolfman is not dead! We've been waiting while Andy outfitted the Darkhouse Studios with the new EQWL Symphonic Gold program, which will give Andy Kalbfus' score the approximation of being performed by a full symphony orchestra. Andy number one tells me that the program was an 80GB install which took a significant amount of time.

But now, I believe it's all set up (a few instrument patches notwithstanding,) so the transcription of Andy K's score from 4-track recording to MIDI data can begin!

In other news, there was a recent photo that surfaced online (courtesy Entertainment Weekly) of makeup maestro Rick Baker's work on Universal's upcoming The Wolf Man, starring Benicio Del Toro & Anthony Hopkins.

3-D DLP TVs

With 3-D in the 21st century finally making inroads into mainstream acceptance, it's nice to see some electronics manufacturers future-proofing their new TVs to display 3-D content.

Samsung and Mitsubishi have recently introduced HD DLP displays that have a port for an IR transmitter (for controlling 3-D shutter glasses) built in. You can read all about the technology here. The drawback is that field-sequential 3-D dvds won't work without a) playing them back from a PC over a DVI to HDMI connection, and b) play them through a special software program that will convert their field-sequential 3-D encoding into a new, checkerboard encoding pattern. You can read more on that by checking out the 3D DLP white-paper here. I was able to locate a program, called Stereoscopic Player, that seems to do the trick. Unfortunately, it's not freeware.

The upside to this is flicker free (60 Hz refresh rate for each eye) HD resolutions of 3D material (including video games when used with special drivers) on your HDTV.

The field sequential 3-D version of Frankenstein vs the Wolfman will be fully compatible with this technology. Now... where's our HD 3-D version of Beowulf?!

More Music and Effects Work

Last week I was able to hear most of the Frankenstein vs the Wolfman score over at Andy Kalbfus' place. With only the final battle to go, we're reaching a place where we can almost say that the score has been written... next up comes the transcription of the 4-track recordings to EastWest Symphonic's orchestral MIDI.

In addition, I made a trip into the Darkhouse studio to mixdown the existing effects cues into 15 separate audio tracks, and Andy Carlson spent some time cleaning the tracks and punching up the audio quality.

Bear with us... things are still inching forward towards a completed movie!

Sound FX Recording

Not much new to report on the movie progress, as we're still working on the musical score. I did, as promised, make it in to Andy's Darkhouse Productions recording studio to do a few extra sound effects for the movie, including ripping a broaster chicken limb from limb (to simulate bones cracking,) and recording children screaming. I posted a guest blog on the subject over at the Darkhouse MySpace page, which you can find here.