December 4, 2007 by George Shaw.

Check out the new teaser trailer for an upcoming UFO movie (Noche Sin Cielo) that my good friend Benjamin Williams is directing next year. I wrote original music for this trailer.

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November 26, 2007 by George Shaw.

The Thanksgiving holiday weekend is approaching an end, and I feel like I need to drag myself out of a lazy stupor. Fortunately I finished recording and mixing my latest score about a week ago, and was able to enjoy the holiday and take some much needed time to relax, veg, watch some movies, play video games, and spend time with friends and family.

I really needed a little time off to recharge myself, I’d been feeling burned out from composing non-stop since May, I’ve written over 2 hours of music in the last 6 months for a variety of projects. The most recent is a Chinese film entitled SAILFISH, was shot in Beijing and is being released by Warner Brothers China next year.

I’m told some of the actors in SAILFISH are pretty big stars in China. I’m not familiar enough with Chinese cinema to know how famous these actors are, but their performances are fantastic. I barely understand Mandarin (My Chinese is at a level of that of a 5 year old), but I was able to understand the emotions and actions of the scenes just from their body language and tone of voice.

At one point, I got notes from producers and it was all in Chinese, I had to wait a few days to get a translated version, and even then it was hard to decipher the notes due to some bad translations and lack of timecode. That’s one interesting challenge I had never faced before, though I was able to figure everything out by talking to the director over the phone. In a world of quick and convenient communication via email and text messages, sometimes a phone conversation is what gets the job done.

SAILFISH is a heart warming and romantic movie about a boy growing up in China during the Cultural Revolution who dreams of becoming a champion swimmer. And it is one of the most beautiful and thematically driven orchestral scores I’ve ever written. Some of my favorite melodies that I’ve ever written are in this film. You can listen to a suite of themes on my myspace page:

http://www.myspace.com/maestrosc

There’s also a cue from my score that is being featured as a demo for the new CineHarp Glissandi sample library. Some composer friends of mine that I went to school with created a sample library of harp glisses which I put to good use. It was nice to have some realistic sounding harp glisses, though they are no replacement for a real harp player. There were a few times when I wished to start and end on specific notes, or to stay within a certain range, but you can really only get that kind of specificity with a real musician. It did beat trying to slide my finger up and down my keyboard though! Take a listen here:

http://www.cinesamples.com/samples.html

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August 7, 2007 by George Shaw.

A friend of mine created a 30-second stop motion piece for the Heinz YouTube Commercial Contest. It’s a parody of the opening scene of Raiders of the Lost Ark, where Indiana Jones must escape the tomb while dodging booby traps, including a huge boulder. I parodied the Indiana Jones theme by writing a partial inversion of the melody (meaning it’s upside down). I had fun emulating the style of John Williams, and it made good practice for my upcoming project, a feature length Indiana Jones fan film, Treasure of the Templars.

Watch the video on youtube

Indiana Heinz mp3Demo tracks:
Love Conquers All (charming romantic comedy)
Driven (explosive action)

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July 12, 2007 by George Shaw.

Victim is a twisted feature length horror/psychological thriller, and is the most unusual and experimental score I have ever written. There are 2 different sides to the score. The first is dark and disturbing, using a lot of synths, backwards piano, electric violin, sounds I created by striking, rubbing, and bowing inside a piano, and other unusual percussive and processed sounds. The other is orchestral and covers the emotional human part of the film, and in particular, is centered around a creepy lullaby theme that I wrote. The lullaby represent’s Rachel’s theme, and it’s constant presence lurks behind the character of Rachel who is almost never really seen onscreen.

I’m being vague as to what actually happens in the film, as I don’t want to give anything good away….or disgust you. You’re probably thinking this is another one of those gory horror films like Hostel or Turistas, but given the low budget nature of the film, it’s not really all that graphic. It’s more just extremely F’d up and twisted in a mental and emotional way.

Anyways, the difficulty in writing this score was finding the dark and twisted tone to compliment the disturbing nature of the movie, particularly to immerse the audience in the psychological trauma experienced by the main character. The psychological nature however gave the music a dramatic role, as it has to convey feelings that can’t be seen or spoken of, and puts you inside the mind of the characters. It was a very daunting task to undertake.

The recording sessions were both exciting and exhausting. I slept very little in the two weeks leading up to the sessions and felt a little out of it when I was conducting the orchestra. The studio we used wasn’t designed for such a big ensemble, we barely fit the 10 strings we recorded on one day, and the 7 brass on the other. Also the air conditioner made too much noise during recording, so we had to shut off the air whenever we were holed up in the studio. It got so hot, it felt like a sauna, or one of those really hot yoga rooms. Which isn’t so great when you’re trying to concentrate on making music, and we weren’t exactly dressed in bathing suits either (though that would have been nice).

In the end we got what we needed to record despite the grueling temperature. The musicians were all fantastic, and I had my good buddy/engineering extraordinaire John Rodd recording the music and keeping us all focused.

If this were infra-red, everything would be red. Photo by John Rodd.

I overdubbed some amazing violin and wind solos in my own studio. My amazing violinist, Nicole, played some beautiful solos, as well as electric violin. And the beautiful expressive oboe solos were performed by Kate Green. Erin Wilson is the beautiful voice you hear in the…uh….I’ll call it the transformation scene for now.

Click below to hear excerpts from the Victim Score.
Victim Excerpts mp3

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June 14, 2007 by George Shaw.

Watch the series on Youtube:
Part 1: The Problem
Part 2: The Lesson
Part 3: The Risk

This project began with a handful of scenes needing music in part 1. So I worked out the timings and the chord changes ahead of time, so everything would line up with the changing moods in the film. Then Bo Han came over and we recorded him playing the guitar parts. The one portion that I ended up recording on guitar, is the romantic theme for the Amy character. I had come up with that particular voicing and style that both Phil (the director) and Bo thought I should play the part, since I had the feel of it down already. My shoddy guitar playing doesn’t come close to Bo’s awesome technique, but I went ahead and did it and it came out ok. Though I’m very critical of my own playing, and wish it was better. After I laid down the rhythm guitar track, Bo improvised the melodic part over my chords.

What’s amazing is we hammered out all that music and recorded everything in a 5 or 6 hour stretch. I spent the next day programming the drums and mixing down all the tracks. It was a lot of fun to work on, and a nice little get away from the horror music I’ve been writing for the last month.

For episodes 2 & 3, Phil reused the music from the first episode in the recap sequences, and it fit perfectly, and gives the whole series a nice continuity. For the final scene in episode 3, Phil needed some emotional music that started off somber and transitions into the “happy ending.” So I sat down at the keyboard and improvised a piano solo, I literally spent 5 minutes on it and sent an mp3 to Phil to get his thoughts. He asked for very subtle changes, so I took what I improvised and reworked it to fit the scene better and recorded my playing on the keyboard (so much easier than playing guitar for me). And that’s what you hear in the final product.

Click here to listen to the entire score suite

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June 1, 2007 by George Shaw.

I recently met Philip Wang at the VC Asian American Filmfest in LA. I was totally psyched about meeting him, having seen his hilarious short film, Yellow Fever, which has gotten over a million hits on the internet.

Philip asked me to score his new short, called “JUST A NICE GUY.” It’s a 3-part miniseries that takes a funny look at why girls look past nice guys for dating potential. I definitely connected with the subject material, I was a former uber nice guy.

I collaborated with an awesome singer-songwriter friend of mine, Bo Han, who is a fantastic guitarist. He’s an amazing musician and has a great ear. I laid out the chords and how the music lines up with the movie ahead of time. Bo then came to my studio and improvised all these amazing guitar licks. I was just blown away by how quickly he comes up with ideas.

Check out Bo’s myspace page
http://www.myspace.com/bohanmusic

Check out part 1 of the miniseries here

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April 30, 2007 by George Shaw.

I recently completed a short film, SEA OF TRANQUILITY, directed by JP Bolles. It’s a student film made at Loyola Marymount University, and it has the look of a big studio film. I have to credit the cinematographer, Peter Soto, for the amazing look. Peter is a fellow in Film Independent’s Project: Involve with me, and recommended me to the director.

It’s an interesting story about Michael Collins, the astronaut who orbited the Moon while Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin performed the first manned landing on the lunar surface. The movie is centered around Michael Collins, and explores the idea of a Government conspiracy involved with the moon landing.

Listen to the end credit music: click here

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