Recently I have been busy working with director Mo Cheriet to develop an original score to his short film Reconnected. I became immediately interested in the film after watching the teaser trailer. I reached out to Mo with some music mock ups and ideas I had for the film score. One week later, and Mo got back to me, we got talking about the story of Reconnected - What is the movie? What are we trying to say? What is the appropriate instrumentation?
The Story
It's 2016 and Europe has been struck with a mysterious online outage. There’s no broadband, no wifi and even phone signal has disappeared. No one knows what's going on, and The Taylor family are struggling to cope. A month into the outage, they receive word that connectivity has finally been restored...in Aberdeen. Thrilled with the news and eager to get back online, they embark on a family trip up North. However, in the absence of Google Maps to get them from A to B, it doesn't quite go to plan...This is the story of the accidental road trip that brought the Taylor family closer together and the surprises that they encountered when they disconnected from the virtual world and reconnected with the real one.
The film was still being shot as I joined the team, Mo sent me the script along with a few musical ideas of his own. A combination of the script, teaser and musical ideas and I was all set to go. I opened Cubase my DAW of choice, with a blank slate I started to select the instruments that I felt would compliment the film; Piano, string quartet, tuba, trumpet, electric guitars, acoustic guitars, bass guitars. Finally a little sound design to create synthesised pads, drones & ambience. By the press of a key I was ready to begin.
After a couple of weeks, I had drafted a magnitude of songs in one project file, by using markers I was able to stay on top of it all, and keep organised. I exported all the mock ups, and sent them through to Mo, and to my relief he loved it.
Another couple of weeks had passed, and we had a film cut. I received my copy, setup a new Cubase project, imported the video and then it was time to experiment. I had all the songs written, so when it was time to sync, I was able to strip songs down, add variations and build on themes. I chose specific screen cuts were I wanted the music to hit, and with a little time and effort the first draft was complete.
I sent the draft to Mo and the audio editor which sparked more ideas for the score. I made the adjustments, added some tweaks, and worked with a few musicians: Kieran McGranaghan (Guitars), Shauna Kearney (Vocals) & Paul O’Doherty (Guitars) who helped to add some life and sparkle to the score.
Track Samples
The film is due to be released later this year (2017), and will be played at film festivals and technology related events across the UK.
Until next time. Thanks for stopping by.