BRAM STOKER INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2014 – DARK ARTS EXHIBITION 23rd – 27th OCT

The calendar has once again rolled swiftly round, and it’s nearly time to pack our coffins and head up North to Whitby in Yorkshire
for this year’s BSIFF and the Dark Arts exhibition now a popular feature within the festival.

We’re not attending the official Whitby Goth Weekend which immediately follows on the next weekend on this occasion, however the BSIFF event is on for a full 5 days this year so once again we have taken a house in the heart of town for a week to cover the duration of the festival.

My contribution is to the digital element of the exhibition, and following the success of last year’s audio poetryscapes I’ve created 3 slightly more epic
offerings with the theme of ‘Universal Monsters’ this being a homage to ‘Dracula’, ‘Frankenstein’ and ‘The Mummy’ the films from the early 1930’s which can be considered as
iconic and have had a lasting effect on the horror films we watch today.

The poetryscapes will also be played at the premiere of ‘Nyctophobia’ on 30th October.

FRAGMENTS OF FEAR

This project is moving nearer to fruition with an expected air date in December and subsequent online presence.

With celebrity guest readers such as Francois Pascal and Caroline Munro adding their experience and screen presence the show will add a uniquely dark twist to the ‘Jackanory’ style theme!

I got a sneak peek of the title sequence featuring my musical ident style theme and it looks fantastic and full of macabre promise!

Keep up to date at this link

http://fragmentsoffear.com/

NYCTOPHOBIA UPDATE

With the premiere and launch of ‘Nyctophobia’ just around the corner, director Andy Loverage asked me to write and record a short
piece of music that could be used for a 2 minute promotional trailer.

I must have been having a particularly good day, as the music I came up with hit the mark and encapsulated the kind of feel that was desired for the trailer without any re-writes or alterations.

The theme was dark and powerful, think anger and rage being driven and heightened by clostrophobic deadly captivity!, which sums up the premise of the film and the underlying storyline nicely.

For the trailer shoot, the team returned to the location used in the film and new footage was shot with Ben as his ghostly monk character, and Mike in his now infamous ‘creepy caretaker’ role
in which he apparently hungrily consumes a real cobweb or two – all in the name of acting darlings!

Anyway, check out the trailer whilst we excitedly anticipate the big launch night on 30th October!

Nyctophobia – Upfront, Behind the scenes!

It was probably around May when I first came across a post on Facebook by film director Andy Loverage advertising a casting call for a short horror film he was making.
Whilst I wasn’t interested in being in front of the camera, I’m always looking for new challenges for which to ply my trade as a sound producer, and being as this was a horror film I knew it would hold my interest.

With nothing to lose I dropped him a line to offer my services, it didn’t take too long before he got back to me, and we’d exchanged the required ‘show reel’ as proof of ability.

The film concept came about through the UK Haunted team’s (the duo behind the famed TV paranormal investigation shows) wanting to commission a short fictional horror story to accompany their own video output.
award winning author Alan Keen was brought in to write the story and screenplay, and the project started to take shape.

Anyone perusing my website will pretty quickly realise that it’s things of a dark nature that float my boat, so having read the script I was very keen to put my spookiest of stamps on the soundtrack.

So how would a blind man go about writing and recording the music and sound score for a highly visual film project such as this?
Well, the thought had crossed my mind as well, most video jobs I’ve been involved with have been fairly short in nature, and I’ve generally adopted a procedure of writing and recording the music according to the directors instruction and over producing variants so that they can cut and edit themselves to mix and match their audio requirements.

That approach had certainly worked on the many in-house commercial video projects, and also on the one previous film I’d worked on back in 2001 when I co-wrote the score for Marc John’s ‘Jesus the curry King’ the first British film to be shot and distributed entirely digitally with Odeon cinema’s.

Technology has moved on a great deal, and thankfully there are more options available now that help level the playing fieldfor me.
for one thing the crossover between working with audio and video is narrower, both types of producer are able to understand and use each other’s media and quite easily exchange and share work and ideas.

It’s this ability that made working on the film score so enjoyable for me. Director Andy would send me an audio dialog track, along with another audio track empty aside from carefully placed sine wave bleeps indicating precisely where something was happening onscreen. I could load these wave files directly into my DAW (digital audio workstation) select the matching frame rate of 25fps and get to work.

I became very familiar with the script and had a visual image of what was going on in my head as I listened to the dialogue, I was able to play along on piano pretty much as they would have done in the days of silent cinema and record a guide track to flesh out the basic feel and vibe of the storyline.

The ‘jumpscare’ track enabled me to go in and create and place all those scary bits that happen after the suspense builds up.
Most of the initial piano sounds were replaced by my beloved synthesizers which gave greater depth and power where needed.

Andy and I discussed the use of diegetic and non-diegetic sound within the film, one point that came out was that Andy wanted the building where the story took place to be an organic part of the story, so you’ll hear constant creaks and groans almost as if the structure has it’s own life and voice, something that the creepy caretaker character featured at the beginning and end of the film clearly believes.

Other sounds were a definite part of the screen action and I was in my element in creating them. I spent many a happy hour walking around the house with digital recorder in hand knocking and scratching on walls, bannister rails and ceilings. I’d then load the lot into sony SoundForge and carefully audition the many dozens of recordings I’d captured until I narrowed it down to the few I felt would work.

One of my favourite ‘jumpscares’ involves a terrifying rap on a door, however rather than it just being the heavy knock, Andy had said it’d be great if we could hear the dust being disturbed by the thump.
so into the garden I went, gathering together a decent amount of sandy dust on the patio I then recorded the sound as I quickly swept it aside with my hand. Back on the computer I cut and discarded the first element of the sound until I just had the tail of the scattering dust. Pasting this onto the sound of the door thud and panning the dust to one side of the stereo field gave a satisfying result and a nice piece of audio movement that complemented the onscreen scare, probably no-one will even notice but it’s that attention to detail I like to try and put in where I can.

Other little audio tricks were using a subtly recorded piece of tin foil being crinkled to simulate the sound of a glass storm lamp cracking, and the end of a quarry explosion scattering rubble sound being reversed for a ghostly hand morphing from the wall.

The title music was something of a problem for me, Andy was looking for something quite upbeat and almost rocky to start the show,whereas my head was already engaged in horror mode and wanting to create something slower and spookier from the outset. Eventually we seemed to find something that we both liked and I have to concede it’s not something that would normally come from me!

I loved doing the final crescendo music, although it’s very short it packs a good deal of tension into a short space of time and it certainly matches what’s happening in the final climax of the movie!

The end credit music is more my typical style, probably quite 80’s sounding as Andy put it ‘Escape from New York’ there’s certainly a cyberpunk apocalyptic feel to it, dark moody, industrial yet cinematic is what I was hoping for.

Everyone involved with the project is really excited, we’ve submitted it to the Bram stoker International film Festival which is held in Whitby in October. Obviously if we can get it accepted it would be the icing on the cake because everybody has worked so hard to get this film completed.

Personally I’d be really thrilled, we’ll be in Whitby exhibiting my poetryscapes at the Dark Art’s exhibition anyway, so to be there and have a film shown too would frankly be out of this world, particularly as the film’s premiere at the Picturedrome in Northampton will be later that same week!

Whatever happens, I’ve learnt a lot and really enjoyed working on this film, there’s been much midnight oil burnt, very apt given that it’s produced by director andy Loverage and writer Alan Keen’s own After Midnight Productions, and having read the time of night from which Andy’s emails are generally sent I can testify that he’s certainly a nightowl too!

Don’t be afraid of the Dark – Nycptophobia premiere’s at the Northampton Picturedrome on 30th October 2014

I recorded a new shorter ‘sting’ style intro music sequence for this exciting project a couple of months ago, things are starting to move ahead and there are some well known British celebrities now onboard as guest readers – stay informed with this link

http://fragmentsoffear.com/2014/07/28/fragments-of-fear-haunts-the-uk-horror-sce

FRAGMENTS OF FEAR – TV SHOW

The title music has changed for this programme, we’ve put the melodic ghostly waltz style music back in the top drawer for another day, and instead opted for a more modernistic 20 second audio sting of fragmented misery!, joking aside the new style is more in fitting with what is happening across the pond in TV show title trends the thought being why waste another 30 seconds of showtime on music that could be better used by the actual content.

so with this brief in mind I’ve been beavering away in the studio to offer the makers a choice, we’ve narrowed it down now and it’s well underway, oddly creating a mere 20 seconds of sound that encapsulates the flavour of the show is harder than it sounds!,

The show is expected to air later in the year now with some celebrity storytellers!

NYCTOPHOBIA

This short horror film has been written by award winning author Alan Keen and is being directed by Andrew Loverage in an affiliation with popular US TV show UK HAUNTED http://www.uk-haunted.co.uk/

Important at this stage not to reveal too much plot, but suffice to say having visited the film set, a real haunted cellar network underneath a grade 2 listed building I’m confident the atmosphere will transfer onto film.

The cast and crew are totally committed and there was a real buzz on location. I met alex & Micheal from UK Haunted who were dressed as police officers for there cameo in the movie.

Alan the writer/producer gave us an extensive guided tour, and I made numerous field recordings which may find themselves into the soundtrack.

We’re experimenting with various angles, including digenic location sound, Gregorian Monk chants together with some of my palette of synth and sample sounds.

It’s an exciting project I’m really pleased to be involved with and can’t wait for the premiere later in the year when all the post production and polish is finished.

FICTION TERRIFICA

The July/August of this online magazine will include my horror short story ‘Charlie’ which you can find under ‘stories’ on this site.

HAUNTED DIGITAL MAGAZINE

The last amazing issue of this digital magazine featured my poem ‘The Mortician’s Tale’ which was also featured on the US radio show ‘Whispers in the Dark’ back in February and can also be found in the ‘Poetry’ and ‘Poetryscape’ sections.

BRAM STOKER INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2014

filming has now wrapped and post production is underway on the movie ‘Kids Vs Monsters’, this is a film being made by our good festival friend the Sultan.

we will be heading up North to Whitby in October for a week to attend and also exhibit within the ‘Dark Arts’ exhibition.

I’ve got a plan of the poetryscape’s I will create, and will be consulting with Mark Williams the exhibition organiser on intergrating the sound within the digital section of the show.

CREATURE FEATURE – REVIEW SHOW

Early days on this project, but it’s looking to be a magazine and review show for horror and sci-fi, co-ordinated by Richard Gladman of space Monsters Magazine.

I will be involved with the theme and link sound creation, and there are some very talented and contributors and presenters onboard.

The 1981 debut album by depeche Mode ‘speak & spell’ was an innovative slice of synthpop that inspired a generation!

This is my production of the instrumental track ‘big Muff’, though I’m not sure where they got that title from!

I’ve used Cakewalk sonar Producer 8.5 as my DAW, soft synths include roland Groove Synth, Session Drummer 3, whilst the analog bass
sounds and some effects come from the Novation Bass Station 2. The lead line is from a Yamaha PSR295 which also provides some additional drums and fx.

Delighted to announce that my poem ‘The Mortician’s Tale’ will be featured in the next edition of Haunted Digital Magazine, more news soon!

The Dark Path was another short poem that featured in the 2013 Dark Arts exhibition at the Bram stoker International Film Festival.

Inspired by creepy nightime walks through an eerie wood near my home, which is inhabited by many a crow!