Captive
Watch the 30-minute short in its entirety at BlipTV.
Click a link to hear samples from this project.
Cue list:
1. Main Titles
2. Rise n' Shine
3. Mr. Fish
4. Abduction
5. Cleansing
6. Monday
7. Wednesday
8. You're Weak
9. Thursday
10. Why Should I?
11. The Dream
12. Are You Ready?
13. He Was Very Brave
14. Escape
Captive is complete! This is the most difficult project I've done so far, and the effort has really paid off. I feel really good about the cohesiveness of the project. I feel that Rebecca's sadness and grief really came through in "Mr. Fish," and the creepiness of her abductor really came through in "Monday."
Something I wish I could have done a bit more effectively was lose tonality towards the end in the last few cues. "Mr. Fish" is a very tonal cue, sad, longing, and sympathetic, and I wanted it to degrade from there to the end, to the point of tone clusters. And in fact the last cue, "Escape," begins as such in the low register of the piano, as synth pads hover eerily in the background. I just wanted to get to that moment in the film, where there was nowhere else to go but back to tonality, but I wasn't able to do this to the extreme I hoped.
With every new project I like to try something new sonically. So I blended the string patches from the Roland Symphonique Strings with the Garritan strings. Roland strings have a very icy brittle quality to the timbre, almost a straight tone. This gave the overall feel a more edgy sound. The Garritan strings are to beautiful alone so I needed something to create a bit more tension. For three of the cues I needed some really aggressive staccato brass sounds, so I added the East West Silver library, using the solo bassoon, the solo horn, solo trumpet, solo trombone, cymbals and anvil, as players within the primarily GPO ensemble. It was quite a feat at times to get them to play nice with each other, but I'm very happy with the result.
To force myself to keep in practice, I replaced all the oboe parts with my own playing. It made me feel really good that I was able to blend into the GPO woodwind section, and remain more or less in tune. I also replaced the synth choir with live singers. Although my budget does not allow for a whole choir, so I employed the help of two very talented people: Lauren Lee, soprano, and David Sobolov, bass. And I filled in everything in between. In "Cleansing," they thought me very strange, as I had them doing multiple takes of glissandos, in various patterns but it really came together (or rather, fell apart) very nicely. At one point Lauren asked, "So...what's happening in this scene."
"This is where he cuts off her tattoo."
"...Oh."
I'm really looking forward to everyone's opinions of the film and music. When I first presented the score to the director, we talked about the beginning, which at the time was Rise n' Shine (the opening hadn't been created yet--the Main Title cue was the last cue I wrote for this project). And he felt that what I had written gave too much away too quickly. As soon as he said it, I knew he was completely right, so I rewrote that cue to have a more stand-offish quality. Now, the way the film ends is with a pop song, so I never got a chance to reconcile the orchestra's tense build up. So I wrote this cue is just for me, so that I know everything is okay at the end. So I present the overly dramatic rough draft of 1m2, and a short ending I call "Sunday."
Captive Extras
Instrumentation:
*performed by Joseph Carrillo
**performed by
Joseph Carrillo
Lauren Lee
David Sobolov
Piccolo
Flute
Oboe*
Clarinet
Bass Clarinet
Contrabass Clarinet
Bassoon
Contrabassoon
Horns I - IV
Trumpet I, II
Trombone I, II
Bass Trombone
Tuba
Timpani
Cymbals
Tubular Bells
Snare
Bass Drum
Anvil
Harp
Piano
Celesta
Synth
SATB Choir**
Violin I
Violin II
Viola
Cello
Bass