I live in Toronto, Canada where I’ve been settled for about 3 years now. Originally from the UK, I’m currently residing in a flat I rent just outside of downtown Toronto, near ‘Little Italy’.

I love Toronto, as there’s always loads going on. The events, concerts and festivals in Toronto are as diverse as its inhabitants, and each of the city’s seasons offer very different experiences.

My girlfriend and I were lucky to find our current apartment as not only is it a beautiful house in a nice neighbourhood, but it had also been recently renovated. It has terrifically high ceilings, lets in lots of light and is a great space to live and work. I have converted the spare room into a little studio space where I get to cause a little chaos each day.

Most of my time is dedicated to running my design partnership Core, but I also occasionally take on freelance work at agencies or in-house design departments. I love to lock myself away and work on designs or illustrations for hours on end, and I find that shifting between my business and freelance work is a good way of balancing my dedication to my own work and getting out there and interacting with people. I have a tendency to become a bit of a hermit when I get stuck into projects! I’m definitely most in my element when I’m in the studio working on something creative.

My bread and butter is working on branding projects – creating logos, print collateral, online web assets and interfaces. However, I also like to draw and illustrate, and enjoy doing commissions or personal projects in my spare time. One of the things I love about my work is the variety. I can work for all sorts of clients from different industries and there’s always something new to learn and explore.

I love working from home, although I must admit it took me a long time to get used to it. I used to struggle with disciplining my hours and avoiding distractions, but now I’ve settled into it and look forward to work on a Monday morning.

It took me 25 years before I worked out what I wanted to do with my life, work-wise. Despite having gone to an Art and Design College after I finished high school, I didn’t explore the idea of making a career out of my craft until several years later. I’m very fortunate to be doing what I love, but I think more than anything I have gotten to where I am today through hard work, drive and determination.

I’m always open to new opportunities and to collaboration, so please feel free to get in touch with me at tom@core-agency.com.

More: Website | Core | Facebook | Twitter

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‘Where I Make’ invites readers behind the scenes of artists from many disciplines to share photographs and a little insight about where they create their masterpieces. See more from the series here.

The resulting collaboration will produce two short experimental films exploring themes of collective identity and historical perspective.

In this special event, the screening of the films will be accompanied by a panel presentation charting the projects evolution.

The screening will be followed by networking drinks.

Please note that this event is free but ticketed, the best way to book a space is through the Festival box office, either in person or over the phone on 0131 623 8030. Also note that these tickets cannot be booked online.

Join us at Inspace to meet, discuss and experience Roderick Buchanan & Fear Wasabi’s collaborative piece.

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If you are attending the festival during the day and have a delegate pass pop in and see us at our Hub situated at the Novotel, 80 Lauriston Place Edinburgh EH3 9DE. Have a cuppa, chat to the Censta team, upload, unwind or just say hello.

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To find out more about the project and get the latest news on the production of the films, read this blog or have a look at the Roderick Buchanan Soundtrack Group

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Image by Roderick Buchanan

We were closeted in Studio 2 at Savalas with Michael – and his faithful and incredibly patient hound Somhairle (reference Google for spelling, it’s Gaelic for ‘Sam’) –  for about 8 hours bashing out the final mixes for the two films. Michael is the third sort of engineer/producer type we’ve been lucky enough to have tolerate us at Savalas, and his skills confirmed our suspicions that an entry qualification for working there is ‘devastating ProTools speed’. If we asked him to do something to a mix, he had either already done it or was finished by the time we were done trying to vocalise it. Which was handy, as we used every last drop of time we had, trying out different things…I suspect our seemingly limitless indecision threatened to drive Gaia quite mad as she kept us on deadline…

At times throughout the whole process, we’ve discussed with Roddy and among ourselves the peculiar dynamic we’re working with here – we’ve never really soundtracked anything before, and Roddy hasn’t been that involved with soundtrack-ers. Hey, that’s why we’re all here, I guess… However, today in particular I really got the feeling we were all pulling together and speaking the same language – there was even a strange sort of excitement when we all realised we were obsessing over the same single note at the end of one of the films. We were literally leaping out of our seats over a single plucked violin note – it may seem a bit pedantic, but in a heart-warming way. A lot of the process thus far has involved us sending sound mixes and film edits back and forth, sort of like audio/visual tennis, so it was great to knuckle down both with the locked edits and for the first time properly really together, with ourselves and Roddy. Obviously we’ve met up and so forth before, but we’ve never done a huge amount of work while in the room together, more just showing off results and taking reactions from that – more tennis. We were able to be open and honest about what we were aiming for and doing, on a point-by-point (almost note-by-note) basis, and it really showed up the collaborative side of the project. Even where we had disagreements  - no, it wasn’t all plain sailing, which I guess rarely really happens when you get five or six creative people bouncing ideas off of each other – we knew it was because we all genuinely cared a lot about the project and wanted to make the best soundtrack possibly possible, and we came to conclusions we’re all happy with.

And that’s the sort of final word, the perfect cadence at the end of our little bonus-features composer commentary here…we got a bunch of creative people together, and created something that we all like. “This is making me happy”, as Roddy would say. I think I can speak for the entire Wasabi collective when I say it’s been a tremendous experience for all of us, both as a sort of learning-curve, a creative challenge, and in terms of just being great fun. You’ll notice I’ve not said that much about the actual details of the soundtracks or indeed the films themselves – so I guess you’ll just have to come along to the Edinburgh International Film Festival next Sunday and see them for yourself…!

Phil (Fear Wasabi)

Roddy talked to us about the difficulties in the collaborative process, and elaborated upon his ongoing involvement with the project. We discussed with him our ideas that had been previously presented as sketchy, partial recordings. We played our most up-to-date composition for Lament, and heard Roddy’s comments. Gladly, he was honest about aspects that he thought were inappropriate, and thankfully, these were generally details of the composition which we agreed needed work.

Our initial priority was to record an important aspect of the Lament soundtrack – so the first thing we focused on was clapping. In a flamenco style rhythm, to speed up in time with each other… we did many takes, some approaching the desired effect. It felt good doing this; building a rhythm together. Some takes were just one or two of us, others were all four – with Giles faithfully manning the mixing desk.

Our mentor at the studio, Giles was with us throughout the day, lending us his professional expertise, giving us both advice and encouragement to follow our own ideas. In many ways we were all pretty clear, and agreed, on the approach we were taking to the two pieces; though with Lament there was some doubt over the structure of the composition. We spent time discussing this. There were objectives we felt unable to progress on until the final voice recording was made for this piece. We also realised that the newest cut of the Tattoo video, being significantly longer, would require us to re-record our soundtrack piece for it. Chatting to Giles about the facilities available, as well as the techniques we could use to sculpt or enhance our recordings, we were able to plan what we needed to do in time for the next session at Savalas, and used our last hour or so to record some improvised tangents. The session therefore concluded with a sense of achievement, and as we made our way back to Dundee we firmed our resolutions for the next stage in the plan.

25.05.10

Edit polish

So that is the last polish of the edit done before Andy gets a shot at the music.  The changes that made were a few compositional changes, timing changes for a couple of camera moves, order changes so Roddy felt happy with the juxta position of images, and a few additional images.  I can’t wait to see what Andy will do with the score.

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17.05.10

rough edit

Based on discussions with Roddy I put together a rough cut of the piece.  I also did a short test of just presenting the photographs for a couple of seconds punctuated by a second of black.  Roddy liked elements of both approaches so I made another cut using the roaming camera as well as the still photos separated by black.  This seemed to have a variety and texture that worked well not only to display the photos clearly but it also provided interesting visual rhythms that the composers could work with.   The next stage is to polish the edit…

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15.05.10

beginning editing

I have worked with Gaia before so she contacted me about the job.  I had an initial meeting with Roddy and Gaia to discuss what was needed and how I could contribute.  On the strength of that meeting I was made responsible for the editing and motion graphics side of the tattoo project.  I began by putting together some ideas for animation and transitions.  I explored a few techniques on how to present the photographs and how to transition from one to another.  Roddy and I discussed them and although some of the ideas were interesting, a simple approach seemed to work best.  Roddy wanted the camera and editing to be as objective as possible so how the camera acted needed to be unostentatious.

Next stage: rough edit…

The Business End

The Fear Wasabi bandwagon rattled down from it’s HQ in Dundee to Glasgow yesterday for a very pleasant afternoon chatting with Gaia and Giles at Savalas.  The discussion occasionally touched on our “working dynamic”, which now needs to expand a bit given the deadlines and so on, as well as the need to work quite closely with Giles.  My effort at describing our working practise as Fear Wasabi (which, prior to this project was more a semi-improvised live-performance creature rather than a recording one) was that we had “several long discussions before sitting down to record over the space of an evening”, which probably wasn’t terribly enlightening.  I think it’d be fair to say that what we try to focus on is the root concept that we want to convey, and that how we go about making actual sounds follows that.  Sometimes specific ways of conveying an idea will come to us, but often we work just by trying things and seeing how the others react.  Each member of the group plays some sort of instrument, for example on our Traffic interpretation we really liked the video’s simple energy, so you can hear me strumming away at a violin, Gomango playing a harmonium and rattling some fruit-shakers, In/visigen bowing some violin through a guitar effects-pedal and Phipsim playing his beloved Korg x-50 and MicroKorg…all of us huddled around a small microphone.
Anyway, a few hundred words later I feel I’m no closer to really pinning down how exactly we make these noises, hopefully through the mysteries of the internet this will have made some sense to someone somewhere…
Upon it’s return to HQ, Fear Wasabi is pleased to report that it enjoyed some excellent fish and chips from The Silvery Tay (yes, in Newport rather than Dundee.  If ever a city was in real need of a good chipper, it’s Dundee) and sat on the roof of a castle watching the sun go down.

Congratulations to them, and all the best with the project!

I’m not sure how I feel about the whole thing. I’m a bit disappointed that I didn’t put more work in. Bad timing, but that’s the sort of thing you need to push through. Listening back to my submissions, I’m mildly cringing at how rough and underdeveloped they are. I’m convinced everyone else’s were vastly superior!

It was fun to meet with Roddy and talk about his work. I’ll look forward to seeing the finished pieces, with the benefit of his impressive insight.

I think I’ll take 2 things from this experience:

Firstly:

My working preference used to very much be: talk-about-it-together, execute-it-apart. I think that’s changed somewhat over the last couple of years. As much as I enjoyed talking with Roddy, I failed to establish a connection with the project for myself. That’s maybe down to not meeting up with anyone else involved. The ability to maintain a distance-working relationship is obviously very important today but I don’t feel like I got into the spirit of that. Will need to look out for that next time, but I guess it’s also made me appreciate the intimate musical relationships I’m fortunate enough to have with people at the moment.

And secondly:

Blog, shmog.

Big Ta to Central Station, Roddy & Giles!

Comment by Gaia Meccuci [project producer]:

Very interesting points you raise Jonnie. The ever increasing distance-working relationship on collaborative projects is indeed very important these days but at the same time establishing a real, close connection with a project and the people behind it is still crucial for an artist to be able to use their talent and creativity in the most satisfying way.

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Let me just say that both your submissions were far from being rough and underdeveloped! They were in fact very interesting approaches and the idea of the unsynced flute loops seemed to reveal a new layer and something surprising with each listening. The decision was hard, all of you demonstrated very personal insights into the ideas behind each piece.

It would be great to keep having your input in the project as we go along, so I hope there is scope to reconsider your blog shmog stance!

I’ve been part of the creative momentum on ‘Composer Wanted’ for a while now and it seems to be birling on down the road quite nicely towards it’s June outcome, but I’m far far away and only contactable through the slightest Skype connection. So I was invited to keep contact going with all those interested in our process by typing up a creative blog.

I’m 9 hours ahead of the Glasgow office (it’s 09:00 on the 20th of May here) and they’re all currently tucked up in bed warmly anticipating timecodes and approved scripts in the morning – But theirs many a slip ‘twixt the cup and the lip.

Weather is dictating my calendar. I’ve got to strike out today in a weather window that could close tonight. I’m currently on a photo assignment in Australia and need to take the opportunity when it’s here. It’s not like I can come back next week.

So, apologies to all the creative people waiting for my input and output, it’s pushed back by a day. I’ve got to take these photographs and for the first time in days, it’s not raining out there.

Yours Aye, RB

I’m a little stuck for words (particularly non-cliched ones), being as I genuinely never expected us to win.  In fact, I suspect we haven’t, and this is either a strange dream or The Matrix.
This began as soon as the other finalist’s entries were posted online: Nil’s and Daniel’s were ingenious, Lu Sisi’s was incredibly brave, Jonnie’s excellent and Martin’s seemed to be along similar lines to our entry, except much better.  I felt distinctly like an outsider in this group; they were all far too good.  Rogue cells in the back of my brain crackle, convinced that there has been some mistake.

The strange and wonderful place/thing that is the internet has permeated this entire project for us.  During one recording-session, a member of our group could only be present via Skype, peering out of a laptop screen at the rest of us, occasionally sending opinions and/or files back and forth.  Checking the project page on CenSta became a daily ritual.  Blogging (or Clogging, as we came to call it) after some initial reticence, became fun.

In fact it’s all been fun, and continues to be (now with the added pressure of expectation, of course) for which we are honoured and grateful to all involved.  As always, we can’t wait for the next step!

Andy (Fear Wasabi)

I’m sitting in the dark, in the middle of a thunder storm anticipating stern words from my producer.

My location changed these last few days and that’s turned my head. As a matter of fact it’s an issue of professional practice. ‘Composer Wanted’ had me tied to the computer last week and I really burnt the midnight oil on the road to developing a first cut, then selecting a collaborator to run over the finish line with (next month). However, like everyone else out there in art land, I’m working other projects too. I can happily report that I was working on ‘Helpfindmyneighbour.com’  today towards an important journey tomorrow, so although I know Gaia is going to give me a hard time in 5 minutes (it’s her job), I don’t regret a thing.

Yours Aye, Roddy Buchanan