The frenetic finish in the Savalas studio last Friday left me feeling like Wily Coyote falling through the air before hitting the ground in Edinburgh this Sunday Night.

Thanks to everyone for working so hard. Whatever happens they can’t accuse us of slouching.

We’ve not shown our dominos to anyone yet. In fact we’ll only see what we’ve got as the curtain goes up on Sunday night, which is thrilling but which could also mean we get a very public doin’.

So if anyone wants to see the moment when the ‘poof’ of dust lets you know Wily Coyote has hit the bottom of the gulch. Sunday Night 9m at In-Space, 1 Crichton Place Edinburgh is the place, Phone 0131 623 8030 to book a seat.

See you there, RB

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

Some thoughts on the ‘Roderick Buchanan Soundtrack’ / ‘Composer Wanted’ event at In-Space Edinburgh.

Sunday was a rollercoaster. Waves of anticipation, followed by dead calm, followed by a stamp on the arm by a digicult representative.

We did a lot of talking. Good therapy for all those feeling battered and bruised by the project. Paul Welsh was a sort of L. Ron Hubbard initiating the audience into the ways of Central Station. In-Space, the venue, described in the EFF brochure as an “Atmospheric theatre” – a type of auditoria built in 1920’s and 30’s to create a fantastical setting in which to watch a film – looked more like the reception hall for some cousin of the Wizard of Oz. I felt like Toto looking at that curtain off to the right of camera when I was meant to be awed in the presence of the Grand Wizard. In a sort of animal reaction to the architecture I growled my way through the evening feeling that the big wizard, that is new media, is really only a Corporate Arts representative who just wants to be feared.

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)

There has been a rise in the amount of blogging by the other members of Fear Wasabi recently, which I’ve been glad of.  In the earlier phases of the project I worried that I was failing to properly represent them, being as we were submitting collectively and so on through my individual profile.  Writing in the 1st person can have an ego-trip effect on me, I bet this turns into a philosophical ramble of some sort…

Anyway, following our now-customary travel disaster, yesterday we were back at Savalas “plush is not the word” Studios, situated in a renovated section of the old Govan Town Hall, which we found still has it’s main hall area hidden away, in all it’s grandeur.  While part of the team played with recording the reverb in there (leaping around in the dark, frightening the janitors), the others got on with some recording and arranging in-studio.

Fear Wasabi has been referring to Giles as our “5th Horseman”.  At one point yesterday while he was out, we de-tuned a violin (a hammer would have been a more subtle method to how we achieved this) and bowed some double-stop harmonics, creating a frankly bizarre noise.  That kind of stunt would have swiftly lead to our expulsion from any orchestra in the land, but upon his return, Giles simply grinned and said “cool sound”.

Apart from being tremendously encouraging and understanding, Giles has been manning the mixing-desks for us, and until we met Iain he was the fastest man we’d ever seen at the controls of Pro-Tools.  There were one or two moments of revelation for us in there, first hearing our rough sketches played through the Dolby system in the studio, and then hearing the difference once Iain had a chance to do a quick (really quick) 5.1 mix and give the various sounds some space…completely different listening experience.  The skills these guys bring to the table totally transform whats being produced.

Yesterday afternoon also brought an always-welcome opportunity to talk with Roddy and Gaia about the ideas and sounds we have been toying with.  Different perspectives and opinions are, to my mind, essential in the creation of work that is interesting and satisfying not only to those making it, but objectively too.  I can’t help but feel privileged to have been able to work with such a group of diverse talent as this.

Enough talking about working, best go get on with some!

Andy (Fear Wasabi)

PS. Told you I’d ramble.

buses.

disappearing. breaking.

cars.

high speed chasing.

the small orange metro glow of underground glasgow.

a walk to the studio in the right direction.

horses galloping.

children running.

coffee shaking.

around the worlds with pictures meeting sounds and

around the words with ideas and positions and intense tiny movements confined in spaces between one wednesday and the next.

this is time travelling

bouncing back between here and there

and forth between cuts and locks and edits and changes and the

time is stretching

shared equally among friends and pulled tight to accomodate the right amount of bounce for free falling ideas from all the directions around.

what amazing places to go

the studio is max

its the tardis- all lovely on the inside and we are surrounded by the people and things which help you hear what you are trying to say.

its 5.1 (a new 5th horseman)- we are all there and the sub bass is underneath us.

all the frequencies

it all went click clack compacted, and then WE broke free and made the sounds we didnt know we wanted to make.

and then it was time to go

return

back on the bus

backsides on the back seats.

back to dundee

back to thinking about the future

and how we are going to fit

everything into the time

stretching from here to then.

thanks to roddy and giles

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…

To go into a couple of the reasons for taking up the project?

I’d been hearing a good deal about the connectivity provided by social networking sites and reasoned that since Facebook hadn’t worked out for me, I’d give Central station a go.

Re: ‘Composer Wanted’

I’m going to quickly sketch in the make up of our teams to offer you the route map to where we are now. First contact was made through Trisha, who’s a visual arts consultant for Central Station. She introduced me to Paul who started off as the producer then graduated to executive producer once things were up and running. He did the pitching and dealing which led to the offer of a budget to take on the project. He then linked me to Giles who had his own long creative history as a composer and now has a studio that can do almost anything (think of the All Spark in Transformers) . These were all real time introductions involving coffee and handshakes and that sort of thing. At this point my analogy’s going to shift to Charlie’s Angels because like Charlie you never knowingly met these next two, they just sort of started to talk to me like disembodied voices in my head, these were Yvonne, and Genny. Like big brother they were always there and ready with helpful prompts ‘What about…?’ , or ‘This is how you can do that’. I floated the idea of offering ‘Out’ and ‘Traffic’ to Giles, as templates for potential collaborators to play with, tempting new composers on board, and with that ‘Composer Wanted’ was launched.

After the great response, Gaia was brought in on board as the line producer and shortlisted candidates where considered and a collaborator selected.  Hello Fear Wasabi.

So currently we’re running with two productions that have risen up through a series of creative meetings.

I started to generate ideas the way I always do and rummaged around for pieces that were just waiting for budgets to come along. This is how my studio works these days. I have big projects, small projects and everything in between, half articulated to myself, lying consciously and unconsciously around me. Exactly as messy as it sounds. Artschool taught me a good sketchbook practice but I lost it somewhere along the line and now I’m left with this.  I have books lying by my bedside and photocopies in a box that prompts towards unprocessed ideas.

For ‘Composer Wanted’ I reached for a good spread. I had projects that I’d like to make, ones I thought Central Station would like me to make and a couple that I knew I could make.

Speaking to Paul and Giles I wanted to have a go at their world. Like Mr Tibbs in ‘The Heat of the Night’ (which I just watched up here on Film club’), ‘I just couldn’t let an opportunity like that pass me by.’ This is what drew me towards making ‘Paddy’s Lament’. A  5 minute drama that uses technics old to Paula and Giles, but new to me. The subject for this drama; the juntaposition of two moments in time that spark off one another to talk about the nature of control. The settings are 2 found sources, one from the 19th Century the other from the  21st century. I’ll leave it hanging there….

The other work has more clearly come from a larger body of work that’s occupied my brain since 2005. This is the work I’ve been making with the Imperial War Museum on my developing relationship with active Loyalist and Republican groups in Glasgow. The title of this work hasn’t been announced yet, because I haven’t decided on it yet, but the visuals are just about in place, so I’m happy to open up to all comers now.

The guys are beavering away as we speak – refining their ideas and trying some more stuff out with a view to spending the day on wednesday in our foley/recording studio to explore all our sound props, sfx library and record some old fashioned playing of musical instruments.  with a mix of video artist, sound artist and classically trained musicians, we are confident of something that will work with Roddy’s film.  Onwards