deep breath

Helium from Torlando Hakes on Vimeo.

earlier this year i had the pleasure of working with my good, and very creative, friend torlando on this short piece. he wrote, directed, and animated the thing (with his partner, william) and i was responsible for the music. i had a real blast coming up with this tune, although we both agreed that it was a bit of a miss, in the end. i mainly blame that on the amount of time we had with everything. all of this was done on an extreme time budget, for the two of them, and for me. i wrote the music based only on my understanding of the plot line and a few stills that torlando sent to me via e-mail. i think we had two meetings to discuss what the music should be like before i really started working. i also did one revision from the original version i submitted before their deadline approached and we were left with what we had. the main shortfall is that i feel like i didn't quite capture the spirit of the images and the story with the music. i let it get a little too dramatic, and it came off feeling a little too sinister. i'm happy with the music overall, i just think it didn't quite get us to our goal when paired with the video. hopefully next time we'll have a little more time to develop things and let them evolve together. also, i'll hopefully be able to consort with my usual collaborators on our next project together, which i think is the best way for me to work in a situation like this. music for visual media requires much more of a balance of emotion than music that stands alone. you aren't required to paint nearly as much of the picture aurally (duh) and i think two heads are definitely better than one for getting there.