The Trailer:
I had a few technical difficulties putting this together (not all of which were fully resolved I'm sorry to say), but still, I am happy to report that the trailer for GTP's next production is here!
Please, please pass it on to friends and family (especially those with kids!) in the area. It's not easy making theater with children this young and it not turning into a recital, but I feel all involved are giving it everything they've got to achieve something more. There are some really talented kids in the mix. Along with new faces it has been a delight to see some of the older kids who have been in previous productions with Anna really coming into their own as actors on this. So come on out!
To be frank, kids need theater and theater needs patrons.
Involvement Status Corrections:
In a previous post I incorrectly said the Beverly Seng would be providing an original score that I would be arranging for this production. This was a misunderstanding on my part. I had initially planned to not be involved with this show and was then asked to arranged the instruments and sound mix for the tracks about a month in to make things sonically more in the spirit of Anna's last big young children's theater fantasy project, Snow White (which was the first that I had provided any music and sound effects for). Along with instructing the children for the musical numbers, Beverly arranged the original score, simplifying some numbers for our young beginners' ease and tweaking others. Being a fairly peripheral team member on this production, and with many other things going on in my life, I took "rewrote" to mean she wrote something completely new. This assumption wasn't corrected until I started discussing promotional material rather late in the game, but again, I was on the sidelines for most of the pre-production and rehearsals until the last couple weeks.
So, to clarify... Beverly Seng arranged the score and I arranged the instrumentation and sound mix. Sorry for the confusion and misrepresentation. My bad.
Friday, April 20, 2012
Saturday, April 14, 2012
Recent Demos: "Now and Again," "Fingerprints and Vinyl Dreams," and "Smoke Dragons."
Here's a few old songs I've rearranged demos for.
"Smoke Dragons"
This was a song I wrote and performed back when I was attending Charlottesville's No Shame Theater. It's very heavily influenced by Bob Dylan's original version of "All Along the Watchtower" from his album, John Wesley Harding. I used to listen to that album on vinyl in the living room on weekends as a teenager, around the same time I was getting into Leonard Cohen. Chiefly led by the imagery of Tom Waits albums like The Black Rider, Bone Machine and Mule Variations, I was very interested in composing some sort of southern gothic, apocalyptic musical or folk opera, or concept album... or... something. It's never truly made it to fruition, but all along the way I have been dropping pieces, and bread crumbs, and a few brontosauruses assembled from the bones of this or that. This is one of those bones. Probably a femur.
The experimentation with the video generated some of my favorite results of any I've done thus far. I expect the particular look of this one to rear its head in at least one future project. Though that's still a very 'wait and see' sort of venture.
"Fingerprints and Vinyl Dreams"
Also written in high school, this song has for many years lacked a melody of its own. When I first wrote it, the lyrics were just sung to Devon Sproule's song "New Song" off her first album Devon. In that regard I feel like this is the longest song in progress, that I've written as this can be seen as the official melody instead of some reworking like the other songs I've shared. Sadly though, I think this had some of the worst mic/singing problems, and the vocals get a little more Billy Corgan-ish than I have any business attempting.
"Now and Again"
This was written after I graduated from high school and attending PVCC. It was a strange transition for me, from this tight-knit group at The Living Education Center to the comparably larger community college where everyone was a stranger. For all the social diversity at LEC, we were all relatively like-minded in political and spiritual views. Combined with the divisive climate of the time (the Bush/Kerry elections, and the Marshall/Newman Amendment), PVCC was a pretty stark contrast to that environment. It was a good thing, ultimately, but at the time it was frustrating, to the point of feelings even of resentment towards LEC. At its core, the song is very much about that moment where two people are getting along - until they realize they aren't supposed to be. Of the lot, I'm most happy with how it turned out.
That's it for now. I'll have more on Gorilla Theater stuff real soon. Much has been going on all fronts and this last week has been exhausting.
Later.
"Smoke Dragons"
This was a song I wrote and performed back when I was attending Charlottesville's No Shame Theater. It's very heavily influenced by Bob Dylan's original version of "All Along the Watchtower" from his album, John Wesley Harding. I used to listen to that album on vinyl in the living room on weekends as a teenager, around the same time I was getting into Leonard Cohen. Chiefly led by the imagery of Tom Waits albums like The Black Rider, Bone Machine and Mule Variations, I was very interested in composing some sort of southern gothic, apocalyptic musical or folk opera, or concept album... or... something. It's never truly made it to fruition, but all along the way I have been dropping pieces, and bread crumbs, and a few brontosauruses assembled from the bones of this or that. This is one of those bones. Probably a femur.
The experimentation with the video generated some of my favorite results of any I've done thus far. I expect the particular look of this one to rear its head in at least one future project. Though that's still a very 'wait and see' sort of venture.
"Fingerprints and Vinyl Dreams"
Also written in high school, this song has for many years lacked a melody of its own. When I first wrote it, the lyrics were just sung to Devon Sproule's song "New Song" off her first album Devon. In that regard I feel like this is the longest song in progress, that I've written as this can be seen as the official melody instead of some reworking like the other songs I've shared. Sadly though, I think this had some of the worst mic/singing problems, and the vocals get a little more Billy Corgan-ish than I have any business attempting.
"Now and Again"
This was written after I graduated from high school and attending PVCC. It was a strange transition for me, from this tight-knit group at The Living Education Center to the comparably larger community college where everyone was a stranger. For all the social diversity at LEC, we were all relatively like-minded in political and spiritual views. Combined with the divisive climate of the time (the Bush/Kerry elections, and the Marshall/Newman Amendment), PVCC was a pretty stark contrast to that environment. It was a good thing, ultimately, but at the time it was frustrating, to the point of feelings even of resentment towards LEC. At its core, the song is very much about that moment where two people are getting along - until they realize they aren't supposed to be. Of the lot, I'm most happy with how it turned out.
That's it for now. I'll have more on Gorilla Theater stuff real soon. Much has been going on all fronts and this last week has been exhausting.
Later.
Tuesday, April 3, 2012
Winning Battle Royale
A few weeks back I slapped together a video and submitted it to an Ain't it Cool News contest to win a special edition copy of Kinji Fukasaku's final film, Battle Royale.
And I won.
YAY!!!!!!
For those not familiar with the infamous classic that I now have a very sexy special edition of, lets just say that The Hunger Games is to B.R. what Twilight was to Let The Right One In. It's a film about a class of middle school teens being forced by their government to fight each other to the death, only this film doesn't soften that concept for the mainstream in the least. There's lots of blood and drama and even a few moments of beauty. It's quite disturbing and not for everyone. Made in 2000, it's still banned in several countries. Though my Mom got me an imported copy this last Christmas, this BluRay marks the first official release in the States from what I understand.
Kinji Fukasaku was a giant in Japanese cinema, best known by Americans for directing the Japanese half of Tora! Tora! Tora!, he worked extensively in the Yakuza (Japanese gangster) genre with such films as Graveyard of Honor and Sympathy for the Underdog. For many contemporary fans of Yakuza films from the likes of Takashi Kitano (who stars in B.R., as the former teacher of the class now put in charge of their game of death) and Takashi Miike (who went on to remake Graveyard of Honor), Fukasaku is one of the elders that they are responding to with their existential/surrealistic "Neo-Yakuza" films. My point being... Battle Royale is a blood-soaked masterpiece. I can't wait to look over all the behind the scenes footage and finally compare BluRay to DVD formats by watching the same video in both. But in the mean time, I just wanted to express my gratitude to AICN news for this awesome prize.
And I won.
YAY!!!!!!
For those not familiar with the infamous classic that I now have a very sexy special edition of, lets just say that The Hunger Games is to B.R. what Twilight was to Let The Right One In. It's a film about a class of middle school teens being forced by their government to fight each other to the death, only this film doesn't soften that concept for the mainstream in the least. There's lots of blood and drama and even a few moments of beauty. It's quite disturbing and not for everyone. Made in 2000, it's still banned in several countries. Though my Mom got me an imported copy this last Christmas, this BluRay marks the first official release in the States from what I understand.
Kinji Fukasaku was a giant in Japanese cinema, best known by Americans for directing the Japanese half of Tora! Tora! Tora!, he worked extensively in the Yakuza (Japanese gangster) genre with such films as Graveyard of Honor and Sympathy for the Underdog. For many contemporary fans of Yakuza films from the likes of Takashi Kitano (who stars in B.R., as the former teacher of the class now put in charge of their game of death) and Takashi Miike (who went on to remake Graveyard of Honor), Fukasaku is one of the elders that they are responding to with their existential/surrealistic "Neo-Yakuza" films. My point being... Battle Royale is a blood-soaked masterpiece. I can't wait to look over all the behind the scenes footage and finally compare BluRay to DVD formats by watching the same video in both. But in the mean time, I just wanted to express my gratitude to AICN news for this awesome prize.
Sunday, April 1, 2012
Recent Music: "Real Doll Delivery (Demo)" and "Gale of the Wyvern"
And now for something that has nothing to do with GTP (gasp!).
Real Doll Delivery (Demo)
I actually wrote this song back in 2007 in a body of songs called Casualties of the Times, and its kind of a mind job for me to think that it's five years old. In part because I've slowed down a lot as a lyricist and in my mind it's a fairly recent song, but even more so because of how old that makes the many songs I wrote before it. As I said on the YouTube description, I originally structured it more in the style of "Sister" era Sonic Youth. When I started dabbling in recording vocals with Garageband, I applied it to the very basic bass loop structure and found the vocals more angsty. I think Xiu Xiu was stuck in my head on that day. It was sometime last December before Anna got me a mic for Christmas and I used the built-in mic of my aging iMac for the recording. It has been sitting on my hard drive ever since due to a lack of enthusiasm towards the result and mixing problems. I think I'm finally satisfied with the mix (there isn't much one can do about poor singing skills, but at least you can hear the guitar loops).
The video is of a wasp I found stuck between the screen and the glass of my kitchen window. I added some textures and stuff, but that's the gist of it.
Gale of the Wyvern
I might have started the earliest incarnation of this piece as far back as recording Real Doll Delivery. I've been picking at it on and off for a while, but of late it's served as a pallet cleanser at the end of the day - a little project unrelated to theater, film, or family commitments, that I can poke at for 20 or 40 minutes before going to sleep. It started out very much a guitar piece, and for some reason reminded me of that (also angst-ridden) moment in The Crow where Brandon Lee smashes his guitar. Obviously it sounds nothing like it, but I just got this image of someone having this kind of epic guitar-off to the point of becoming comical as I worked on it. I could never decide where the track was going though. Over time the second half was added and the idea of some sort of pursuit started building. The idea of running from a dragon kept swimming around in my head, and then for god only knows what reason I added high bass dance beats to the mix... and it felt right. There's a lot of almost chaos throughout the track as the two styles clash, but I like it and it feels good to be done with it.
The video footage is mostly comprised of some recent material from yesterday. I was parking my car across from the train tracks down by the amphitheater downtown, on my way to GTP auditions for She Stoops to Conquer, when a train happened to be coming into the station. Since I had my camera with me, I took a moment to film the wheels. I'll probably use the footage again in other things. What really excited me about it though was the sound I recorded from the train going down the tracks. Between editing The Doctor and my own projects I'm pretty sure that is going to come in real handy.
That's all for now.
Later.
Real Doll Delivery (Demo)
I actually wrote this song back in 2007 in a body of songs called Casualties of the Times, and its kind of a mind job for me to think that it's five years old. In part because I've slowed down a lot as a lyricist and in my mind it's a fairly recent song, but even more so because of how old that makes the many songs I wrote before it. As I said on the YouTube description, I originally structured it more in the style of "Sister" era Sonic Youth. When I started dabbling in recording vocals with Garageband, I applied it to the very basic bass loop structure and found the vocals more angsty. I think Xiu Xiu was stuck in my head on that day. It was sometime last December before Anna got me a mic for Christmas and I used the built-in mic of my aging iMac for the recording. It has been sitting on my hard drive ever since due to a lack of enthusiasm towards the result and mixing problems. I think I'm finally satisfied with the mix (there isn't much one can do about poor singing skills, but at least you can hear the guitar loops).
The video is of a wasp I found stuck between the screen and the glass of my kitchen window. I added some textures and stuff, but that's the gist of it.
Gale of the Wyvern
I might have started the earliest incarnation of this piece as far back as recording Real Doll Delivery. I've been picking at it on and off for a while, but of late it's served as a pallet cleanser at the end of the day - a little project unrelated to theater, film, or family commitments, that I can poke at for 20 or 40 minutes before going to sleep. It started out very much a guitar piece, and for some reason reminded me of that (also angst-ridden) moment in The Crow where Brandon Lee smashes his guitar. Obviously it sounds nothing like it, but I just got this image of someone having this kind of epic guitar-off to the point of becoming comical as I worked on it. I could never decide where the track was going though. Over time the second half was added and the idea of some sort of pursuit started building. The idea of running from a dragon kept swimming around in my head, and then for god only knows what reason I added high bass dance beats to the mix... and it felt right. There's a lot of almost chaos throughout the track as the two styles clash, but I like it and it feels good to be done with it.
The video footage is mostly comprised of some recent material from yesterday. I was parking my car across from the train tracks down by the amphitheater downtown, on my way to GTP auditions for She Stoops to Conquer, when a train happened to be coming into the station. Since I had my camera with me, I took a moment to film the wheels. I'll probably use the footage again in other things. What really excited me about it though was the sound I recorded from the train going down the tracks. Between editing The Doctor and my own projects I'm pretty sure that is going to come in real handy.
That's all for now.
Later.
Thursday, March 29, 2012
She Stoops to Conquer Auditions - There's Still Time!
If you are interested in auditioning for GTP's She Stoops to Conquer, don't let the "'till the end of the month" bit discourage you. While that would be ideal and some roles will be cast with the 'early birds' that get in before this coming monday, many auditions have been scheduled for Saturday and I think a few for Sunday. We've got a lot of people who have auditioned and more that are auditioning that have us very excited, but there's a sizable number of roles to fill in total, from meaty leads to walk-ons, allowing for a cast of mixed experience from veterans to newcomers. So if you're interested, swing by the main site and send an email or leave a message.
Monday, March 26, 2012
First Wave of Stoops Auditions - a success!
Auditions for She Stoops To Conquer are going quite nicely so far with some familiar faces and a few new ones. This being Gorilla's first show to cast adults, Anna and I are getting very excited at the prospects of so much new blood joining the mix, along with old friends returning to work with us again. The first wave of readings was thoroughly invigorating!
While the new direction of the show is still gestating and will only take its true, full form once a cast is completely selected, I can say thus far that it's going to be a very character driven show. I think what turned me off to the play initially (it had the unfortunate fate of being read shortly after discovering Congreve's The Way of The World) was the portrayal of the characters as caricatures to facilitate the laughs. However, returning to the text Anna and I've continued to not only find depth in many of the roles worth taking seriously, but something we all-together never anticipated: a familiarity with these characters that could allow this to become a fairly personal project.
There was always the historical context to be juxtaposed to our current economic climate, but beyond that I anticipated, from the sidelines, that it would prove somewhat a challenge to convey the context of such a comedy that's jokes are very rooted in another place and time from our own. (Imagine remaking Juno with the same script... only a couple hundred years later, and expecting people to laugh at "Oh my blog!") This I suspect is the sentiment that leaves it seldom put on the way shows like The Importance of Being Ernest and School for Scandal are. Yet, what we found in rereading the text and working with the first wave of auditioning actors was that the relationships and family dynamics in Stoops have aged surprisingly well, and for a couple born and raised in Albemarle and Buckingham, these British characters of almost 300 years ago--even with their servants and class systems--read with a curiously Virginian flavor to them at times. What will come of these observations, you'll just have to wait and see! What Anna and I are certain of for now is that the show is funny, and we believe that through making our audience care about the characters, we can make it hilarious.
Auditions are continuing to the end of the month. If you're interested in participating, there are still rolls to be filled! Please go to Gorilla's auditions page for more information.
Cheers!
While the new direction of the show is still gestating and will only take its true, full form once a cast is completely selected, I can say thus far that it's going to be a very character driven show. I think what turned me off to the play initially (it had the unfortunate fate of being read shortly after discovering Congreve's The Way of The World) was the portrayal of the characters as caricatures to facilitate the laughs. However, returning to the text Anna and I've continued to not only find depth in many of the roles worth taking seriously, but something we all-together never anticipated: a familiarity with these characters that could allow this to become a fairly personal project.
There was always the historical context to be juxtaposed to our current economic climate, but beyond that I anticipated, from the sidelines, that it would prove somewhat a challenge to convey the context of such a comedy that's jokes are very rooted in another place and time from our own. (Imagine remaking Juno with the same script... only a couple hundred years later, and expecting people to laugh at "Oh my blog!") This I suspect is the sentiment that leaves it seldom put on the way shows like The Importance of Being Ernest and School for Scandal are. Yet, what we found in rereading the text and working with the first wave of auditioning actors was that the relationships and family dynamics in Stoops have aged surprisingly well, and for a couple born and raised in Albemarle and Buckingham, these British characters of almost 300 years ago--even with their servants and class systems--read with a curiously Virginian flavor to them at times. What will come of these observations, you'll just have to wait and see! What Anna and I are certain of for now is that the show is funny, and we believe that through making our audience care about the characters, we can make it hilarious.
Auditions are continuing to the end of the month. If you're interested in participating, there are still rolls to be filled! Please go to Gorilla's auditions page for more information.
Cheers!
Saturday, March 24, 2012
A Long Day: Filming and the Status of SHE STOOPS
Saturday was indeed a long day.
Filming
As previously mentioned, Anna and I helped work on a short film. "The Doctor: We All Have Our Demons," co-written and directed by our protege Gabriel Komisar and featuring a few familiar faces from Gorilla's theater circle and others we hope to work with more in the future. Anna and I provided sets and assistant directed. Anna appears in the film as a mysterious woman who will give the protagonist a towel and some sound advice (thus winning the Douglas Adams Fan seal of approval!) before tossing said protagonist out a door and taking on some demons. I was the cameraman and cinematographer. I will also be editing the film.
I think the shoot was above all an educational experience for everyone involved, and looking over the footage now uploaded, I can happily say a success. Working with high school students is tough. Not because of intelligence or maturity so much as the simple reality that they are often quite busy in ways that make it challenging to get all in one place for rehearsals and blocking and all the preparation that goes into a smooth shooting schedule. In this case, we had to knock out the majority of the film in one day starting at 9:00AM and ending at 3:15PM. Everyone walked away exhausted, and I'm sure wondering not if we nailed every shot, but if we nailed any shot. Ultimately, we didn't them all. Some things could have used another take. I found some technical hang-ups with sound and a few shots, but as a whole, we didn't shoot a broken film, and some scenes came out genuinely great. The rests our the griefs of perfectionists still learning (myself included).
I need to talk more with the writer/director duo about what more I can share from or about the film. It really was a blast, and for Anna and I, the project was also a proof of concept for grander ideas. I'm sitting on a script for a full-length film, and after today, I feel very confident that with the proper resources, we will definitely be able to handle shooting it. More on that later.
Status of She Stoops To Conquer
With the evening came less happy tasks. After much discussion and reluctance, Gorilla Theater Productions has decided to terminate Tim Hulsey's involvement with She Stoops to Conquer. It is neither my nor Anna's desire to dwell on the particulars for why she came to this decision, nor do we wish ill will towards Tim or his future pursuits. Some clarification is due however. Tim is gone, but we are still doing Stoops.
Tim presented the idea for She Stoops to Conquer to us, and adapted the script for the production. Tim takes that adaptation with him, and we fully expect he will direct his interpretation (which I do not mean to imply was anything so radical - just that it was simply his) of the classic sometime in the near future, perhaps even the very near future - independently or as soon as he can find the backing of another company. This is my presumption though. Tim is no longer involved with GTP, nor we with him, and so neither can speak for the other. If he does pursue it, then whether he accepts it or not, he does have our blessing on the task. Tim came to Gorilla with enthusiasm and praise for Antigone, indicating that he believed in what we were doing. If that sentiment has changed, we nonetheless appreciate it for what it was at the time. We genuinely do wish him the best of luck.
GTP is a small company, based largely out of our home (stage flats still rest in the hallway between the living room and my office). The success of each show literally funds the next, allowing Gorilla to survive. It is essentially a non-profit without the 501c3 to make it official. Our reputation is still growing in this town, and it can't afford the hits that, for example, canceling space rentals (potentially convincing key venues that we are unreliable) can cause. We've committed to the location, spent money on fliers, and devoted many, many hours to this project ourselves (especially Anna). A large part of the changes to the summer programming were due to devoting more time to this production, the first production to mostly feature an adult cast, showing that Gorilla is not just a youth theater company. So, yeah, no pressure.
It really was a hard call for Anna to make, but we move forward with at least one conciliation - that our production will truly not take Tim's show away from him, even if he opens his own version on the same week. I find that the older a play is, the more malleable it is to re-interpretation. She Stoops to Conquer is 239 years old. Whatever vision Anna is coming up with for it, it will be pointedly not like that conceived by Tim.
As the use of "we" and "our" throughout should suggest, I will be much more involved with this project. Besides promotions, my role has been fairly vague, but I have a feeling I might find myself wearing more than a couple hats as we solider on.
Later.
Filming
As previously mentioned, Anna and I helped work on a short film. "The Doctor: We All Have Our Demons," co-written and directed by our protege Gabriel Komisar and featuring a few familiar faces from Gorilla's theater circle and others we hope to work with more in the future. Anna and I provided sets and assistant directed. Anna appears in the film as a mysterious woman who will give the protagonist a towel and some sound advice (thus winning the Douglas Adams Fan seal of approval!) before tossing said protagonist out a door and taking on some demons. I was the cameraman and cinematographer. I will also be editing the film.
I think the shoot was above all an educational experience for everyone involved, and looking over the footage now uploaded, I can happily say a success. Working with high school students is tough. Not because of intelligence or maturity so much as the simple reality that they are often quite busy in ways that make it challenging to get all in one place for rehearsals and blocking and all the preparation that goes into a smooth shooting schedule. In this case, we had to knock out the majority of the film in one day starting at 9:00AM and ending at 3:15PM. Everyone walked away exhausted, and I'm sure wondering not if we nailed every shot, but if we nailed any shot. Ultimately, we didn't them all. Some things could have used another take. I found some technical hang-ups with sound and a few shots, but as a whole, we didn't shoot a broken film, and some scenes came out genuinely great. The rests our the griefs of perfectionists still learning (myself included).
I need to talk more with the writer/director duo about what more I can share from or about the film. It really was a blast, and for Anna and I, the project was also a proof of concept for grander ideas. I'm sitting on a script for a full-length film, and after today, I feel very confident that with the proper resources, we will definitely be able to handle shooting it. More on that later.
Status of She Stoops To Conquer
With the evening came less happy tasks. After much discussion and reluctance, Gorilla Theater Productions has decided to terminate Tim Hulsey's involvement with She Stoops to Conquer. It is neither my nor Anna's desire to dwell on the particulars for why she came to this decision, nor do we wish ill will towards Tim or his future pursuits. Some clarification is due however. Tim is gone, but we are still doing Stoops.
Tim presented the idea for She Stoops to Conquer to us, and adapted the script for the production. Tim takes that adaptation with him, and we fully expect he will direct his interpretation (which I do not mean to imply was anything so radical - just that it was simply his) of the classic sometime in the near future, perhaps even the very near future - independently or as soon as he can find the backing of another company. This is my presumption though. Tim is no longer involved with GTP, nor we with him, and so neither can speak for the other. If he does pursue it, then whether he accepts it or not, he does have our blessing on the task. Tim came to Gorilla with enthusiasm and praise for Antigone, indicating that he believed in what we were doing. If that sentiment has changed, we nonetheless appreciate it for what it was at the time. We genuinely do wish him the best of luck.
GTP is a small company, based largely out of our home (stage flats still rest in the hallway between the living room and my office). The success of each show literally funds the next, allowing Gorilla to survive. It is essentially a non-profit without the 501c3 to make it official. Our reputation is still growing in this town, and it can't afford the hits that, for example, canceling space rentals (potentially convincing key venues that we are unreliable) can cause. We've committed to the location, spent money on fliers, and devoted many, many hours to this project ourselves (especially Anna). A large part of the changes to the summer programming were due to devoting more time to this production, the first production to mostly feature an adult cast, showing that Gorilla is not just a youth theater company. So, yeah, no pressure.
It really was a hard call for Anna to make, but we move forward with at least one conciliation - that our production will truly not take Tim's show away from him, even if he opens his own version on the same week. I find that the older a play is, the more malleable it is to re-interpretation. She Stoops to Conquer is 239 years old. Whatever vision Anna is coming up with for it, it will be pointedly not like that conceived by Tim.
As the use of "we" and "our" throughout should suggest, I will be much more involved with this project. Besides promotions, my role has been fairly vague, but I have a feeling I might find myself wearing more than a couple hats as we solider on.
Later.
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