i can now report that faust has been successfully finalized, even the text between the scenes is now done, this was the last piece that had been missing. the faustderfilm.com webpage will soon reflect these news and we are looking forward to distribute faust as good as possible, which is quite another story for itself. for now: please watch faustderfilm.com for updates!
all the best,
alex.
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
Friday, October 10, 2008
farewell
now faust is done, the orchestra score has been mixed down, the voiceovers have been flewn in, the color correction is finalized and the animation has been finally adjusted to maximum impact...the text between scenes has yet to be done...we are looking forward to distribute faust to as many festivals as there are who want to show the film. philipp is in the process of making a dvd for me that i can use for promotional purposes (the first one had no chapters and most dvd players were unable to cue it due to its high data rate) and for distribution to the festivals. we'll see what happens...
it's been a long time that i've been working on faust and i enjoyed it, but now the time has come to say goodbye...well maybe not completely, there will be a making of, but i doubt that i will write any new music for it...although there are new projects that i'm already working on this will be the final entry into this blog and i hereby consider it closed...
if you want to know any more about faust, gretchen and mephisto than you can read in goethes original, that is, if you want to know any more about their fate in the film, you'll have to go and watch it...i hope it will be viewable at one or another festival, and of course there will be the point when the dvd will be released and distributed, probably through the home page, so stay tuned. i know nothing about a theatrical release which would be great, but we don't know anything about a possible distributor...i'm sure philipp will look for one, though...
so i hope you'll go and watch - and listen to - faust, the film, and i hope you will find it enjoyable...other than that i hope you have a good time...and thanks for stopping by!
all the best,
alex.
it's been a long time that i've been working on faust and i enjoyed it, but now the time has come to say goodbye...well maybe not completely, there will be a making of, but i doubt that i will write any new music for it...although there are new projects that i'm already working on this will be the final entry into this blog and i hereby consider it closed...
if you want to know any more about faust, gretchen and mephisto than you can read in goethes original, that is, if you want to know any more about their fate in the film, you'll have to go and watch it...i hope it will be viewable at one or another festival, and of course there will be the point when the dvd will be released and distributed, probably through the home page, so stay tuned. i know nothing about a theatrical release which would be great, but we don't know anything about a possible distributor...i'm sure philipp will look for one, though...
so i hope you'll go and watch - and listen to - faust, the film, and i hope you will find it enjoyable...other than that i hope you have a good time...and thanks for stopping by!
all the best,
alex.
Thursday, August 21, 2008
done!
we're done! the soundtrack has been bounced to 5.1 and 3.1/2.0 mixes and is ready for distribution. philipp is working on producing a final copy of faust on dvd as well as on digi beta (he ran into trouble initially because the video studio where he wanted to do the transfer had an ancient avid version that was incompatible with the version that has been used to work on faust). i volunteered to find a copy of dvd studio pro that we could use, so this will probably be the program that we will use to finish the final dvd with 5.1 sound. some dvd programs had the ability to do the menu the way philpp wanted it and some could do 5.1 sound, but not both at the same time. with dvd studio pro we should be able to produce a cd with the menu philipp wants as well as 5.1 sound. yesterday i rendered the 5.1 and 2.0 ac3 files so we're ready to incorporate the soundtrack into the dvd. i'm quite excited since a 3 year work period has ended and faust is ready for prime time. in the following months (years) we will distribute faust to as many festivals as possible, hopefully some will be interested. i'm really curious how the audience will receive the film and the music, a first test will be done really soon when we will have a pre premiere for the team that worked on the film. i'm curious about what the actors will have to say about the music...
so there is no final medium with faust on it yet, but we'll have one or more masters really soon, i'll keep you posted how the work proceeds...
so there is no final medium with faust on it yet, but we'll have one or more masters really soon, i'll keep you posted how the work proceeds...
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
mixing faust
hi there!
after cutting together the whole thing i managed to start mixing the project. that sounds easier than it is. cutting faust took me about two months. you have to imagine that i was cutting 28 tracks minimum at once and that my computer slowed down during the process so that it almost came to a halt. it worked out somehow, though. now that everything has been cut and also two organ parts have been recorded (with a live church organ) i started mixing the project. first i tried to do it in logic, which turned out to be impossible because logic is somehow not compatible with the digidesign interfaces in the studio where i do the mixdown. so i turned to pro tools and this works fine. i slapped some great sounding surround reverb on the tracks and started to mix. meanwhile i'm almost done, a few finishing touches are still missing, but i will finish the mix this week i hope. the voices of stefan and georgij have been integrated into the mix as well as some additional instruments that i won't talk about too much. choir and organ are there as well. sounds great in 5.1 surround so far...
after finishing the 5.1 mix i will also generate a downmix to dolby stereo (3.1) and stereo (2.0), so we'll be ready for any occasion.
in the meantime i already started to work on my next project, which...but that's a whole different story...i'll let you know when faust is ready...
after cutting together the whole thing i managed to start mixing the project. that sounds easier than it is. cutting faust took me about two months. you have to imagine that i was cutting 28 tracks minimum at once and that my computer slowed down during the process so that it almost came to a halt. it worked out somehow, though. now that everything has been cut and also two organ parts have been recorded (with a live church organ) i started mixing the project. first i tried to do it in logic, which turned out to be impossible because logic is somehow not compatible with the digidesign interfaces in the studio where i do the mixdown. so i turned to pro tools and this works fine. i slapped some great sounding surround reverb on the tracks and started to mix. meanwhile i'm almost done, a few finishing touches are still missing, but i will finish the mix this week i hope. the voices of stefan and georgij have been integrated into the mix as well as some additional instruments that i won't talk about too much. choir and organ are there as well. sounds great in 5.1 surround so far...
after finishing the 5.1 mix i will also generate a downmix to dolby stereo (3.1) and stereo (2.0), so we'll be ready for any occasion.
in the meantime i already started to work on my next project, which...but that's a whole different story...i'll let you know when faust is ready...
Sunday, March 16, 2008
long time no see
it's been some time since i wrote an entry here...meanwhile the final scene of faust has been finished as well as the walpurgisnacht. we even had a recording session with the orchestra (sinfonia piccola-kammerorchester robert stolz). it was about the largest setting which you could still call a chamber orchestra - 34 musicians. we had a lot of fun, but we were also severely tested by our equipment, that is, by our computer running logic studio, which tried to do something else but recording during the first two days, mainly trying to crash all the time. on the third day we figured it out, sort of, and were able to work at a decent pace. anyway, we still have to do another recording session to be able to finish the film. the walpurgisnacht was so tricky musically (13/8 and 7/4 bars throughout the tune) that the orchestra had a hard time staying close to the click. playing to a click as an orchestra by the way is a whole seperate issue altogether. it works, but it doesn't always work well. there were several times when vladimir, our conductor, had to keep the orchestra from a ritartando at the end of a phrase, which would absolutely make sens musically, but which wasn't programmed in the click. i'll keep that in the back of my head for the next project.
nevertheless the recording sessions were a thrilling experience and we borrowed the best equipment we could lay our hands on. there were three millenia media hv3d preamps, a sebatron vmp4000, 20 schoeps mics, 7 neumanns and one akg. there were rme and apogee converters (the latter bought in the last minute by me, figuring i'll need it in the future anyway). i used my genelec monitors and my trusty old imac to record everything. we even had a behringer headphone amp (that was an insider joke now).
the result is a very warm orchestra sound in the absolute absence of anything like noise or analog hiss. very nice. from a technical point of view i'm absolutely satisfied. also musically the sessions were great. we'll see if i can cut everything togethere nicely so it fits.
. tomorrow i have to have a demo of the whole film ready to be sent to a famous festival. i hope they like it...
stay tuned, i'll be back soon...
nevertheless the recording sessions were a thrilling experience and we borrowed the best equipment we could lay our hands on. there were three millenia media hv3d preamps, a sebatron vmp4000, 20 schoeps mics, 7 neumanns and one akg. there were rme and apogee converters (the latter bought in the last minute by me, figuring i'll need it in the future anyway). i used my genelec monitors and my trusty old imac to record everything. we even had a behringer headphone amp (that was an insider joke now).
the result is a very warm orchestra sound in the absolute absence of anything like noise or analog hiss. very nice. from a technical point of view i'm absolutely satisfied. also musically the sessions were great. we'll see if i can cut everything togethere nicely so it fits.
. tomorrow i have to have a demo of the whole film ready to be sent to a famous festival. i hope they like it...
stay tuned, i'll be back soon...
Friday, June 01, 2007
something's going on...
i've been working on the new version of the music for the credits lately...i keep sending philipp music via skype and so far he seems to like the new version better, which is cool with me. it's a little bit downtempo compared to the first version, but i don't want to talk about it too much to avoid giving anything away for those of you who haven't seen the film yet...
i still have no ending for some reason, yesterday some great ending came to my mind when i left the computer, but i forgot to write it down, naturally, since i was somewhere outside when it came to my mind. i had hoped to remember it, but alas...i didn't. so i will have to come up with something fresh which is ok too...i just didn't have the nerve today to sit down and concentrate for some reason...
apart from the ending of the very last music in the film and the walpurgisnacht (which still hasn't been finished by the animation department) the music for faust is done. wow. we'll see how many weeks it will take me to find an ending...i'm talking about 8 or 16 bars or so here...
more to come soon, i'll let you know when philipp says ok to the credit-music...
l8er...
i still have no ending for some reason, yesterday some great ending came to my mind when i left the computer, but i forgot to write it down, naturally, since i was somewhere outside when it came to my mind. i had hoped to remember it, but alas...i didn't. so i will have to come up with something fresh which is ok too...i just didn't have the nerve today to sit down and concentrate for some reason...
apart from the ending of the very last music in the film and the walpurgisnacht (which still hasn't been finished by the animation department) the music for faust is done. wow. we'll see how many weeks it will take me to find an ending...i'm talking about 8 or 16 bars or so here...
more to come soon, i'll let you know when philipp says ok to the credit-music...
l8er...
Thursday, May 24, 2007
cemetery scene revisited...
hi there...! it's been some time...
well i had the opportunity to finish the cemetery scene meanwhile. fortunately the form was quite clear at that point up to the point where gretchen falls down on her knees. and fortunately i decided that my previous layout was good and i would stick to it. only thing i did was shorten the last part when she's wandering through the woods a bit and enter with a quite dramatic theme in the first trumpet when she falls down to her knees. there's also some accented string pattern coming in...it's quite dramatic. then everything kind of fades away as she stops crying and starts to pray...i had some fun introducing, well, programming the ritartando.
the cemetery scene is now pretty much what it has been in its last reincarnation, the counterpoint part is gone, of course, and there's a -hopefully- haunting flute theme that lingers on through the whole scene, interrupted only by a string part. the flute theme characterizes the situation at the cemetery and foreshadows the upcoming tragedy and grief that is within gretchen, while the string part describes her remembering her loved ones (mother and brother valentin). then the flute theme appears again and merges into a pretty dramatic theme with organ and choir as she strolls through the woods. after that there's the breakdown.
what can i say, philipp was happy when he heard it today, and he was completely happy after i removed a tambourine track that i liked but he didn't and that i had tried to smuggle in somehow...well, after all he's got ears in his head, so much about trying to smuggle something in, i just can't get away with it.
next thing will be completely rewriting the music for the credits. philipp wants a different kind of mood. let's see if i can nail it. oh, by the way: except for the credits the music is pretty much done now, except for the one big animation scene, the walpurgisnacht, which is due to be delivered to my by the animation department in about a month from now, if i recall it correctly. i should have the credits done by then. there will be an interesting guest musician in the walpurgisnacht scene that i will tell you, well, maybe, when i get there...
stay tuned...!
well i had the opportunity to finish the cemetery scene meanwhile. fortunately the form was quite clear at that point up to the point where gretchen falls down on her knees. and fortunately i decided that my previous layout was good and i would stick to it. only thing i did was shorten the last part when she's wandering through the woods a bit and enter with a quite dramatic theme in the first trumpet when she falls down to her knees. there's also some accented string pattern coming in...it's quite dramatic. then everything kind of fades away as she stops crying and starts to pray...i had some fun introducing, well, programming the ritartando.
the cemetery scene is now pretty much what it has been in its last reincarnation, the counterpoint part is gone, of course, and there's a -hopefully- haunting flute theme that lingers on through the whole scene, interrupted only by a string part. the flute theme characterizes the situation at the cemetery and foreshadows the upcoming tragedy and grief that is within gretchen, while the string part describes her remembering her loved ones (mother and brother valentin). then the flute theme appears again and merges into a pretty dramatic theme with organ and choir as she strolls through the woods. after that there's the breakdown.
what can i say, philipp was happy when he heard it today, and he was completely happy after i removed a tambourine track that i liked but he didn't and that i had tried to smuggle in somehow...well, after all he's got ears in his head, so much about trying to smuggle something in, i just can't get away with it.
next thing will be completely rewriting the music for the credits. philipp wants a different kind of mood. let's see if i can nail it. oh, by the way: except for the credits the music is pretty much done now, except for the one big animation scene, the walpurgisnacht, which is due to be delivered to my by the animation department in about a month from now, if i recall it correctly. i should have the credits done by then. there will be an interesting guest musician in the walpurgisnacht scene that i will tell you, well, maybe, when i get there...
stay tuned...!
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