Hey there guys....so sorry it's been such a hugely long time since my last catch up...but...well...quite frankly I've been the busiest I've ever been in my entire life!!!I'm now "working" in Tanzania on my first film score. Some of you already know about it. It's the flamingo one. What's great about this project is that it's not going to be me sweating on delivering a score 1 week before the films due for release (like Narnia!) but I'm being brought in right from even before the start! The idea is I'm here to record sounds and be inspired (like I need to be,...but of course I didn't tell them that!) to get writing. Being a nature film there's not a whole long of dialogue (not unless you can speak flamingo or marabouan) so it's just great for me to spread my musical wings...as it were.
So now....I should really introduce you to everyone while I'm here. First up we have Leander Ward...he's the guy who got in touch with me in the beginning and he's directing it along with Matt Aebehard who lives in the Serengeti along with our script writer (his wife) Melanie Finn. There's also Smiley (who's Somali) and he's a great mechanic...which is VERY handy if your jeep breaks down in the middle of the open plains.This is me in the Serengeti. It's only the 2nd day and I've seen lions, gazelles, impalas, buffalo, tons of big birds (like myself!) like ostrich, vultures, marabous and wonderfully colourful birds (the lovebird being my favourite so far....but I haven't yet seen a flamingo...a couple more days until we get to those!), hippos, giraffes, baboons, hyenas, black backed jackals, one snake which is an egg beater and Matt is holding it captive in a tupperware box with a huge chicken egg which it won't ever swallow...but it can dream, some crazy insects and bunnies. I'm sure there's some things I've forgotten...zebras, elephants and wildebeests too. Wow. Loving this so much. I'm really starting to listen to the sounds around us. It's hard to remember the last time I was somewhere and couldn't hear a car in the background or an aeroplane in the sky. It's just all natural sound. I've got this mic setup. Binaural mics. I wear them attached to this headband thing. They look like headphones but they're mics and I've been recording everything from zebras and wildebeest lapping up water from a river to Hippos wading in mud and farting quite a lot. The broad wings of the marabou flying over us. The idea is to take these sounds back to London and begin to work on the score using the beats and melodies within the natural environment. Starting from a hyena call and then morphing it gradually into a piece of music. So the listener can't really tell where the two meet. They just evolve out of each other.
There's this rock that's called Ngong rock...and it makes these amazing resonant sounds when you hit it with other rocks. Really tuneful. This is me hitting and recording it. I was thinking about getting me one of these for stage but I don't think the stage crew would appreciate carrying a 5 ton lump of granite on and off the stage each night! It's said to be the oldest instrument in the world. It was almost like a steel drum. After playing it for a while you start to hear all the detail within it's sound. So many harmonics. I'm definitely going to be using those recordings as part of my rhythm tracks!Met this guy called Alan Root today (who's a big cheese in the world of nature films). He had this pet hyrax. It was soooo cute! They called it Pia. Apparently it the elephant's oldest relative and looks like a large guinea pig. He's going to take me up in a helicopter in a few days to the top of the Lengai volcano which is still very much alive. Cool! or not actually...
As you can imagine I'm having the time of my life.
Well we've got to go now.
Off to Ndutu for the night in our Jeep.Gotta run!
Speak soon xxxxx i xxxxx
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