This film was part of a series of films imagined and directed by Jane Laffey at Nickelodeon. I wrote the music and did the sound design and mix – it was a real pleasure to work on such inspiring stuff.
The voice is a recording of a kid and their true story, captured by Bold Creative and then animated to bring it to life. The film was recognised with a Bafta and Promax Gold award, testament to a great bit of film making!
[vimeo 39361939]I wrote this track with Saul Richards for Kream London… it’s a darn sight harder to whistle in tune than you imagine (I soon discovered). The final sound effects and mix were done by Chris Southwell, have a look:
[vimeo 39361441]This promo was directed by Derek Best at Nickelodeon and animated in house I think. I wrote the track for this with the multi-talented Simon Thompson, with chopped up vocals from Amanda Moocha. Most of the drum hits were from the ‘Driven Machine Drums’ collection, with bassline courtesy of my SH-101:
[vimeo 39361492]Them kids love to dance… I liked this track lots, but before Simon got to work on the vocals it weren’t nuthin special – a bit of collaboration can go a long way. Btw the end voice-over is Lewis McLeod in one of his many guises…
Check out this track I wrote for Nokia starring card flourisher Max Vlassenko.
[vimeo 39361512]To go with the homemade brief, most of the percussion was recorded in my talented percussionist and friend Nick Smalley’s front room… we recorded anything we could get our hands on that sounded tasty. Everything from a humble cheese grater to a didgeridoo got hit, all recorded on my Sony PCM D50 handheld recorder. I then made selects, chopped them up and polished it all into the finished thing in my studio within Pro Tools.
Chris Cairns from Partizan and I worked on the music and sound design for this commercial together from the storyboard stage through to the final mix.
[vimeo 39362345]We started by grouping sporting activities with corresponding musical sounds. Having built samplers within Logic using library sound effects, I wrote the track based around the storyboards, and with a bit of to’ing and fro’ing we ended up with something close to the final tune. On the shoot, elements of the track were used as playback in order to sync the action, and I attended the set too in order to pick up some foley from the people on set. Back in the studio in post production, I replaced a lot of the original libary sounds within the track with the foley I recorded on set, and that was about it… anyways, have look – it’s a complex idea to execute and it isn’t without its flaws but I learned a lot from the process and the end result was pretty cool.
What’s Fufu was conceived by Bold Creative – a great digital agency working with mainly youth projects. It was part of a series of ‘Three Minute Wonder’ films on Channel 4 a couple of years ago.
[vimeo 39362011]I initially wrote the music using mainly programmed instruments in Logic and wanted to add a bit more life to it, so I re-recorded the cello parts with Oliver Coates, a talented man indeed… he added a great deal, and some interesting scrapes around the shadow tugging bit.
I wrote the music and edited and mixed the sound effects too for this gorgeous animation directed by Claire Norowzian and Jonny Mazur. It was one of three animations created by Nandita Jain for Nick Junior to form part of their environment awareness campaign.
[vimeo 39361844]I love the texture of this film, I think the animator used lots of textiles in it… anyway for my part I tried to pitch lots of the sound effects to be harmonious with my music – see if you can hear the tuneful squawking just before the monkeys in the trees!
Adam from Studio NX commissioned me to write the music for this trailer/pilot for an animation they made:
[vimeo 39361534]
I edited the sound effects and mixed it too, while Adam recorded the kids dialogue on his handheld recorder at a school. In an ideal scenario we would have re-recorded some of the dialogue put as it was a pitch this wasn’t an option.
I wrote this track for my good friend Chris Ullens back in 2007 I think… I was really happy with it and so was Chris, however the client in Chile ended up going with a cheesy hip hop track. I wasn’t too worried – it was good fun to make:
[vimeo 39361893]It was around the time I got Reaktor (Native Instruments) so the Vectory plugin was used on the beats, along with a bit of granular stuff and some noise from my trusty Roland SH-101!
will cohen 