Hello, all!  Long time, no see, I realize…but I hope everyone has been enjoying the summer!  We have several things going on simultaneously for “Sol,” right now…special FX, sound design and score are all being worked on by a trusty team of individuals across the country.  Before we know it (hopefully!), we’ll be putting all of these elements together for the final mix!

Today, Alex Davis takes us on another journey into the wonderful world of composing.  Watch closely, because he even shares his most valuable, treasured secret to writing music…!

We never get tired of hearing him down the hall!

Hello, all!  This is Sara.  It’s been a while for me, too, since I last posted anything, but I’m happy to say that I have a new video for you today!  Now that we have picture locked, Alex Davis has started working on the almost 2 hours of music that will end up as the score for “Sol.”  (He gave us a delicious taste of what to expect for our teaser a few weeks ago!)  In MY opinion, a film score has as much of an impact on the viewer as the performance does, if not more so!  So, I’m super excited to see what music will do for “Sol,” which is already an awesome story.  In today’s video, Alex and Ben hammer out the specifics of where they think music belongs and what is should sound like – what mood it should create.  It’s what’s called a “spotting session.”  Take a look!

I’ll  be back with more on the score in a week or two!  (After I set up shop outside Alex’s office so I can listen to him composing all day…Shhh!)

Hey guys – Ben checking in. Gosh, so after many, many weeks and months of endless editing we’ve finally finished picture cutting. That’s a really important step in the life of the film because most of the work that goes on in post-production can’t really happen until editing has been finished. But anyway, now here we are… Now the movie is heading forward to get all the other fun elements added like visual effects, music, etc.

Editing for Sol was a really interesting process to watch how the movie developed and took shape as we went along. Any given movie normally goes through several cuts and ours was certainly no exception. I guess the main goal with each new cut is to make the film as clear and concise as possible while still maintaining a tone and a fluid pace. So it’s sort of a fun juggling act.

It’s pretty funny to look back on because every time we finished a new cut we were always positive that the movie was as fast and as fun as it could possibly be. But then a day or two later we’d watch the film again and get all sorts of ideas where to keep going. Running time for the film was never as much of a concern as I thought it would be. Normally it’s like pulling teeth to try and keep material short and sweet but I think that just happened naturally for Sol.

Our first cut was about two and a half hours – which is definitely longer than I had in mind – but was a great starting point as we began bringing the story together. After our first pass we brought the movie down to about 2 hours even, which was short enough for my taste, but each time we took another look at the film we always found new things to speed up to keep the story moving.

Eventually after about four cuts, and about as many private test screenings, we finally have the movie covering everything that’s essential and for the right amount of time – so it’s all set and done. Our final run time is right around an hour and forty minutes – which is right about what I’d originally hoped we’d hit if we were lucky. I’m really relieved because it was actually fun trimming the movie to that length! But anyway, with all that now finished, Sol is now getting the final elements brought in.

A few of my favorite screen grabs below:

(Sneak peak!)

Ben

Exciting news!  Ben and Dylan Correll (our editor) put together a little trailer to give you a taste of what’s to come!  Alex Davis (our composer) even added music from the original score he’s composing.  Everything looks great, a testament to all of the trials we had to go through in the OBX.  We hope you all are as excited about it as we are!