My first movie score was for “an unsuitable job for a woman”….based on a PD James novel…directed by Chris Petit back in the late 1970s
Since that time ive composed music for a number of movies including D.O.A which my sister Annabel co-directed………..i spent three months in los angeles working on this..and this was an inspiring movie to work on……..the music theme for this is still one of my favourite works as is the music I wrote for the scene just after Dennis Quaid discovers he has twenty four hours to live….the peice featured heavy feedback guitar and organ and developed the theme of the movie and then went “crash,bang wollop” into the waterboys…….brilliant!….Other memorable scores included “Tales from the darkside”.…Cat fom Hell episode
…..when the director asked me how i imagined the music, i said ….”blue”…..he was sold….and that was what i painted musically….however on the day the score was mixed carl from underworld was in los angeles for a day and i spent it writing a song with him that was never finished…unfortunately the score for “cat from hell” was very quiet!…thats the price you pay for not attending the movie you scored.
Another film that comes to mind was “the Rachel Papers” directed by damian harris where i incidentally met Elaine – my wife, whom i married … she was assistant editor on this movie.
Anyway other movies including K2 and a documentary called “From the ashes” about the cricket legend Ian Botham also came my way………..but im going to fast forward to March 28 2012 when I directed a short film called “Beyond Words”……..
Dylan Martin filmed and edited it and this was a completely different concept….let me explain………..i was lying in bed one morning half asleep and half awake and i was reminiscing about a time id been down to Fowey in Cornwall with the blockheads (no explanation necessary) annd as i was lying there in bed with my eyes closed i was picturing the beautiful serene wide river mouth of the river foy and i was almost in a meditation..when gradually i imagined music accompanying this image………….as time went by the idea of filming this river and then adding sympathetic music became more and more powerful…till one day i said to myself….”ive got to and film this…..and thats what we did….i hired an HD sony camcorder and booked the same room that id stayed at with the blockheads about two years previous which had a riverside view…and went and filmed………….basically we shot from sunrise till sunset and then i wrote piano music to it…..i took quite a while to edit…..but what we had at the end was like an impressionistic painting…or even a neo realistic painting come to life.
As time went by i thought about playing live piano to the scenes projected or possibly on a huge plasma screne of this film but just using the natural ambience that we had recorded……….but as time went by i realised that as the this film called “Beyond Words” was only 38 mins long …..i needed another film to make up a full evenings progam if i was to perform in a venue…………..So i thought about another serene image that was somewhere deep in my memory banks and i thought about going to “Ben Nevis” in the highlands of Scotland…..and likewise we were going to make a short film using the same camera and…..film whatever happened on the day we had booked the hotel and camera………as it turned out the weather was appalling!It didnt stop raining……….but then we got a break and the second half of our day was rainfree a different story and we then had a sort of a narrative in this film called “Evocation”….we shot this film in October 2012……now its march 2013 and weve just finished editing the film. PHEW!…..this film took a long time as we messed up on the audio(we didnt have any) and practically had to overdub all the ambience….no mean feat….i can tell you!!!!!
So there we have it…i now have two films that i can show back to back and accompany with live music….thats the plot anyway……we dont want to put the film on sale yet as we want to enter them into film festivals and it is a prerequiste that they arent available commercially………When there is more news i’ll bring you up to date…
My other movies scores included…. Making Mr Right, War Party, A sixty four day hero-randolf turpin, Confetti (featured song co written with ian dury-one love)……and of course “earth girls are easy”………not an easy name to remember……not an easy name to remember after twenty seven years!
and last but not least…of course the bafta nominated “sex and drugs and rock and roll”