So how many of you out there saw this???
Back in 2006, we wrote our own score to the Russian silent film "Aelita, Queen of Mars" at the Alamo Drafthouse. Adam brought all this music to my attention again the other day. I had not heard the music or seen the film in nearly 2 years. After hearing some it, I was compelled to watch the DVD that we created (for our own reference) that features our soundtrack to the movie.
I was floored! Listening to this 2 years later, I can appreciate the scale of the project and the quality of the show with greater objectivity.
I wonder how many people would be interested to hear this music in album format or even to see the DVD version of the film with our music syncronizeded to it...?
Leave us a comment and let me know.
the story of our version of Aelita:
We had wanted to score a silent film in conjunction with the drafthouse for years but had never done it. Older Austin bands like Brown Whornet, Golden Arm Trio and Guy Forsyth had already done most of the classic silent films like Metropolis, Faust, The General, etc. When I finally got the Drafthouse to agree to let us do one we got all caught up in deciding WHICH movie to do. Eventually, the Drafthouse asked us to "Aelita...". Rick, Bill and I watched the film and I remember falling asleep on Bill's floor. It was nearly 2 hours long and had tons of unnecessary scenes. The continuity was awful, too. It was really hard to understand what was happening.
We agreed to do the film because we knew that if we kept shooting down all the ideas the Drafthouse had, we'd eventually lose their attention and the project would not happen. Rick and I edited between 10-15 minutes of the film completely OUT of our version. That may not seem like much but that is significant when it comes to film editting. Mostly, we just cut lots of those unnecessary scene changes where it was just someone walking along or folding clothes or smoking or just sitting there. We learned later that the film was restored from several different versions of the original and that's probably why its continuity is so spotty. The restorers probably just guessed where to place some scenes.
Anyway... we made a rule that when the movie started getting boring, the music needed to rock more... or at least be less boring. Sarah Norris joined us on vibes for this project and I remember that her dad told me at the premier that we'd made the best score for the worst movie. haha! Graham Reynolds and Peter Stopschinski were both there and had nothing but good things to say. I remember Graham saying that we had obviously put much more thought into the porject than any other band who'd done it before.
Bill created probably 80% of the themes in the score and came up with the idea of using ascending 4ths (like in other Sci-Fi films/shows). I did a lot of arranging of stuff that he'd already written. I'd say that our actual scoring duties were about 60/40 with Bill doing most of it.
Performing the soundtrack live was VERY challenging. We did everything to a click so that scene changes would be (nearly) spot on. We rehearsed the living hell out of the thing and the people who saw it at the premier were treated to one of our best performances of any kind, ever. The only thing I wish we would've changed was that click. Because it was dark, we chose to have Tommy keep the hi-hat going throughout rather than directing us orchestra style. Though we thought it would be minor, it was still pretty audible in the really quiet scenes. Fortunately, there weren't a lot of quiet spots! In spite of the clicky quiet scenes, the music was top notch and people really liked it.
After the premier, we did an encore at the Alamo Lake Creek that went well about 6 weeks later. In the interim, we played other gigs and forgot the music.... we really had to practice to get it back in time for the encore!
At some point, Rick and I had the forsight to set up a recording of the entire soundtrack IMMEDIATELY after the encore performance. So, a few days later, we set everything up and started recording it in bits and pieces. Bill was instrumental in getting the drum sounds. Listening to it now, I have to say that he did a FANTASTIC job with that. We didn't use any special mic pres or anything. He just placed the mics really well.
We had to play it all to that same click we'd used live... but the click was only audible at the time of recording so you don't hear it in the actual playback. Tommy recorded ALL of the music along with a MIDI file playing in his headphones. No one else was there except me. haha! I engineered most of the sessions alone and that was quite a weird thing to witness - Tommy was alone in our band room playing drums and I could hear all the midi instruments playing our lines on the speakers in the control room. As I added each real instrument over the course of the next several weeks, certain midi sounds were covered and even cut/replaced. The process was very odd. Like turning a robot into a human.
Eventually Rick made a mix of the music that was pretty good and synced it to the movie in DVD format. Thank goodness he did that. We'd have no real reference otherwise.
The thing I don't think I appreciated until recently when Adam pointed it out is that we essentially created and performed 2 albums worth of music for this film in a matter of only 5-6 months!! We've never released any of it to date. We also play VERY little of the music from the score of "Aelita" live now. I really hope to change that and we're taking one step toward that goal tonight - we've added and extended version of "Elena" to our set for tonight's show at Room 710. Both "Elena" and "The Fight" will appear on our next album, as well.
So is anyone is interested in us releasing this music in some form - either album or a DVD version of the movie??
Here's a pic of the composer talking with Buzz Moran right before the premier of our version of "Aelita" in AUG 2006:
