Halloween III HAPPENED!
Jun. 16th, 2023 11:05 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ateolfWow. I can't even describe my feelings after what went down last night. The live score for Halloween III seems to have been an unequivocal success. I'll try to talk about it. Let me back up and get the day in chronological order.
Not a lot earlier in the day as we had to get going up there pretty early for sound check. But a little before I left I got some cds in the mail: Glaxo Babies: Put Me on the Guest List, La Monte Young/Marian Zazeela: 31, and David Cunningham: Grey Scale. Okay, then Jacques came over and we loaded my shit into our cars and headed over to Crosstown. We got to park at the loading dock behind the theater so that was convenient. Set up went smoothly (still takes a while but was expected). Jacques had some issues with his sound and volume when we were first setting up and he was starting to get into panic mode. But after a while things seemed to mysteriously resolve themselves. I was worried being right up close to the screen would be difficult, but it wasn't bad. After setting up we had a bit of a break. We got to use the fancy green room in the back with the fancy furniture. It was quite nice. Never seen any of the back of the theater at all before anyway. Then we got back together and ran through a good hunk of the movie, not the whole thing but some key parts for all of our sections. During all this the lights were completely off and I couldn't even see my Taurus pedals or my cheat sheet. We got a small amount of light for the actual movie so I was able to see better. But things were sounding good and (though I'd been a little nervous into the days leading up to this, I had a feeling it would be pretty popular and being on that big stage in front of a lot of people)...well, after we got together and were sounding good (as we always have), I was over feeling any nervousness! Then a little more time before. At 6 Zachary and Denny showed up to take control of the shirts.
Well, then we did it. There were some flubs. I messed up leaving the mod wheel on before doing my part playing along to the "Happy Happy Halloween" song (twice) so it came out messed up) and I think once or twice on it I had a wrong note. Then there was a technical issue where my modular at the beginning had no sound coming out of it. I do a thing where I'm running the drum machine through it for the reverb but the reverb didn't come through so I had to just crank up the clean channel in the mixer but then my first stinger where the robot is crushed by the car, absolutely no sound. So that was a little bit of a bummer. Still not sure exactly why that happened, but a little later everything was working. And overall, it was our best runthrough. Mistakes weren't bad enough for people to notice or care. And people were really into it, it seems. When we first walked onto the stage just a little before it happened, there was a good amount of people out in the audience but it wasn't packed or anything. But after we finished and turned around, it looked pretty packed out there. I was a little freaked out to look too closely, but I think it was a very sizeable turnout. There was an applause when the movie ended right before we went into our closing credits music and I was like "cool, they're applauding the movie" but then when we really finished there was another very big applause. And then I saw all the people and yeah, I think it was liked. I mean, when we went back out to mingle everyone was coming up to us and everyone was extremely complimentary. And like, with this genuine enthusiasm where you can tell that they really do mean it. Like, it's hard to articulate, but the response was surprisingly emphatic. I would have been happy with everything even if it wasn't, but it felt overwhelmingly genuine and positive. It's kind of very shocking and humbling! And I'm so lucky to have done it was such great musicians. I mean, sure, I've played with Jacques for like 25 years almost, but still! And I can't believe I managed to b.s. my way into playing a show with Natalie! I've never played with someone where I was just a fan of theirs before getting to know them. So yeah, it's insane. And I know we all put way more work into this than probably much else (I won't speak for Natalie though! as she's been in and touring with real bands and stuff!, but the demands of this kind of live score are definitely PARTICULAR!) and we kind of didn't know what we were getting into effort-wise when we set off, even having done other live scores before, but it DEFINITELY paid off. Probably, aside from just the music being awesome (heh) people were responding to the level of detail in the changes and shifts of mood and all that. It was really like we wrote out a score to a whole movie and then played all the studio edits live. Anyway, I don't mean to just toot the old horn and all that, but damn! The most stressful part of this week was over and went even better than I expected!
After we loaded shit back home, Jacques and I went and grabbed some food at Slider Inn (I hadn't eaten since around noon and Jacques not even then). So I had some delicious food and we got to talk and decompress and stuff. And while there, Jacques got a message from Courtney (who runs the whole film series, but had to be out of town for tonight...in Mexico!) letting him know that the president of the Crosstown Concourse was there and he had reached out to Stacy (Courtney's boss at Crosstown, also who I worked with setting up the first Memphis Concrète, and pretty sure she's moved up the ladder since then) to let her know how good it was! Oh, this kind of doesn't belong in this paragraph, but whatever. So I think I mentioned before that there was a question of the video quality. Well, it was all just fine. And even more than that. I couldn't see anything that looked off with the video. I mean, I bet if I did an a/b comparison with the original blu ray I'd notice a little something, but yeah it looked great. And with the sound edits, that was just perfect. It was a lot of effort for that but I'm glad it paid off! Okay, now I'm babbling and all and I've got some shit to do. I've probably forgotten something but if I remember I'll say it later and all that. Oh yeah, one more small thing. Earlier, when talking with people about certain logistics and stuff (mostly Courtney) they'd say "ah, you're a professional [etc]" and I felt a large dose of imposter syndrome at that! I mean, I enjoy being an amateur in these matters! But anyway, after all this I kinda do feel like I pulled something off at a professional level, at least a little bit or more than before. Okay, had to throw that in before I forgot!
Not a lot earlier in the day as we had to get going up there pretty early for sound check. But a little before I left I got some cds in the mail: Glaxo Babies: Put Me on the Guest List, La Monte Young/Marian Zazeela: 31, and David Cunningham: Grey Scale. Okay, then Jacques came over and we loaded my shit into our cars and headed over to Crosstown. We got to park at the loading dock behind the theater so that was convenient. Set up went smoothly (still takes a while but was expected). Jacques had some issues with his sound and volume when we were first setting up and he was starting to get into panic mode. But after a while things seemed to mysteriously resolve themselves. I was worried being right up close to the screen would be difficult, but it wasn't bad. After setting up we had a bit of a break. We got to use the fancy green room in the back with the fancy furniture. It was quite nice. Never seen any of the back of the theater at all before anyway. Then we got back together and ran through a good hunk of the movie, not the whole thing but some key parts for all of our sections. During all this the lights were completely off and I couldn't even see my Taurus pedals or my cheat sheet. We got a small amount of light for the actual movie so I was able to see better. But things were sounding good and (though I'd been a little nervous into the days leading up to this, I had a feeling it would be pretty popular and being on that big stage in front of a lot of people)...well, after we got together and were sounding good (as we always have), I was over feeling any nervousness! Then a little more time before. At 6 Zachary and Denny showed up to take control of the shirts.
Well, then we did it. There were some flubs. I messed up leaving the mod wheel on before doing my part playing along to the "Happy Happy Halloween" song (twice) so it came out messed up) and I think once or twice on it I had a wrong note. Then there was a technical issue where my modular at the beginning had no sound coming out of it. I do a thing where I'm running the drum machine through it for the reverb but the reverb didn't come through so I had to just crank up the clean channel in the mixer but then my first stinger where the robot is crushed by the car, absolutely no sound. So that was a little bit of a bummer. Still not sure exactly why that happened, but a little later everything was working. And overall, it was our best runthrough. Mistakes weren't bad enough for people to notice or care. And people were really into it, it seems. When we first walked onto the stage just a little before it happened, there was a good amount of people out in the audience but it wasn't packed or anything. But after we finished and turned around, it looked pretty packed out there. I was a little freaked out to look too closely, but I think it was a very sizeable turnout. There was an applause when the movie ended right before we went into our closing credits music and I was like "cool, they're applauding the movie" but then when we really finished there was another very big applause. And then I saw all the people and yeah, I think it was liked. I mean, when we went back out to mingle everyone was coming up to us and everyone was extremely complimentary. And like, with this genuine enthusiasm where you can tell that they really do mean it. Like, it's hard to articulate, but the response was surprisingly emphatic. I would have been happy with everything even if it wasn't, but it felt overwhelmingly genuine and positive. It's kind of very shocking and humbling! And I'm so lucky to have done it was such great musicians. I mean, sure, I've played with Jacques for like 25 years almost, but still! And I can't believe I managed to b.s. my way into playing a show with Natalie! I've never played with someone where I was just a fan of theirs before getting to know them. So yeah, it's insane. And I know we all put way more work into this than probably much else (I won't speak for Natalie though! as she's been in and touring with real bands and stuff!, but the demands of this kind of live score are definitely PARTICULAR!) and we kind of didn't know what we were getting into effort-wise when we set off, even having done other live scores before, but it DEFINITELY paid off. Probably, aside from just the music being awesome (heh) people were responding to the level of detail in the changes and shifts of mood and all that. It was really like we wrote out a score to a whole movie and then played all the studio edits live. Anyway, I don't mean to just toot the old horn and all that, but damn! The most stressful part of this week was over and went even better than I expected!
After we loaded shit back home, Jacques and I went and grabbed some food at Slider Inn (I hadn't eaten since around noon and Jacques not even then). So I had some delicious food and we got to talk and decompress and stuff. And while there, Jacques got a message from Courtney (who runs the whole film series, but had to be out of town for tonight...in Mexico!) letting him know that the president of the Crosstown Concourse was there and he had reached out to Stacy (Courtney's boss at Crosstown, also who I worked with setting up the first Memphis Concrète, and pretty sure she's moved up the ladder since then) to let her know how good it was! Oh, this kind of doesn't belong in this paragraph, but whatever. So I think I mentioned before that there was a question of the video quality. Well, it was all just fine. And even more than that. I couldn't see anything that looked off with the video. I mean, I bet if I did an a/b comparison with the original blu ray I'd notice a little something, but yeah it looked great. And with the sound edits, that was just perfect. It was a lot of effort for that but I'm glad it paid off! Okay, now I'm babbling and all and I've got some shit to do. I've probably forgotten something but if I remember I'll say it later and all that. Oh yeah, one more small thing. Earlier, when talking with people about certain logistics and stuff (mostly Courtney) they'd say "ah, you're a professional [etc]" and I felt a large dose of imposter syndrome at that! I mean, I enjoy being an amateur in these matters! But anyway, after all this I kinda do feel like I pulled something off at a professional level, at least a little bit or more than before. Okay, had to throw that in before I forgot!
