Settling the Score

Colin Devlin is no stranger to film and television music. His song "The Heart Won't be Denied" was just used in the season finale of ABC's "Brothers and Sisters." I first encountered Colin's music on the BATMAN FOREVER soundtrack (which I owned on cassette, I believe). He and his brother appeared as The Devlins on that collection (that featured U2, Seal, and PJ Harvey as well) with a track called "Crossing the River." For TAKEN IN, Colin has recorded U2's "Staring At the Sun." It sounds amazing. The perfect ending to our film.

CINCO DE MAYO

Lunch with Tim Brosnan...then saw Josh McGill on Skype...and saw Daniel McCord, Madelaine Hoptry, Jeter Rhodes, and Emily White last at Dan's...where we all chatted with Jennifer Baxley on the phone.

REALLY ready for public screenings of our movie...

FIRST LOOK!

This is TAKEN IN.

Or at least, this is what it looks like on a Final Cut Pro timeline.

The picture edit is complete, and a DVD draft has been sent to Josh McGill in Dallas for scoring. A few people have seen the full locked-picture cut (Jeter and I...Emily, her brother Dan), and a couple have seen the very end of the film (Colin, Maddi and her roommate Alex, Tim).

There are a few problems. Most have to do with just how much exposition, or back story, we release to the audience. At present...there is almost none. Just...story happening. I wonder how much our audience needs to know, setup-wise, to commit to taking the ride with us. Most movies explain everything. And most of the time, they do a clever job at this.

Not sure if this film can stand up straight with as little as we're giving.

ALMOST DONE!

Picture is almost set for the film, thanks to the amazing efforts of editor Jeter Rhodes.

Next up? Sound editing...which should be helped by Josh McGill's original score.

MUSICAL SCORE

Excerpts from a recent e-mail exchange with our composer, Josh McGill:

“I was talking to a friend the other day about this gig and at a point I ended up inadvertently blurting something out that I have now come to adopt as a sort of personal mission statement for this film, ‘My job is to provide a counterpoint to what is being said, and a harmony to what is being felt.’

“This is a character driven story focusing on a first degree familial relationship. A complicated father/daughter relationship at that. It seems to me that this is the kind of sensitive situation where words can just seem to come out wrong, where there may even be no words at all to express the depths of that which is felt internally. A hidden dimension so to speak. Something that, in quite a mystical sense, is both shared by and unique to both father and daughter. A kind of coded language that comes from the extreme vulnerability and illusory exposure that the dynamics of family can so easily create.

“What I want to attempt with this music is to give that hidden dimension, that secret code, a voice in this cinematic caldron. To expose that which is unknowable behind the eyes of the father, and uncertain behind those of the daughter, in an attempt to accentuate the fragility of the story and hopefully, in turn, the impact of the catharsis as well.”

Josh McGill

Composer

Dallas, TX