Hantu Lumpur

Exciting news … Work has just finished on my first ever Feature Film. This is a horror from Indonesia and is a very particular brew of classic Asian horror, and and a goofy kind of humour. They’re nuts for it in that part of the world apparently – and will be shown in cinemas all across S.E.Asia in a week or so.
To western sensibilities, I expect Grindhouse is the closest comparison  in style.

I’ve heard quite a few good suggestions for titles … ‘Carry On Up The Shining’ has come from two places. ‘National Lampoon’s Friday The 13th’ is another – would love to hear some more, I’ve put a comments box below for just that, best one wins a prize !

The challenge I faced in this was the sheer quantity needed in such a short period of time. For those who do this, my saviour was Spitfire’s excellent ‘Albion:ICENI’  library, as well as for some wonderful atonal orchestral effects from ‘Albion Vol. 1’.
It’s crucial to me to be able to manipulate sound with my hands it as I see the images in realtime, and for this I used my Korg MS10 synth, routed through Strymon’s’El Capistan’ Tape Echo – improvising several layers over the soundscape. Kind of the synth equivalent of a silent movie pianist I suppose. I’m really pleased with the results this produced :)

The other tricky aspect was handling the Asian tendency to quixotically jump cut to cut between vastly different styles of music. I didn’t want to stomp all over this tradition, but I also wanted the score to have some kind of integrity between the quick cuts. I approached with the idea, what if this weird atonal orchestra , distorted synths, ghostly pads and amped up drums were to try and play Trip Hop, or Carry On Camping ? The result has, I would say, mixed success :)

It’s been quite an experience though – the key bit of equipment I bought for this project that got me through the consecutive 18hr days was this ,

The juice I made from this kept me focussed every day, all day ’til I stopped. It’s a very good way to exist folks. Forget Red Bull, coffee and take aways when you don’t have time or energy – this is the way to go.

With that I’m gonna sign off, many thanks to Deane Ogden for getting me the job and keeping me sane, and to Panos Kolias and Robert Schroeder for handling the commercial pop tracks I wasn’t able to do !! You saved my skin !!

Happy Horroring !