The SINISTRE Score

Mark Kueffner, the amazing composer for FLOWERS and LUNG just finished the last of twenty-three music cues for SINISTRE. There aren't enough superlatives to describe how impressed and thrilled I am with Mark's work. Once again, he has dignified and elevated a low-budget movie to heights that few indie filmmakers dare dream of. The trailer for the new version of SINISTRE utilizes some of his early tracks for the movie, giving a hint at what's in store. Mark was kind enough to compose about half of that music in the trailer exclusively for it because I couldn't quite find the right mood with what was available at the time. This is a small example of how great a rapport we've got.

I've spent each of the past three Autumn/Winter seasons corresponding with Mark on film scores and have enjoyed every bit! It's a lot of fun and uniquely rewarding to continually experience new pieces of music to augment scenes in your movie. After months of a very long kind of gestation with post-production, the music really brings it to life! As with FLOWERS, Mark was given the movie with previously mixed music tracks. i.e. temp tracks for FLOWERS and Clark Carter's original score for the previous version of SINISTRE. Originally I asked Mark to simply imitate the style of the old score, which he was agreeable to, but that notion went to the wayside before the first track. It would have been a regretful missed opportunity to do that. Instead, I reached way back to SINISTRE's roots when I imagined something ominous and grandiose for the opening moments. I shared a certain portion of Bernard Herrmann's VERTIGO score as an example of the intense mood I wanted. Boy, did Mark deliver! From there, the tone was set and we were off to the races. ..well, rather like that fabled tortoise-and-hare race.. The timing of Mark's involvement in SINISTRE coincided with his moving to a new house, which meant slow progress while he was making that big transition. I'm a patient man so that's not a complaint. Last I checked, the construction of his new studio still hasn't been completed so all his efforts have been done in temporary settings. That must have been stressful and frustrating for him so I'm that much more grateful for his diligence. Meanwhile, I took advantage of the situation and kept the restoration efforts going. There was, for example, an attempt to create a cropped widescreen version of the movie but enlarging a standard-definition shot-on-analog-video image just magnifies it's shortcomings. Not every attempt at polishing this turd has been successful.. I've lost count of how many individual picture elements were heaped onto the various masters. Also, I found a good video noise-reduction plug-in to soften the harsh "grain" in over half the movie. A couple of local crewmembers have seen portions of the work-in-progress. Lily Strain even caught a glaring gaffe that I'd neglectfully overlooked before. (Fixed it, Lily!) The lucky few have been pretty impressed with the score so far and that was several weeks ago. Much progress has been made since then. It's almost miraculous how really good film music can transform an otherwise lackluster flick into cinematic gold. I'm tempted to say that an audience can be fooled into thinking an average movie is much better than it really deserves to be regarded, simply with the addition of an awesome score but it's not that simple. It's a symbiosis. For example, SUSPIRIA without Goblin's score? There's no such thing. There's a long scene in SINISTRE that's full of expository dialog that I've always loathed. Mark delivered a fantastic track for this scene that totally redeems it! I almost wish I could kill the dialog, leaving the music to play solo. Now when that scene happens, my ears tune to the background score, rather than the actors blathering on. There are pauses between the spoken lines which allows a beguiling melody to stealthily sneak in which gives the scene a very welcome added dimension.

Luckily I've had the empirical experience of soundscaping (is that a word?) Phil Stevens' dialog-free movies to hone my sound-designing skills. With the score being progressively added to scenes, I'd find places that demanded extra sound effects when the music was low and onscreen action called for them. Live dialog recording was really bad in several places. I did my best to EQ and filter those lines but wasn't able to work miracles. Gonna have to just grin and bear it, knowing full well that critics will bitch later. Dan Skinner was kind enough to step back into character after all these years for some ADR. I had picked some of his character's lines that sounded the worst and had Dan perform them again for the microphone. Looped into the movie, it helped tremendously! Now is the bittersweet moment when I finally have to admit that the film is finished while realizing that another year of my life has flown by. I plan to author a self-released DVD asap, much like what Phil offered as crowd-funder editions before the official releases of FLOWERS and LUNG II. Speaking of, I'd be remiss not to remind everyone about the Unearthed Films 2-disc release of LUNG that's coming out March 14, 2017. Man, it's been a long wait for that DVD! The Unearthed guys have relocated as well which may partially account for the downtime. All about LUNG in previous blog posts. The SINISTRE disc will be a very limited run and fairly bare-bones because there's always the possibility of a distribution deal somewhere down the road. Special features, commentaries & whatnot haven't been created yet and will be reserved for that eventuality. There's been some interest in a premiere screening here in Springfield, MO as well but that's yet to be scheduled. Stay tuned!