http://www.jackwestmore.co.uk/blog

Head over there for new and up to date info, and to subscribe to future posts.

I’ve also updated the website all round, with lots more info about films I’ve worked on, with more music extracts and fun things like that, so do check it out: jackwestmore.co.uk.

Photograph Copyright of Mei Lewis @ Mission Photographic

On Tuesday LoveStruck was broadcast on BBC2 Wales and is now available on BBC iplayer here. We also have a website for LoveSturck up now, which has lots more info about the film, lovestruckfilm.co.uk.

(extract from the score to LoveStruck, hear on soundcould)

I recently I went to the Newport International Film Festival too. I was there on behalf of Queensbury Rules, a film I’d worked on which was being screened. It was a nice event and I saw some great other films there, the feature film Mother’s Milk stands out, and there was a great musical comedy short called Sudden Death, which felt like its destined for great viral video success, once its finished the festival circuit.

I also managed to get round to seeing a few events in the Cardiff Soundtrack Festival last week. One highlight was a screening of Murnau’s Faust with a live semi-improvised score by the Guillemots. The music felt like an indie-rock interpretation of free improvisation, using a lot of static textures, lightly varying soundscapes to help create a continuous accompaniment for the full 2 hours. Faust is such a great film anyway, with special effects that look more impressive than the homogeny of CGI you get these days, but this live accompaniment really kept it feeling engaging all the way through.

Last weekend I went to the premier event for LoveStruck, a 10minute short I’d worked on. The film was made through It’s My Shout, a scheme that selects people from across Wales to produce a series of short standalone films for the BBC’s Made In Wales serise. They screened all the six film, and it was great to see them all together. 

At the Made In Wales Premier and Awards Evening. From left to right: Hannah McKimm, Chiara Carbonara, me, Joseph Wallace who did some great animation for LoveStruck, and our wonderful director Leyla Pope. (Photograph Copyright of Mei Lewis @ Mission Photographic)

They also had an awards ceremony where, much to my surprise, I actually won the award for Best Composition. This was really amazing and I’m still really pleased about it (in spite of the fact I then had to improvise a little acceptance speech in front of hundreds of people…)

The Made in Wales series has now started being broadcast, on Tuesdays nights at 11.20pm on BBC2 Wales. Apparently LoveStruck is due to be broadcast on the 22nd Nov, and will then be available on iplayer too.

Also, this weekend on Saturday the 12th of November I will be at the Newport International Film Festival. A short film I work on a little while ago called Queensbury Rules will be screened there, and apparently we’ve got a nomination in their awards too (nothing to do with music thought this time). If you’re about and see me then do come and say hi.

(hear on soundcloud)

Geotag: 45.439436, 12.341309

Closing Credits music from Bubbes (hear on soundcloud)

Also there is another screening of Bubbles lined up in London later in September, at the Soho Screening Rooms. This is a private industry event, and isn’t open to the public. But if you or someone from your company would be interested in attending then do feel free to contact the production company for more information.

Also, I’ve recently been working on another short film with Bubbles director Leyla Pope, called Love Struck. The film is being produced through the It’s My Shout scheme, and should be broadcast on BBC Wales later this year. There are lots more pictures from the shoot on facebook here.

(production still from Love Struck, photograph by Mei Llewis, via)

(here on soundcloud, image via)

When I was in Stockholm I noticed these ticking pedestrian crossings, which use mechanical clicks to notify when its safe to cross.

(hear recording on soundcloud)

I’m sure to any Swedish people, it must seem strange how fascinated I was by something so mundane. But I found the clockwork ticking of these traffic lights quite delightful and something I definitely wanted to record.

(geotag: 59.329531,18.065675)

This weekend I managed to get to the Hay On Wye Literary Festival. It’s always lots of fun, but is a rather strange event, kind of like a Glastonbury for the average radio 4 listener.

In this kind of environment, you can’t help but give in to a certain amount of ‘celeb spotting’ every time you see someone vaguely famous. At Hay, this inevitably makes for quite an eclectic collection of celebrities. During my short few hours there I almost bumped into the Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams; walked past comedian funny-women Sue Perkins; and squeezed past the sizeable book-signing queue for Julia Donaldson, author of The Gruffalo. And of all the 3 ‘celebrities’ I successfully ‘spotted’, I’m quite charmed to report that it was the kids author who was definitely receiving the most attention from her fans.

The tune we’ve ended up choosing is an old Welsh folk song called Robin Ddiog. There are a few samples on amazon if you want to hear what it sounds like, but a version far closer to my childhood experience of the song would be this performance below, of a young girl singing at what looks like a St David’s Day concert or Eisteddfod.

When I found out about the important role of the music box I remembered a long forgotten christmas present of a programable music box. It works in the same way as a player piano. You punch holes into a piece of paper, which you then feed through the instrument, and the spacing of the holes trigger different notes to sound.

When I mentioned this programable music box at a production meeting everyone was quite excited to have such a quirky and authentic way to produce this melody. But, as is often the case when working in film, the authentic sound is actually a lot less effective than an artificial substitute.

(hear recording on soundcloud)

This is a quick recording I made just now, but even if we did record it properly in a studio, taking every precaution to dampen noise from the turing of mechanical cogs, it still wouldn’t sound as seamless and convincing as a Software Instrument with high quality samples of a Celesta.

So even though arranging this welsh folk song for a programmable music box hasn’t been of any real use, it has still been a nice change from the usual film music process and quite fun too.