Background

Filmmusic is an occasional series of CD releases featuring score commissions by Philip Brophy.

Credits

Headless

Composed by Philip Brophy
Philip Brophy - sampler, keyboards, programming, reconstructed fragments of multi-track recordings of:
Irine Vela - bouzouki
Mulaim Vela - guitar
Rachel Cogan - vocals & recorder
George Kirkopoulos - clarino & drums
Christos Balzidis - oud
All studio recordings engineered & produced by Philip Brophy @ Media Arts - September 1997
Produced, mixed & mastered by Philip Brophy @ Gelatin - December 1997

Paradise

Composed by Philip Brophy
Produced & performed by Philip Brophy - sampler, keyboards, guitars - September to November 1998
Mastered by Philip Brophy @ Gelatin - September 1999

2002

Filmmusic Vol.1 - Sound Punch Records

Overview

Having composed the music to Ana Kokkinos’ Only The Brave in 1994, Philip Brophy saw the chance to work on her next film Head On in 2000 as a great opportunity. But as is the way of so much commissioned film music, the end results were deemed inappropriate to the film. Philip’s concept for the score was to produce a hybrid musical state to reflect the ‘between-cultures’ aspect of the story’s main character: a young Greek boy, trapped by conservative family values, breaking out into drugs and gay nightlife. Philip had engineered and produced the Greek band recordings used in the film, and then reconstructed new themes from fragments of oud, clarino, bouzouki, guitars and drums. Analogue synths and highly abstracted textures transform them utterly. Headless presents the complete unused score: a true ‘invisible soundtrack’.

Ilana Schulman’s 1998 short Paradise is a dense allegoric tale of domestic discord. Loosely based around a mermaid who sews her legs together to walk on land and take her place as a mother in a family, the film has a luscious look and only one word of dialogue. Not only does some of the Philip's processing suggest the acoustic sensation of being submerged under water (muted, low-frequency rumbles, 'wah-wah' tones, etc.), but the instrumentation evokes cinematic conventions of the sea.

Technical

The transformations for Headless were done from multi-track recordings. Each of the CD tracks is constructed round discrete fragments from individual tracks from the sessions for the Greek band recordings. This allowed for a lateral reconstruction from the Greek recordings: often, a CD track is comprised of drums from one Greek band track and clarino from another, and so on. Through this, different tonalities and harmonies were created, often by extending harmonically what modulations occurred through collaging and overlaying discrete components from the original recordings. Most of these individual track fragments from the original Greek band sessions were remixed in 'dub' mode at the Media Arts studio. These fragments were then taken back to Gelatin, and sampled and placed in extended linear form to make up the primary backing for the CD tracks. Spatialization and timbrel enhancing were completed through waveform editing and MIDI manipulation. Then on top of these textured beds the rest of each CD track was composed, often using analogue synthesizers to symbolize the drug-induced quasi-hallucinatory sensations of the character Ari in the film Head On. Some drum patterns were totally rewritten at this stage, using original fragments of snares, hit-hats and kicks, but then re-editing them to reflect the club environs within which Ari undertakes much of his late night hedonistic revelry.

Background

Filmmusic is an occasional series of CD releases featuring score commissions by Philip Brophy.

Credits

Anyone Home

Composed by Philip Brophy (drums/guitars)
Engineered, produced & mixed @ Gelatin June 2004

The Pining Tree

Composed by Philip Brophy (keyboards/effects)
Produced & mixed @ Gelatin August 2005

Whispering In The Dark

Composed by Philip Brophy (drums/guitars/voices)
Engineered, produced, processed & mixed @ Gelatin May 2002

Maidenhead

Composed by Philip Brophy (drums/guitars/voices)
Engineered, produced, processed & mixed @ Gelatin May 1995
Source location sound recordings - Philip Samartzis & Jennifer Sochackyj

Only The Brave

Composed by Philip Brophy (keyboards/guitar/sampler)
Engineered, produced, processed & mixed @ Gelatin, November-December 1993
Samples processed from The Pit recording session of Clive Bourne (bass), Andy Provis (guitar), Rachael Sheriff (violin), Philip Brophy (drums) & Sally-Anne Upton (vocals)
Final CD mastering by Philip Brophy @ Gelatin, August 2008

2009

Filmmusic Vol.2 - Sound Punch Records

Overview

Anyone Home is a short digital video by Rosemary Dean from 2004. Based in Tokyo, Rosemary’s work merges documentary and a form of visual contemplation. All her videos are largely composed of long static shots of apparently empty spaces. Anyone Home captures the feeling of ‘danchis’ – a type of home developed in Japan in the 60s.

The Pining Tree is an animation written & directed by Rosemary Dean, using images drawn by Aiko Asanuma and animated by Tetsuro Shimauchi. Independently financed and produced by Rosemary between 2004 and 2006, the film employs a sketched/water-coloured series of still-drawings. The animation is extremely limited so as to focus on the minutiae of 'stillness' that surrounds the central character as she lives alone in her apartment with a large tree just outside her window.

Whispering In The Dark is a short film funded by the Australian Film Commission and developed by writer/director Lynne B. Williams and producer Aida Innocente in 2002. It stars Rachel Blake and Daniel Schlussler as a couple who appear snared in each other’s memory of their fractured and transient relationship. Through a series of self-enveloping moments, the two appear to replay their own version of the events that lead to their chance encounter and the aftermath as they leave each other.

Maidenhead is a short film developed by writer/director Marie Craven and producer John Cruthers. It stars Alice Garner as Alice - a young woman who moves through a series of quasi-surreal episodes and encounters with people in everyday situations. The character Alice is a meld of the numerous 'Alices in Wonderlands' that have been referenced in stories intent on exploring emotional/psychological transformations that occur when a female characters 'wanders' across unfamiliar terrain. Very much a 'dream narrative', Maidenhead is comprised of around 7 discrete episodes - each featuring Alice, but none connecting or linking to each other. They are like random moments or chapters in her memory or imagination.

Only The Brave is a featurette funded by the Australian Film Commission directed by Ana Kokkinos from a script by Ana Kokkinos and Mira Robertson, and produced by Fiona Eagger. It features young actors Elena Mandalis & Dora Kaskanis as two teenagers working through a series of family and emotional problems. Told in a terse naturalistic style, the story charts the girls' sexual maturation against their limiting and oppressive family backgrounds.

Technical

More information: Anyone Home

More information: The Pining Tree

More information: Whispering In The Dark

More information: Maidenhead

More information: Only The Brave