Naturally, I agreed to help Hiroki with the music for his movie. I didn't know exactly what helping make movie music might entail, but I'm always happy to lend a hand. It wasn't until a few weeks later that I got the call. "Hey, man. Do you think you can come by the studio for a few hours tomorrow afternoon?" What was it that I agreed to do again? "Oh yeah, sure. Wait. Where?"
I met Hiroki and a few friends on a sunny Saturday afternoon on the rolling hills of UC Santa Cruz. His friend, Bret, was an electronic music composition major and had access to a very nice, and very expensive looking, studio. "But only for two hours, kids." Hiroki didn't waste time, I shook hands with a confused looking girl holding a violin while Hiroki flipped open his laptop. He leaned back in his chair with a very director-like demeanor, "Ok, in this scene the main character is going to meet the girl who shapes the storyline from here on." I realized that I knew the actor who is playing the main character. Neat. "And right.. here.. she starts to dance".
Hiroki explained what kind of music he was interested in for this and other scenes using pretty vague, sweeping descriptions and was content to leave the details up to me and the violinist. "Yeah, something like that - but a little bit more uplifting." or "I like that melody, can you play something along with that." and "Yeah! That's perfect!" I wasn't sure if I was actually helping or not, but Hiroki seemed pretty optimistic. Bret had us record samples so that he could play our instruments back with the midi keyboard. "For post-production." Right..
I recorded some ambient, distant sounding pieces with no particular rhythm or meter and some plucking parts on a few chord progressions I'd been kicking around. The violinist didn't say much, but she could wail. When we were in between one thing and another, I starting twiddling around with a little do-dad that I've been meaning to turn into something. "Hey, can I get a loop of that? Do you think we can use it?" "Sure thing." Before I knew it that little song was falling around me like rain and a sweetly sad violin melody was playing over it matching the final scene and fading out to black and the ending credits. "Ok, time's up. That should do, guys. Thanks a lot."
I went to the film school's premier in the media arts theater, not really knowing what to expect. I walked in half-way through a futuristic sci-fi thriller about androids gone bad. I found a seat and laughed along with a pretty full house as the next group poked fun at a stereotypical action flick. I saw a movie or two with almost zero dialogue and an anti-war themed movie. One director had made a cute educational film about clouds. Finally, Hiroki's movie came on.
"Jump High."
I was very impressed. So much had changed from the rough work-in-progress I had caught a glimpse of in the studio. The music really knocked my socks off. The "post-production" Bret had referred to might have been called "studio magic". The genius had managed to take those 30 seconds of music and fully orchestrate them. There were piano parts in some places and percussion parts in others. The music matched up with the visuals and the tone of each scene so well that it was clearly written specifically with each scene in mind. I might have been a bit biased, but I thought Hiroki's was the very best movie at the premier.
"Jump High" will be submitted to various film festivals and will probably kick-start Hiroki's super-star career as a film maker. ..
And here it is~ http://fdmsoftserve.ucsc.edu/videoarchive/showvideo.php?film=438 love that music by "magic pants!"
