Virtual Delay

As has been the story of my 2010, life is overwhelming me a bit.

This time it is the move that me and Lady R had not planned on. We're pretty much in the new place, but EVERYTHING is in boxes. So my single day off will be probably spent putting the place together.

Helping keep me on task, but not relaxing much, will be the lack of internet we currently suffer. We are booked to get the net hooked up on Tuesday, but until than all my online outposts will be silent.

So catch you yet again on the flip side... Boo! I think all this flipping is making me dizzy!

2009 Goals

I can't believe it has been over a year (by a few weeks) since I last really sat down to layout where I've come from creatively and where I want to go...

So lets start by looking at what I accomplished and didn't in 2009:

Traumador

Success- I got Traum out of Alberta!

Failed- To get Traum into the many New Zealand adventures I have lined up for him...

Failed- To get an adventure done every 6 months as I'd hoped

Delta Patrol

Success- I got the rough cut of the movie done!

Failed- To get much modelling for the effects done...

Failed- To cranking out any final effect renders

Failed- To setup myself up to have the final film out next year!

ART Evolved and my Palaeo-art

Success- I have managed to get a piece into EVERY gallery on time so far (making me one of two people to do so!)

Success- I have continued to up the quality of my art (for the most part... when I have had the proper time and oppurtunity) when creating pieces for these galleries.

Success- I have managed to get my art published (non paid mind you) in several magazines!

So clearly of my creative projects my palaeo-art is the only one going well for me thus far. Traumador in particular has become an ongoing regret, and I need to step him up (like usual).

With that in mind, I now launch into my goals for 2010 and beyond next post...

Cha...cha... Changes!

Looking through my older files and blog posts I stumbled upon two independent discoveries, that actually go well together.

First was that my last real outlining of creative goals on the blog was just over a year ago... I had been planning on updating these every couple months!

The second discover was this old pic here.


This is an old Mark 0 Centrosaur model from back in 2005. Prehistoric in both subject and in terms of my art work.

I just found this funny, as I just upgraded my current Centrosaur.

This was the orignal Mark 3 version from back in 2008.

He just recently got a Mark 5 upgrade this year.

This past week he got a head upgrade. He now has perfect skull proportions and placement, a better beak, a proper nose, and a few other minor but better enhancements.

Anyways apart from this quick showcase of my current tweaking (the Centrosaur is about to play big into Traumador's adventures), I'm stating for the RECORD my next post WILL BE a look at how well I did with my 2009 goals and outlining my official 2010 goals!

So tune in for a look at what the Weapon of Mass Imagination intends to do with his next "year"!

The Storm MAY be passing...

The aftermath of last week's debacle is still playing out around me. I had thought our renting a new place last night would have been the end of it all, but I have learned (much to my extreme depression) it may have been too little too late.

This situation, caused by my thinking I was doing the right thing, has put a strain on many of my relationships, however I learned the damage between me and Lady R is a lot more serious than I'd thought. She has assured me that things should return to normal once we move into the new place, but I'm not a big fan of how upset she has been lately. Leading like usual to my outlook on life, that no good deed goes unpunished.

I've also shifted from not working all that much to working all the time! I only have Sundays off, and at moment my days are all 8-11 hour ones! With school getting out next week it is looking like my schedule should shift into at least a more manageable version of this timetable (I currently don't finish till 7-7:30pm each night).

Yesterday I had an unexpected bubble of time, so I popped back to my Trilobite piece. I now have a rough composition I'm working on, but had an interesting malfunction with one of my lighting effect.


This was the initial result trying to get my watery haze going. I like it. Not my usual attempt at realism, but the picture has a certain awe factor to it I like. So I might work on as final version like this as well.

Keeping My Mind Off Stuff

Things have returned to not good in my life. I shan't go into detail, but I've just discovered all the reasons I came back to Canada were not only wrong but a complete waste of time. We're not talking a little bit of time either. A whole year!

Rather than dwell on it (that is what "sleep" time is for... it is probably not good that I've gotten used to 3-5 hrs of sleep a night these day come to think of it!) I've been trying to keep myself busy.

With the upcoming Trilobite gallery on ART Evolved it is time to get something ready for that...


Here is a sneak peek. This was just a play render with my fill in sand I made today. The sand needs a bit of work, but I like the hiding it effect.

Here he is in the open. He is looking alright. I'm not entirely happy with the head, but the body/tail are quite awesome.

Next he needs legs and a proper environment.

Soundtracks: 2010 Keeps Them Coming!

So I know I promised my next soundtrack related post would be on popcorn music gone bad...

However this promise was made when I thought my than next trip to the cinema would fuel my rage with the second Iron Man soundtrack, and we'd get that post organically. Instead I was in for a very pleasant treat, which would than be followed up by another wish list album!

Basically 2010 has been defying all my expectations, and setting itself easily apart from the past 3-4 years... Good soundtracks have become a rarity in recent years, with the Zimmer clones choking much of the market, and many of the great composers lower their productivity (possibly due to this increased demand for popcorn music by studios). It appears that perhaps there has finally been some backlash against generic film music, and as of such I'm struggling to keep up with all the great new scores coming out!
The first Iron Man, while an amazing movie, had one of the weakest superhero soundtracks ever made (only Danny Elfman's Hulk comes to mind as worse). The official line was Director Jon Favreau wanted a score that could be played solely on an electric guitar. Okay on face value this sounds "cool" right? It was his intention to have a very cool sound for the film. Well think about that for a moment. Basically you're asking for a whole movie to rely on music a 12 year old in guitar lessons could play... It was just a really weak score, in every sense of the word!

I had expected a repeat of this entering the sequel. Only to discover seconds into the opening credit music I was in for a surprise, the music was of a more strong nature! Thinking this had to be fluke, and we'd leave the nice villain theme and reenter generic music, the explanation was spelled out on screen. Zimmer-clone Ramin Djawadi had been replaced by veteran utility composer John Debney.

I can only wonder if someone had realized how pathetic the first movie's music was, and thus sout a more capable composer (as Zimmer-clones of Djawadi's generation are not really capable of making more than one type of sound), or if the Zimmer clan was so engaged else where they couldn't be booked (I hope to learn of the first option personally).

The choice of Debney was frankly kind of brilliant. Debney has built a career on being incredibly versatile, and has often been brought in to save franchises musically. While he is not in my top 5 he is a composer I respect, and typically enjoy the work of. His Iron Man 2, while not the best score of the year (he is up against some very steep competition!), is a remarkably enjoyable score.

It still has electric guitar for the cool factor, but it is wisely a buried element among a strong orchestral arrangement. The highlights are the villain theme of Whiplash, Iron Man's new much more defined theme, and the finale action sequence where these two themes duel with each other on a epic scale!

This was nice extra punch by 2010. Though I'd settled into the notion that Avatar and How to Train Your Dragon were going to be the true highlights of the year... When we had another heavy hitter enter the ring this week!

The Last Airbender, by none other than my favourite composer James Newton Howard...

I'd been starting to miss Howard. His productivity dropped considerably post 2006, and what he was doing proved impossible for m3 to track down in New Zealand. In his absence I found that John Powell's huge recent output and old Jerry Goldsmith classics I hadn't owed were eating up the niche in my musical listening that Howard had occupied back in 2000 till my move to NZ.

It is so lovely to have him back!

With one of his most ambitious epic scores yet! What is even more cool is it is one of his M. Night Shyamalan collaboration scores. Howard has done all of M. Night's music, and these have resulted in some of my favourite musical tracks of all time. However as overall albums they have typically been lacking in across the board quality, with isolated tracks (one of which inevitably always being the climax track) being the highlights and the rest being somewhat forgettable.

The exception to this was Lady in the Water which is one of the strongest soundtracks of the modern age if you ask me. There had been hope that this new high quality would continue in their joint projects. From what I hear The Happening (in addition to being a truly awful movie) was not able to keep this going, with Howard's music being more like his earlier M. Night efforts. I won't judge it as I still haven't heard it.

However with Airbender we have another absolutely solid album start to finish! While not as immediately obvious as How To Train Your Dragon on the thematic end, Airbender is an absolutely solid fantasy effort on par with Howard Shore's Lord of the Rings. I have had to listen to it three times in the last two days to grasp its scope and more subtle (but very rewarding) themes. Once you get in its head space it is incredibly compelling!

Like the other greats of 2010, I'll do a proper review of these later. I'm still having to absorb most of these scores properly yet. I'm just enjoying having more music to absorb than I can handle. This hasn't happened in over 5 years!

Avatar has fully sunk in with its 6 months to digest. So I will get to these shortly when they have equally fully hit home.

I conclude with the hope this isn't the end from 2010 on the movie music end. It is turning into an incredibly memorable year!

The Good News

So life has been quite jam packed for me the past week or so...

On the same day as my rejection from the Calgary Board, I received a job working with a young boy with disabilities. Having now met with the family a few times we've got things ironed out so that I will be working with him every evening this last month of school, and than during the days in the summer.

Lady R is the best girlfriend ever, and bought me a new computer! Given its vastly superior performance over my old one (it renders in Carrara about 6-8 times faster!!!), and DAZ having a sale for the brand new Carrara 8 I broke down and picked that up relatively cheap (it was 50% off) new version of Carrara (finally!)...

So things are finally starting to pick up.

I've been too busy sorting stuff out for my new job (I have a pretty full on program to learn and set up), to sit down with the new Carrara and play much. Also most of its new features are pretty intense, and I'll need to sit down with the manual to get the hang of them. More to the point not having a physical copy of the manual I'll need to go to a print shop and get the PDF printed. However being 750 pages this is going to have to wait a little while!

I have plugged some of my "old" Dinosaurs into the new program, and no problems thus far. A few environmental factors didn't make the cross over for some reason, which is a bit annoying. In particular my water's caustic effects and tree bark shaders didn't get saved in the model files, and thus were left on the old machine. It is not the end of the world, it just means I have to manual copy them over to the new machine and tell my 3D models where to find them...

I've been toying with my "top secret" ART Evolved project while working on my job stuff. As I'm currently just trying to make the river work it is just a matter of adjusting the shaders and rendering. Given that the new machine renders the whole scene in 20 minutes this is making progress much faster (on the old machine this scene with plants and such would take over an hour!).
This was were I started on the new machine. It is a slight step back as, again, I lost all my tree bark in the cross over to the new puter.

While I liked the baseline of the water effects, the details were all wrong. The splashes were too defined, the colour of the mist and water were not working, and the whole thing seemed artificial.

Tweaking the water colour and reflection I started to sort of step in the right direction, only the colour was too bright. Now my Rex was standing in a river of Cool-Aid OH YEAH!

A key factor to water is its reflective nature. I'd only had its reflection up to 50%, so I cranked it up to 90% while darkening the colour and got something much better for the river. At the same time I made my splashes more transparent which removed the orb like nature of the water droplets, but the splashes weren't big enough and still not quite right on the colour scale.

Expanding the splashes and lightening the colours I likes the size of the splashes, but not the brightness.

Darkening down the splashes and their mist I arrived here. I like this, and think I'm done on the water front.

I also decided I didn't like the red colour scheme of the T-Rex sticking out from the environment so much. A T-Rex doesn't strike me as the sort of animal that wants to stand out. So I applied the Larry colouration to the model, and like how it subtly blends in with the background. Though I need to tweak the feather colouration as they currently disappear all together.

Next I just need to fix the riverbank (which also lost its texture map), the tree bark, and play with Carrara 8's new tree systems that should let me add dead leaves to the trees and play with some other settings to get way more realistic looking plants!

The Recent Bad News...

Have had a lot going in my life lately. Yesterday in particular had a particular nexus quality to it, with about 6 things all going down at once. Rather than one big post, I've decided to break this up into bad and good news posts. Partially as my good news still needs a day or two to get sorted out.

The first immediate and devastating piece of bad news is that I have been formally rejected from the Calgary Board of Education. So I won't be teaching in Canada anytime soon...

Without so much as an interview, I got a very generic letter stating I don't fit into the Board's ideals. How I don't fit in it doesn't say. Rather than take this personally (which it is hard not too) and assume this is do to with my application package I sent them, I need to remind myself of the more likely underlining cause. That being the 200 teachers they laid off as of yesterday...

In general these are "wonderful" times to be a beginning teacher. Of my dozen or so friends who all went into the teaching profession, only 1/3 are actual still teaching and most of them overseas. Yet people wonder why we're losing our edge? When we can't be bothered to invest in our education system...

Rather than end on this downer, another recent piece of news has hit my radar that has given me an employment idea.

The supposedly upcoming Hobbit movie is looking for a new director, while coincidentally I at the same time need a job. Hmmmmm



I propose I get the job! After all I'm qualified!

• I have directed/produced/acted in over 5 movies... well at least movie LIKE compilations.

• I've lived in and explored New Zealand to the point where I can tell you roughly where all the previous LOTR movies were filmed, and know some great untapped locations for new Middle Earth locales.

• I have extensive experience with low level special effects... how much harder could it be to have high end ones that actual do all the stuff I'd like them too?!?

• I could cut down the budget, by playing Gollum myself. Anyone who has been around me can tell you how eerily close my Gollum voice is to the real thing!

• I bring star power to this new project. Apart from Gandalf and maybe Bilbo (Ian Holm is sadly getting really old) what other established names are attached to this film (again I replace Andy Serkis as Gollum :P)? None, as the characters are all new to the film franchise. Sure the studio could search out people to fill in many of these roles, and they will have to. However I bring one star they'd never think of to the role of Smaug the Dragon, Traumador the Tyrannosaur!

• Finally my asking price is very reasonable and very competitive in today's modern entertainment industry!

So there is my official application to become the new director of The Hobbit.

(Oh I just thought of another thing. How many fancy pants directors could throw together their own crude logo like mine above in under 5 minutes like me :P)

Soundtracks: Popcorn Music

I AM going to Iron Man 2 tonight, no matter what else the universe tries to pull on me this week! Though I am looking forward to this movie a lot, and I love the first movie so much, one thing I'm not anticipating enjoying is the music for this film. The first film's music was awful (but more on that in my next Soundtrack post...)

It is thinking about Iron Man's score that has me writing this particular post on soundtracks. Iron Man falls into an odd genre that is becoming all the more common in film scores these days. I can't say it is my favourite breed of scores, but yet a few tracks from some of these records still make my favourites.

There is no agreed upon name for this newly emerging sub genre, but there are plenty of features to define them (in particular the select "usual suspect" list of composers typically involved in their creation... with some film directors and producers also being a sign of such music as well). I personally refer to them as popcorn scores, as they have substance when you listen to them, but much like eating popcorn you get little of value out of it in the end.

At its core film music exists to assist the storytelling through making the emotion audio during the movie so that the audience knows what they should be feeling. However good composers also find ways of injecting personality into this music, causing the soundtrack to suddenly give the film a unique musical identity different from other movies. Thus differentiating one film from another just by listening to the music for a few moments. At least in normal soundtracks...

Popcorn scores certainly obey the first convention of conveying the emotion of the film, but yet their most defining feature is they all fail at attaining or defining their own identity. In essence they are scores that could all be easily swapped with each other and you'd barely notice watching the film. I personally look at them as feature length trailer music samples, and often these are the soundtracks studios take trailer music from!

The question is what is the purpose of this music if it is not defining its film? For a movie maker the answer is it provides simplicity for the audience. Popcorn scores are the equivalent of animated scores for adults. They provide a simple set of musical rules for the audience to gauge what they should be feeling. However unlike children's scores, popcorn music is devoid of the intelligence and craftsmanship of (good) animated scores. It is the lowest common denominator of film music in every sense. As of it such it can safely be said to lack any intelligence.
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So why do I listen to them? In the short answer, they are a guilty pleasure. Essentially popcorn music is the equivalent of pop music in film scores (the boy bands of soundtracks as it were). It is music you listen to when you are brainless, don't feel like being overly engaged, or when you don't want a specific genre of music.

What is interesting about Popcorn music is that it is a very recent phenomenon. In its true form it emerged just this decade, but it didn't have too! My list here today includes scores that go back into the 1990's, but when these scores were released they were novel break outs of originality. However rather than take the new musical constructs that they offered to new and interesting levels, the pioneering group of composers choose to basically keep rehashing them to the point that, sadly, even the original 90's albums became popcorn.

You'll notice this list includes many albums by Hans Zimmer, master of the Popcorn score. He was one of my favourite composers in the early 2000's . Yet a few years later I'd come to immediately dismiss his work unless he was teamed with someone else I liked. His music all sounded the same!

Virtually every other composer of the following albums worked for Zimmer at some point or another. Typically as a ghostwriter. This is an odd situation in the soundtrack world. With most Zimmer scores you have up to a dozen ghostwriters, blurring who created what in the first place. Then even when some of these guys go independent you won't know the difference between them or their boss.

(With the notable exceptions of my two favourites John Powell [who doesn't come up here, due to being a transparent ghostwriter pre 1998] and Harry Gregson-Williams who would break out into his own man as of the 2000's!)

All these Zimmer employees running around creating the same sort of music has given rise to the term "Zimmer clones" in soundtrack circles. I could have called this genre Clone music, but I felt Popcorn music was more descriptive of what it really was.

It is a real shame this genre even came to be, as Mr. Zimmer invented some brilliant new musical constructs for people to play with. Many other composers have employed them in effective non-popcorn manners. Yet Zimmer himself has fallen into a comfort zone he rarely breaks out of (though when he does it is quite good!). Let's look at a few (of my favourites... but by no means all) of the first proto-popcorn scores.

The Kernel Albums

The Rock by Hans Zimmer, Harry Gregson-Williams, and many more!

This score is probably one of the biggest sources/causes of the popcorn movement. Not only did the Rock have very satisfying action music, but the project had practically the whole Zimmer team onboard. Meaning all of them were involved/exposed to the Rock's sound, and many seem to have imprinted on it for good!

When this soundtrack came out, it was one of my favourite action scores. It was fresh and new. Sadly in the following 14 years it has been rendered the most generic of generics as this one movie seems to be the basis of so many more that follow...

Sitting down to think about describing this score, I'm at total lose because of this. I haven't listened to anything except the opening title and climax battle piece in years! Even with these two, all that comes to mind is generic action music. Yet I can recall a time I would have been able to describe all that was unique and cool about this album... How the times change :(

Backdraft by Hans Zimmer

This is still one of Hans Zimmer's strongest albums, which makes sense as it is very early in his career. The best parts of this album have never been definitively ripped off (which is perhaps why they remain my favourite?). Some of his music constructs from this film pop up elsewhere, but never to the same epic levels or intelligent executions.

The most memorable themes from this album are the variations of the march for the firefighters. It is a combination of catchy snare drums, synthetic bass, and choir. Yet in the action music for this film you can hear the birth of The Rock's action music.

Crimson Tide by Hans Zimmer

Was the height of Zimmer's creativity, and this is a standout album! Seriously despite my misgivings about later Zimmer, this is the man's best work. It is a true classic of soundtracking.

The music constructs the confided nature of not only the submarine on which the story plays out, but captures the equally constricted attitude of the captain whom the conflict comes from. The heroic theme for the mutiny is still a highlight of Hans Zimmer music... Just sadly it is no longer unique to this album...

So powerful and original was this when it came out, that Steven Speilberg commented on how he was very impressed with Hans Zimmer's work. If not for the long standing relationship Speilberg had with John Williams, Speilberg stated he'd have hired Zimmer for his films. Considering the timing of all this, I'm not sure it would have turned out much different (Williams began his spiral towards plagiarising his own work within a few short years of 95... meaning it either be Williams regurgitated of Zimmer regurgitated).

Gladiator by Hans Zimmer and Lisa Gerrard

This was the last album by Zimmer I would ever think "wow he is so original", and it was for its time.

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Though this music has an ethnic flavour to much of its composition to try and lend a feel of the Roman era, in the end it is so mellow most of the time it barely registers. A trend with Zimmer clones to follow. Even when they try and inject identity, they do it within their comfort zone, or drown it out with all their other stuff.

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Where Gladiator is still the best, is the Zimmer masculine style. The two battle tracks are boiling to the top with muscle, and are very awesome action tracks. They would lend a great deal to the sound of other Zimmer projects down the line. Notable is Kung Fu Panda, which made the cut of my top animated scores. Here Zimmer teamed up with his former ghostwriter John Powell and took this masculine method and apply it to Kung Fu in a amazingly original way. I just wish it were true for other Zimmer projects...

The Kernels of course would pop, and we got a whole lot of...

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True Popcorn!

These next albums are in no real order, basically the order I downloaded the pictures. This is partially as I couldn't be bothered to resort them, and more to the point I couldn't figure out a clear way to do so... Again these are so close to each other I could switch them between their films and you'd barely notice.

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Though you might say to me, "hey I remember the theme from *insert movie*!", but I challenge you to think about the difference in a film having a individual theme (any score should have tracks recognizable to that film) and this theme having a true character. All these scores while having individual themes, don't have individual character. You won't be able to tell musically that a film is about giant robots, pirates, or space etc. without the film to tell us this.

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This is why they are popcorn. They are so generic they can easily be removed from their film, and not give a hint of the movie they were attached to beyond emotion. So functional yes, but still generic!

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Transformers by Steve Jablonsky

Just the other day while trying to give Peter "the" Transformers theme", we discovered that Peter didn't remember the true theme from this film! It was seriously funny. As I kept trying to give him the "Autobot" theme, which was so generic Peter didn't realize it was from this movie.

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The one memorable piece, and the one that Bond sought, was the single action piece during the army taking on the robot scorpion. It is why I bought the album, and though extremely satisfying action music, could be from any film. This is in fact why I like it. As I often use music to spur my "massive imagination", I find Transformers action and "Autobot" themes very good trailer type music. The general emotion/pace is set, but everything else is blank for me to imagine to my hearts desire.

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Transformers has a single exception to this genericness in having very unique villian music. A very deep choir chanting Latin over a synthesizer riff is actually quite haunting and effective, and somehow matches the Decpticons in a way the Autobots music never sticks to them...

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You'll notice the sequel is not in this post. Where the first movie's score (much like the film) was a brainless chunk of fun, the sequel's music (much like its film!) doesn't connect to what made the first one good. Revenge of the Fallen will be included in my later When Popcorn goes wrong post...

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Pirates of the Caribbean 1 by Klaus Badelt... though what they weren't allowed to say, was really by Hans Zimmer, with Badlet taking the credit due to a contract thing...

I recall when this film came out, and hearing the ongoing Pirates theme (which I'm sure you would recognize if I hummed it too you) at the end I said "I must own that generic hero theme!"

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Because yes Pirates 1 certainly had a recognizable couple of themes throughout, there was NOTHING piratey about them! The golden age of film clearly defined the instrumentation, pacing, and construct for swash buckling music. This film completely ignored it all (much like it ignored swash buckling choreography), and as a result created music that could have worked as well on the high seas, as it could in space, or in a police car. Which is why I wanted it! It could be anything I wanted it for...

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The sad part is that former Zimmerite, Harry Gregson-Williams demonstrated you could easily escape all the constraints of the golden age, so long as you kept some of their basics. He took a modern orchestra and created a brilliant pirate/swashbuckling score for Sinbad Legend of the Seven Seas. Which puts all 3 pirate movies squarely in their place!

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Pirates 1, much like Transformers hides a single gem. "Barbosa is Hungry" is among the closest any music from the Pirates franchise comes to actual Pirate music, but "Up is Down" from 3 robs it of the most piratey distinction. Barbosa is a solid effort though, and well having hints of the Pirate's themes standout from the rest the score. Had the rest of the music been this good, Pirates would have been a truly awesome score, as opposed to good Popcorn...

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Pirates 2 by Hans Zimmer... which is what the first should really have just had!

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This is my least favourite of the Pirates films AND scores. Overall it is just a bunch of random music playing aimlessly amongst the equally aimless plot. The first Pirate movie album while the most generic of the lot (I'll get to how Pirates 2 and 3 are at least less generic than 1 in a sec), had the most clear cut direction. It was the heroes theme all the time, and while boring from a construction point of view, was at least fun. Pirates two has a lot less pure fun, and a lot more random all over the place to its music.

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Zimmer tries his best to try and infuse some piratey elements into this score, and thus remove the generic criticisms of the first film. To do this he grabs an accordion and some whistles and inject them into the mix. However that's what it feels like, some random accordion and whistle samples laid over top of otherwise generic music. These days whenever Zimmer tries to inject authentic elements into his music, he fails as he refuses to leave his underscore comfort zone.

Accordions and whistles need some adjustment from the rest of the orchestra if they are to fit in.

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The singular highlight (noticing a theme with popcorn scores and the number of highlights they tend to contain yet :P) is the theme for the Kraken. It is very boring in its genericness, but a Gladiatorized monster(like) theme saves this album from my next post!

Pirates 3 by Hans Zimmer

Everything I hated about Pirates 2 is addressed in this score, and while not being quite as consistent as the first Pirates movie, Pirates 3 has some fantastic tracks.

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There are some kickers though. First the music is still very generic, and very Zimmer. Second most of my favourite material is NOT avaliable on the official movie release. Rather two extra tracks were redone by a pure orchestra on a Pirates complilation album I picked up a while back (complilations are another area of soundtracks I need to do a post on...).

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It is interesting to hear all the Pirates movies done with just a normal orchestra, and not Zimmer's standard synthetic setup. The Prague Orchestra has a long history of excellent compilations (where they rerecord existing soundtrack music), and this is one of their strongest products. It proves there is some swashbuckling potential to the Pirates movies. Reworking the timing a bit, as well as applying their own choice of instruments to the music they give a bit of life to the Pirates music. It verges on breaking out of the generic container. Yet fails short due to the snippets of The Rock, Gladiator, and various other Zimmer efforts.

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The highlights here though are worth while. Pirates 3 also breaks the rules by having multiple highlights. The "Up is Down" track is the most pirate sounding music from all of the Pirates music, and Zimmer's whistles work for him here. It has a lot of quirk and fun. The two part "I don't think now is the time" from the compliation while squarely back in the generic, is a very solid offering of Zimmer action at its best.

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Batman Begins by Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard

I think if there were ever a soundtrack that let me down completely and utterly it was this one. This album came out at the height of my love of James Newton Howard music, and to hear he was attached to the revamp of Batman, I was overjoyed. At the time though I noted Hans Zimmer attached to the project as well. I had hoped that Howard could infuse some originality into the Zimmer methods. Instead what I got was a Zimmer album with just a minor hint of Howard on the edges...

The only material worth listening to on Begins is the isolated statements of Batmans hero theme. It works for the caped crusader, but not satisfyingly. This music could just as well be for a submarine, dragon killer, or intergalactic bounty hunter. I still enjoy the dark edge of this hero music, but won't lie in saying it is amazing. It does its trick and that's it.

The album also failed me, in that it only contained 3 tracks with this hero music, and not the two chief moments from the film!!! Fortunately for me one of them was the end credit music cue, so I simply recorded it off my DVD, however the music where Bruce Wayne rushes to the Batcave to suit up and save the girl elude me to this day :(

The villain music for the Scarecrow was the beginning of the real bad in Dark Knight, with Zimmer taking major samples of noise and mixing them into music. Additionally he plays with this meta sound a lot in both Batman scores, and in Begins the hero music's only Batman-like quality is the application of sound variation that simulates flapping bat wings. It works, but is nearly annoying. An annoying that would blossom in the sequel!

The Dark Knight by Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard

Much to my relief James Newton Howard seemed to have asserted himself musically a lot more in the second Batman. There are tracks that don't fit into this otherwise Popcorn score. The good standouts are the Harvey Dent themes in tracks 3 and 6, which are unquestionably Howard music. I'll probably discuss these anomalies in another post...]

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Sadly there are terrible standouts in Knight too. In fact I question whether they are music at all!?! These are all pieces with the Joker "theme", in which Zimmer has sampled irritating noises and mixed them into what often sounds like a plane crashing. It really isn't music at all, but an annoying racket, that while thoughtfully constructed, is still the sum of its parts! Zimmer claims this cleverly captures the chaotic nature of the Joker, but last time I checked he wasn't made of metal or crashing into the runway!

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Beyond this Batman's hero theme gets some more material (which again was lacking in the first album...), and so I still like this album more than the first. Guilty pleasure it might be, but I like it on occasion.

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However in the latter part of the Dark Knight the weirdest music shift I've ever seen occurs. Where Batman's theme was distinct (though still generic) in Begins and the early parts of Knight, suddenly in later Knight Batman's hero theme is replaced with the mutiny theme from Crimson Tide?!? Seriously, there is next to no difference other than the pacing... While I love the Crimson Tide music, this was a big let down to have it used for Batman!!!

King Arthur by Hans Zimmer

Is basically Gladiator with none of the attempted Roman ethnicity. You get a lot of very macho action music. There is nothing overall surprising about this album, but you get some good generic hero and action music.

Team America World Police by Harry Gregson-Williams

Perhaps the most amusing of all Popcorn scores, this music was composed by one time Popcorner Gregson-Williams to spoof other Popcorn scores! His results are hilariously on the ball, though so over the top he borders on becoming to distinct at times. In particular the cheesy theme for Team America is just a bit too much to stay within its generic target, but the rest of the filler music saves it.

What is even funnier is the nature of the overall soundtrack. Originally Team America's score was much more Zimmer in nature, but the studio didn't like it and brought in Gregson-Williams to make a more zany version. Both scores supplement lyrical songs including one satirizing Michael Bay, master of awful popcorn (several of my popcorn gone bad are from Michael Bay films).

Anyways my tummy is getting sick from all this popcorn ;) So I'm going to leave it off here. Next time I visit soundtracks we'll look at some of the worst vats of popcorn music ever produced.

I am alive, but I can't say that for everyone else :(

It's been a little while since I last posted something on here. So before people start worrying, I am in fact still alive.

I am still unemployed. We're hitting an epic (personal) record in failed job applications. In this week alone (2 days so far) I've had 6 rejections. Though I'm slightly hopefully about Septemeber, two school boards have acknowledged receiving my applications.

My car died on the weekend. It still hasn't been repaired, which restricts my movements a bit. "Fortunately", the modern job market is one of pure online applications, in person visits and phone calls to places are forbidden!

Topping off everything my grandmother passed away yesterday. This is sad, but was not unexpected. She was 101, and had a really good run. Still just one more thing to add to the not happy pile.

To fight off depression and my slowly (but steadily) lowering self esteem, I've dove into a number of art projects.
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You get a preview of this one:
It's my feathered Tyrannosaur. Only now I'm posing her.

Not just in a random pose. She needs to match this skeleton precisely. Why is a secret for now, all I'll tell you is that it is for a big joint project on ART Evolved.

With my T-Rex matching the skeleton closely, I decided I need to make somewhere for her to live. This is my progress with a Cretaceous landscape over the course of the last week+.

First I tried a generic forest. I didn't like this on a number of levels. I'm sure had I played with the tree density it would have gotten better. However I had a different idea...

Since my Rex lined up perfectly with the skeleton everywhere BUT the legs (in particular the feet) I decided to cover this up. With what else but water!

I also wanted the mountain range I'd put in the background to be visible.

Well okay, the trees covered up the mountains. Something I still have to fix, but there is room for them.

However yet again the trees were to few. My ginko trees leaves are too bright, and look plastic now (which is annoying as they are textured with a macro photo of a ginko leaf I took in New Zealand!!!). I also found the riverbank colour to be too cartoony. The biggest problem of all was the ground was too sparse.

Okay getting closer. Most of the elements are now present, it is just a matter of tweaking them.

There needs to be splashes at her feet, and I've already constructed these. I just need to add them (which might be a pain in the neck!). I also want to add some horsetail in the water.

I'm also vowing here to start getting some Traumador posts up (it is just so hard when I'm down. Traum is the embodiment of my happiness, and at moment he is starving. Poor guy. So I'm going to force myself to "Traumitize", and get some posts up darn it!).