Carl Sondrol :: blog

I recently had a request for an updated montage “reel” of music I’ve worked on and took the opportunity to put this together. If you’re unfamiliar with my work, this is probably the quickest intro I could offer. Snippets from feature films, a documentary, bands, dozens of viral shorts, etc. produced over the past 4 years or so.

As an added bonus, here’s a picture of myself and Jason (my co-pilot during the massive u-haul roadtrip to LA a few weeks ago, as well as the operatic voice of The Hoodie) posing by some of our favorite gas station merchandise finds.

Above is a sneak-preview of the 15-minute film Carpe Millennium by the very talented writer/director Eric Bednarowicz. It involves a guy trying to lose his virginity on the eve of the year 2000 by telling increasingly bold lies about knowing a celebrity. I had a lot of fun scoring it last year.

Eric recently informed me the film has been accepted into the 2010 Director’s Circle.. Carpe being one of only 32 narrative shorts selected from 2500 entries from 40 countries… not bad!

It’s also had a lot of other festival activity- the full list as of this posting:

• Winner: The 2010 Accolade Film Award
• Winner: The Golden Kahuna Award For Excellence In Filmmaking (2010 Honolulu Film Festival)
• Winner: The Silver Ace Award (2010 Las Vegas Film Festival)
• Official Selection:  The Los Angeles United Film Festival
• Official Selection:  The Chicago International Reel Short Film Festival
• Official Selection:  The Hoboken International Film Festival
• Official Selection:  The Charleston International Film Festival
• Official Selection:  The Geneva Film Festival
• Official Selection:  The Alabama International Film Festival
• Official Selection:  The Chicago United Film Festival
• Official Selection:  The Riverside International Film Festival
• Official Selection:  The Reality Bytes Independent Film Festival
• Honorable Mention:  The National Undergraduate Film Festival

Whew.. kudos to Eric and the rest of our team!

The score was a nice challenge. Much of my job was to enhance the lead character’s neurosis.  I used various light percussion for this, including the sound of condom wrappers tearing and the SMACK of a condom being stretched and let go… a 3AM idea I’m pretty happy about. Anything for the perfect score!

Check out carpemillenniumfilm.com for more info – you can also read Eric’s interview at hollywoodchicago.com.

I safely made it to LA! While I unpack, take a gander at the first film I ever “scored”, which happens to be a one-shot 6-minute video of a turtle swimming around. My friend David Fishel sent it to me randomly one day and asked if I’d like to put music to it.

I did my best to follow my instincts, as I’d never written music to picture before. I played accordion, trumpet, a cheap synthesizer I had at the time, and even hummed a bit. It was a pretty eye-opening & fun experience for me.

Coincidentally I’m scoring a new film of David’s right now… more news about that soon.