Carl Sondrol :: blog

Two things for today… first, check this out:

This is the trailer for something I’ve been slaving away at for a while now: Man v. Candy Machine. It’s easily one of the most intense and fun sound design projects I’ve ever worked on (you’ll hear just a snippet or two of my sound in this). Basically, director Angeline Gragasin rounded up a crack team of mad scientist creative types and set ‘em loose (see: motion graphics).

It’s futuristic, crazy, and I’m not really sure what to compare it to. Be excited.

Secondly, HUGE congrats to director Eric Bednarowicz and everyone at team Carpe Millenium. This film I scored earlier this year just got distribution, as part of a collection of shorts from around the world. Among the nine other shorts is Israel’s Oscar submission… good company!

Click here to open the facebook page and “like”.

I don’t have anything Thanksgiving-themed to post, but I do have something holiday-related. This is a piece I did music and sound design for earlier this year.. a parody of Tim Burton’s Nightmare Before Christmas.

As with Web Site Story, I:
1) didn’t have sheet music so did my best to recreate all the parts by ear.  (I’m of course using samples and a few great musicians rather than a real orchestra) Here is the original if you’re curious to compare.
2) thoroughly enjoyed dissecting this track and figuring out what makes it work. Danny Elfman is one of my all-time favorites and this was a real joy to work on. A very intensely-fast-paced-race-to-the-deadline kind of joy.

That’s Jacob Carlson on vocals (as Danny Elfman!) and one of my Chicago favorites, Gerald Bailey on trumpet. Last, and surely least importantly, I cameo (vocally) as a drunk priest at 0:55.

The lovely claymation is by Chelsea Manifold, and a few nice visual effects are by the wizards at Gloo Studios.

As for my friends at CollegeHumor: Josh Ruben and Vincent Peone directed, Ben Joseph wrote & produced, and David Fishel edited.

I wrote an article about filmmaker/composer collaboration for the great filmmaking website reelgrok. Check it out!

Seamless Collaboration with a Film Composer
by Carl Sondrol

Good film music communicates. It helps a film inject emotion directly into the viewer’s brain, gives them information about a scene, smooths a transition, or any number of other things. But none of this is guaranteed just because you throw a composer at it. The success of the score in your film is very dependent on…

[read more...]

I got a request for some Dark Knight-ish music last year for this CH sketch. I checked out a few Hans Zimmer cues and created a similar sort of “stuff’s happening!” pulse accompanied by appropriately ominous low brass swells.

Featuring Pete Holmes as Batman (with a spot-on subtle lisp… “lightly irradiated bills-ss”, ha) and the very funny Matt McCarthy as Gordon.

Part 1: (intro and buildup, 2min length)

Part 2: (narration into HIT at 1:10, 2min length)

Above is some audio of a dreamy score I made last year for the film Pipe Dream (again by David Fishel). It still hasn’t been released but when it is I’ll be sure to post it.

Vocals by my great friend Alice Wedoff, who’s also an amazing theater actress.

The goal for this score was to match the tone of the film with something like an echoey French pop song interwoven into sweeping/dreamy swells and neurotic sound design. I used a mix of synths, a broken guitar I found in an alley, orchestral elements and more to get it there.

This was also a fun challenge because it required French lyrics– and I don’t speak French! Solution: I sang a temporary track of the melody (in gibberish), David wrote lyrics to match, then Alice came in and nailed the real thing. Voila! (Ok, one word of French…)