FCU with James Franco LA Times premiere

Well hey it’s a bonus episode of FCU! This time featuring the amazing James Franco as a shapeshifter. The LA Times even gave it a nice write-up here.

I had fun creating lots of chase cues as well as some evil lab music for unstoppable director Dan Beers. Scoring scenes with actors as skilled as Franco, Pete and Brian is a real treat. Their timing & performances open a lot of doors for the score as my job becomes much more about complementing the energy onscreen than driving it. So fun.

Props as always to the rest of the team: editors Kyle Gilman and Steve Makowski, exec producer Thomas Bannister, producer Larry Laboe, and many more.

Last but not least, thank you to spy guitar-ist Max Crowe for his work starting when Franco flees his lab at 3:16.

Fact Checkers Unit - season 2 (cont'd)

Continuing on my post from last month, here are the remaining episodes of FCU. 4.5 million views as of this writing, sheesh! Anyway, let’s get to it:

Episode 4 (ft. DMC): This one’s my personal favorite of the series.. a few reasons why:

• I got to make some “medieval old skool hip hop” for the jesters scene (2:25)
• Brian’s character is losing his grip on reality, resulting in some of the best/darkest Pete & Brian moments in the series. Made a bittersweet strings ‘n choirs cue for the climax at 3:30
• Thomas Middleditch as DMC’s man-servant (star of the “world’s most famous paparazzo” mockumentary I scored last year)
• DMC of Run DMC!

Episode 5 (ft. Mary Lynn Rajskub, Mark McGrath): To wrap up the series, you’ll hear plenty more “Party in my Mouth” from Ep. 2 as well as some (terrible) dance music I put together for the party:



Kudos again to all the talented people behind this series- director Dan Beers, leads Pete & Brian, Editors Steve Makowski and Kyle Gilman, Exec Producer Thomas Bannister, Producer Larry Laboe, and many more. If you’re at SXSW on Saturday, drop by the FCU panel and give them high fives.

Fact Checkers Unit - season 2

Back to work! FCU is a web series by Dan Beers- one of the most talented, easygoing, and collaborative directors I’ve ever worked with. (This is our second time working together- we also worked on an ESPN web series, release pending)

This was a lot of fun, as there were plenty of diverse music needs (often the case with comedy)… here’s a walkthrough of the first few eps:

Episode 1 (ft. Moby):

Made a quick instrumental version of Moby’s “Sleepy Sleepy Grandma” for when she wakes up at 3:01. The second piece I made was described thusly in the script:

INT. JORDACHE’S OFFICE - LATER

Jordache sways to some bizarre indie music. Amy watches.

JORDACHEYou’ve never heard this song. No one has. The band made one song then they all died. Their early stuff was better.

Heh. I recorded a bunch of random parts and “sang” through a pitch-shifter overtop, resulting in the potentially the strangest piece of music I’ve ever been contracted to make (at 3:30).



Episode 2 (ft. T-Pain): I produced/recorded the song “Party in My Mouth” for this one, and co-wrote it with the illustrious Pete and Brian aka Russell and Dylan. Pretty impressed by T-Pain’s acting in this.



Episode 3 (ft. Kyle Gass!, TJ Miller) Did a little angelic cue for when “Mirage” is floating around the sky at 0:40:



More episodes coming soon..

Fact Checkers / Damn decisions

Brian Sacca and Pete Karinen of FCU: Fact Checkers Unit were in studio this week to collaborate on a song for the upcoming Season 2 of the series. It was a treat to work with these guys, who are as hardworking as they are funny.

Don’t want to give away too much of what we worked on, but I will tell you Brian is really good at saying “Damn”…