Carl Sondrol

Composer and Music Producer

Filtering by Tag: celia rowlson-hall

The Pact II + 2013 wrap-up

We’ve got some catching up to do!  A few projects I’ve scored lately include:

The Pact II

This feature horror film is being released by IFC Midnight and hitting the festival circuit shortly.  I had a blast working with directors Patrick Horvath and Dallas Hallam.  They are ideal collaborators: sweet, hard-working, and creative as hell!  It was also a treat to work with producer Ross Dinerstein and team.  I’m a fan of their work (e.g. Jiro Dreams of Sushi) and they are total pros.

Here are Dallas and Pat playing a “vent hood” (a weird piece of metal traditionally used on rooftops).  We recorded some cool and very “stereo” sounds by super-close miking it while they tapped, scraped, etc.

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My elite squad of musicians included Joe Mendoes (cello), Lauren Baba (viola), Pasha Tseitlin (violin), and Brandon Dickert (drums):

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The score also featured chromaharp (but played with a pickle jar lid instead of picks), radiator cover (e.g. low metallic BOOOOMs- don’t tell my landlord I ripped it off the wall), and piano (many thank yous, Dory Bavarsky, for letting me record your beautiful baby grand):

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Here are audio gurus Rob Chen and Joe Loera at Lotus Post locking in the sound mix:

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The last step of the score was naming the 40+ cues.  "The Ghost Who Messed Up the Stuff" is probably the leading Grammy contender:

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That’s all the PACT 2 news for now!

GRAY DOG

Another collaboration with the wonderful Celia Rowlson-Hall, which featured accordion, synthesizers, and more chromaharp.  I don’t have a clip since it is hitting festivals soon, BUT here is a kickstarter video for her debut feature film MA:

Check it out and consider supporting if you find her work as exciting as I do!

Natural Selection

This playful short by my longtime collaborator David Fishel features the amazing dancer Carlye Eckert.  It will have the honor of screening at Lincoln Center in NYC in February, and you can watch it online right now here:

http://dancesmadetoorder.com/dance-film/2013/06/natural-selection/

Breaking Bad parody (SPOILERS!  Don’t be stupid- watch Breaking Bad first.)

Directed by the talented Oren Brimer, who is now kicking ass at the Pete Holmes show- congrats Oren!

Oren moved to LA from NYC this year, and at his housewarming I found this in his bathroom.  That is some mega Comedy Nerd Cred.

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Also, here’s Alex Wand deftly playing his National Steel Guitar for my BB-esque theme song:image

First Dates with Toby Harris

It was a treat to create some “Planet Earth” style source music for this episode of First Dates.

In my opinion, it is among the best-crafted web series out there.  It’s rare to see this sort of tone pulled off so well (and consistently), but director Elliot Dickerhoof nails it.  And of course, actors Seth Morris, Joel Spence, and Anna Wenger are hilarious.

Check out the full series here.

Happy holidays!

SxSW and Si Nos Dejan

Si Nos Dejan still

I’m excited and humbled to announce that I’ll be attending SxSW this year with a director I immensely admire, Celia Rowlson-Hall!

We’ll be there with her film Si Nos Dejan (pictured above)- “a love story flooded with good intentions and missed connections.” I composed the music and look forward to writing about the scoring process here.

She also has a 2nd film in the festival, which sums up the audition process in a bold and painfully accurate way:



The truth, it burns!!

GOODY! TWO SHOES



I recently had the pleasure of scoring & sound designing this video, directed by the wonderful Celia Rowlson-Hall. She describes it thusly:

watch me demolish a city, perform in a broadway show, stroll through the jungle and turn into a ghost… all over a pair of shoes.


I’ve been following Celia’s work for a few years now and it was a real treat to team up. It was a fun challenge to figure out how to complement the stream-of-consciousness visuals in a compelling way… I’m pretty excited about the godzilla-soundscape-into-broadway-sassiness-into-electro-jungle-ominousness-into-bittersweet-death-music-with-ghost-breathing approach we landed on :)

Thank you to all the great musicians who helped out on super-short notice:

Shannon Stone - tenor sax, clarinetWalter Simonsen - trumpetAngeline Gragasin - vocalsMax Crowe - guitar

Also, thank you Richard Howarth for assisting with sound design (as with last week’s post!)

Special thanks to frequent collaborator David Fishel (who also assistant directed and edited this video) for the introduction.

Enjoy! Then check out more of Celia’s films and choreography here.