Carpe Millenium in the 2010 Director's Circle

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.

Tortue (my first score)

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.

Scare Tactics (puppet sound design)

One more post before hitting the road to LA…

“Scare Tactics” is a live action puppet piece co-directed/co-produced by the great Frankie Cordero and the also-great David Fishel.

This was a lot of fun to sound design.. my favorite part was recording the vocalizations (vocal parts besides the actual narration, which is by Andrew Schoen). Turns out my go-to guitar/bass expert Max Crowe is great at screaming so I had him handle the numerous freakouts for “Charlie”. I handled the narrator character’s vocalizations (e.g. grunting for the fence jumping at 0:47, ugh!’s and such for the fight scene at 1:20)

Back to packing!

Moving to LA / The Hoodie Song

Big news: I’m moving to LA next week!

Chicago has been a great place to build momentum over the past 4+ years, but the timing feels right to get out where all the film infrastructure is (NYC was very tempting too).  I’ll miss all the talented musicians and filmmakers I’ve had the pleasure of working with here.

I’ve somehow managed to trick my great friend Jason Jackson into co-piloting a moving truck across the country so I’ll have some entertainment for the trip.  Speaking of Jason… I had the pleasure of recording him recently, as the operatic voice of a (usually) inanimate object:



Kudos to Dan Gurewitch for writing the song (and starring in the video for that matter), and to the following killer musicians for some very fun sessions:

Man Vocals - Jon SteinmeierHoodie Vocals - Jason JacksonCello - Lilianna WoskoGuitar/Bass - Max Crowe

Meet Josh!

I’ve been lucky this summer to have Josh Sauvageau as an intern. He’s been a great help with everything from cleaning up dialog audio to researching the latest/greatest virtual instruments & recording gear to sound design.

A recent grad from Columbia College Chicago (BA in Audio Arts & Acoustics), he studied recording under & worked alongside R&B producer Ron Gresham, Chicago Sessions (jazz label) owner/engineer/producer Nick Eipers, as well as WFMT Classical Engineers Mary Mazurek and Jesse McQuarters

In addition to being one of nicest people I know, he’s quite the interesting guy (for starters, he travelled the world as a nuclear reactor operator in the Navy!)   A few current projects:

• Production/audio editing and general research intern for 98.7 fm WFMT’s Exploring Music with Bill McGlaughlin, a nationally syndicated, nightly radio program
• Live sound tech doing everything from hip-hop battles to church services and wedding receptions
• Bassist/background singer for two bands that have CDs due out in about a month: Stealth Like a Canoe and As 40 Sleeps

I can’t thank him enough for all the hard work over the past few months. Hire this man!

joshuasauvageau at yahoo dot com

Animated Bears, Brutal Metal

This sketch is about the true nature of animated bears, and required 2 very different types of music: “Happy Forest” music and EVIL metal.

To research the former, I scoured youtube for clips of The Berenstain Bears, Yogi Bear, Winnie the Pooh, and even some Charmin commercials. As you might expect, most music accompanying animated bears is pretty similar: usually flute, glockenspiel and some very pleasant strings. So I took that general approach for the happy scenes and then customized each to match the sensibilities of the scene.

For the latter scenes with “more realistic” bear behavior, I made the most evil-sounding metal I could manage (props to Max Crowe for the dropped-D guitar sludge). I even used my EastWest Symphoic Choir samples for some low male grunting (which definitely give Pooh’s scene a “ritual sacrifice mega-evil” vibe) and seasoned to taste with orchestral strings effects.

Someday I need to make a list of all the times CollegeHumor has attempted to retroactively warp my childhood.

Zoo Horn

Every once in a while, I get hired to create some baaaaaaad music.  In this case it was muzak for a fake commercial about a product called “Zoo Horn”. Fortunately, it’s hilarious.

YOU’VE BEEN WARNED.

Ska's back!

A few months ago I found out I’d soon be making a full-on ska song for CollegeHumor. I know a ton of amazing horns players here, so was pretty excited right off the bat. Even better, the premise of the song involves an increasingly out-of-control horn section.. so I knew it would involve lots of very fun sessions.

Pat Cassels wrote the song & sent a rough demo- I added a couple melodies here and there, arranged a bunch of ridiculous horn parts, and got to work recording & producing this beast.

Thank you very much to all the great people who played & helped out on this:Vocals - Kevin GibsonTrumpet - Gerald BaileyTrombone - Andrew ZelmFrench Horn & Kazobo - Anna SuechtingGuitar & Bass - Max CroweDrum Sequencing - Rob KleinerDidgeridoo - David Fishel

This is definitely one of the most ridiculous things I’ve ever made (and that is saying something). Enjoy.

AXE COP 3 + writing process + testimonial

I just finished scoring & sound designing another episode of the AXE COP motion comic! There’s actually a video of Malachai (age 5) writing the story for this episode.. so if you haven’t seen that, watch it first. That’s his brother Ethan (who illustrates the comics, age 29) interviewing him:

And here’s the new episode. I did all music & sound except the opening/closing credits… it’s a real WHOOSH-BOOM-stravaganza. In addition to the usual crack team of people who work on these we are joined by Maurice LaMarche as the voice of Avacado Soldier. You might know him as “The Brain” from Pinky and the Brain or from any other cartoon in the past few decades. Pretty awesome of him to help out.

Finally, Ethan wrote me a nice testimonial which I’ve posted at sondrolmusic.com.

The Neighborwood

Early this year I had the pleasure of scoring this short pilot for animator-extraordinaire Mike Parker. We’d previously worked together a few times as he does a lot of great animation for CollegeHumor.

This score involves a lot of dramatic star wars-esque music as well as a mixed bag of other genres (gotta love cartoons).

Voices by Diedrich Bader and Will Friedle, guitar ‘n bass by the ever-solid Max Crowe, and trumpet by Nick Sednew.

Jason Bateman in drag

This is “The Dancer”- the second video of three that I had the pleasure of scoring for Jason Bateman and his company DumbDumb, as part of their campaign for Orbit gum.  Ben Joseph and Spencer Griffin at CollegeHumor produced once again.

This was definitely the first request I’ve ever gotten for “cowboy stripper music”, heh. I put together a slow blues track with Rocco Labriola on telecaster & pedal steel (clean, and then distorted for extreme sleaziness!)  Max Crowe handled bass and I added some honkytonk piano overtop.

I also whipped up a fast & light piano cue for the “transformation”, some light orchestration for the closing scene and finally a bit of über-generic club music for the intro.

Fun stuff.

Jeff and Kate: Wedding Song

Two of my favorite people got married last weekend: Jeff & Kate Becker! As a surprise wedding gift, I made a song (warning: 5min) for them and played it as a ‘toast’ during the reception (click link to download):

Jeff and Kate

It of course contains a few inside jokes, but these facts might help you make sense of it:

• Jeff and Kate live together in Madison.
• They have a dog named Barkitron 3000 (see his blog here), who was pretty old when they adopted him.  Jeff once explained he envisions himself as running a “retirement home for dogs”.  Bkt3k rarely barks.. but when he does it is deep and earth-shaking.
• Jeff proposed to Kate in a treehouse. (awesome)

This turned into quite the epic scale project when I decided to involve as many of our mutual friends as possible, and even some of Jeff’s family members..

Spoken Parts:

• I managed to get Jeff’s mom and one of his brothers (Matt) on the phone to narrate during the verses - I basically just interviewed them for 5 minutes each and edited it down later.  I had no idea what to expect but I think having family members handle the 'verse’ narration was a great route.
• For the bridge section I decided to make a “life advice” section full of half-serious/half-ridiculous thoughts by all the other friends I could manage to either get in front of a mic here in Chicago or over the phone: Mike Sudmeier, Rich Kirkendall, Max Crowe, Mark Quiner, Paul Skinner, Alex May, and Nick Thompson.

Musicians:

• Hawk Colman (vocals, some narration) is a great friend and one of the most talented singers I know.  He’s actually never met Jeff & Kate.. but was up for helping out.  I’ve had him in mind since I came up with the initial idea a year ago… thanks again so much for the session, Hawk!
• Nick Thompson (tenor & bari sax) lives here in Chicago, and stopped by to knock out the parts one afternoon.
• Kestrel Wright (french horn) now lives in Seattle but just happened to be in town for a few days.  I hadn’t seen him in years and the first thing we did was have a recording session… after that we went to a Thai restaurant to catch up.
• Will Roseliep (cello) is in Boston and recorded remotely with a flash recorder, playing along to a rough mp3.  Will’s pretty hi-tech.

p.s. dear other friends: I wish I could do something like this every time someone gets married, but holy moly did I ever underestimate the amount of work it would take… so I’ll probably have to go a more traditional route for future weddings to stay healthy & sane.  Take my word that I love you equally!

Gourmet Birthday Pie

I have the best friends in the world. One of them, Skylar Garland, happens to be a professional pie-maker and made this for my birthday!

Thank you Skylar!

Do yourself a favor and order one of her creations from http://skyinthepie.info

Man v. Candy Machine screen test

Here’s a sneak peak at something I’m sound-designing right now. I didn’t do any of the sound in this screen test, but it will give you a preview of some of the very cool motion graphics work it features.

It’s directed by my new friends at NATIONAL HEADQUARTERS, who describe it as an interactive “Internet Tele-Play”.

Definitely the most futuristic project I’ve worked on (robot voices and sound effects!) Stay tuned and I’ll let you know when it’s all wrapped up.

AXE COP score + sound design

Every once in a while, the internet calls our attention to something truly amazing and unique. One of my favorite examples is the webcomic AXE COP which is written by a 5 year-old (Malachai Nicolle) and illustrated by his 29 year-old brother (Ethan Nicolle). It’s a pretty wonderful thing to see Malachai’s wild imagination fully-realized in comic form by a professional comic artist. I’ve been a huge fan ever since it came out.

I am very proud to say I scored and sound designed the above motion comic version last week- easily one of the most fun projects I’ve ever worked on. I worked hard to make the action music as ridiculously OVER-THE-TOP as possible, and have the sound design continuously punch you in the face! I’ve been listening to the Die Hard 2 soundtrack a lot over the past few weeks to get in the right mindset :)

Anyway… enjoy!

I’d like to give a shoutout to Tony, Glenn, and Donald of Promo Scape in Australia who did an amazing job animating and producing.

I was completely blown away by the voiceover work, which features Bob Souer (narration), David DeAndrea (Axe Cop), Lee Gordon (Flute Cop), and Marcus Irvine (Telescope Gun Cop).

Last but not least, kudos to Step Dad for an axe-tastic theme song.

The Old Man and the Seymour

In case you haven’t seen it, here’s one of my favorite past scoring projects. It’s a 30-minute film by the very talented duo of Jonathan Grimm and Giancarlo Fiorentini in which a 47-year-old, growth hormone deficient man gets mistaken for a new kid at his nephew’s high school, where he quickly becomes the most popular student.

It features Steeter and Amir of CollegeHumor, Shawn Harrison (Family Matters), Liz Cackowski (Forgetting Sarah Marshall), and Jordan Carlos (Colbert Report).

More from Jon & Giancarlo soon!

Turtle Race Ep 2 and 3

If for some reason you can’t get enough of my sports music, here are a few more chances: parts 2 and 3 of CollegeHumor’s Turtle Race videos with Brian Baumgartner and Jerome Bettis.

More new work coming soon. I just counted and have 6 (!) completed projects that could post any day now..

Prom Date (with Jason Bateman)

It’s a real privilege to announce I recently scored 3 shorts directed by Jason Bateman for his new comedy enterprise with Will Arnett: DumbDumb. They were sponsored by Orbit and produced by some good friends at CollegeHumor, Ben Joseph and Spencer Griffin.

“Prom Date” is the first- it also features Rachel Harris and Aubrey Plaza.

Jason had a clear vision for the piece (a plucky, whimsical score with a heavy presence throughout) which was very fun to bring to life. I have a lot of respect for his work and he was great to work with- very professional, focused, and friendly, even on the tightest of turnarounds.

This one’s all over the place online… the Wall Street Journal, Entertainment Weekly, Huffington Post, Hollywood Reporter, etc..

HollywoodChicago.com interview

In anticipation of today’s Webby Awards ceremony in NYC, I was interviewed by HollywoodChicago:

CHICAGO – Carl Sondrol is on a huge winning streak. The musician, composer and soundtrack scorer for CollegeHumor.com is a vital part of the Webby Award winning shorts “Web Site Story” and “Pixar Intro Parody.” His work has also expanded into television, short films and feature films.

[read more…]

CBS and Carnegie Hall

Last month a song I produced for CBS kicked off their 2010 Upfronts presentation (where advertisers can purchase airtime “upfront”) at Carnegie Hall! The song and accompanying animation introduced the president himself, Leslie Moonves.

Lacy Daigle at CBS was very enthusiastic and fun to work with throughout the project. It was also a pleasure working with Mike Ungar of Broadway Sound, who handled sound design and the final mix. Aside from being an expert at fine-tuning audio for Carnegie Hall, he was a sound editor for ThunderCats back in the day… pretty much instant credibility in my book.

Special thanks to vocalist Steve Frisbie for his meticulous attention to detail on this one. Also, to Max Crowe for the ever-solid guitars-‘n-bass-manship.

While I can’t post the song or video, feel free to use your imagination and check out a few pictures from the opening (click to view big versions):