Seth Freeman : Atwater Village Neighborhood310.430.5224 | home | email | myspace | facebook | linkedin | sonicbids | reverbnation | imdb | peace | little john |
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My friend and neighbor, Catherine Dent, asked me one day if I'd be interested in writing some music for a short film for this year's tree lighting ceremony. I had been to previous tree lightings, and always enjoyed the great neighborhood spirit and Catherine's on-stage improvised MC'ing between acts, from school children singing and dancing to the Tam O'Shanter singers. I said yes on the spot because it sounded like so much fun. From that point, it was a matter of assembling a team to help out with the videography, photography, and editing. We both sent the word out to our network of Atwater friends, and ended up with a great team of Tom Bishel (co-composing), Lorena David (videography), Mylissa Fitzsimmons-Grieve (photography), and Greg Brouwer (editing). We also had help along the way from some other photographers that Catherine wrangled into the project as she scrambled to put together footage and photos to cover everything she envisioned. The initial concept for the song came to me shortly after our first meeting, while walking my dogs with my daughter around the neighborhood. Catherine wanted the Sesame Street Neighborhood song to be prominent, but this new tune just kind of took over my brain while I was walking around. This is not an unusual thing for me, by the way. If you were to come upon me walking around the neighborhood with the dogs and my daughter one day, you would invariably hear me singing some kind of silly tune back and forth with her. Tom came in and contributed many great lyrics, an amazing harmony voice, and an awesome B section that we massaged a bit to ultimately create the finale toward the end. Catherine also had a great knack for coming up with fun quirky lyrics and in the end we created a truly collaborative work. The video influenced the song. The song influenced the video. Everyone shared ideas in borrowed moments on the phone between jobs, parental duties, etc. Tom returned from a road trip and recorded harmony vocals for the lines that were replaced in a last minute phone rewrite with Catherine. I finished the orchestration (pizz strings, harp, vibes, bells, whistles :)) late that night. Greg, meanwhile, was importing new video and pics the morning of the tree lighting, and ultimately finished at noon that day. The end result is a lot of fun and while we chopped out a ton of video footage and lyrics that we all really liked, the video and song are better for it. I hope you enjoy our love letter to our neighborhood.
Peace. |
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