Newsletter #8 - End of Year Newsletter
Kia ora everyone, Meri Kirihimete!
Tonight airs our final episode of Shortland Street for the year before we go on hiatus for a few weeks. It’s a double episode, with a big musical ending.
It gets quite dramatic, and as Ben Barrington (Drew) revealed on Breakfast this week, a main cast member will not make it into 2024 alive. So expect drama, action, and some pumping music.
Soundtrack Release
Our poetry film Butterly recently played at the 2023 Aotearoa Poetry Film Festival in Wellington. For this project, I recorded violinist Yury Gezentsvey, who was Principal First Violin in the NZSO for many years before retiring last year.
I wrote the music for this film many months ago towards the beginning of the year, this was because the film was to be edited to the music, and featured a significant dance element that needed to be choreographed to the music. So we had to do the music first— then they made the film!
A look back at 2023
With the year wrapping up, and Christmas nearly upon us I want to look back at this year and all the projects I was fortunate enough to be a part of.
The big one of course is Shortland Street, which has totally transformed my life. I am now over a hundred episodes in, and I feel beyond fortunate to be a part of it.
The year began with the release of Follow the Light, a fantastical fantasy short film, which gave me the chance to write a bombastic fantastical score.
Around the same time, I wrote the music for the time travel short film Hudson Hemisphere.
The Follow The Light team moved on to The Death of Hector, a short experimental project that was about making an action-packed fight sequence between two ancient warriors.
I worked as an assistant in the early stages of two upcoming feature films, Lee Tamahori’s The Convert and medical drama A Mistake. For The Convert, I helped build Kontakt sample libraries out of original recordings. While I created a temp score (place-holder music that is intended to be replaced) by editing the music of the composer for early cuts of A Mistake. I could not continue with both these projects once Shortland Street came around, and I don’t believe any of my work remains in the final films, as they explored other musical directions after I had left. But it was still an awesome experience being involved in a small way in these big productions.
I released my string quartet Observations I & II, a very special and personal project. Recording this with members of the NZSO, and the positive response from people of the recording was a definite highlight of the year.
I contributed some music to a YouTube fan documentary called 815 - The Story of the Lost Pilot, which follows the behind-the-scenes drama at Disney that led to the making of the very first episode of the 2004 American drama series LOST.
I worked with my friend Luke Ross on the Someday Story documentary The Generation Gardener, featuring clarinet player Joshua Buckler.
And I started this newsletter!
That summarises most of it-- quite a year in retrospect! There is a couple of projects I've been working on that haven't seen the light of day yet. But I will talk about them when they emerge from hibernation.
Thanks so much for reading. I hope everyone has a wonderful holiday period, and has a safe and relaxing new year!
Happy 2024 to everyone!
