The musical genius of Nathan Tanouye

FROM AN EMAIL I JUST SENT AROUND TO THE GUYS

The first time I heard the opening flourish strains of Nathan Tanouye's title cut ("Crossings") on his Russ Freeman CD project (last tune on the disk), I was immediately struck by inescapable imagery of "Saving Private Ryan," and I thought, 'jeez, this cat oughta be writin' film scores.'

So, tonight I'm pissin' around in iMovie (in between trips to the hospital to deal with my Ma), copped a few D-Day stills off the 'net, and assembled them with a few of my own, culled the first 75 seconds of "Crossings" audio, and just threw it all together to make my point.

No frills. Just took the default 5 second frames with the slow zoom-ins (which gets old, I know. Ken Burns I'm not right now), no cross-dissolves, or trying to map the edits to various beats or notes (you can overdo that, anyway; reflexive editing tightly to downbeats is the sign of an anal hack). Interesting how some of it just "works" passably outa the chute.

I've not used this app before, it came bundled with my iMac. It's OK, but not ready for Prime Time. (Like me.)

Nathan could easily score for film. I told him that the other day at the Serpentine Fyre rehearsal. I friggin' meant it.

UPDATE: OK, just checked. The larger conversion is now uploaded to YoooTooobe.

The Normandy Beach / D-Day cemetery shots are pics I took in 2004 when Cheryl and I went to see the Tour de France. The last shot before the flag coda is me Ma & Pa in the nursing home earlier this year.

My Dad left his leg behind in Europe during WWII, and one of my Mother's brothers was pissin' his britches and throwin' up in one of those D-Day landing craft, so "Saving Private Ryan" kinda shook me up a bit more personally. Only 2 of the 5 Gladd brothers survived the war years.

I'm gonna post the YoooToooobe thingy on the blog with props to Nathan. I have studied the "Crossings" CD intensely, man. It is a MASTERWORK.

Bobby
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8/21 UPDATE: I LEARNED A BIT MORE iMOVIE and DID SOME REVISIONS TO THE ORIGINAL YOUTUBE POST:


POST SCRIPT: ON "EDITS"

So Cheryl and I recently went to see the totally amazing Bourne Ultimatum, and then just had to come home and re-watch the first two Bourne flicks for the umpteenth time. So, as I'm watchin' the Bourne Supremacy (the 2nd in the series), the day gig statistician in me is compelled to randomly silently count scene lengths. Maybe 1.5 seconds on average per cut, meaning perhaps 4,500 - 5,000 edits across the entire flick. The edit rate in the new pic is even more frenetic (gotta be 6,000+ edits in that flick). Amazing, the technology and creative effort of film. Man! the work involved.

MONDAY MORNING UPDATE

Is anyone else already sick of this endless Presidential pre-campaign campaign, with its ad nauseum litany of patronizing platitudes and outright weak-assed lies? Enjoy some Robin Williams, LOL!



Calls to mind this 1996 Bill Champlin tune, Party Time in DC (mp3, Jerry Lopez on guitar, Rochon on bass, the awesome "MayDay" CD).