The day has finally come that I can share a commercial production with you. This assignment was commissioned to me through Sizzer Amsterdam, a music agency that I’ve been working with on a regular basis over the last year.
The commercial looks amazing and I think it sounds that as well. So without any further ado, here it is:
All my best,
W.
a.k.a. Portrait of a Ballerina pt. 2
A little longer than a month ago, I posted a song I did for a school project for Hannelore and wrote the following:
“… Maybe someday the movie will appear online too …”
Good news! Today is that day :)
Enjoy!
This is a very short little soundtrack to another school assignment of my girlfriend. She had to make a portrait of someone and she picked one of her best friends to do some ballet. Maybe someday the movie will appear online too ;) Until then, here’s the sound:
After posting this tune on soundcloud last week, something pretty special happened. Someone (who will remain anonymous ofcourse) had sent me a private message on soundcloud asking for the mp3. The message went as follows:
Hello Sir Willem
I just heard your “Portrait” right now and i’m moved to tears.
do you think its possible to get the audio in wav? i would like to play this really special artwork at the funeral of my grandpa in 2 weeks.
thank you for reading this message
best regards
It’s been some time since I uploaded something. I have loads of stuff laying around at the moment but which just isn’t ready or suited for uploading yet.
Expect more music soon.
As promised in my previous post, here’s the video of Ergens Nergens. Enjoy!
YouTube description:
Ergens Nergens is een bitterzoete vertelling over twee kleine jongens, die samen ontdekken dat de grens tussen realiteit en fictie niet altijd even duidelijk is. De film toont het verhaal van Sam, die na het overlijden van zijn beste vriend Stef, een manier zoekt om hiermee om te gaan.
Ergens Nergens (Somewhere Nowhere) tells the story of two young boys, who discover that the difference between reality and fiction isn’t always clearly defined. The film shows the story of Sam, who has to find a way to deal with the loss of his best friend Stef.
CAST:
Stef Peeters: Michiel Borgers
Sam Vandenbergen: Lander Michiels
MUSIC:
Willem Claesen (https://soundcloud.com/willem-claesen…)
WRITTEN, FILMED, DIRECTED AND EDITED BY:
Steve Bottelbergs & Thomas Nelissen
Yesterday was a good day for culture in my hometown Diepenbeek.
Film clubs Bird’s Eye and CCD organized a showing and played their new movies for the first time to an audience. Big day for me as well, since I did theree of the soundtracks of the films Bird’s Eye (the younglings) showed.
The first one being I.V.F. This was a school project my girlfriend, Hannelore, had to do in film school last year. They were told to do something with the subject of “indignation” and she came up with an idea in which all I.V.F. children were hunted down and killed. She has quite the knack for dark stuff :)
The soundtrack for this one is one of my earlier soundtracks back when I didn’t have a great orchestral sound bank yet. Still, I’m pretty pleased with the result. Check it out:
The second film with my soundtrack on it was called Ergens Nergens. This was a special one for me as it wasn’t for my girlfriend this time but for two close friends of mine. It has to be the stressiest one I’ve done as well though, as time between delivering and the showing yesterday was about 36 hours. In the end, the movie was a hit so I’m definitely happy with the end result.
The film is a about a little boy having to deal with the loss of his best friend and finding a way to do this.
Below is an audio link to my sound cloud. Hoping they’ll put their movie online someday though as the effect comes across much better with the video. If they do, I’ll let you know ;)
Last but not least, Hannelore’s film Audrey Le Jeune was showed. I posted about this soundtrack in my first blogpost already and I’m now proud to say that this one also did very well.
Here’s the audio links again:
To end this post, I want to give a last big up to the creators of the films Hannelore, Steve & Thomas and especially for trusting me with their ‘babies’. I think we smashed it and some more quality stuff will be coming in the future.
Fan up for Bird’s Eye right here
I have been getting some opportunities for television and commercials lately and I must say some of these assignments are really cool to work on! I also got to score a short film my girlfriend made!
Short Film: Audrey le Jeune
My girl is studying Film & Television at college and she is really passionate about this. Even when she doesn’t have any assignments she’ll be drawing up storyboards and start filming something. That’s exactly what she did last summer and of course I am happy to do a soundtrack for her.
It’s a pretty dark short film with some heavy themes (just as she likes them :)) so the music of course had to have the same feel. Here’s the end result chopped up into separate tracks. Ofcourse this OST doesn’t include all the ambient noise tracks because that just wouldn’t be very interesting to listen to ;)
Television: KETNET – De 5 voor 12 show
I got this assignment through a friend over at Lektroluv Records who does music selection over at a national TV channel. This was my first television gig and the music had to “make the kids go hyper”. All in all this was a very fun project to work on and to hear it in the show twice a week and actually seeing it work is just really satisfying.
Click here to watch the very first episode of De 5 door 12 show. You’ll hear the tune I did at the start of the show and whenever a ball rolls down the epic ancient computer!
Commercial
Got in touch with a couple of production houses and had cool experiences with them and learned a lot about music syncs. The process was almost entirely new to me at first as I wasn’t really familiar with making music on demand and editing editing re-editing the hell out of one tune to fit just perfectly with the imagery as the brand sees fit.
Up until now, I’ve had a couple of successes that did make it to television, but unfortunately, there’s some pretty stiff competition out there and some didn’t make it… The problem not necessarily being the music wasn’t any good, but because it has to pass through about three involved instances (1. the production house, 2. the brand’s agency, 3. the brand itself) of which all of them might have different tastes.
I’ve had experiences in which the production house as well as the agency were over the moon with my demo. But it just didn’t get the final pick because it doesn’t sound familiar enough or something like that. Factors which I will bear in mind in my future endeavors for sure! :)
Willem Claesen 