Friends and family - while at your local blockbuster this weekend, preparing to get your scare on for Halloween by stocking up on horror flicks… make sure to pick up 666: THE BEAST. This recent Halloween release stars none other than Chad Mathews in the lead role playing the devil… need I say more! In case you’re wondering who Chad is, he plays Wes in Cowboy Smoke and was the title character in my first feature WESLEY CASH. CONGRATULATIONS CHAD!!!

Last night I worked several hours working with Aaron Horne and his Four Eyes studios sound crew. The majority of the evening was spent watching/listening to the third act and spotting where sound still needs work. After that we watched/listened to the first two acts, which had been the focus on previous visits. It’s exciting to witness the process, the film transforming as layers of sound are added… Aaron assured me last night we are weeks away from having the sound ready for the final mix.

A few days ago I visited Brian and listened to the new music he’d written… I told him this and truly believe it - he’s doing an amazing job and know this will be the best work he’s ever done! The music far exceeds my expectations and adds such an epic layer to this film. 

Brian had this to say on his Blog:
Tonight I wrapped up two more cues for COWBOY SMOKE: 2m11 “Mi Familia” and “Joe & Elysa.” These are both tonally and structurally related. Sometimes the soft quiet cues are the hardest ones and both of these were challenging for these reasons. Will was over tonight and I played him my music for the opening of the film. He liked what I liked and we were able to figure out what was wrong with what I wasn’t liking about it. I think I’m back on track with that piece now. Sometimes it just takes the director’s direction to be sure that I’m staying on the right path. I couldn’t quite figure it out this weekend when I was working on it but all is full-steam ahead now. There is still so much to do but I’m making good progress. The compositional machine tends to speed up as it gets going so I’m sure I’ll make up some ground in the next couple of weeks. There’s still plenty of time so I’m not worried about the schedule at all.

That’s all for now!!!!

Over the next couple weeks I’ll be working with Aaron and his four-eyes studios crew to sweeten the post sound. BTW, the film is sounding great and I can’t wait to do the final mix. Last night I heard the bullet hits for the first time and cringed each time the effect was played back for me. Great sound is crucial when dealing with suspension of disbelief and the audience’s ability to accept story.

Last week I listened to the first finished music cue. It was Indio’s theme and the music kicked ass. So much so that I had Brian play it back for me six times and then burn a CD so I could listen to it on the drive home. Brian also played two more themes for me on piano… the immigrant theme (which will be the central theme music for the film) and the love theme.  Brian commented that he thought they were the best melodies he’d ever composed for a film. Needless to say I left his studio pumped.

Two new additions to the post crew of Cowboy Smoke. Carlos Funes will be handling motion graphics duties while Chris Lambright will be creating the art work for posters and the dvd. Chris has created several movie posters for me in the past, including the Wesley Cash poster and the Cowboy Smoke pre-production poster. Carlos will be creating and animating the video game graphics for a convenient store scene where the main character Joe beats a free-standing game called Cowboy Smoke. Carlos has also been tasked with rotoscoping the opening credits.  Rotoscoping is an animation technique in which animators trace over live-action movement, frame by frame, for use in animated films. This technique was used for several spaghetti western title sequences, usually as simple silhouettes but extremely effective and very cool.
 
Lastly, we’ve decided on a post-house to master the picture… The Film Worker’s Club out of Dallas will be doing the final transfer to HD as well as the color correction. The Director of Photography Steve Acevedo and myself will travel to Dallas in order to supervise the process. More to come.