Film Score Recorded in Storied Studio

This Saturday, the Laguna Concert Band will pack up their gear and head to Capital Records studios in Los Angeles to record music to accompany two short films produced by animation students at Laguna College of Art and Design.

“The Big Dad Wolf” film short is a hand-drawn film while “Un Garçon et Sa Bête” (“A Boy and His Beast”), is created using stop-motion animation. The latter is produced in a laborious process where students make all the puppet characters and sets and then animate each piece in single frames.

Both movie productions have been supervised by instructor Stephen Chiodo, who also guided LCAD students through the production of “The Sock Thief,” a stop-motion animation film featuring music composed by Laguna Concert Band musical director Ed Peterson and performed by the band. The composition was funded by a Seven-Degrees of Inspiration award of $5000, part of the 2013 Art Stars Awards.

“Studio A is famous for having stars like Frank Sinatra and Beatles record their music there and I have connections to Capitol Records through engineering friends like Fred Christopher Spielvogel,” explained composer Alexander Burke, commissioned to create music for the two films.

Burke, also the son of LCAD president Jonathan Burke, said he took inspiration from the score of films such as “Budapest Hotel.”

The 32-year-old composer and musician specializes in keyboard instruments, but is versed in other instruments as well. He has performed on “Saturday Night Live” and Comedy Central’s “Mash Up” and with Amy Poehler.

“For ‘Beast’ I used an ‘80s sound with synthesizers and horror movie orchestration. I could create musical landscapes that are done in finer strokes than heard in today’s short movies,” he said. “I got to compose themes and melodies you can hum or sing back, something that composers don’t get to do very often.”

Craig Gordon, president and executive director of the Laguna Concert Band, was skeptical that a recording session in the venerated studio was financially possible. Gordon declined to disclose costs, but said the project is getting financial help from LCAD and individual donors.