But seriously: it is a rather neat image, although rather bloody. But I like how it compels the eye to dart around it, picking out grisly detail and the film's tagline...
For more of the wonderfully wacked work of Marco and his crew, visit the website of Route 64 Vintage!
That looks stunning! Can you believe this is a film being made by mostly teenagers? Well, Marco and his crew are a very talented lot and I'm not ashamed to say this either: I've learned a lot from him that I'm eager to apply to my own productions. This is definitely a rising young name that we'll be hearing plenty more good from in the future.
And if you wanna know more about Normalsville, click on over to the official website! :-)
So this morning he tells me that the first teaser for his new project Normalsville is done and that I oughta take a gander at it. So I did. Like, five times in a row. It's a right atmospheric and moody piece of work. Can't wait to see the rest of it (even though I've been "in the loop" on it for awhile :-) Check it out!
Well, Marco did some asking-around in the right places and here's what he found out:
I was wondering for a longer time now what the great lyrics in the "Decepticons theme" mean, and today, I found out: The Decepticons theme is influenced by the world famous Dies Irae. Jablonsky mixed it up, and uhm, well now you have a meaningless pot of words:Here's the Wikipedia entry on Dies Irae. From the opening paragraph:Low-voice-chant:
Tuba, mirum, Tuba, spargens
Tremor, David, mirum, anteChant which gets louder throughout:
Totum totum totum totum David
Totum spargens totum david
Totum quarens, sedisti totum(I wasn't able to understand the rest of it.)
If ya would translate it, it would be something like this:
Trumpet, casts, Trumpet wondrous
Horror, David, Casts, beforeContained, contained, contained contained David
Contained wondrous contained David
Contained seeking, hope containedSo, it's all kinda nonsense (although the real Dies Irae has a biblical meaning behind it).
Dies Irae ("Day of Wrath") is a famous thirteenth century Latin hymn thought to be written by Thomas of Celano. It is often judged to be the best medieval Latin poem, differing from classical Latin by its accentual (non-quantitative) stress and its rhymed lines. The meter is trochaic. The poem describes the day of judgment, the last trumpet summoning souls before the throne of God, where the saved will be delivered and the unsaved cast into eternal flames.I can sorta see why this particular hymn might have wound up being "adapted" for the Decepticons theme: just the translation of the lyrics sound dark, foreboding, unearthly...
What a neat find! Thanks Marco! :-)
Something I've been saying for awhile: the next revolution in film-making won't be in Hollywood. It'll be coming from out of the hinterlands. There is something really wonderful happening across the world, my friends: a new breed of filmmaker, and I'm seeing them as young as 12 all the way up to their 50s and 60s. People armed with the new technology of cheap digital filmmaking who are doing incredible things around their hometowns and down in their basements... which are more often than not rigged-up with makeshift greenscreens. Regular people, no longer content to watch the magic on the big screen, are now telling themselves "I could do that, I can do that. Maybe I will do that!"Marco van Bergen is one of those people. A mid-teen filmmaker in the Netherlands, van Bergen just finished his new movie Zero Hour. This past week I was honored to be granted the opportunity to give it a looksee.
Zero Hour is about a tidal wave that hits a research facility on an island, and how the survivors frantically fight to survive. That this sounds much like Poseidon is bolstered by how some footage from that movie (along with clips from Titanic and other major motion pictures) is used in van Bergen's film. But don't let that fool you: Zero Hour is defined by its own cinematography (and by a largely original score by German composer Ralf Wienrich, which won a whole slew of awards at a major competition in Amsterdam a few days ago). There are some terrific shots that van Bergen and his crew pulled off, including a number of great special effects. Yet Zero Hour doesn't make the mistake that many other productions on this scale fall to the temptation of doing: making the effects supersede the story and the characters. Indeed, the scene that stands out in my mind from Zero Hour is an escape through the ventilation system: there was a much greater sense of claustrophobia and dark humor in that part than I would have expected from an older, more experienced filmmaker.
I couldn't help but think while watching Zero Hour that I was being blessed to witness the early efforts of a very talented group of young people, that I've no doubt we are going to be hearing quite a lot of good from in the years to come. Heck, if I was a bigtime studio exec, I'd throw Marco and his crew a couple million dollars and really turn them loose!
If you want to find out more about Zero Hour, check out the movie's official website. Oh yeah, and there will be a soundtrack CD of the film's score coming out soon, too! If that were only true of some other movies...
Among the biggest breakthroughs that have happened in this matter came about because of Marco van Bergen: an intrepid young film-maker (click here for the website for his movie Zero Hour) and journalist based in the Netherlands. Marco's been making some tremendous inroads in getting the word spread about the Transformers score petition. Well earlier today he received what may be the most substantive info yet straight from the sources at Sony Music. And that word is ... that Sony Music isn't in charge of the score at all, apparently! Here's what they sent Marco:
Hi Marco, unfortunately I don't have any information on this record as it is not a Sony BMG release. There might have been some confusion with the recent release of the Transformers Movie 20th Anniversary Edition soundtrack (the animated movie) since Sony BMG had put that record out.Okay so ... who is in charge of the score? Is it indeed, as some have said, Warner Records: the company that released the Transformers "soundtrack" (it's not a real soundtrack) album?SonyMusicStore Customer Service
www.SonyMusicStore.com
"Your Source For Music And More!"
I don't know, but I'm going to be spending part of the next few days trying to find out. In the meantime, it might be worth bearing in mind that Transformers should hit the $300 million dollar mark in box office earnings by the end of this week. It's now the #4 highest-grossing movie of 2007. The Transformers score petition also received it's 3,000th signature earlier this evening. It sure seems that whoever has the rights to release a good album of Jablonsky's score for Transformers, is sitting on a gold mine that's just waiting to be tapped into. Let's hope they do it soon! :-)
