2019 Hype Jam - A Game Trailer Jam

Hello!

This year marked the beginning of the annual Hype Jam - a game jam organized by Andrew McPherson and hosted by the Seattle Indies.  At this jam, game developers come together to create a trailer for a hypothetical game - in 48 hours!

This year, the event took place from August 2-4 at the beautiful Midtown 21 building in downtown Seattle.  The jam was sponsored by Amazon Game Tech, Amazon Games, and Twitch, and it included food for hungry game developers and outstanding aerial views of Seattle.

At the beginning of the jam, individuals conceptualized and presented ideas for a hypothetical game that could be created.  Groups formed around some of these ideas, with programmers, artists, sound developers, and storytellers teaming up together to make a trailer.

One young lady came with a fully developed story that seemed really engaging right off the bat.  I decided to join the team:

-Tessa Thurman (story development)
-Anabelle Decoret (editor)
-Erika McKracken (videographer)
-Bill Morse (character design/2-D artist)
-Grace Wallis (music and sound design)

Together, we worked to create a game trailer based around the story of someone who applies for a job...only to get blackmailed into becoming a gig-economy super spy.

I participated by recording voice-overs, designing the sound for the sets and sound effects, and, of course, preparing the entire music soundtrack.

You can view the completed video here on YouTube:

It was a lot of fun to put together with my teammates, and I look forward to repeating the adventure at next year's Hype Jam!

Fiasco Recording Session

Hello!

For the past ten months, I have been working on my master's degree in Film Scoring at the Pacific Northwest Film Composing program https://www.pnwfilmmusic.com

This accounts for why there have been no blogs in many moons.  Fortunately, I survived the program and emerged with a degree, so here is a sample of what I've been up to.

The "Fiasco" recording session, as it is fondly known in the program, is the final project for the program.  The students are asked to write a two-three minute "end credits" sequence for a hypothetical film, for a 52 piece orchestra, and then conduct and record it live.

My piece was written for the hypothetical film "Orion", about the legendary Sumerian hunter (passed down to us in the form of the Greek constellation).  It begins with the heroic, sparkling theme of Orion, has a romantic section about his relationship with Artemis (goddess of the hunt), and the returns with a bang to the theme.

This video was recorded and compiled by SFI student Malcolm Frankson, and he did an awesome job.  The final version of the piece was mixed and mastered at Studio X.

Thanks for listening!