[video] Author & Punisher live in SLC, Nov 2018

I recorded Author & Punisher on his stop in Salt Lake City on his recent US tour, and it turned out great. Full performance, pro audio, three cameras.

Someday I may make the jump to 4k, but for the foreseeable future, 1080 it is.

[movie remaster] Eyes of Fire (1983)

I just finished up another movie remaster- Eyes of Fire (1983, Avery Crounse).

Remastered the video and the audio, and added a bunch of original music, sound effects, atmospheres, sound design and other random audio bits.

This is a superior haunted forest flick, with an amazing performance by Dennis Lipscomb as the bible-thumping whack job preacher guy. I could go on and on about it here, but instead I wrote out some extensive liner notes on the YouTube page, so read those if you care to read my ramblings.

Never came out on dvd/streaming, which is a terrible shame, but at least we have this version.

I also just finished giving the same treatment to Michael Mann's The Keep, but YouTube wouldn't let me post it, those bastards.

[movie] Demons (Dancu version)

Demons (1985)

Lamberto Bava, director. Original music by Claudio Simonetti.

Additional music, sound effects, sound design, incidental music, atmospheres, video editing and recoloring by Brian Albers of Humorless Productions aka Dancu in 2016-2017.

https://dancu.bandcamp.com/

http://humorlessproductions.wordpress.com/

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Humorless-Productions/190626074303436?ref=hl

http://www.mixcloud.com/humorlessproductions/

Ok, so here is my version of Lamberto Bava's classic proto-zombie flick Demons from 1985, where I re-scored it- added a bunch of music, atmospheres, sound effects and sound design.

I actually did all the work on this a couple years ago. This was the first movie I re-scored. The second was Elves (1989) which you can see here (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rcAtRHzCP-E).

All audio done in Presonus Studio One, with way too many synths and signal processors to list.

All video work done in FCPX and Adobe Premiere.

If you have any questions about what I did or how I did it, ask below. Here are some basic notes-

First I edited out the fat- I took out the three or four short scenes of the quartet of punk rockers driving around Berlin. Those characters do enter the movie in the second half, but these scenes in the first half that I axed were totally irrelevant to the movie as a whole, so I dropped them.

I went to a screening of this movie sometime in the 2000s in Los Angeles with a Q&A with some of the actors. Geretta Geretta was there, the black woman with the braids who becomes the first demon in the movie. Somebody asked why they chose to shoot the movie in Berlin instead of somewhere in Italy (where most of the actors and crew lived) or New York, which was all the rage with Italian horror filmmakers at the time. She fielded the question and said that Berlin was simply the super hip place in Europe in those days, and I think that's why those scenes were included in the movie. But in retrospect, they're 100% inconsequential to the story, and the film works just fine without them.

Bobby Rhodes was there too, and 35 years after the movie, he looked EXACTLY the same. Didn't even looked like he'd aged a day.

I ditched only one other scene which happens most of the way through the movie. As they're trying to escape the theatre, a group of people enter an empty room, with brick walls and a dirt floor, and they sort of grope around as if they're blind or as if the room was completely dark, as if they're in some sort of trance. Then they freak out in hysterics for about 10 or 20 seconds, and then they turn around and leave the room. There are no other references to that room. So what the hell was it? I don't know. Does anybody know? Doubt it. In any case, it's a better movie without that scene.

I tried to lose the whole helicopter thing (that's another total head-scratcher), but the last part of the movie would have been one big non-sequitur, with them on the roof for the big fight scene. So I had to keep it, even though it makes no sense.

Also in this process, I color corrected many of the scenes. Especially the whole intro subway/S-bahn scenes. They were really green, so I warmed them up a bit. And I fixed a lot of the stuff in the rest of the movie, too. Mostly dropping the blacks and punching up the overall color a bit.

Then I started on the music. The one aspect of this movie which inspired me to take it on in the first place, was the fact that there is no music in the two most climactic scenes of the movie- the transformation scene about halfway through, and the final rooftop climactic battle. Once I made the music for those scenes, I thought I would leave it at that. But then as I watched the rest of the movie, I kept noticing other scenes that really needed filling out, so at that point I dove in head first and went through every scene and added what I thought they needed.

I also went so far as to remaster the movie's original audio, including all dialog, all the heavy metal songs and Claudio Simonetti's originals.

And now that it's done, I can confidently say that it's a vastly better movie. It's still mind-boggling to me why so many of the scenes don't have music in the first place, especially those two pivotal scenes. Lamberto Bava was a seasoned pro at this point, as was Claudio Simonetti. If they were rookies, you might think it'd be plausible that they made a rookie mistake like running out of time or running out of money. But I don't think that's realistic. Maybe they were just going for a stylistic thing where they thought having no music in those scenes and others would be best. Well, it's not, and I fixed it.

Hope you like it. Go check out Elves, too, where I gave it the same treatment.

I'm working on Eyes of Fire (1983) now. I've made some very good progress on it, but it's still a ways from being done. I'll let you know when I post it.

I rescored a couple 80s horror movies. Help me get them screened.

After posting my first batch of originals in early August, I've been working on a couple other projects, and now those projects are done, so I want to tell you about them.

I added original music, sound design and sound effects to Demons, Lamberto Bava's classic, gore-ific zombie flick from 1985, as well as a lesser known flick Elves from 1989, which is a low-budget and completely bizarre movie about some little, vicious troll-gremlin type monster and something having to do with Nazis and it all revolves around a hot, young blond woman and stars Dan Haggerty (well after his Grizzly Adams days) who plays a down-and-out Santa at a dreary department store at Christmastime. I also remastered the original audio of both films for my versions.

Here's how this all came to be.

I'd done a couple fan edits of Demons in the past, just for personal use. This amounted to cutting out all the scenes of that quartet of punk rockers aimlessly driving around Berlin. Those scenes are totally inconsequential to the film, so I axed them. I trimmed some other very small bits, but nothing as substantial as the punkers. Well, I had it on the flatscreen the other day, and something I hadn't noticed before hit me- a couple of pivotal scenes are largely devoid of music. I don't know how it was possible that I didn't notice this until now, 30 years after the movie had originally been released and after having viewed it dozens of times. In fact, it's the most famous scene from the movie - the transformation scene with the teeth and fingernails - and the climactic finale scene with the rooftop battle which are both are bafflingly light on music. So, I set out to fix that by composing my own and inserting it into the movie alongside those great Claudio Simonetti compositions and the 80s heavy metal songs.

The two songs I made for those scenes came together quickly. But upon watching the film again with a keen eye (ear) on the soundtrack, I started noticing all sorts of scenes that could be touched up with some added sounds or atmospheres. So, in the end, what I did was analyze the movie from beginning to end with an emphasis on the soundtrack, and filled in the gaps that I felt needed filling.

To give you a much better idea of what I'm talking about, I threw together a couple A/B before-and-after comparisons of those two famous scenes (using low res files; my master copy is 720p)-

Big difference, yes? The music in those scenes may come across as a bit too heavy or relentless or poundingly aggressive, but those are but a few minutes of a movie that is 90 minutes in length (well, actually 80 minutes now that I've excised the scenes of the hoodlums). I added all sorts of sounds to the rest of the film- sounds that are much more subdued and atmospheric, but appropriately spooky and creepy and ominous. So don't expect the entire movie to be wall-to-wall industrial strength pounding drums and distorted synth bass lines.

I am very happy with the results with this first attempt of mine to rescore an old movie. So, I thought I'd do another. I selected Elves not because it had any scenes in it that were egregiously in need of music, but rather I thought that I could make great improvements in this movie by adding just some atmospheres and other minimal synth parts. So I started doing that, and, like Demons, I got a little bit carried away and ended up adding a decent amount of sounds throughout the movie. All told, though, I'd say that I ended up contributing less music to Elves than Demons. But still, the impact of those sounds is significant. I'm not gonna say that I've transformed the movie into a whole new thing. In fact, unlike Demons, I didn't edit out any scenes from Elves at all. But with both of these movies, I like to think that I've improved upon the material that was already there.

And now I say to myself, 'ya know, I'd bet there's a bunch of people out there who might really like to see one or both of these. I wonder if I could find anybody who would be willing to screen them for a public audience.' Having seen Demons a couple times over the years at Grindhouse at The New Beverly in Los Angeles, I know that movie has a sizable fan base. Elves, probably not as much, but it's definitely one that fans of that era of horror flicks would like.

So that's what I'm working on now- finding a venue that's willing to screen these. And this is where I can use your help. I've contacted some people at theatres in my current city, San Diego, but none have expressed too much interest. I have some contacts through some of my LA friends, but I'm still coming up empty. So I'd be super stoked if any of you, my readers, might have any suggestions or know of any people who I could contact in the hopes of getting either of these versions screened.

My original idea was to do a Kickstarter to raise the funds to rent a theatre for a couple hours, and I still might do that, but I thought I'd first try to leverage the power of the internet and ask my network of social media friends. I'm hoping to find some place in San Diego, OC, LA or the Inland Empire, but I'd be happy to trek to anywhere in the region if need be. I don't know if I'd be open to sending off the movie to some remote location where I wouldn't be able to attend the screening. I'll want to be there in person, and would even be hip to doing a Q&A about the work I put into my version.

I might also add that neither of these reworks are commissioned or authorized by the original filmmakers, composers, producers or movie studios or anybody involved. They're simply a couple personal projects of mine in an attempt to challenge myself to find out if I could do it. And now that both final versions have surpassed my expectations, I thought some of you horror fans out there might like to see and hear them as well.

Hit me with any suggestions in the comments of this post, or drop me a note at brianhumorless@gmail.com, or find me on FB.

Super. Thanks for everything.

Brian, Dancu and Humorless Productions

Dancu on Myspace

Don't ask me why, but I created a Myspace page for Dancu yesterday. Must have been really bored. But at the same time, I don't think there's any harm in it.

Nothing exclusive there- the same couple songs that I have up on my Soundcloud/official.fm, and the same video that I have up on YouTube. Lots more fotos than I have anywhere else, not that they have anything to do with my Dancu music at all. Of course, all six songs of my debut release are posted nowhere other than my Bandcamp.

By the way, Myspace still has a bunch of kinks to work out. Setting up my page and uploading my content was fairly painless, but the process has some weird little quirks that you won't know about until you upload your media, and once you do that you'll realize how stuff needs to be labelled for it to display the way you want it to on Myspace, and it's not all that logical.

Also, I don't remember what the original Myspace was like, but the new one is set up in a blog format where you can post pictures or songs or videos or simple text updates, and it all becomes part of your 'stream' or whatever they call it. Fine. I doubt I'll post too much there, but it's just another blog to update (along with my Blogspot, my Tumblr, my Wordpress, my LinkedIn, my personal FB, my artist FB, my company FB…).

[video] Kid 606 live in Los Angeles, 27 June 2014

Track from Kid 606 live in Los Angeles where I recorded and edited all audio and video.

[audio] Defrag live in Los Angeles, 27 June 2014

I recorded Hymen Records artist Defrag at CELEBRATE EVERYTHING at Complex in Los Angeles, 27 June 2014.

Defrag live in Los Angeles, 27 June 2014 by Humorless Productions on Mixcloud

finishing up my first batch of original songs

So I'm finally getting around to finishing up the tracks for my debut release. The stereo mixes of the six tracks are done, and now I'm starting on the surround mixes of those same tracks plus a bonus track for the dvd. Aiming for a summer release, pay-what-you-want on Bandcamp. Surround sound .ac3 files will be pay-what-you-want, and I figure the physical dvd with surround mixes will be 5 bucks or so.

In the meantime, I uploaded one of the tracks to my Soundcloud as a teaser. Complete song, and this one is a bit more uptempo than the others. Generally speaking you'd call it martial industrial, orchestral, soundtracky, electronic, gloomy, dark, uneasy listening.

Imagine if In The Nursery teamed up with (Pax Britannica / Goddodin era) Test Dept. with their entire batterie of junkyard percussionists, and they set out to put together an album of the most apocalyptic doom and gloom industrial songs in the vein of In Slaughter Natives, filtered through all the wonderfully noisy digital signal processors of today.

a quick note from Humorless Productions

I have four videos up on my YouTube of the live recording I made of Medicine. The two songs that they promoted on their FB have a combined 1428 hits. The two songs they didn't mention, even though they sound and look just as good, and are equally available to anybody to view on that very same YouTube channel, have 239 hits. More than a five to one ratio.

I put up two videos of the Youth Code recording, and the story is the same- the one that they posted to their FB has 522 hits, and the one they didn't has 98. Again, just over a five to one ratio.

When I post a video, I write up some sort of description or info and post it along with the video(s) to my Blogspot, my Tumblr and my Wordpress blogs, my personal FB and my company FB, as well as my LinkedIn (I only have like 3 Twitter followers, and those people are already on my FB, so I don't even bother with Twitter). The bottom line is that I reach only so many people, and the people who I do reach don't always seem to take the ball and run with it.

So if I'm ever fortunate to record you or your band, if you want your fans to see/hear it, it would really help out if you posted it to your FB with a quick little 'Hey, check out this cool live recording from the other day…'. It'll make you look good, you'll sound good, it'll be good for me, it'll be good for the venue, and your fans will appreciate it.

Thanks. Brian Humorless.

http://www.youtube.com/user/BruceBurbank8/videos