Composing music for my first film

"Waiting"

My sister Danielle has always been an amazing writer and ever since I can remember has been writing stories, plays, and working on screenplays. She’s completed several short stories over the years and is always working on a new story idea. I’m so excited for her because she has just released her first short film.
The film is called “Waiting” and is 3 minutes and 51 seconds long. You can read about ‘the story behind the film’ and follow the production journey on her blog

I’m also excited about this film is because I composed the music for it! Composing music for a film was definitely a first for me. It seems to be the year of ‘firsts’ for me as earlier in the year I wrote 22 songs for the From Patmos’ musical and then at the end of 2011 I found myself composing music for a short film. Let me say that I did not expect that kind of year but it was such an amazing journey and experience.

Writing music for this film was a daunting task at first. In the beginning stages when I was trying to get an idea of what I wanted to do I had to watch it over and over and over again with no music at all! Though the quality of filming and acting was excellent but it was almost tormenting to watch a film with no music! It was almost as if a part of the story hadn’t completely been told yet. Music has so much power!

From when I received the rough cut of the film to the day the music was completed took about one month. I was honored to work with Judah Earl as the arranger on this project. Arrangers play a huge part in making the music what it is and Judah did an amazing job bringing the music to life and helping to tell the story. It’s amazing watching a little idea, concept, or melody blossom into an actual piece of awesome sounding music. I also want to thank my long time friend Joshua Hawkins for helping to mix and master the music.

This is the first of many films that Danielle will be releasing and she’s already in pre-production for her second short which is set to release Fall/Winter of 2012. I am excited to watch her journey in film unfold and am honored to have been a part of this film, the first fruits of what is to come!

If you’ve read through this whole blog post then you’re probably quite ready to watch the film! So without further ado go here to watch it!

© 2012 Justin Rizzo