The Music of Jo Hyeja: Audio Work Done

This entry is part 10 of 15 in the series Making "The Music of Jo Hyeja"

I mentioned recently that I had “finished” working on the music for “The Music of Jo Hyeja.” Well, last night we well-and-truly finished work on the audio, except perhaps for swapping in one musical track. We went over to Mediact, an organization that exists to help develop and promote the independent film industry in Korea,m teach people who to make films, and help people complete projects without having to sell everything they own. The sound engineers we hired work there, and helped us master the audio for “The Music of Jo Hyeja” for what is probably a lot less money …

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The Music of Jo Hyeja — “Music” Finished, Sort Of

This entry is part 9 of 15 in the series Making "The Music of Jo Hyeja"

The last mention I made of this project was to note that we’d done some recording with the haegeum player from the band 잠비나이 for the soundtrack. Since then, I’ve been off and on constructing music tracks from samples — both of the haegeum, and of other sounds I collected over a 48 hour period: water going down a drainpipe, the hum of car engines, growling, and so on. As of right now, my work on the audio is done except for one step: the audio post-production work, which we’re scheduled to do on Friday at a studio. (I’ll have …

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The Score for The Music of Jo Hyeja OST: Composed, But Rough

This entry is part 8 of 15 in the series Making "The Music of Jo Hyeja"

I didn’t think music composition was a skill quite as loseable as, say, a foreign language, but today I got my comeuppance. While back in the old days I could have cranked out a whole minor piece in a day, I spent that much time just working out a few fragments for the score. (Okay, one reason is that I’m not all that great with the notation software and had a steep learning curve to climb; it’s really not intuitive in many ways, though I’m sure once you’re used to it it’s great.) One of the most frustrating parts of …

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The Music of Jo Hyeja: An Update (AKA My Work Begins)

This entry is part 7 of 15 in the series Making "The Music of Jo Hyeja"

We now have a deadline for getting the music and foley, as well as the final editing, finished for The Music of Jo Hyeja, and that is the 9th of March. This became our deadline because that’s when we will be taking the final cut of the film to get the audio postprocessing done. (By some kind of organization in Seoul that supports independent filmmakers by dong this kind of work for them, either inexpensively or free of charge — to the filmmaker, at least.) This means I have a ton of stuff to do, especially because we also learned, from …

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What I’ve Learned Shooting The Music of Jo Hyeja, Day 4

This entry is part 6 of 15 in the series Making "The Music of Jo Hyeja"

Well, there technically wasn’t a “Day 4” as this was a three-day shoot, but we worked about fifteen hours on our last day, actually finishing at close to 4:00am on Tuesday morning. I think it’s pretty easy to imagine why I didn’t have a lot of insights to post (or energy to post them) at the end of shooting last night. But thinking over yesterday, there are a few insights I have: Wrapping up shooting feels good no matter how bloody tired you are by the end of it. We sent our star home in a cab at close to …

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