The IndieGoGo Campaign for The Mumbler Recording Session is Live!
About Our Campaign
The Mumbler is a short film where mumblers are quarantined to an industrial treatment center. The film follows the story of Willow, a young woman with a decimated speech enhancing device struggling to get a replacement. The Mumbler was shot in January of 2019 and completed in summer 2019.
Except for the recording of the live music score, The Mumbler is now ready for festival submission. Recording a live music score with real musicians will not only complete the film but will dramatically increase its value. Here’s how:
The Mumbler’s music takes the perspective of the main character, Willow, a smart young woman who feels suppressed by others because of her inability to communicate. Her experience is not far away from 18th-century kings and queens who were often harassed and muted by court intrigue. By using classical period music as a source, the score encapsulates the frustration that Willow feels while at the same time keeping the film light and comedic in feel.
What We Need & What You Get
Our fundraising goal is $2,000. To properly perform and record the score, $2,000 will get us:
French Horn (instrumentalists): $100
Two Bassoons (instrumentalists): $200
Score Supervisor: $300
Recording Engineer: $400
Recording Studio Time: $500
Microphone Rentals: $200
Equipment Rentals: $200
Catering: $100
If you are kind enough to donate to our film, there are a plethora of rewards to be given out, from free downloads of the score, special edition posters and T-Shirts, to a vinyl record and even an executive producer credit. Additionally, some tiers of support will receive access to a live stream of when we record the score!
More than anything else, you'll have the distinct pleasure of helping us do great work on a film that means so much to us.
The Impact
By far, most independent movies have scores that are computer generated and synthetic. There's a trade-off when movies are made with fake instruments: There is a remarkable dip in the emotional impact of the story.
When real musicians play the film score, it's much more personal. The musicians can extend their humanity to the film. Computers might be savvy time savers, but they'll never be able to beat human beings when it comes time to bring emotions to the table and really help the characters and the story shine.
Your contribution will help us bring a beautiful humanity to the film. So few producers and filmmakers really care about the music to the extent that we do. It is our very strong opinion that a film is not done until the music feels appropriate for the story.
Your contribution will help The Mumbler be more memorable and enjoyable. Your contribution will will also enable a bunch of non-conformists make a movie that completely bucks the filmmaking trends that seem to scream "quicker is better." No! We want to do this right, and we will make it happen!
Risks & Challenges
We believe that the risks are lower for The Mumbler than for most other projects. We have a fantastic score supervisor and producer Shelly Eager, who is executive director of Cinematic Symphony, handpicking the best possible talent for the recording. With Shelly's help, we have figured out that the actual recording of the score will take us 3 hours or less, with one break. Additionally, Shelly triple-checked our score to make sure we didn't make any mistakes in writing for french horn and bassoon (we didn't!).
Our audio engineer Eddy Hobizal has also agreed to record the film score in his home studio, Treehouse Recording Studio, in North Austin. Eddy has access to world-class microphones, equipment, and a wonderful sounding studio. More importantly, Eddy has a deep knowledge of recording orchestral and pop music. We are absolutely going to get a great sounding score with him on board.
The musicians will be conducted by Dave Wirth, our composer on the project. Dave has a masters degree from the #1 music school in the USA, The Eastman School of Music. Dave also knows how to get the best takes from the musicians, how to conduct the pieces, and how to get the best possible emotional response from the musicians.
Madison Bounds is our recording session supervising producer. Through extensive collaboration with Dave, both the composer and the director will work together to make the score shine.
Like any creative endeavor, especially one as collaborate as film and music, creating a safe, healthy, and productive creative environment is always a challenge. Yet by working with longtime collaborators in a comfortable environment, we have minimized any potential bumps in our way. We both feel 100% confident in who we will work with, and have full trust in their abilities as artists and as people.
Other Ways You Can Help
If you are not in the financial situation to donate, do not worry! There is plenty of other ways you can help.
Here are some super-amazing and concrete ways you can help us:
Email a friend about us, and ask them to send us an email. We love to meet new people!
Post on your Facebook page about how rare it is to see short films take the music so seriously. Then link to our campaign
Write a blog post about how we want to use real instruments on this project.
Tweet about how The Mumbler is bucking the film score trends.
Write a fake-news article about how The Mumbler is outsourcing all of our music to the computer slaves we're holding in a secret, undisclosed location.
Write a short post about how we are employing and supporting musicians in Texas
If you are the more esoteric type, send us good vibes, visualize for us that we got our funding, and imagine the joy and the gratitude we will all feel once this score gets done. Though this request is a little out there, it would mean the world to us!