Apskafters # 003

APSKAFTERS
THE OF F IC I A L
J A N U A R Y
2 0 1 2
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SOUND
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M A G AZ INE
SPECIAL ISSUE!
EVERYTHING ABOUT THE MAKING OF...
APSKAFTERS
THE OF F IC I A L
J A N U A R Y
2 0 1 2
n .
SOUND
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M A G AZ INE
A P S K A F T
BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN
P R E S E N T S :
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SUMMARY
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Welcome to third issue of APSKAFTERS, dedicated to Apskaft Presents: Battleship Potemkin! The in-too-deep analysis is split up into chapters: Team World Map - to get a sight of where musicians involved in this project come from. Mostly Europeans, this time. Movie Structure - Chapters and scenes with timings. Management and Taxonomy - All the theoretical work to define and assigning parts before starting with restoration, soundtrack and video authoring. Movie restoration - Techniques, issues, software. Soundtrack Details - Authors explain how they created their part: tech specs, strategy, anecdotes. Final Master - Video authoring process to assemble and create the ultimate reel. The Album - Apskaft soundtrack release. Credits and Links - Self-explanatory.
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APSKAFTERS 3 03 - JAN 2012
APSKAFTERS
BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN
DITZKY
USA
Battleship Potemkin project was much a european affair, as 12 bands of 13 are from this area with the exception of John Ditzky from Pennsylvania, USA. Also its further noticeable that the majority of them come from northern countries.
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TEAM WORLD MAP BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN TEAM LOCATIONS
DRN DRN
Finland
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SPECULATIVISM
England
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Scotland
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Sweden Finland
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Ireland
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England
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England Germany
HOX VOX
Italy
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Macedonia
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Italy
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BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN
0:01:00 - Seascape
PART ONE: THE MEN AND THE MAGGOTS PART TWO: DRAMA IN THE HARBOUR PART THREE: A DEAD MAN CALLS FOR JUSTICE PART FOUR: THE ODESSA STAIRCASE PART FIVE: MEETING WITH THE SQUADRON
0:15:07 - Captains speech and preparing for executions
0:33:36 - Mourning Vakulinchuck
0:45:04 - Odessa was with the sailors
0:56:58- The Meeting
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MOVIE STRUCTURE
0:09:27 - The men refuse to eat the soup - The ship store 0:04:37 - Following morning The wormed meat 0:31:44 - To the shore of Odessa
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0:02:16 - The men slept heavily after the watch - Nightime in dormitory
0:24:11 - Uprising on the boat and Vakulinchuck death
0:42:47 - Its time for rebellion
0:49:40 - Soldiers shot on defenseless crowd
0:58:34 - A night frought with anxiety
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0:56:25- Bombing Odessa Opera House
1:02:40 - Prepare for battle
1:09:53 - All against one - Will they open fire?
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BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN
SimiArbeit (Tuomas Krkkinen), on March 3d 2010, opened a discussion in Apskaft forum to throw in an idea:
Project Management
Tuomas Krkkinen Gianluca Missero
Taxonomy
Kristijan Petreski Peter-David Smith
A possible project: Making a score for a film I just found out that Chain Tape Collective has made a score for F.W. Murnaus classic film The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. Now, why dont we do something similar? There are at least some old silent films available for free download since they are public domain. Some alternatives could be for example Nosferatu, Metropolis or The Phantom of the Opera. Anybody interested in this kind of thing?
After doodling around a series of early movies, most of the apskafters decidedly pointed to Battleship Potemkin and 13 bands agreed to participate in the project. Peter-David made a tryout of Potemkin footage using a Windows Movie Maker feature, a macro aimed to analyze and automatically split a movie in scenes. After that, he directly made his own version of the full soundtrack. Meanwhile, on the forum a long debate started on how to manage and coordinate a dozen of musicians from different countries on such a long soundtrack. Not a compilation of songs, everyone felt the need for supervision to avoid a total mess.
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MANAGEMENT & TAXONOMY Troubleshooting before go by Gianluca Missero
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In September the discussion almost vanished, until Fy- the usual missing musician who seems to have disapdhws (Kristijan Petreski) came out the next month with peared into another unreachable parallel dimension, a first scheme to split scenes (quite tight to the final). broken files and all the Murphy laws issues. Rapidly Tuomas took the scheme and assigned parts to On February 13th I uploaded first pre-release of the musicians via random.org. The first deadline was set for movie in Dropbox folder. After discovering a few errors, December 31, 2010. I corrected them and uploaded the final version on 15th. I also made a promo, 5 minutes with 30 seconds from At that point I took my scene, created music and as- every scene. sembled a 1080p clip, to showcase what we could obtain with little work. So, I offered myself as video editor, to Then Jason Kavanagh took the movie and trailer and assemble, put parts in sync and create graphics and started a looooooooong upload on Internet Archive. titles. I explained in detail how I intended to proceed to restore our whole Potemkin copy, bring it to HD 1080p On the 16th we started to debate on album cover artresolution, and also to create at the final OST record. work. We made a few different ones, but the best for Everybody agreed, and we passed to analyze first issue: sure was the one by Tuomas, in full traditional Apskaft how to exchange tracks rapidly through the web. Using style! email attachments or dozens of file repositories could be a mess. I purposed to create a dropbox account and The day after, Tuomas announced Apskaft Presents: give the access to everyone in the project. As most of us Battleship Potemkin was available on Last.FM. Later, in already used it, we decided it was the best option. the evening, Jason announced the eternal upload was finished. Meanwhile deadline shifted. On February 1st 2011, after some time passed in syncing first tracks and solving There was a last issue: Speculativism noticed his two length / fadein / fadeout problems with first contributes, tracks were in the wrong order, so Tuomas rapidly manI made the final scheme: 5 chapters, with utter subdivi- aged to put fix everything, and uploaded it again on Febsions in scenes, for a total of 18, and all the timings. ruary 18th. We had a few issues: a few mates were late with their track, a misunderstanding of timings with sounds, and With this last act, the project was officially finished.
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BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN
One of the hardest tasks in this project was restoring our copy of Battleship Potemkin, downloaded from Internet Archive - Silent Movies area (www.archive.org/ details/BattleshipPotemkin), sized 448 x 336.
I used some of them for images in my job, never on footage. I made an investigation on the web; for sure there were enhancers for moving pictures. Being Apskaft, a free music collective, I wanted something from the public domain/free software. I found I wanted the final movie to be at 1080p (1920 x 1080), so many (mostly useless) of them, and after a few tests on three times and a half bigger. By a simple resize, the re- small footage samples taken from Potemkin, I found the sult should have been blocky; blurring the image means best tool. things would only get worse. Its Video Enhancer, a series of macros to use in conjuncIts been a few years since Ive seen image enhancers. tion with VirtualDub, which is a free, and quite powerful,
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MOVIE RESTORATION by Gianluca Missero
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video authoring tool. Still far from push the button and wait for everything is done, but experienced people with a few small adjustments (and taking painstakingly note of differences in changing setup) can obtain quite satisfying results - sometimes even unbelievable!
The process is simple: take the original I.A. footage, pass it with Video Enhancer, and import the result in After Ef- Up right instead is about a normal scene. Here enhancefects to add audio sync / titles / graphics. ment work is more evident, because its easier than working on high contrast text; and in fact in this kind of Up left pic is an example of reshaping and up-scaling situation I made few further corrections in After FX.
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a font. The original file (left) is full of aliasing, with too strong contrast (white borders) and a lot of dirt. Upscaled image (right) got morbid and antialiased borders, and dirt is quite gone. To achieve a better image, I utterly added contrast AFTER a passage of despeckle directly in Adobe After FX.
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SOUNDTRACK DETAILS
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NIGHT TIME IN DORMITORY
THE WORMED MEAT
THE MEN REFUSE CAPTAINS SPEECH UPRISING ON THE TO EAT THE SOUP AND PREPARING BOAT - VAKULINFOR EXECUTIONS CHUCK DEATH
TO THE SHORE OF ODESSA
MOURNING VAKULINCHUCK
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Track BY TRACK
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-SOUNDSO-
ITS TIME FOR REBELLION
ODESSA WAS SOLDIERS SHOT ON BOMBING ODESSA WITH THE SAILOR DEFENSELESS OPERA HOUSE CROWD
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LURHOLM
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AWAYCABOOSE
MEXICANVADER
DITZKY
FYDHWS
THE MEETING
A NIGHT FROUGHT WITH ANXIETY
PREPARE FOR THE BATTLE
ALL AGAINST ONE WILL THEY OPEN FIRE?
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SOUNDTRACK DETAILS
AER20-200 started as sidekick of a video project. We had a theme, message and a plot and we shot a short video in a parking hall. After that I sat down to make the score. I was so pleased with the resulting track (Plastik Bass Bucket Clap Snap) that I continued working on the sound and eventually released an EP with four tracks. Making a track to match an existing story often introduces more tension to the music than what a regular tune would otherwise. The producer can borrow the dramatic progression from the story and concentrate more on the sound, which seems to be much more interesting for many producers. I already had plans to use this method again and when I heard about the Battleship Potemkin project, it felt like a perfect opportunity. I had already participated in some Apskaft albums before as a member of Drn Drn and Super Afrikka and knew the group by its original and often ambitious projects. I joined in and was assigned a task to create the score for
AER20-200 DRN DRN RES BAND HOX VOX SPECULATIVISM FOUCAULT V AWAYCABOOSE SPECULATIVISM
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AER20-200 by Antti Kangas
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the opening sequence and also for a shorter scene where a nice brassy sound, but when its taken to its limits, the the Odessa opera house is bombed. sound transforms into a piercing scream. This matched the militant imagery perfectly. The movie starts with pictures of waves rolling against a dock and over the rocks on the shore. My first idea was to I wanted to accentuate the cut to the quote with a musical elmimick the sound of the waves by using just noise signal. I ement. After playing with some of the Reaktors sequenced also started to look for elements that would bring tension synthesizers, I came up with a small, ascetic melody and to the soundscape right from the start anticipating the pic- synced it with the title card. I also used a Reaktors intertures of the threatening battleships, which appear after the nal tool to slice and transform the samples collected so far quote by Lenin. to create fast percussions and glitches. These were used more extensively in the bombing scene. Usually I start working by playing around with Reaktor, which is a modular sound design software by Native Instru- After the sonic ingredients were created, I stacked and ments. It is a great tool for creating any kind of sounds synced the tracks in Soundtrack Pro, which is a multi-track whether you do or dont know what you are searching for. audio editor with nice built-in effects and a video track, Hours can easily be spent by just turning the dials and lis- which is great for syncing sounds to video frame-by-frame. tening. After the project, I took the loops and samples created As expected, creating the noisy wave sounds was very sim- for this soundtrack and included them in my live setup. I ple. The ambient sound took a bit more time. After trying also have plans to use them as a basis for a couple of new out various things, I ended up using a Reaktor synth called tracks, but I guess it will still take a while before the next Steampipe. With somewhat normal settings it gives AER20-200 release is out.
QUENDUS -SOUNDSOLURHOLM AER20-200 AWAYCABOOSE MEXICANVADER DITZKY FYDHWS
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SOUNDTRACK DETAILS
We - Drn Drn, that is - have always liked to take part in Apskaft projects, because setting these kinds of goals helps us get things done. For example, weve been thinking about our debut album for a long time, but its still far from being reality, whereas in these Apskaft projects one song suffices. Recently, Drn Drn has started to think and act musically more and more as a collective: most of our (so far unreleased) songs are based on or at least developed by jamming. Night Time in Dormitory was one of the very first thoroughly jam-based songs weve made. Quite often the collective approach makes our songwriting process rather slow. If there was a leader in the band who wrote the songs and simply told the others how to play them, they would be finished quicker - but it wouldnt be Drn Drn. This time we were fast, though, after we got ourselves to our little cellar room. Our part was put together,
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DRNKrkkinen DRN by Tuomas
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written and recorded, during a two - or three - hour All of the tracks weve recorded for Apskaft projects session. have been recorded with just one mic, so no mixing could be done afterwards. Our keyboard player Antti With some of our main influences being in repetitive threw in a little bit of equalization and compression krautrock - the classics like can and their followers and a tad of distortion - and that was it. like Circle - we tend to keep our song structures simple. If theres a good riff or a chord progression, why Our sound on Night Time in Dormitory is very bluesy, not keep it going for three or four minutes to make a quite a lot more so than usually. It reminds me of the song? Night Time in Dormitory is just that, an elemen- British boys who got inspired by Robert Johnson and tary four-chord progression repeated throughout the jammed their weed-soaked brains out in the sixties. track. The keyboard part especially sounds like it could be from a Jethro Tull album (Pretty good Hammond emuWe started with the four chords and a tom-tom beat lation, innit?). The arch-like structure, however, is reminiscent of the drumming on slave ships (or at rooted in nineties post-rock. So, maybe we could call least how its reproduced on the television, we havent this post-blues? heard the actual thing). We thought the beat would fit well to the imagery of the oppressed men sleeping in Weve played Night Time in Dormitory - or just Potemtheir hammocks. Then, just by watching the video clip kin as we call it - quite a lot after the recording. Its rolling on a laptop screen we improvised a simple arch been a part of our set in the three gigs weve played of building and releasing tension. Not much compos- since. Recently, weve added some synthesizer sounds ing was needed, it all came out very naturally and af- to fill in the gaps there are, but that version will be reter a few takes we were happy enough with the result. leased sometime later.
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THE MEETING
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SOUNDTRACK DETAILS
For this project it soon became apparent that our normal jamming style wasnt going to be possible as a couple of members of the band live far away, one in another country completely, and I had damaged my arm somehow (I forget quite how). So I couldnt play the guitar anyway. So plan B came into effect, which was probably a better plan anyway. I decided to get a bunch of already recorded Res Band songs and stick them together to fit the scene Following Morning - The Wormed Meat which actually wasnt too bad to do. After watching the scene it just became a matter of finding the pieces of music to fit it. The scene started with the men working on the boat and gradually spiraled into tension over the visible maggots in the meat. The scene then changes to the cook attempted to prepare some of the meat. The main thing I was trying to achieve with this is that the music changed with the on screen action and at certain points, (the Captain turning in the doorway or the cook chopping the meat for example) the music was
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RES David Preston BAND by
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exactly in sync. This was the trickiest part and required the audio tracks making the syncing possible. In total, 8 lots of cutting and pasting of tracks. This was mixed on different parts of different Res Band songs were used, Acid Pro which allows you to view the video alongside and I was pretty pleased with the end result.
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THE MEETING
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SOUNDTRACK DETAILS
My part is the fourth and final sequence in chapter one The Men and the Maggots. After discovering the meat is full of worms in the previous sequence sailors refuse to eat the soup made with it, and buy food at the ship store. The overall atmosphere of the movie is full early last century, when classical music was moving from romantic to contemporary. This was impossible to overcome and gave a footprint to my choice. First I analyzed the sequence and noticed there was a rhythm in the scene changes, repeated two times - like two turns of roundabout. So I started to build in my head the melody on a long sequence repeated two times, as a couple of chorus/verses, with a change on last end round, to underline sailors anger in crashing the plate. To put it in practice, and having no orchestra to play the track, I managed to play it all by myself on my keyboard (apart the bass, of course), instrument by instrument except one. I found it impossible to play on a keyboard, like having four sticks and a real vibraphone, so that
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HOX VOX by Gianluca Missero
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was done half on keyboard and half in midi editing. Up the score, or play the track, the movie follows, so you here you can see the score I made on Ableton Live. always know exactly if youre in sync. I modified original composition to underline some of the This DAW offers the opportunity to load a movie in the topic moments in this sequence and emphasize moods score (its the first green channel in the pic) and open (playfulness, anger, disconcert, chagrin). it in a video window. When you move the cursor along I needed around 20 hours to finish the track.
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THE MEETING
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SOUNDTRACK DETAILS
When I began to work on the Battleship Potemkin soundtrack I didnt want to wait for group decisions to be made. I wanted to start straight away while the inspiration was there. I could see it was a big project and I was worried that it might drag on and on unless an early start was made. I decided to make a soundtrack for the entire movie and then the editor/compiler of the project would be able to take bits from my version of it and mix it in with other peoples work. At this early stage the decision to allocate sections of the movie to different people had not yet been made and I envisioned everybody doing their own versions of the Potemkin soundtrack and then combining them. I hadnt really expected the movie to be handed-out scene by scene. I thought the compiler would be going through the movie choosing from different peoples sounds, fading Speculativism in, then fading Speculativism out as Hox or someone faded in, then fading to another type of sound etc., making a giant collageboration type of
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SPECULATIVISM by Peter-David Smith
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soundtrack. So the sort of sound I recorded was done and a midi-based percussion track. These were in a style with that plan in mind. intended to represent the day-to-day boring routine of the sailors lives. Together the sound was of angry guiTo begin, I plugged my guitar into the computer and set tar seething away under repetitive routine drums and up Audacity to record what I played. Then I set up the percussion. silent version of the movie to play. When the decision was made to allocate sections of the I improvised on the electric guitar while watching the movie to different people I looked at which section was movie. I played continuously for over an hour. Then I took given to me. Then I cut the movie accordingly and sent a break because my head had turned to jelly. the appropriate section in to the group. I recorded a bit more electric guitar until I had nearly Later, a second section needed to be filled and I offered the whole movie. Then I edited the recordings a bit, re- the material Id already recorded. using some of the guitar recording in a couple of places until I had matched the sound to the movie scenes. Some months after the release of the movie and the album I went back to my original recordings of the whole The style of guitar playing throughout most of the movie soundtrack and released it as a Speculativism album. was intended to indicate anger seething below the daily routine of the sailors. On the Odessa Steps scene the Its an unusual sound because it was never really intendstyle of playing changed to represent atrocity. ed to be listened to in this way, but rather to be used as a component to a group collageboration fading in and To the edited recording I added a midi-based drum track out where appropriate in the whole scheme of things.
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THE MEETING
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SOUNDTRACK DETAILS
AER20-200
DRN DRN
RES BAND
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SPECULATIVISM
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QUENDUS
-SOUNDSO-
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LURHOLM
AER20-200
AWAYCABOOSE
MEXICANVADER
DITZKY
FYDHWS
THE MEETING
APSKAFTERS
SOUNDTRACK DETAILS
AER20-200
DRN DRN
RES BAND
HOX VOX
SPECULATIVISM
FOUCAULT V
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SPECULATIVISM
SEASCAPE
THE WORMED MEAT
MKIN SP
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AWAYCABOOSE
OTE
QUENDUS
-SOUNDSO-
BA
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LURHOLM
AER20-200
AWAYCABOOSE
MEXICANVADER
DITZKY
FYDHWS
THE MEETING
APSKAFTERS
SOUNDTRACK DETAILS
AER20-200
DRN DRN
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HOX VOX
SPECULATIVISM
FOUCAULT V
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THE WORMED MEAT
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QUENDUS
OTE
QUENDUS
-SOUNDSO-
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LURHOLM
AER20-200
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MEXICANVADER
DITZKY
FYDHWS
THE MEETING
APSKAFTERS
SOUNDTRACK DETAILS
AER20-200
DRN DRN
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HOX VOX
SPECULATIVISM
FOUCAULT V
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SEASCAPE
THE WORMED MEAT
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-SOUNDSO-
OTE
QUENDUS
-SOUNDSO-
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LURHOLM
AER20-200
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MEXICANVADER
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THE MEETING
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I started out by watching the scene I had been assigned. As I had no practical way of watching the movie and recording the music simultaneously, I took notes instead: at 1:04 this and this happens, at 3:45 something else happens, and so on. In my notes, I marked the dramatic high points of the scene (like the baby stroller starting to roll down the stairs), with the intention of making the music reflect the drama. A complicating factor was that I didnt have the scene as a whole; it was cut up in shorter segments. I added the length of the different segments, crossed my fingers and hoped that in the end, everything would add up correctly. Now, I had the general layout. On to the actual music. When I started out, I had no real idea what it should sound like; all I knew was it would have to sound dramatic. I began with a few different improvisations on a keyboard, didnt really like any of them, deleted them, and then started over. After awhile, I somehow managed to bang out a few piano chords that sounded ok. Alright, finally something I could use. I thought a bit about the arrangement, and decided that there should be some sort
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LURHOLM by Jonas Lind
something that was similar, but not quite identical, to a mellotron; it was either some sort of organ sound, or a recorder sound, I cant remember. I added this to the existing piano chords. Yes, it worked. OK, this was all very well, but more stuff needed to happen in the course of the scene, so: more instruments, more sounds. But what? Once again, I began improvising, using a variety of different sounds from the JV-1010. I rather liked the sound of strings, but I thought perhaps that would be too much of a clich... film music almost always has strings in it. But then again, the string sound fitted with the piano and the mellotron, so why not try it, at least? If I wanted to be more avant-garde, I shouldnt have started with a piano. Duh. Anyway, I selected a violin sound, played a phrase I had come up with when I improvised, added harmonies using other string sounds (another violin, a viola, a cello), attempting to fake a little string quartet. Even though the individual sounds were a bit plastic, they sort of worked as a group. Now it sounded like a score. But something was missing. Something big and dramatic. What? Well, the JV-1010 sports a guitar feedback sound, which turned out to be the perfect dramatic addition.
AWAYCABOOSE MEXICANVADER DITZKY FYDHWS
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of drum rhythm in it, acting as a skeleton which I could build the rest of the music around. I programmed my old trusted Zoom RT-123 drum machine to play a very simple beat with something that resembled a timpani sound (if you squint your ears, at least). Then I added those piano chords on top of it. This went on for a few minutes.
So far so good. Now, to keep building the music: Ive always been fond of the mellotron sound, and I wanted something like that in the piece. I experimented with different sounds from my Roland JV-1010 unit, and found
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The arpeggio would be the foundation of this movement. The chord progression is different here, to contrast against the previous movement not only in force but also in harmony. On top of the arpeggio I put two electric bass guitars in stereo, in an attempt to mimic the bass sound on one of Mike Oldfields 70s albums (Hergest Ridge or Tubular Bells, Im not sure which). I used an actual bass guitar here. Then I added a sketchy melody with only four notes in it on some sort of synthesizer horn sound, again from the JV-1010. For some reason, this piece was very short, maybe half a minute. I think I miscalculated a bit there. I needed to make it longer, so I recorded another piece based on the exact same chords and melody, to be mixed together with the first one. This time, I was fiddling around with the arpeggio, trying it out on other sounds than the piano, and I found that with certain percussion sounds, it produced nice and unexpected beats. I decided to use them. Its still andante, just with a soft beat underneath. To emphasize the melody a little, I replaced the synth horn with an electric guitar (an actual one, not the Roland unit) and threw some synth strings in the mix for good measure.
SPECULATIVISM FOUCAULT V AWAYCABOOSE SPECULATIVISM
And so the first part of the score was finished. As the scene is quite long, and since the music should vary throughout the scene, in different movements of sorts, I decided to record it in pieces and then mix those pieces together. This first part only covered the first few minutes of the scene.
Now, on to the next movement, the andante part, coinciding with the women huddling together by the wall and then trying to reason with the soldiers. For this part I programmed a piano arpeggio in my old analog sequencer.
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LURHOLM by Jonas Lind
OTE
you like them apples. Even though I managed to synchronize the beginning of the piece with the appearance of the Cossacks, the beginning of the louder part with the shooting of the young mother, and the lead guitar with the baby stroller rolling down the stairs, I must have miscalculated the ending. Those four emphasized beats at the end were supposed to sync with the beatings on the screen, but they didnt, not precisely. But, well, they were close enough for the viewer to get the message. Actually, I believe I should thank the video editor that so many of the events synced with the music at all. Left Finally, the third movement, the finale. In this one, I to my own devices I would probably have missed all of recycled the cello part from the first piece, added some them. drum programming that was supposed to sound like military marching drums, although Im not convinced The very last thing I did was mixing these four pieces they did, and for some reason that I cant remember, I together: the opening, the two parts of the andante increased the tempo with about 5 BPM, which may not movement, and the finale, and add a few sound effects have been the best idea I had in the course of these re- where I thought appropriate: a little crowd murmur at cordings. And thats just the beginning of it. After that, the beginning, turning into crowd shouting and yelling I somehow managed to raise the key, turn the military as the mayhem progresses, a few not-so-well placed drums into something jungle-esque, and knick the lead gunshots, and a couple of chilling female screams. And guitar from Mike Oldfields Ommadawn finale. How do that was it.
BA
TTLESHIP
THE MEETING
APSKAFTERS
SOUNDTRACK DETAILS
AER20-200
DRN DRN
RES BAND
HOX VOX
SPECULATIVISM
FOUCAULT V
AWAYCABOOSE
SPECULATIVISM
SEASCAPE
THE WORMED MEAT
MKIN SP
IA EC
L APSKA F
RESENTS: TP
APSKAFTERS
MEXICANVADER
OTE
QUENDUS
-SOUNDSO-
BA
TTLESHIP
LURHOLM
AER20-200
AWAYCABOOSE
MEXICANVADER
DITZKY
FYDHWS
THE MEETING
APSKAFTERS
SOUNDTRACK DETAILS
I was pretty happy with the section that I was assigned with, because it was a very climactic part of the film. The difficulty, however, would be to create a 7 minute piece just using the film as inspiration. I did have some difficulty at first, but then I decided to go with something more minimalist for the scene. I also decided to break up the scene into to more easily manageable chunks, or themes, a chaotic part and doom part. The chaotic part consisted of the men rushing to their battle stations, the officers trying to communicate, and readying the weapons. To capture the essence of this I used a recording of a clang of metal, a wavy piece of plastic, and a shortwave radio. I changed the pitch of the metal clang and looped it over itself to create a truly chaotic, and somewhat unnerving, part of the song. The wavy plastic sounded a lot like bubbles, and I thought it gave the piece some character. For the shortwave recording I had to find a suitable frequency that sounded like a morse code telegraph machine. Then I mixed them together in an unpleasant way to get a nice jumbling-I just-got-out-of-bed-and-the-alarm-clock-is- annoying me kind of feel to it.
SEASCAPE
THE WORMED MEAT
MKIN SP
IA EC
L APSKA F
RESENTS: TP
APSKAFTERS
DITZKY by John Ditzky
OTE
The doom part starts as the engine on the ship fires up. This section used a recording of a fireplace door closing and the shortwave radio. I played around with the fireplace door recording a little, to get different sounds of whales or orcas or what sounds like some sort of sea creature to draw parallel to the huge ships about to wage war. I also tried to get the whale calls to come out of different speakers at different times to get a more all-encompassing feeling. Then towards the end of the piece I brought it back together with the shortwave recording again.
QUENDUS -SOUNDSOLURHOLM AER20-200
BA
TTLESHIP
Overall I was fairly satisfied with the outcome of my piece, even though alone the track seems kind of monotonous or annoying in some sections, I think it fit well with in the scene by creating an underlying feeling of danger. This project had me stepping out of my comfort zone, because I had never created a track that long and by only using outside inspiration. But that is one thing I really like about Apskaft , they force me to step out of my comfort zone while at the same time embracing my oddness. These projects have shown me different facets of my music and where my weaknesses lie.
AWAYCABOOSE MEXICANVADER DITZKY FYDHWS
THE MEETING
APSKAFTERS
SOUNDTRACK DETAILS
First of all, Im very glad this project was finished. At first I was skeptical if we were gonna even begin recording, or if we could make the whole thing, it was ambitious project for the Apskaft community, making OST. But as it turns out, we didnt just complete it, we made a very good soundtrack. According the random pool I got the last part of the movie. Because I was cutting the film into parts I had pretty good idea of the atmosphere and the dynamics for all parts. Before me was Ditzky, and he had a tense movement that I was supposed to follow, making the final arrangements on the boat and waiting for the battle to begin. Till the release of the soundtrack I hadnt heard Ditzkys part and I wasnt quite sure how to proceed after him. I had three ideas for my part. The first, was a minimalistic theme slowly increasing the tension to the Hooray part and following a one note distortion driven progression after that. The second, militaristic rhythm movement with industrial
SEASCAPE
THE WORMED MEAT
MKIN SP
IA EC
L APSKA F
RESENTS: TP
APSKAFTERS
FYDHWS by Kristijan Petreski
OTE
metal sheets parts. And the third one, completely both sides, moment. Over the strings I replayed the string based theme, something like standard movie same theme, this time with noiseful guitar tones, to score. add further depth. So, I decided to try something together with all three All in all, the whole song was recorded in a 2 hour ideas. First I record the underlying sounds, distorted session and it took 4-5 hours of editing and mixing in ambient/drone spanning through the whole song. The FL studio. idea was to create heavy sound that would reminiscent the ship movement across the water. For the tension part I record two sets of guitars. The first is one repetitive E note with flanger effect and the second is of distorted high notes. I re-watched my part couple times to get the sense when to put the notes. I pressed play and started recording in Sound Forge while the scene was playing. As the tension was rising on the boat, higher and higher notes were progressing, trying to capture moment of no turning back. After recording this part I was left to figure out how to finish the scene, the joyful revelation when finding out the members of the other boat are their allies. So I decided to do a string theme for a glorious/winning, but with a touch of relief that no blood was spilled on
BA
TTLESHIP
THE MEETING
APSKAFTERS
BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN
This was the hardest task. We had a looong discussion on Apskaft forum, where we continuously debated methods: for instance how to manage tracks overlaps, and if use them or stay strictly into assigned timings. Despite this permanent check, at the end I had a few cases of short/too long/wrong timing tracks. As it was a matter of only few seconds, I solved the issue by just stretching them a little. Within a certain amount of time remapping, sound remain integer; by the way I verified tracks dont sound different, or lose strength after the stretch.
To do movie authoring I used Adobe After Effects. I feel it more comfortable than Premiere, which is in my taste quite rusty when managing different resolutions/ video formats. In addition to it, when I do special fx and complex compositing I must use After Effects, save footage and then import it in Premiere... better to manage everything with a single tool: the most versatile. The drawback is a bad audio preview (too short and long to process), and in an audio sync job its not a small issue, but rendering a few small partial movie (where there were more ambiguities) I located exactly every starting & ending point.
MKIN SP
IA EC
L APSKA F
RESENTS: TP
APSKAFTERS
FInAL MASTER by Gianluca Missero
When I finished titles (length: exactly 60 seconds) I started with audio sync. I couldnt have all the soundtrack parts in a single shot, as people sent their own in a period of several months, so I mounted everything that came in first, in a very random order. This way I had to redefine authoring rules according to various issues I faced from time to time. Once I had the entire movie with the final soundtrack, I went for closing titles. I tried to kill two birds with one stone (not literally): I put ten seconds from every sequence and chapter of the movie, video (in an oval) and audio and at the end all the credits and links to YouTube and last.fm Apskaft headquarters.
OTE
The platform to build our movie upon was the restored Battleship Potemkin copy. As I already said in Movie Restoration chapter on this Apskafter special issue, I used Video Enhancer with VirtualDub to process a lores original footage found on Internet Archive, enhance it in quality and video resolution and save it in AVI not compressed, 1568x1080 pixel. The strange size is caused by the fact Potemkin original movie is 4:3. We spoke about it on our forum and everyone agreed to keep the full image, with black areas side of movie, instead of enlarging it to full width, so under and above its brutally cut. Not elegant, but respectful of the original.
I then imported the restored movie in After Effects This way end titles become a summary of the whole and started to build graphics. movie. I copied them, pasted in another After Effects composition and with no further work I rendered it First of all I needed a movie studio logo for Ap- directly as the Apskaft Presents: Battleship Potemskaft. I took the famous MGM roaring one, cut the kin teaser. lion and substituted it with an animation of mine of a laughing Apskaft monkey. Then I worked on opening titles. I found a water loop clip to use as endless animated background gave it a strong blue color cast and created a wave-distorted effect for Battleship Potemkin text. About the rest of texts, I simply assigned a typewriter animation.
BA
TTLESHIP
APSKAFTERS
BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN
This soundtrack is a different experience when listened alone. Being part of the music not strictly in-sync with events (well see later in detail), if listened while watching movie it can feed a different lecture from original message, or enhance it until paroxysm. Sometimes creating even confusion. Listening to Battleship Potemkin without visual refers, instead, its more an experience of concrete music juxtaposed to rare parts of more conventional composition, a strange record winding between abstract and figurative. AER20-200 opens up with a Residents-style march (reminds of Mark of the Mole atmospheres). Small but very focused electronic roundeau. Drn Drn enters in with a post-blues track, thats perfectly fitting with original movie images so you dont get the great jump from AER20-200s avant-electro to a flesh & blood sound like the suffered, even sweated track by Drn Drn. Res Band goes for an hybrid electronic/electric, starting with a sound similar to those Chicago post rock bands like US Maple - not extreme like Flying Luttembachers, anyway - passing rapidly from space rock and psychedelia mixed together to a post-rock fugue mutating in pronk (punk progressive) and closing with an avantgarde/noise part that again mutate in a strange free jazz, then post rock again. I (Hox Vox) pointed to a contemporary composition. I would do something that resembled romantic classical, so strangely similar to a plausible original soundtrack. I just tried to put into it a little of Gong and Philip Glass common places, to create utter false
APSKAFT PRESENTS: BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN

Project started in: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . march 3, 2010 Release:. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . february 18, 2011 Number of tracks: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 Total lenght of record: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1:27:56 Bands involved: AER20-200, Drn Drn, Res Band, Hox Vox, Ditzky, Speculativism, Foucault V, Awaycaboose, Quendus, -Soundso-, Lurholm, Mexicanvader, Fydhws.
MKIN SP
IA EC
L APSKA F
RESENTS: TP
APSKAFTERS
THEbyALBUM Gianluca Missero
At this point theres Lurholm song. Its a poignant, elegant melody with a Glass pace, made of many layers, with a lancinating guitar. The beauty of these notes above voices of people screaming is something sparkling out respect the rest of record. Song evolves further with more complex arrangements and another couple of memorable hooks. With AER20-200 we are thrown into a moment of pure electronic avantgarde. Short but very intense. Even more intense is the short breakbeat track by awaycaboose. Noises here push the song la Prodigy. Mexicaninvader goes for another 4 notes piano sequences, but this is different form the one used by Foucault V, more dreamy. And infact he managed to build around it a series of layers: noises, another impalpable melody made by many, indistinct instruments. Song is very cinematic, reminds Bernard Herrmanns soundtracks for Hitchcock movies. Water is always present, you can hear waves while song fades out. Ditzky goes for concrete music. First a crazy sonar, then frenzy bubbles, a mad telegraphist, a whale singing. For first 3 minutes this trio of sounds intertwines, then only whales remains with their dark tunes, and dolphins screaming in high pitch, every now and then. Fydhws closing is a cascade of guitar notes. It reminded me a lot first records by italian Franco Battiato, where he melted seamless electronics and electric sounds , and so does fydhws in his track. While listening many influences comes in your mind: Faust and a lot of electronic kraut rock such Tangerine Dream and Klaus Schulze, last century avantgarde composers, Pink Floyd (!), Robert Fripps Frippertronics.
OTE
familiarity. mixed with a little disconcern. At this point the record find a sudden gear change. First 4 tracks were still into - somehow - a typical song form. With Speculativism we enter into a minimalist avant-garde piece still dealing with rhythm, despite odd and glitchful, disordered small sparse synthsounds and a guitar following a strange winding, melancholy non-melody. Another break happens with Foucault V. From the noisy, disordered and glitchful ambient by Speculativism we pass to another minimalist track, but this time its like a martial funeral march based on a piano four long and strict note sequence. The sense of drama is immediate, from first note, dark and oppressive. At half track only the heart beating drums remains, and slowly enters in a more complex melody based on first theme, adding melancholy to drama. Awaycaboose goes for a short full noise track, he avoided deliberately to make a music comment and put only water and machines clashes, something crossing field recording and electronoise. Then Speculativism come back again with former theme, and create another 9 minutes long dadaist hypnotic suspension. Quendus build a tin drum from-the-basement tribal rhythm and weave on it a series of razor blade electronic ionized sounds, bordering a chainsaw (or maybe it was?). -Soundso- puts an 8-bit drum sequence floating a little, then let an electronic mutating note enter in, then a far low pitch voice, or a distand noise moving continuously, like a wasp flying around your room, then voices. Sounds like a minimalist re-lecture of Art of Noise first works. Theres a change in the final part, only a female voice remains, and a slow, martial rhythm paired with a winding synth carry you at the end of track.
BA
TTLESHIP
APSKAFTERS
CREDITS
Battleship Potemkin poster Author: Anton Lavinskii Date: 1926 Source: The National Library of Russia, St. Petersburg Sergei Eisenstein portrait Date: early twenties of 20th century Source: scanned from Jerzy Toeplitz, Historia Sztuki Filmowej, vol. 2, tableXXXVII, FAW, Warsaw, Poland, 1956 Philharmonic Orchestra of Jalisco (Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico) Author: Pedro Snchez Date: 24 February 2006 Permission: GFDL + CCby2.5
AER20-200
DRN DRN
RES BAND
HOX VOX
SPECULATIVISM
FOUCAULT V
AWAYCABOOSE
SPECULATIVISM
SEASCAPE
THE WORMED MEAT
MKIN SP
IA EC
L APSKA F
RESENTS: TP
APSKAFTERS
WEB LINKS
INTERNET ARCHIVE Apskaft Presents: Battleship Potemkin full movie, available for streaming or download. Formats: Ogg Video, 512Kb MPEG4, MPEG4. SOUND OF APSKAFT YOUTUBE CHANNEL Full movie + playlist with Apskaft Presents: Battleship Potemkin movie split in scenes. Resolution: 1080p BANDCAMP Apskaft Presents: Battleship Potemkin full soundtrack record available for streaming and download. Formats: Mp3, Ogg Vorbis, Aac, Flac, Alac
OTE
QUENDUS
-SOUNDSO-
BA
TTLESHIP
LURHOLM
AER20-200
AWAYCABOOSE
MEXICANVADER
DITZKY
FYDHWS
THE MEETING
APSKAFTERS
THE OF F IC I A L
J A N U A R Y
2 0 1 2
n .
SOUND
OF
APSKAFT
M A G AZ INE
Gianluca Missero
EDITOR, DESIGNER, WRITER
John Ditzky
SUPERVISOR, WRITER
Peter-David Smith
WRITER
Tuomas Krkkinen
WRITER
Kristijan Petreski
WRITER
Jonas Lind
WRITER
Antti Kangas
WRITER
David Preston
WRITER
APSKAFTERS - The Sound of Apskaft official monthly magazine Web presence: WEBSITE - YOUTUBE CHANNEL - FACEBOOK PAGE - FACEBOOK GROUP - BANDCAMP - INTERNET ARCHIVE

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APSKAFTERS

APSKAFTERS 3 03 - JAN 2012

APSKAFTERS 4 03 - JAN 2012

0:15:07 - Captains speech and preparing for executions

0:33:36 - Mourning Vakulinchuck

0:45:04 - Odessa was with the sailors

0:56:58- The Meeting

0:24:11 - Uprising on the boat and Vakulinchuck death

0:42:47 - Its time for rebellion

0:49:40 - Soldiers shot on defenseless crowd

0:58:34 - A night frought with anxiety

0:56:25- Bombing Odessa Opera House

1:02:40 - Prepare for battle

1:09:53 - All against one - Will they open fire?

APSKAFTERS 7 03 - JAN 2012

NIGHT TIME IN DORMITORY

THE WORMED MEAT

TO THE SHORE OF ODESSA

APSKAFTERS 12 03 - JAN 2012

ITS TIME FOR REBELLION

A NIGHT FROUGHT WITH ANXIETY

PREPARE FOR THE BATTLE

ALL AGAINST ONE WILL THEY OPEN FIRE?

APSKAFTERS 13 03 - JAN 2012

NIGHT TIME IN DORMITORY

THE WORMED MEAT

TO THE SHORE OF ODESSA

APSKAFTERS 14 03 - JAN 2012

ITS TIME FOR REBELLION

A NIGHT FROUGHT WITH ANXIETY

PREPARE FOR THE BATTLE

ALL AGAINST ONE WILL THEY OPEN FIRE?

APSKAFTERS 15 03 - JAN 2012

NIGHT TIME IN DORMITORY

THE WORMED MEAT

TO THE SHORE OF ODESSA

APSKAFTERS 16 03 - JAN 2012

ITS TIME FOR REBELLION

A NIGHT FROUGHT WITH ANXIETY

PREPARE FOR THE BATTLE

ALL AGAINST ONE WILL THEY OPEN FIRE?

APSKAFTERS 17 03 - JAN 2012

NIGHT TIME IN DORMITORY

THE WORMED MEAT

TO THE SHORE OF ODESSA

APSKAFTERS 18 03 - JAN 2012

ITS TIME FOR REBELLION

A NIGHT FROUGHT WITH ANXIETY

PREPARE FOR THE BATTLE

ALL AGAINST ONE WILL THEY OPEN FIRE?

APSKAFTERS 19 03 - JAN 2012

NIGHT TIME IN DORMITORY

THE WORMED MEAT

TO THE SHORE OF ODESSA

APSKAFTERS 20 03 - JAN 2012

ITS TIME FOR REBELLION

A NIGHT FROUGHT WITH ANXIETY

PREPARE FOR THE BATTLE

ALL AGAINST ONE WILL THEY OPEN FIRE?

APSKAFTERS 21 03 - JAN 2012

NIGHT TIME IN DORMITORY

THE WORMED MEAT

TO THE SHORE OF ODESSA

APSKAFTERS 22 03 - JAN 2012