Zack Hemsey - A brief insight into the way he works

One of the reasons why Inception was such a big hit was partly because of the music used during one of the trailers.  Many thought the music had been created by Hans Zimmer, but in actual fact, it was done completely by one man, Zack Hemsey.  Titled "Mind Heist", its an epic track, used to great effect. Even today, people think Hans Zimmer created it, but its all done by Zack Hemsey.

His music is so good, it has even been plagiarised by Steve Jablonsky during a key scene in Transformers Dark of The Moon, something which Hemsey addressed on his blog here.


SoundWorks Collection: Composer Zack Hemsey from Michael Coleman on Vimeo.


Zack Hemsey is actually a Hip Hop MC and composer extraordinaire.  He started off composing for hip hop group called Nine Leaves where he is also an MC.  His unique blend of electronic and orchestral gave Nine Leaves a very distinct sound.

http://nineleaves.org/album/peace-in-death

 
Hemsey's first album contains Mind Heist and many other tracks which have been used in several more movie trailers.  He doesn't actually compose for film, its actually Hollywood that has actively persued his music to be used.

Paul Hertzog - Freeing The Waters Release

If you don't already have Paul Hertzog's Freeing The Waters CD, you can purchase it via Perseverance Records here.

http://store.fortytwotradingco.com/freeingwaters.html

Originally released in 2009, its a collection of unreleased movie score instrumentals he originally created in the late 1980's.

You can also still find his Bloodsport and Kickboxer score's on Perseverance Records too, 2 legendary scores by the great man.

Ramin Djawadi Fright Night 2011 Soundtrack

The assault on music continues with the genericness of Ramin Djawadi's Fright Night 2011 Score. There is no doubting his talent as a composer, however, this score is full of generic mediocrity and containing none of the original's charm or sexy sleazyness.  A reasonable movie is aided by a rather crappy score. What else did people expect? It all seems very boring and uninspiring.

Full of the standard brass, and generic drones and the same old tired crap that we've heard for the last 16 or so years, frankly, you would be better off listening to traffic noise.


The original featured sleazy synthesizer themes and iconic music, not just the score, but the pop and rock songs actually featured in the movie in key scenes. In this remake, you hear all sorts of ear raping sounds which make you long for a day out train spotting, its that bad.

Considering the original 1985 score has never been released in any format, how this new remake score managed to get released is astonishing.

The only decent thing about the remake is David Tennant, at least Doctor Who got his Hollywood break.

Fright Night 2011 Trailer Bites You, Is it any good?

The trailer for the new remake of Fright Night has just been released.

It stars Colin Farrell as Jerry Dandridge and Anton Yelchin as Charlie Brewster, with the infamous Evil Ed played by McLovin (Christopher Charles Mintz-Plasse).  Judging from the trailer, it looks dark, serious and has some nice location settings in there.  There isn't much showcase of Peter Vincent who is now played by David Tennant (Dr Who), who apparently is a Criss Angel type magician rather than an old TV host.

I like that they have used the original logo and font for this remake, at least the designer had good taste to realise they couldn't improve upon perfection! You can see how it holds up well today.  It's a lot better than the generic fonts they've been using on so many remakes of classic movies.  You can see the original one from 1985 below which is virtually indentical. 

Overall, we're not going to expect any of Brad Fiedel's masterpiece synth music to show up anywhere in this! "Come To Me" was the theme of Fright Night in both the original in 1985 and sequel in 1988, so a new version would be welcome, but so far we don't know who is doing the score for this remake.

I'm sure most fans though would have enjoyed a Fright Night 3, a sequel featuring the original Charlie Brewster coming back to help a new generation of kids.  Then again, money talks in Hollywood, and remake's are on the rise.

As long as the movie is good and entertaining, and offers something new, then hopefully it should be an interesting result.

Here is the trailer for the original 1985 movie, and some of Brad Fiedel's music.