Last year (November/December 2006) a friend from church asked my sisters and I to help with her movie. She is a film and new media major at UNL, and for one of their production classes, they produced short films. Lindsay co-wrote and was cinematographer for her production, and when it was time for her team to think about the soundtrack, she asked if we’d be interested in providing the theme song for the movie. I was intrigued, but tentative and nervous about such a big task. The only composing I’d ever done before was for class (”Write a short piece in the style of Mozart”), and this was obviously a very different situation.
Lindsay told us about the film’s premise, and provided us with a script. Bess quickly came up with some brilliant lyrics, and then passed them on to me. Since the tone of the movie was supposed to be light and comedic, I was trying to compare the style with something I knew. The idea I kept coming back to was the SNL sketch “Middle-Aged Man.” With inspiration from Bess and SNL, I dove in and came up with a theme song. One piano and female vocal trio part later, I was done.
The singing Ghormley sisters and my mediocre piano skills would never have been enough, so we asked our friend George to play bass. His contributions made the entire thing possible (musically speaking). He improvised ALL of the solo bass stuff, and he was invaluable during the somewhat primitive recording process.
Anyway, for those of you who haven’t seen it (or for those of you who just want to watch it again), here is Randall Wry, Private Eye.
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