OMI: Blair Mowat Friday, 6 March 2009

Composer Blair Mowat wrote the music for episode 2 of The Lost Book – and I think you’ll agree that it’s brilliant.

Blair is a composer for film, television, theatre and media. He’s a recent graduate from the Masters in Film Music course at the University of Bristol. Last year Blair was short listed for a prestigious 4Talent award in the “Production Music” category, placing him in the top 5 young composers for media in the UK. As well as composing he also conducts and plays a variety of instruments including the clarsach (the Celtic harp!).

He’s done some serious thinking about our One Minute Interview… (more…)

OMI: Adam Brewster Thursday, 5 March 2009

Adam is half of Binary Fable, the animation company behind The Lost Book.

He’s always behind the camera, so it isn’t easy finding a photo of him. But, we’ve caught him. Here he is – captured taking a photo of the SCO players at our first music recording session in January. Adam is the slightly ghostly reflection.

Adam’s responsible for several really cruicial parts of the animation. He’s in charge of textures, lighting and rendering (if that doesn’t mean anything to you, keep reading the “making of…” posts). He also draws the storyboards and does the editing, so he’s integral to every stage of production.

To find out a bit more about Adam, read his One Minute Interview… (more…)

OMI: Stuart Delves Wednesday, 4 March 2009

Stuart is the writer behind Watson’s voice over at Follow Your Nose. We’ll be uploading Watson’s thoughts on episode 2 this Friday, so thought you might like to hear more about Stuart. As well as writing a lot of the copy for the project, including the website, he developed the tone of voice for The Lost Book and trained Adam and Helen to write this blog in a Lost Book way.

Stuart has over 20 years experience as a copywriter, starting out in one of London’s top advertising agencies in 1985. After seven years at Redpath Design, Edinburgh, he set up Henzteeth in 2002 with fellow writer John Ormston. Much more than just a firm of copywriters, Henzteeth champions the creative use of language in business. To this end they run programmes in developing brand language, they initiated Writers in the Workplace in partnership with Arts & Business Scotland, and they run creative writing for business residential courses under the banner Dark Angels.

Stuart wrote the questions for our One Minute Interview, but we also persuaded him to give us his answers… (more…)

OMI: Alison Mitchell Tuesday, 3 March 2009

Alison is Scottish Chamber Orchestra Principal Flute. She played on the soundtrack to The Lost Book episode 2, which we recorded yesterday – managing to make it look easy to play Blair’s fiendishly difficult music (which involved a technique called flutter-tonguing that sounds fantastic).

Alison is originally from Melbourne (another UNESCO City of Literature!). She’s played in major orchestras around the world, including the Sydney Symphony. Alongside her busy SCO schedule Alison performs as soloist and chamber musician, most notably, with Mr McFall’s Chamber and the Hebrides Ensemble, at the East Neuk festival where in 2009 she will perform with Kristian Zacharias, as guest soloist at the Bang on a Can Marathon at the Perth Concert Hall and most recently in recital at the RSAMD with pianist, Scott Mitchell.

We managed to get her to sit down long enough to answer our One Minute Interview… (more…)

OMI: Gavin Fort Monday, 2 March 2009

We’ve got our second music recording session this morning. We’ll post about the session later, but in the meantime here’s a look at one of the team: Gavin, one of four MSc Sound Design students working on The Lost Book. This was Gav at the last recording session.

Gavin is Head Sound Engineer/Designer at Verden Studios in Edinburgh. With several friends he runs Offline Events who put on the Spectrum mini festival. He also DJs. Somehow, he found time for our One Minute Interview… (more…)

OMI: Jasper Fforde Friday, 30 January 2009

The utterly genius novelist Jasper Fforde is the guest writer for The Lost Book’s microstory competition. We’re challenging you to help him write The Lost Book – the book that has been stolen. It’s the journal of a 2004 expedition to Arthur Conan Doyle’s lost world.

Jasper has written two intriguing articles about explorer Sally Challenger’s expedition to Southern Venezuela. His cast of characters seem to have had an eventful time, but it’s now up to the rest of us to carry on the story and write the expedition’s journals. To join in, head over to the microstory competition page.

Jasper Fforde is loved by readers everywhere for his bestselling Thursday Next and Nursery Crime books. The Thursday Next series is a ‘book phenomenon’ which started in 2001 with the publication of The Eyre Affair. The fifth in the series, First Among Sequels, came out in 2007. There have been two books in the Nursery Crime series so far – the second, The Fourth Bear, was published in 2006. Fortunately, we don’t have long to wait for his next book, Shades of Grey, which is due out in summer 2009.

Jasper’s answered our One Minute interview questions, plus a couple of others of his own choosing, so read on…! (more…)

OMI: Helen Jackson Thursday, 29 January 2009

Helen is one half of Binary Fable, the animation company behind The Lost Book. Helen originally dreamed up the concept of a booky animation last summer, and is delighted that the idea’s taken off. It’s basically her ideal project.

This is Helen captured in a rare moment away from the computer. She’s doing some cut-out animation. These Aileen and Watson character cut-out models, plus a step-by-step animation workshop, will be available to download from tomorrow in the Get Involved! section of the website. (Plus you’ll be able to watch the film Helen’s making here.) Creating short cut-out films is quick, easy and fun, so give it a go.

Here’s Helen’s One Minute Interview if you want to learn more about what makes her tick… (more…)

OMI: Jackie Arnott-Raymond Wednesday, 28 January 2009

Jackie is part of the design team at Front Page Design who created the branding for The Lost Book. We adore our wee luggage tag logo, so kudos to Jackie and the rest of the Front Page team (in particular Simon Cunningham, Mark Hutton, Jo Levy and Alan Pyke who have worked on The Lost Book).

Jackie is an account director and copywriter at Front Page, where she’s worked on major accounts like Silverstone Circuit, Travel 2 and the award-winning Edinburgh Festival Fringe and Royal Caribbean Cruise Line accounts. She’s been with Front Page since 2000; before that, she spent 12 years working in the UK Travel Industry.

We caught up with Jackie last week and got her answers to our One Minute Interview… (more…)

OMI: Alexander Jackson Laing Tuesday, 27 January 2009

Alexander is one of four MSc Sound Design students on our recording team. He and colleagues Augoustinos Tsiros, Gavin Fort and Simon Herron recorded and edited the music for episode 1 yesterday (and it’s sounding great!).

Here’s composer Alexis to the left, Alex operating the mouse, Simon taking notes, and Augoustinos and Gav in the background.

As well as doing the MSc, Alex says he’s working on some other arty music/visual/nerdy electronic projects (including one with a fire performing troupe). Want to know more? Read on for the One Minute Interview… (more…)

OMI: Stephen Gilmour Monday, 26 January 2009

Stephen‘s working hard right now to finish the soundtrack for Episode 1. He’ll have the final mix ready for us tomorrow.

Stephen’s a freelance sound designer. He makes soundtracks for animations and new media productions – where every footstep has to be painstakingly created. He’s done stuff for major brands such as Irn-Bru and Tennents as well as animation companies like Binary Fable, Trikk 17 and Igloo Films. He’s also worked with location sound for films such as ‘Shakespeare in Love’ and ‘Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone’.

Read on to see how Stephen responded to our One Minute Interview… (more…)