Leopardactyl Scores!

Musical stupor-group Leopardactyl was enlisted to record the score to "Clipped." Because we had only a very rough cut of the film at the time, Kirk and I decided not to attempt to create the music based on visual cues and instead went with the traditional Leopardactyl approach--wing it. We thought back to the script and storyboards, watched the rough cut once, and then went off wherever our inspiration took us.

Kirk came up with 4 or 5 beats on his Korg Triton while I tuned up and got Pro Tools running. Each beat would have 2 or 3 different variations. Then we jammed on the beats until we had something we liked, and recorded it. Sometimes we would record different, but related parts for each beat's variation, and other times we recorded straight through the changes. Again, we weren't overtly concerned that we had something for each and every scene--we just wanted enough music that we enjoyed and felt represented the tone of the film overall.

The next day I edited down the sections. Some were split into short, loop-able segments to be squeezed into whatever length the scene was, and others were left in their long, complete forms. I then tackled our "dance song," which was specifically called for in the script. Two weeks earlier, I had written a few lines of lyrics, then Kirk turned them into a scrappy little techno demo in Garageband by the time we needed to shoot the scene. I then took Kirk's demo, added some MIDI percussion straight from 80s and 90s electronic drumkits, and expanded the vocals a bit. Then we slapped it right into the film.

Other tracks seemed to fit so perfectly in some scenes that it scared us. Weird, free-form sounds that Kirk added on the Korg the night before ended up mirroring visual cues with no editing involved at all. Of course, not everything was quite as simple, so the next day I recorded a few bass-only tracks based on our longer themes to fit our short framing segments. I also recorded echoing chords intended to run backwards into the flashback sequences (there's a story about those too, but it's so nerdy that I won't share it here).

In the end, we had something we liked for each scene that needed music, and even felt that some of those scenes were actually enhanced by the soundtrack. We did have one track that ultimately found no home in the film ("Clipped" is only 10 minutes long, jeez), but we liked it enough to finish it and share with you. It's called "Superjumper."