SYNOPSIS
Kirk and Ethan Seminak can agree on one thing - they want to make it in Hollywood, Kirk as Sound Designer, and Ethan as a comedian. Kirk has managed to make a very important contact, Walter Murch, arguably the most important Sound Designer and Editor in town. Murch sub-contracts work to him. He knows how important it is to get Mr. Murch the most authentic sounds possible, because Mr. Murch is going to get them into Hollywood's A-league. It's just gonna take a few more assignments. So, if Mr. Murch wants the most authentic sounds for horror films, then that's what Kirk and Ethan are going to get him, by kidnapping and torturing real people in a sound booth! MIDNIGHT WITH MURCH explores the brothers' relationship, one driven and smart, the other following and trying, if clumsily, to stretch his wings, while they try to achieve their dreams.
WILLIAM BEATON BIOGRAPHY, (HTTP://WWW.IMDB.COM/NAME/NM0064121/)
WWW.WILLIAMBEATON.COM
Midnight with Murch marks an exciting new chapter in my life after recently moving from London to LA. Shooting April 2010, it was written as I was waiting for my US work permit, in a gifted moment of time where I had a chance to be open and creative. It's the third narrative short of my career, with my second, IT'S DIFFERENT FOR GIRLS, broadcast on UK Network Channel 4, and my third JULES ON TRAIN, well received at selected festivals around the UK. Since the late 90s I have also worked on a number documentary and television productions including projects for Rapido TV (Eurotrash) and Island Records.
At heart I am an independent filmmaker. I started out as an assistant to 60's enfant terrible Mike Sarne, director of the infamous cult film MYRA BREKINRIDGE, as part of a group of five renegade filmmakers at London production company Videodrome. Here I developed my skills and experimented directing several short films, and a feature with my late father and actor Norman Beaton before his untimely death, early into shooting. Influenced by directors like Alexander Mackendrick, Billy Wilder and Luchino Visconti my films leaned toward noirish themes with a comedic edge. In this time, I also developed a passion for documentary, which also influences my work, as a co-director of GLASTONBURY THE MOVIE which premiered at the London Film Festival.
Jerry Stiller once said "Creative comedy is like growing geraniums in a mine field" and that is a close approximation of the kind of stories I like tell. IT'S DIFFERENT FOR GIRLS dealt with erotic asphyxiation and JULES ON TRAIN a psychopathic stalker - neither of which were exploitative and explored the characters satirically. Comedy still plays an important part in my work with most of the projects I'm developing situated in that genre. I wouldn't want to limit myself in any way, but if I had to sum up my work in three phrases it would be irreverent, avant-garde and playfully incisive.
Jonathan Wolf, Producer, (http://pro.imdb.com/name/nm1434155/)
www.moonlitimages.com
After graduating from college with a degree in Engineering, Jonathan followed his heart and went into teaching. He had a very successful 15-year career in education, teaching Math, English and Science at the high school and middle school levels. He began his entertainment career as a set photographer and soon fell in love with the process of filmmaking. He found an idea for a short film he liked and promptly produced it. The film, THAT GUY, was a $45,000 production with a full crew and up to 100 extras. THAT GUY has been widely acclaimed at international film festivals from Palm Beach to the Big Island of Hawaii, and continues to be an effective calling card for the quality of his work. He intends to bring the same crew and post-production professionals, as well other artists and consultants from his impressive network of industry professionals to make sure MIDNIGHT WITH MURCH is delivered on time and on budget with the highest production value.
Jonathan currently has the rights to two high-quality screenplays, including one by THE WATCHMEN scribe, Alex Tse. The other is his passion project, called TURNOVER. He is currently in negotiation to retain the rights to two more screenplays.
THE TEAM
Brandon Trost, DP, (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1060930/)
Matt Collorafice, Special FX, (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1322529/)
Lindsay Graham, Casting, (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm2274256/)
Mike Wolf, Editor, Post-Production, (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1369733/)
Ron Trost, Special Effects Coordinator, (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0873625/)
Adam Hamilton, Score, (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1795813/)
Bruce Greenspan, Sound Design, (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0339174/)
Sarah Trost, Costume Designer, (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1210953/)
Ramjasha Rhodes, UPM, (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1673216/)
All names can also be searched for at IMDbPro.com.
Honoring Walter Murch
In 1998, when the Director of the Library of Congress found a cylinder labeled "Violin by WKL Dickson with Kineto", he thought it might be the missing sound recording to a film commonly seen in retrospectives about Thomas Edison's life - a 17-second film of two men dancing on the right and William KL Dickson playing a violin next to a Kinetophone machine's cone on the left, called "Dickson Eperimental Sound Film". To find out whether this was true or not, he sent a copy of the film and a copy of the sound recording to Walter Murch. Through much work combined with his immense knowledge and skill, Mr. Murch succeeded and was the first person to see the 100-year old film the way it was supposed to be seen. It can be seen at this link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6b0wpBTR1s.
Sound Designer and Editor Walter Murch received his education in film at the University of Southern California, where one of his classmates was George Lucas. He won an Oscar for mixing sound on Francis Ford Coppola's 1979 film Apocalypse Now, then won twin Oscars for sound mixing and film editing on the 1996 drama The English Patient.
o Murch is widely acknowledged as the person who coined the term 'Sound Designer' and along with colleagues developed the current standard film sound format, the 5.1 channel array, helping to elevate the art and impact of film sound to a new level.
o Apocalypse Now was the first multi-channel film to be mixed using a computerized mixing board.
o Murch's brilliant editing on The Conversation, Coppola's 1974 thriller of eavesdropping and paranoia, is still regarded as a landmark in film sound editing.
o While he was editing directly on film, Murch took notice of the crude splicing used for the daily rough-cuts. In response, he invented a modification that concealed the splice by using extremely narrow but strongly adhesive strips of special polyester-silicone tape. He called his invention "N-vis-o".
o Murch's editing Oscar for The English Patient was the first to be awarded for an electronically edited film (the Avid System).
o In 2003, Murch edited the film Cold Mountain on Apple's sub-$1,000 Final Cut Pro software using off-the-shelf Power Mac G4 computers. This was a leap for such a big-budget film, where expensive Avid systems were usually the standard non-linear editing system. He received an Academy Award nomination for this work.
o He is perhaps (probably) the only film editor in history to be have received Academy nominations for films edited on four different systems.
o In 2006, he was awarded an honorary Doctorate of Letters by the Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design in Vancouver, Canada.
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