Chris Seaver: The Man, The Legend, My Creator

Chris Seaver: The Man, The Legend, My Creator

by | Feb 20, 2021 | Blog

If there is one man I owe a huge debt of gratitude to, it’s Chris Seaver. The man is a sheer genius and poet of the highest order. Charismatic, heroic and an awesome leader and friend, Chris has made some of the craziest films I’ve ever seen. From Low Budget Pictures to Warlock Home Video, Chris has created a beautiful universe of wackiness and weirdness the likes of which are seldom seen in film. His boldness as a director and eclectic cast and crew shine through in everything he works on. 

Finding out about his work all started with my dad dying, probably the worst incident of my life. I fell into absolute hell and started drinking and binge watching films to deal with it. One day, I came across a film called Terror at Blood Fart Lake. I looked at it with such disdain, the name said it all, it was going to be a trash flick to make fun of. Still it’d be good for a laugh, and I tried to watch it. Without alcohol to guide me, I didn’t really get what was going on and gave up after a minute or so. Later on, I started watching it with a bottle of ginger wine.

Before I knew what was happening, the sheer disgusting absurdity of that movie was making me laugh. Josh Suire as Caspian was an incredible sight to behold, witty, disturbing and just plain wrong, he was the first thing that made me laugh since my dad’s death, and now, a third of a lifetime later, I have come very far because of what happened after I finished watching. That one film in its essence changed my life. It’s funny the difference just one incident can make, because without it, I’d never have become a composer…

I hunted down the director, Chris, and asked if he was making another movie. He was making a sequel, so I helped fund it. Before I knew it, I was watching a lot of his flicks, and I begged him to use my music in his film. The music was awful but Chris was too insane to care. He used the music and made it work. Return to Blood Fart Lake was a disturbing success, and blessed me with some amazing friends, Jason McCall, Whitney VanHorn and later Noël Williams who helped me through some of the tougher times in my life.

After Return to Blood Fart Lake, Chris signed me on to write scores for the upcoming flicks he was making under a new label, Warlock Home Video. He gave some rough guidelines and pointed me in the direction of Fright Night and similar movies. I wrote two Warlock scores, which ultimately got used in several insane films. Chris was kind enough to give me a mention in Fangoria Magazine!

After that, I was picked up by Max Hey to work on The Green Goo, and Jeremy Garner to work on All Hell Breaks loose. Now, all these years later, I look back fondly on Chris. He is the guy that made me, his friends looked after me through some of the most challenging times of my life, and he saved me from my life of doing nothing of value.

Thank you Chris and the entire LBP crew. 

 

Episode 3 of Chan Walrus, coming soon… We hope!

Episode 3 of Chan Walrus, coming soon… We hope!

by | Feb 17, 2021 | Blog

Having been set back a couple of years with the COVID pandemic and my life being torn apart, it brings me great joy to announce that we are currently working on a new episode of Chan Walrus. I am in talks with the cast and crew and can confirm that my loyal Mandrake, Rikki will be rejoining us for the next episode, along with a small cameo by Traitormass. The episode will be a follow on from Bodywarp which will hopefully not break continuity too much!

I have started gathering a team together this year for work on Chan Walrus and a few other bits and bobs. I will provide more information on my team later once we start releasing things. 

There will be a few changes to come within the series:

The spaceship Chan and Mandrake fly is going to change. This is due to issues with graphics design and the fact it was clearly too powerful to be stopped.

The budget is going to increase. This will be detrimental to the look and feel of the series, so I’m sorry about that.

The music will include new tracks by various artists as well as the fantastic music that I normally use by Dan Pound. 

If we can secure a higher budget, we will be bringing a few more awesome things in. I’ve had a talk with some special effects artists and we may be seeing some cool aliens within the next few episodes if all goes well. Not just cucumbers with Google eyes on them. But we might have those. I just wanted to prepare you. 

Enjoy the last episode we made below:

Infinitrap: ReHamstered

Infinitrap: ReHamstered

by | Jan 26, 2021 | Blog

Infinitrap: ReHamstered is one of the coolest projects I’ve worked on to date. Working with Shadebob Games has been an awesome experience. As a member of the dev team responsible for composing music for the game, it was my job to try and build a soundtrack that would be effective at encompassing the slightly cartoony nature of the game, whilst keeping in mind the game play, the slightly gory nature of the game… All the while I was stuck in the 80’s. Here’s me trying to play the game, enjoy!

Musically, I was inspired by many different sources, 80’s films and cartoon series, early computer games like Realmz, Bub & Bob, and many more. These are my normal inspirations. I’m sure some Jazz Jackrabbit 2 came in (thanks Alexander Brandon who is one of the best game composers of all time)

I am happy that I am able to call myself a member of the Shadebob Games team, they’re all absolutely amazing people, and I love them to bits!

Well, Close Enough! – Nominated for Best Music in Independent Horror Awards

Well, Close Enough! – Nominated for Best Music in Independent Horror Awards

by | Jan 15, 2021 | Blog

So I found out today that I was nominated for best music in the Independent Horror Movie Awards. It’s not a win but I’ll take it! For all the years of psychological abuse and torment at the hands of the Indie Film Makers, it was nice at least to be recognized for some of the work I put in. Most of the time you just get a “Thonx” and never hear anything more about it, after months of work, nail biting terror, having to watch the same screaming people being crammed alive into jam jars, crying myself to sleep every night because I can’t get to score a nice friendly Romantic Comedy… So I worked on a film called Decline a while back and it did quite well. Here’s the score so you can hear it yourself: (Well most of it!) 

I expected Ryan to get at least a nomination. He’s a great psychological actor and he kept me watching the film over, and over, and over, and over again. Composing is boring. I… am boring – but I’m not surprised Katrina Grey did well. She really knows how to play uncomfortable in a way that’s refreshing and understated. 

Overall, it was a great film, well cast and acted, and I really enjoyed working on it. I had done an original score for it that was quite different and I much preferred that one but you can’t win em all! It was great working with Trash Arts again and I look forward to seeing what they do next!

http://www.horrormovieawards.com/

https://www.trasharts.co.uk/

Millennial Killer Wins Best Indie Film at Wallachia International Film Festival

Millennial Killer Wins Best Indie Film at Wallachia International Film Festival

by | Sep 23, 2020 | Blog

And so it came to pass that in the year 2020, the Millennial Killer, a film I had the pleasure of writing music for won the Wallachia International Film Festival for best independent film. I was overcome with joy to be able to be part of its creation and celebrated long into the night!

Being the composer for the project, I was dragged screaming out of my comfort zone and into a far different style of film score than usual. But, that said, it was a project I immensely enjoyed and loved being part of. It’s always weird writing music outside of your comfort zone. One feels like Linus without his blanket, or worse, Ren without his Stimpy.

The first thing that struck me about the film was the estate agent, played by the exceptional Simon Berry. He managed to embody not only a fantastic character, a deeply troubled and mesmerising sociopath, but also embodied my hatred of millennials too. I hope the police don’t raid my house as there is one fermenting in the bath as I type. Glorious! I bet it’ll taste great!

Simon’s acting is truly something exceptional, especially within the Indy circuit which features some amazing talent, and then some awful people like me that somehow get the occasional role in films, and I personally loved his performance to bits. He was the kind of actor I’d love to work with, intense, energetic and with a fantastic grasp of his character. From the moment he first appears on screen to his final scene, he is uncomfortable to watch and really drags you into the film in a way even big budget studio actors tend to fail at.

He isn’t the only thing about this film that’s great about The Millennial Killer. The rest of the cast are truly wonderful to watch, and I love how the film lets you get to know them, and it does so very quickly, which is not only a wonderful sign that the cast is good but also that the script really knows how to hit home quickly and efficiently without wasting time on unnecessary fluff to pad the movie out from being your usual gore splat death flick. The clever and enigmatic direction really allows this to happen and I found myself really enjoying writing the score. The only problem was that I kept getting distracted by just watching the film, which for me is a good sign the film is a great one, and one of the reasons I loved it was because it had great rewatch value.

The estate agent whom Simon plays so exceptionally begins to fall in love with one of his potential victims played by the talented Alice Mulholland who I expect great things from in the future… After murdering her vastly inferior boyfriend and keeping her locked up for weeks the estate agent develops a strange attraction to her, which is comical to me as her boyfriend is rather annoying and she’d probably end up hiring a hitman to snuff him out in the future anyway… In the background he kills a healthy amount of irritating millennials much to my enjoyment.

I think the only thing that really doesn’t work for me is the explanation on why he is doing things. Not because it’s a bad explanation, but because I think the film is much scarier without it. I like the concept of a man committing murder with reasons unknown… To me that is more terrifying than something I can understand. It’s kind of like when they add to characters like Jason Voorhees and Freddy Krueger, which end up taking away more than they add. Fear comes from the unknown. The film offers an interesting dive into human nature and was easy to relate to because I myself do not like millennials much. Did you know that they have avocado lattes? The very thought is vile to me especially seeing as how avocados are getting more endangered. (Thanks to the blight of Veganism plaguing our planet.)

Overall though it was a great film to score and I loved working on it. I feel the sound mix could have been better, as it’s my main bugbear with films I write music for, and some reviews put that the film didn’t even have music which is mega weird as I’m sure I wrote it, and that it’s there, but hey – it won an international film festival. It made my day.

If you like my work and are interested in seeing millennials getting their just desserts, and if you really like a good, well installed chandelier from time to time, you should give it a watch at some point.

Special shout out to the entire team. You are all incredible people and whilst I’m an ugly grumpy weirdo goblin recluse with aspergers and dyspraxia, I think the world of you for creating this beautiful masterpiece.

Science Fiction – The Endless Challenge

Science Fiction – The Endless Challenge

by | Aug 16, 2020 | Blog

Science fiction is without doubt the hardest genre to make. Fantasy has its complications, and can also be complicated at times, but for me, Sci Fi is the real challenge. From dystopian futures to space battles, a new universe is created to contain the story. There are lesser sci fi films which feature a person in a rubber suit running around a council estate, or where hillbillies find an alien in their shed, but to me these aren’t sci fi… They are simple monster shows. Sci fi to me is about creation and getting as far from Earth as possible. That’s where Chan Walrus comes in.

 

Chandryk Ulysses Walrus is a human being in the far future, in a place far from Earth. He is insane and borderline sociopathic whilst lacking his full memory. He is cowardly and he is not always very intelligent, which makes him a flawed character. I could have done the same thing with Bob Sausage, human entrepreneur, and set things on Earth. It’d have been easier. 

 

As a film maker I want a challenge and I have no excuses for the show I make. It’s a monstrosity which I film to look as close to a show from yesteryear as possible. I use flat static shots rather than motion camera, as I’d rather have a show that looks like it’s from the 80s. Then what I have to do is look at the world I am creating. I have to do this through sound and image. 

 

Musically, I am a composer with over 150 films and short films under my belt, but I hate writing music for my own stuff. Having found a music site, I came across a weird shamanistic composer called Dan Pound and I started writing to his music, which I wanted to use in a film. Eventually I tried it with Chan Walrus and found it really worked. So I used it for my series instead. Dan Pound is a lovely guy and I recommend his music to anyone who wants a sound unlike anything they’ve ever heard.

 

Graphically my guy is Michael Hazelwood. Like me, he is pretty crazy, and he does my spaceship designs. He did a great job of the battle for my pilot and is currently having to redesign a few things for the series. He is creating some brilliant stuff and I love what he’s done so far. He’s helped make my series look like a high tech 80’s show which is really where I want to be.

 

My other artist is Sair Feather, who has done a few of my graphical backgrounds such as the Traitormass compound. She has been a long time friend and contributor to my awful projects and I love her dearly. She knows exactly the kind of sci fi madness I’m trying to create because like me she is a geek, we are a rare species, and should be conserved.

 

With these people building the universe and look of the series, and me constructing the awful sets out of cheap bits and bobs and other doodads, it comes to the cast who make the show what it is, 

 

I play Chan Walrus, the antihero of the series, a man who is on the run from the government for reasons unbeknownst to the audience, but beknownst to me. Chan is pretty much the opposite of me for the most part, which is probably why he is so likeable, as I’ve got all the charisma of an out of date haggis.

 

My great friend Rikki Lovett, who used to be Rikki Hammond plays Christopher T. Mandrake. Mandrake is a reflection of Rikki, long suffering, putting up with my insatiable urge to make films no one wants to watch, and he has been in almost every project I have worked on, whether he wants to be in it or not. He is one of my best friends from school, and probably the only one I still have regular contact with,

 

Will Grantham plays the arch enemy of Chan Walrus, or he is supposed to but he is currently on the run from me until I manage to track him down with my army of goons and ‘persuade’ him to work for pizza. Will is incredibly short in stature and temper, being a Taurus, so I will have to arm them well. He is the creator of the Absorbaloff, a creature in Doctor Who and probably resents me because I now look like it in real life. This might be the reason he isn’t working with me at the moment.

 

The other new cast member to join me is Chris Gibbs. Chris is one of the few people I think that understands me. Not only is he a great friend, he is a greater human being and a greaterer father now too. He understands the stresses and horribleness of creating as he too is a creative, making music unlike anything any human has ever achieved. 

 

Together we struggle to make the impossible. A silly sci fi comedy show. It’s filmed on sets less than 2 by 2 meters, which I usually set on fire, sometimes with my poor cast in them. I haven’t set my staff on fire yet, but one day I will manage it! Funnily enough it’s not too hard to build a passable sci fi set,. I use big panels I bought a few years back and draped tube lights over them. Only problem is that the tubes are inevitably dying out meaning soon I must get more.

 

Overall, the series is hard to make. I’m not good at organising people. I also get very stressed as I have lighting, sound, and all the other stuff to sort out. Science fiction is a nightmare to make, but to be honest I like the challenge. If I can do it, anyone can. I find scrap lying around on the pavement and I see bits and bobs in skips and I beg people to take their trash so I can use it. It’s hard, complicated and embarrassing to make the stuff I make. But I’m so glad I get to work with the amazing people who make my show what it is.