Just a heads up about summer shows.  If you have never been to see a movie in the park, it is safe to say that you’re going to love it.  There’s free popcorn and other stuff, it’s free to attend and you can bring a picnic.  For the last couple years we’ve been doing a live Filmusik show outdoors at Sewellcrest off Hawthorne blvd. (the coolest little park no one has ever heard of).  This year we are upping the ante with 2 outdoor performances, the first of which is at Washington Park on August 12th.  We are performing a classic film, one of the first performances we ever did and the one we get more requests to bring back.  We’re raising the bar with some new elements (not to mention the additional of the actual elements of air and earth and (god forbid) water that an outdoor performance entails).  Be there at dusk on the 12th, it’ll be great.

As its cross-discipline crew demonstrates, creating the sound for the movies is quite an endeavor, particularly when you have a crew of 15 artists and only one take to get it right.  Monsters howl and ray guns flare for a free concert under the stars that will not soon be forgotten.

FILMUSIK: Plan 9 from Outer Space
August 12th
Washington Park
Free show – Begins at dusk

Filmusik imagines a new soundtrack for Ed Wood’s Sci-Fi disasterpiece “Plan Nine From Outer Space”. It is truly one of the weirdest misguided works of 50′s Sci-Fi, often called “the worst film ever made”, which is immediately followed by “you have to see it!!”. Ed Wood’s zealous use of stock footage and optimistic directorial style had men running around the set with flying saucers on fishing rods ad-libbing lines in this epic that was originally titled “Grave Robbers From Outer Space” (The film was largely bankrolled by Ed Wood’s pastor Reverend Lynn Lemon who objected to the sacrilegious title).

On August 12th, two groups unite for a collaborative soundtrack performed live. Electronica artist Heather Perkins’ originally composed score meshes with the Classical Revolution String Quartet for a unique blend of glitch and glissando.  Under the outdoor screen at Washington Park, the soundtrack is premiered in this special one-time show.  Portland voice actors dub the film live, matching the original script that at times seems too weird to be true. Even after long rehearsal hours and many a discussion, we still are in the dark about how exactly “Solarbonite” works, or how the vampire got out of the spaceship without opening the doors.   However, the performers, professional voice over actors from the world of TV and radio, bring you a faithful dub, all live from an onstage sound-booth.

This is a unique opportunity to see how sounds for film are made, to hear an original score by one of the city’s greatest electronica artists and watch the best/worst film ever made on a screen the size of my house.   Did we mention it’s free?