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Composing Music for Movies - The New Way

2010 marks the fourth year of scoring films for George Kallis, who has scored a variety of movies including the music for Angels & Demons as well as TV programs such as Farrah’s Story, America’s Most Wanted, Dateline, and others.

Kallis collaborates with new filmmakers, such as Mavericks Films, who are currently in production with their short film Lost Bullets, to be screened in Cannes 2010.

Kallis, who has distinct ethno-musicological traits to his scores, worked his way up as orchestrator and composer for commercials and documentaries. In 2006 he received the opportunity to pitch for the feature film Joy Division (Momentum Pictures), which he ended up scoring, and went on to record the music with the Slovak Radio Symphony Orchestra in Bratislava. This lead to a meeting with film director Brett Leonard, who at the time was in post-production with the movie Highlander:The Source (Lionsgate). The producers took George on board to compose the epic music for the new instalment of the mythology, for which he conducted the 90-piece Budapest Symphony Orchestra.

On his scoring process, Kallis says: “Today’s technology lends itself to easily creating high quality music. At the same time however, composers need to face the fact that nowadays anyone with a home PC can call himself a music-maker. Therefore my aim is to provide better music and a better service, so as to separate myself from the competition.”

Kallis’ brand new website showcases his music (cinematicsoundscapes.com.)

“It is now very usual for me to collaborate with directors and production companies from all over the world, especially from the US and Europe. I constantly update my clients through my social networking sites, and when I am not able to fly out and meet a client in person, directors and producers can practically 'walk in' to my studio for a face-to-face visual meeting through Skype, which is always accessible from my website."

He continued, "Hey can even listen to music as it is being composed. I am embracing technology as it not only enables me to have a sampled orchestra right at my fingertips, a second best option when we don’t have a real one, but it also allows personal communication, even if filmmakers or production companies are situated in a different country. Best of all, my clients can download and hear their music immediately from our ftp, freshly freshly composed from the studio!”

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Composing Music for Movies - The New Way