The challenge:
To musically steer a new adaptation of Alice in Wonderland written by Moira Buffini and Damon Albarn which utilised massive tech requiring complex sync challenges with live music within an under-resourced and impractical time scale.
The response:
One of the more challenging projects so far! I forged a joyful and strong creative relationship with Moira and Damon in facilitating the artistic response to a really challenging source text (this was my third production based on Alice - all impossible and ultimately frustrating. Avoid it, leave it as a novel!)
Musically, the score was a really successful combination of 8bit track and synths played via Ableton and a live band in the pit. Since this production, my team and I have refined the syncing of music and video/timecode down to a fine art: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory has an incredibly detailed and robust system which delivers stable flexibility alongside a seamless fusion between tech and live orchestra. It’s amazing and I love geeking over it! All journeys starts somewhere, and on ‘black Wednesday’ sitting on the pavement outside the Manchester Palace Theatre at 3am talking to the sync team in Australia who were the problem solvers on King Kong, I was an amazing step further on the path to this success.
(Years later, I would be a ghost orchestrator on the Broadway version of Kong)
