Thief foley and music WIPs

So I've gotten involved in the ongoing restoration of Richard Williams' unfinished masterpiece "The Thief & The Cobbler". For those of you who don't know about this film, it's an amazing animated flick with a long and troubled history. I'm not going to go into detail about that, as you could fill a book with it.

I've offered my services to Garret Gilchrist (the main restorationist) as a bit of an every-man on this restoration, which is currently on it's fourth pass. I've been tasked with doing retraces (and in some cases, total redraws) of storyboards and pencil tests, some minor animation based on storyboards and finished but unusable material,  and creating new sound mixes in stereo and composing new music.

Because I'm between computers, I haven't been able to accomplish as much as I'd like. Thankfully, this beat up old rig I'm on now still has the chutzpah to edit sound.

I present one of my favorite scenes, the introduction to the story's antagonist, ZigZag (voiced by the late Vincent Price).

Originally, this scene contained a full sound mix with a placeholder score written with synthesizers. For all intents and purposes, the mix was complete - albeit in low fidelity - and my work on this scene was arguably unnecessary. The work I've done in these videos was done as an experiment and nothing more, and whether or not the new mix will be used for the mark 4 restoration has yet to be seen.

First, the music. ZigZag's introductory song "Have No Fear" existed very early in production and the original composer is unknown. An unfinished version made with synthesizers was featured in the workprint. Here I take the original melody and kind of run with it, adding some Middle Eastern motifs and subcues. This is just a midi experiment, and not the final version.



Garrett, while impressed with the new score I wrote, is quite attached to the original synthesized version. Perhaps I can change his mind when I present him with the final mix. If not, at least I have a nice piece for my music portfolio.

Second, the foley mix. This is just the sound fx, all redone by yours truly in full stereo. Fortunately, Garrett had an isolated recording of ZigZag's courtiers singing his introduction, which fit snuggly into the new mix.



I can't stress enough that this is just an experiment, and a bit of a slam-bang job at that. My kingdom for a good microphone so I could record custom foley. All the sounds in this mix were taken from online sources, so I was a bit limited in what I could achieve. I'll likely redo most of this mix for the final version.

More to come!