The Brolly Blog

Feb is Flippin Freezin'

2012-02-01T15:05:00.000Z

Well i hope your wearing your thermals, it's bloody cold here!

We have snow on the hilltops & ice in the cat bowl.

Here's what we've been doing since christmas;

Last week we finished the sixth & final episode of 'Antur Y Gorllewin' with composer John hardy & that is currently screening on S4C with international versions to emerge later, the series has been great fun to do, to work alongside John & to experience a more intimate style of writing, especially as lately all you lot want is 'More Bigger Faster….'

We've also finished the Brian Cox reversions which has been retitled 'Earth Explorer' that series ended up including some of the BBC series 'Yellowstone' which footage wise is just a joy to work on.

Currently;

We're working with Princess TV on a great 4 part series for FIVE where I'm pretending to be a bit 'David Arnold' all tongue in cheek although the programme isn't. We're now halfway through that & today is title sequence day.

Next week we also start on the next BBC Worldwide series of shorts which are titled 'Human Impact'

See you all soon & stay warm!!

brolly

Christmas Greetings....

2011-12-20T16:29:00.000Z

Hi all, I just wanted the opportunity to wish you all a Merry Christmas & to thank you for your support over the last year.

Time was when we would spend days creating a silly Christmas card to send out. But these days we simply don't have the time & it seems neither does anyone else.

Here's one from many years ago……

Since my last blog I've been working hard with composer John Hardy on a six hour Wildlife series for S4C.

You may remember I did a few lectures for John at the Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama. John enjoyed the lectures & gave me a call when he hit a schedule conflict.

The series called ' Antur Y Gorllewin' is produced by John Gwyns company 'Aden Productions' & follows Iolo Williams as he charts the western edge of Europe.

We're still hard at work on the Brian Cox 'Wonders of the Solar System' reversions & have also pitched for a few projects which we're waiting to hear about.

In my 15 year career i don't think i've ever been so excited about the coming year. The projects we are being offered are the stuff dreams are made of, we'll let you know about them in due course.

So, stop working soon, crack open the bubbly & mince pies & have a good rest so that you can all work us into the ground in the new year.

We'll be ready!!!

HAPPY CHRISTMAS!

brolly

Olympics, Rory, Lectures & Listening!!

2011-10-30T13:05:00.000Z

Hi all & welcome to Autumn!

i've just had a lovely two weeks off, plenty of fishing & Autumn walks & so am now raring to go again.

This week see's us start work on the reversions of Brian Cox's 'Wonders of the Solar System' with BBC Worldwide.

Twenty short films of visual splendour coming up.

We're also continuing to work on the job that i can now reveal as;

'Rory McGrath's PUB DIG!' A great 4 parter for The HISTORY CHANNEL & FIVE being produced by Oxford Scientific Films which sees Rory in Cahoots with a team of Archeologists digging in the grounds of some well known pubs, making amazing historic discoveries & imbibing copious amounts of fermented liquids. Very informative & very funny!

Halfway through the month we got a call from the desert from our old mate Mark Strickson.

He had an 8 minute job about the Arabian horse for a client in Qatar but the music wasn't quite working in certain spots, could we sort it out , oh & by the way it had to be done in the next three hours!!

So sort it out we did. We had to write new bits of music to blend & replace sections of tracks recorded by the London symphony Orchestra. Not the easiest thing in the world to do but subtlety was the key, so three hours later it was signed off & then we piped it over to New Zealand for the dub. Don't you just love the internet!!

NEW COMMISSION.

We have been commissioned to provide music for some of the broadcast material for next years Olympics which will whizz it's way around the world.

There will initially be 10 short films & a series of 30second clips but I have a feeling more will follow. The subjects vary from informative films about some of the towns where events will be taking places to some comedy shorts about cheese rolling & bog snorkelling.

Oh us crazy British people!!

LECTURING.

Having met Composer John Hardy at a PRS function we got together to arrange for me to give a few lectures to the students at the Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama where John is head of composition.

The first lecture was on 'the business of being a composer in todays market' looking at tax, vat, networking, getting clients & keeping them etc…

The second lecture was 'A day in the life of Brollyman', looking at how I write to picture, interpreting briefs, the technology I use etc. We all had a really good time- talked a lot, drank a lot of tea & learnt a lot to boot!

Brolly & John in the shade.

Talking money!

LISTENING.

We're always keen to improve our craft & to that end we invited Donal & Gethin down from Hafod Mastering to go through some stuff with us. 'Hafod' master all of our music as well as working with a lot of top Bollywood artist & many successful bands & groups.

We went through our monitoring, detail in the top end. How much sub should we roll off & lot's of technical stuff - too boring to write about but stuff that will keep on pushing us forward in terms of sound quality.

After lots of listening it was time for the obligatory curry of course!!

The technical chaps, Gethin, Carlos & Donal

Catalogue pointing simply has to be done!

& then there was curry....

For those of you who've enquired about our Autumn availability we still have plenty of space in the diary before Christmas hits, when our attention will be more focused on mince pies & alcohol.

Happy Halloween & Bonfire night -bring on the snow!!

brolly

Imagine

2011-09-24T10:52:00.000+01:00

Hi to all the readers of imagine magazine who I hope are heading here in droves due to the fun advert I placed in the magazine.
We commissioned an old mate Glen Viljoen to create a light hearted caricature of us hard at work
& here it is!!

If your just passing through & you want to receive future newsletters just drop me an email.

Well, 'Royal Navy Submarine Mission' came & went & was a huge success, rightly so we think!

The viewing figures were great & reviews were positive.

The music sounded great & was at a really good level -thanks guys!!

Writing wise;

We're currently on episode two of our 'Comedian on his quest for Ancient Wisdom' series for FIVE as well as being halfway through a series of twenty shorts for BBC Worldwide under the title 'The Birth of the Earth' the series is all about how planet earth was formed , topics include atmospheres, volcanoes, Glaciation etc...

In the next few weeks we will be updating the whole portfolio section of our site so there'll be plenty of new clips to view.

So until next time, wrap up warm it's getting colder now!

brolly

Submarines, Guitars & Meerkats!!!!

2011-08-22T15:40:00.002+01:00

The last two months have been a little insane to say the least. I've written over 70 pieces of music for various productions so I thought I'd shed a tiny bit of light on them all for you. Of course I can't yet tell you what they actually are until TX dates are announced -you all know the score.

SUBMARINES
We are now two thirds of the way through the 'secret job' & it can finally be revealed that it's a 3 X 50min series for 'Five' produced by Firelight Films & is the first documentary ever filmed aboard an active Nuclear Submarine - hence the secrecy. The series is titled 'Royal Navy Submarine Mission', I should have a TX date soon.
We had a cracking budget on this so were able to get a few friends in.

Here's Liz Prendergast adding some 'moody doings' to the proceedings.

Anitra Blaxhall, soprano from the Welsh National Opera posing with two layabouts!!

The music is a combination of moody electronics combined with a very modern orchestral sound & has been a fantastic project to work on.

GUITARS
We've so far written 21 tracks of blues based guitar music for a 4 part series for FIVE being produced by Oxford Scientific Films. The sounds of Country Rock, slide guitar, banjo & acoustic strumming have all been emanating from the Crows Nest all to accompany a well known British Comedian on a boozy quest for Ancient Wisdom.
More of that soon.......

We've also completed the title music for a pilot show for BBC1 again produced by OSF which we hope will be a real winner. The project combines pain, laughter & two very up for it members of the medical profession, lot's of guitar on this one as well.

Having a strum down at Parasol City....

Spanking the plank in the Crows Nest....

Some of the girls....

My Punky Tele...

MEERKATS

Well, if you haven't seen those fluffy things by now FIVE are showing all four series of Meerkat Manor as we speak. So go get aquainted or even reaquainted with 'Flower & the crew'

That's all from me, looking forward to seeing 'TinTin' & 'Troll Hunter' at the flicks soon.

Brolly xx

Bear Woman

2011-07-11T14:46:00.000+01:00

Showing on Animal Planet for the next few nights.
The American title was 'Blonde versus Bear'. Musically this is all pretty full on without a moment to spare, big drums, big hits, big sounds!

I'm currently putting the finishing touches to a title sequence for BBC1 for a fantastic show that I hope will be a big hit - more on that next time!
I'm also knee deep into episode 1 of a 3 parter for 'FIVE'. I'm sworn to secrecy on this one other than to say it's never been done before & it's military based.

Landing any moment will also be 20 short films for BBC Worldwide with the title 'The birth of the Earth' all about the forming of our planet.
So, a diary full of very exciting projects for me.

From mid - August on I have an open diary which i'd very much like you all to fill for me -you know where I am!!

brolly xx

Tigers & Children

2011-04-07T22:27:00.000+01:00

This week we've been working on a Tiger Conservation film which we hope to post on the website soon.
Here are some photos of the days mixing session down at Parasol City.

Carlos in the hot seat.

Taking a break.

Utter Disruption from Brolly Junior.

Fine tuning.

Inspiration.

The heart of the sun.

Next week we're back onto ITV1's series followed by 20 short programmes on reptiles for BBC Worldwide.
TTFN. brolly

HAPPY ST DAVIDS DAY!!

2011-03-01T12:19:00.000Z

Well folks
I hope your daffodils are up & your walking with a spring in your step!

It's been so busy here with work & health bugs i didn't even get a chance to wish you all happy Christmas!!
Since my last message we've completely upgraded both studios & moved one of them, more on that soon.

Here's my new writing suite called 'The Crows Nest'

Here's what we've been up to.....

In January we completed 37minutes of music for 'Off the Fence's' series Wildest Africa' for programmes on 'The Nile', 'The Cape Coast' & 'Kenya' . The series is currently screening on Discovery UK.

Last week we finished 20 x 3minute promos for BBC Worldwides 'Worlds Wonders' series, these were all beautiful underwater clips on topics as varied as Octopus, the Sardine run & Angler fish.

This week we're completing work on a 3 part series for Animal Planet US called 'Blonde VS Bear' produced by Firecracker Films. This tells the story of Ann, a dedicated yet slightly crazy lady who tries to protect the bears of Lake Tahoe by firing paint guns & various other weapons at them. Lot's of very aggressive music for this one!

As for work in progress we are mid way through providing 12 tracks of music for a new series on Africa for ITV1.

We've started sketching for a 3 part series for 'Five' which is all a bit hush hush at the moment.

We have another 20 short promos for BBC Worldwide on reptiles & are in talks with ITV about another series for them.

Lot's of Natural History but quiet on the Animation front. Come on you people, you know where we are!!

Hope your all busy & having fun!!
brolly

Wildscreen & MIP

2010-10-10T18:51:00.001+01:00

Hi to all you festival goers out there.
Hope your having a good time networking & making deals.
If your at Wildscreen & have got one of my postcards & are having a nose for the first time, welcome to the site.
We are in the middle of rebuilding both studios & have some exciting projects coming up so more details soon.
best wishes
brolly

BBC WORLDWIDE

2010-06-17T13:13:00.001+01:00

Hi all,

Since our last post I've finished the Wildest Africa project & managed to fit in music for a Nokia conference in Finland.

Just about to start work on another set of "Ancient Mysteries". Twenty short promos for BBC Worldwide, so thought I'd show you some of the last ones we did.

We work with these guys about four times a year. They're great fun to work with, the jobs great & the footage is fantastic but-by their own admission - the moneys terrible, but we simply can't resist.

Sometimes we have pictues as on the batch your about to look at sometimes we don't as with the batch we're about to do. If we need players we usually call in a few favours to enhance the job.

Pictured below:
Deri Roberts playing Native American flute on the 'First Americans'.
Watch an extract from the short here.

Next, Anitra is pictured singing on 'Nazca Lines'.

View a clip to of it here.

More Clips:

- The Hittites

- The Turin Shroud

- Tips on how to Move a City.

There were twelve shorts in all, each one was five minutes long. This new batch will be twenty all of two & a half minutes in length.

St Davids Day!

2010-03-01T12:38:00.002Z

Hope your all wearing daffodils on our lovely Welsh National Day!

Just a quick update.

I'm still deep into the 'Wildest Africa' series & have just been commissioned to provide music for a Nokia Conference early summer.

I'll be taking a week out as my second son is due to arrive mid march but apart from that it's all go!

brolly

It's been a while!!

2010-02-12T16:26:00.003Z

Hi all

haven't posted for a bit as i've been knee deep in music. The Ancient Mysteries job is now completed & I should be uploading some clips in the next week or two. The Qatar Job is also complete.

Since the end of November i've been knee deep in a 4 part series called 'Wildest Africa' for Dutch Company 'Off the Fence'. The 4, hour long programmes are set in 'Okovango', 'Zambesi', 'Ngorongoro' & 'Namibia'

Musically we are combining traditional African sounds with contemporary electronics with plenty of Orchestral music thrown in for good measure- quite a soup!

here are a few mp3's from the Zambesi programme to whet your appetite. These are very rough & unmixed , the finished versions will have real flute & singing on them.

click the titles to hear the Mp3's

The Mighty Zambesi 1min 20secs

This piece comes in after the titles & shows you what's to come as we follow the mighty Zambesi river.

Moving On 1min 20secs

We continue traveling downstream taking in life as we go.

Gentle River 48secs

a beautifully tranquil section of the river.

See you all soon!

brolly

2009-08-20T16:45:00.001+01:00

Hi all, just to let you know Meerkat Manor series 4 starts on BBC2 on Sunday 23rd of August at 5;35pm. Hope you enjoy it.

This week I'm knee deep in Ancient Mysteries & also doing a title sequence for Dutch Wildlife company 'Off the Fence'

Swine Flu -been there done it!!

brolly

Summer Rain

2009-08-03T14:21:00.006+01:00

Well for the 4th year in a row the Jet Stream has shifted & our warm summer is a damp squib!!!
Never mind there's music to write!

Ice Patrol gets it's first screening on Nat Geo UK this month & there was a great review in the Sunday Times, it was also in the 'Choice' section.
"... this new series benefits from a thoughtful voiceover, considered editing and non-invasive soundtrack replacing the sturm and drang that typifies the genre...."

After being on hold for most of July I'm finally off the Leash & writing.

I have 10 of the 12 BBC Worldwide programmes called Ancient Mysteries to get on with as well as the Quiz show theme for Challenge TV.

I've just been commissioned to compose a library of 15 tracks for a client working out of Qatar & am really excited about starting that.

Carlos Fandango my new engineer is really getting into his stride & this month we start writing the first of our library albums, so keep an eye on us for progress on that one.

So, enjoy your ice creams & eat lots of fruit!

brolly

A Tune in June!

2009-06-23T11:18:00.008+01:00

Well, here we are in the sunny second half of June & it's time to get to work.
Today I start work on a quiz show theme for Challenge TV featuring Roy Walker as the presenter. The show is being produced by BBC Worldwide.
I also start work on another project for BBC Worldwide which is a a series of twelve short programmes (5mins) under the title of Ancient mysteries where we'll be visiting Mayan Culture, Easter Island & the Pyramids amongst other things.
Both jobs will be complete by the end of June.
My first interview is also now online. I was interviewed by Hubai Gergely on my work on Meerkat Manor.
Hope your enjoying thesun, happy picnicing.
Brolly

May in Spain

2009-05-12T16:29:00.010+01:00

Well, after a hectic 6 weeks I've finally put 'Ice Patrol' & 'Megan' to bed, so I'm taking it easy in May, my only work being to help Machine productions by writing music for one of their pitches.

Mid month I'm off to Spain for a week & on my return I'll be doing lot's of fishing.

June's going to be busy with two projects for BBC Worldwide.

Brolly.

New TV Commissions for a Hot Summer

2009-04-02T12:16:00.004+01:00

Well here we are, it's April already let's hope for a good spring after that aweful winter!!!

The exciting news from Brolly is a couple of commissions from BBC Worldwide for delivery early summer.

The first is a series of 12 x 5 minute programmes called 'Ancient Mysteries' which will be a really exciting project to work on, lot's of electronic orchestral combined with ancient instruments & drums. The second project is for a title sequence for a quiz show about quiz shows and I'll be using real brass for that one, that'll be a lot of fun too.

I've spent the last month immersed in two completely different worlds working really long days. By day I'm in the Antartic with Ice Patrol, lot's of drama, loops and electronics and by night I'm with 'Megan & the Dragon' writing light fun orchestral music.

I'm halfway through Ice Patrol and have finished the first of three of the Megan stories. It's fairly full on at the moment but I do get a few days off at the end of April.

Stay busy!!!

Brolly

Belated Happiness

2009-03-10T15:41:00.005Z

I was going to write this on March 1st which is Wales National day but I've just looked up from my pile of work and it's the 10th so a belated Happy St Davids day, hope you did interesting things with your Leeks!

I'm currently halfway through 'Ice Patrol' one of the projects I was pitching for last time I blogged.

It's a 4 x 50' series for 'Five' and 'National Geographic' directed by Martin Kemp & produced by Rosie Kingham. In the series we follow HMS Endurance & her crew as she travels around the Antartic carrying out her duties. The music is a combination of interesting electronic textures, driving loops and electronically realised orchestral stuff with lot's of strings and brass. Very contemporary. It's a lot of work but also a lot of fun.

I've also just received the voice recording for a project I'm working on to encourage young children to jump and leap about.

The three 5 minute stories revolve around a little girl who discovers a dragon egg in her bedroom. The lively and energetic dragon leads them to all sorts of fun. I'll be writing a light, electronically realised orchcestral score for that, sort of a cross between early disney & ravels opera L'enfant et les sortileges.

Stay busy & eat lots of fruit!

Brolly

About the Brollyman Website

2009-02-19T18:15:00.060Z

I spent a long time thinking about what I wanted from the new Brollyman.com, the old one had served me well but it was well past its sell by date. Brollyman had moved on and so had the web. Whatever form it took one thing was for certain, I didn't want boring.

I’m excited about the future convergence of Internet, TV, cinema and gaming etc. if the site could deliver something cinematic in tone whilst retaining the quirkiness that people have come to expect from me I'd be a happy puppy.

Of course it had to work on a simple level too, like a well composed painting it should gradually draw your eye into my world rather than present the headache-inducing mess that Myspace presents (we are in the communication industry after all!)

After a lot of thought I commissioned my close friend Mike Burrett and the guys at Airborne to art direct, animate and code the site, with yours truly providing the score, the level of collaboration between everyone was fantastic!

In terms of the site's look and feel we didn’t want computer game graphics, so we decided against creating everything in 3D software, so real models and objects would be filmed and photographed against blue screen instead. Mike & Rob had loads of fun over the course of constructing, sourcing and filming the assets.

Fresh corn sheaves were procured from a farmer dug up and transplanted to a village hall where some of the shooting took place. Mike's human scale scarecrow was an amazing piece of modelling, a battered old top hat was bought in from a guy in Italy and a set of false teeth from the USA via eBay (see the blog picture slideshow). All the brollies in the final scenes were from my own personal collection. You might have spotted the little legs poking out from under the red brolly at the centre of the home page, these were attached to Rob’s 6 year old daughter, fast asleep at the time of cpature but then it was 1am in the morning. The mountains in the preload screen were shot in North Wales by Rob. All in all a lot of effort and inventiveness went into getting it all to come together.

While Mike focused on compositing the movie element in After Effects, Airborne photographed the other stage props for the opening stage composition followed by weeks of coding and art work compositing in Flash.

One of the most important aspects of the site's function beyond all the good looks and immersive atmosphere was the design and programming of the portfolio section. I wanted an easy way to upload all my own video content into customisable categories without relying on the boys. I got exactly what I wanted with a simple publishing tool they built for me, it completely abated my fears that as a complete novice in the field of web publishing and video encoding I wouldn't be able to cope. With a little training and support I was pretty much able to get everything preped and loaded into the site in a matter of days.

The design of the portfolio was equally important, it had to be responsive and allow people to easily find what interested them. I work for a wide variety of clients with differing requirements and tastes and the nature of the portfolio had to accomodate this. Combined with great playback quality the end result delivered a very effective and quality means to directly present my work and keep it up to date whenever I wanted - fantastic! All without me having to sit across a desk grinning inanely at the client!

If you haven't already, go and have a look at the site I really hope you enjoy it. And if you have any suggestions on how we can improve it in the future don't hesitate to contact us.

Here’s some links for you...

www.weareairborne.com
www.brollyman.com

Welcome

2009-02-19T16:01:00.000Z

Hello and welcome. If you’re new to Brolly’s world you should make yourself a cuppa and chill out over on my main website at www.brollyman.com. If you're interested in my work as a music composer make sure to give the portfolio section a good work out. Regular visitors will find that everything has changed for the better. For the first time I'm able to publish my work as it was intended to be seen and heard and you'll really get a much better idea of the range and style of what we do here at Brollyman Productions. Also the site's really cool!

For those of you who don’t know me or have been out of touch for a while, I’ve just had six months off to be with my wife & newborn son. I needed a break after four & a half years of fairly intensive work - but I’m raring to go again & sick of nappies, so send me your stuff!!

The latest news is that I’ve decided to write an album between jobs. The music will be an equal mix of techno, heavy metal & orchestral which should be fun.

Work-wise, my current commitment is a five minute film with Cyfle which I’ll be putting up on brollyman.com as soon as the project is finished. Brollyman Productions is also pitching for two major projects.