This week has been really busy. Since putting the advert up on Monday, on the websites Mandy.com and TalentCirlce.net, I have been inundated with replies. Every morning when I opened my email, there would be at least 40 emails waiting for me. I have had applications  from all over the world. From Spain, America, Africa, Israel, etc. A lot of the applicants were from composers and not many from sound designers.

All the emails I received from each applicant, there would be a link/s to samples of their work. On average there were ten samples, and each one at about the 3 minute mark. That was a lot of music to listen to. And as I listened to the samples more emails would come in. I was determined to give everyone a fair chance to impress me and not to accept the first one that did. A good idea in theory, but a helluva lot of work.

I had 2 request from composers, who asked if they could compose a new music track for the teaser trailer. I thought that it was a great idea and I agreed to it. They were both very quick at sending me their work. They were both interesting, but I felt there weren't right for the film. One of the tracks I found quite amusing. It sounded like it had came straight out of 'The Matrix'. I am going to ask the composer's permission to put the track up with the trailer on the internet, so everybody else can enjoy it.

On Thursday, I took the 2 adverts down. I had some many applicants to choose from, that I didn't need any more. But this didn't stop the emails coming in. Another site, called 'Cuesheet' had copied my advert and put it up on their site. Now I hate when other websites do this. I hate it because you as the advertiser have no control over it. I had the same thing happen to me with an advert I put up for scripts wanted and a couple of scriptwriting based websites decided to put the advert on their sites. I wrote to the site I could find, the other one I could find after an intensive search, and asked them to take the advert down. I wasn't looking for scripts anymore, as I had found the one I wanted make. I never got a reply from them. They never took the advert down. And to this day I still get enquiries about scripts.

The composer I decided to go with in the end is Jon H. Orten. The thing that made him stand out from the crowd wasn't that he had a load of credits. He didn't have a flashy website. He didn't have a lot of samples. The thing that impressed me was the fact that he sent me music that he written for the film. I liked some of the music, not all of it, but he was open to suggestions and feedback. I was also impressed at the speed he was able to produce the music. It reminded me of how quickly Ben Woodiwiss writes scripts. I felt from that first email that we had already started to work together. We arrange to meet at the end of the week.

I met Jon on Saturday, he lives in London, and we sat down and watched the film. As the film played, I would talk about music and where it should go. Though a lot of the time I said nothing and let Jon watch the film. Once the film was finished, we further discussed ideas for the music. We talked about experimenting with different instruments, styles and sounds. They reassured me that I had made the right choice. I had a bit of doubt that I had made the right choice, you always do, but after our meeting all my doubts went away.

I have also made my decision on which sound designer to work from. As I said, there wasn't many to choose from, but this in it's self made the job a lot easier. The standard of applicants was very high. The samples that I looked at were all very good, but you could tell they were sound designed. Yet with Marcelo Fossá's work, you didn't notice it. My favourite piece of work he designed was a short called "The End Of Summer" (http://www.marcelofossa.webs.com/). It was a computer animation and the sound design was beautiful. There was no dialogue, just the sounds of the sea, the empty town and the approaching storm. There was no production sound, well no that I could tell, it was all sound design and I though it was amazing. I got to work with this guy, so I sent Marcello an email straight away.

We arranged to meet on Saturday, straight after my meeting with Jon, at the Curzon Soho. The cafe, by the main entrance was heaving, but the bar downstairs wasn't. We sat downstairs, with a couple of beers, and got talking about the film. Now I thought the meeting would only take an hour, but three hours later we were still talking. We talked about other films, music, how we both got into the industry, and soundtracks. We got on like a house on fire.

At the end of our meeting, I passed Marcello a copy of the film on DVD. I am really happy to have him on board. All I need to do now is send him a OMF file and all the audio files, so he can start working on the film as well. I have burnt them onto a DVD-R and popped it into the post. Marcello should receive it tomorrow.

I have also received 10 tracks of music from Jon. I have played them over the film, to their corresponding timecode and emailed Jon my opinions. He is now currently makes the changes I asked for and I just waiting for the next lot of tracks to come in.