Choosing and sourcing Songs

Hello Ancient Lighters,

For the past months we’ve been listening to a lot of songs, trying to come with a good “Soundtrack” list. We have good choices so far but haven’t finished the list. It’s been hard trying to narrow our almost 30 songs to only 10.

There are some points we have that we’re using as guidelines when listening songs such as:

• Meaning of the lyrics.
• Rhythm of music.
• Author(s)
• Artist
• Record Label
• Year

It’s important for us to have powerful music. We’re looking for songs that preferably talk about loving yourself, empowering teens, love without judgment, being strong, anti-bullying, etc. Hence why the lyrics are so important.

So, why are we looking into Record Labels and such? Simply, because we need that information to acquire (or try to) the rights to use the song and since in our “perfect” list we have some big names like Christina Aguilera, Katy Perry, Lady Gaga and Demi Lovato to name a few, we need to have everything prepared before approaching the record label.

Once we get answers from their Record Label, we approach the publicist, the writers, artist and other person who might get rights to the song. Sometimes, you get lucky and the record label has all the final power to say yes or no to your request. Sometimes, you need to spend, hours, days and weeks over the phone and email, before you can get to the right person. And sometimes….well, you don’t even hear back from them.

But don’t worry! We’re also looking outside and into the indie scene. We have secured a song from the talented and always beautiful Tonye Aganaba, we’re in talks with the amazing and talented Natalye Vivian (from Whiskey Jane) to record an original song for us and we’re approaching soon Jen Miller, Kyla Cambell and Monika kon K.

You might have noticed there, that so far, we only mentioned girls…. though it would be amazing to have a 100% female soundtrack, we have some boys there we want to approach for collaboration like: Six Figgaz, Scatterheart and Macklemore,

As well, there are a few Latin names we would like to approach some indie some well known like Ivan Guevara, Ricky Martin. Marcelo Treviño, Gloria Trevi and Jessie & Joy.

So you can see, we have a big and crazy road ahead of us trying to get our soundtrack list ready. And while we still decide if they Soundtrack will be as well on sale or if it just going to be strictly for movie purposes, we’ll keep enjoying really cool music from such amazing singers!

Until Monday AL’ers!

Love!

AL Team

 

Three is a lucky number

Hello, hello.

It’s been a little since we updated this space! We apologize for our absence, there are a lot of things that needed to be taken care of immediately, but we’re back now!. Now, to let you know what we were up to:

1) We have the 3rd Draft ready – after getting the notes from our Story Editor Mariana Perez (grad from Writing for Film & Television at VFS), writer and producer Sandra took a few days to lock herself down in an office and finish the draft. The story has grown into a more mature and strong version of what was Draft 1!

2) The visual concept for Ancient Lights it’s currently in the Brainstorming Room. Director Chris, Production Designer Claudia and Producer Sandra will meet this Thursday to discuss and decide the look for our Fantasy World.

3) Casting! – During the next days a bunch of things are going to happen: choose sides for actors, write and post a Casting Call, book rooms, create a schedule, grab some snacks and get ready to see all the talent Vancouver has!. Once we have our actors selected, we’ll be announcing them here!

4) Crew – so far we have almost all of the Heads of Department attached and we’ll be introducing them to you in the upcoming days.

5) We have launched the Spanish and Portuguese section, so we can reach more people. French is soon to come!

We’re so excited with the project and we can’t wait to keep sharing news and information. Thank you all for all your support!!

Love

AL Team

Pitching, meetings, editing and more

Hello, hello!!!

It has been a good week! We hope everybody had a good Easter break! We for sure had some busy but good days.

First of all, we want to say that we’re really happy with the response from the public to our project!! We have received very good comments towards the story and encouraging words. We couldn’t be happier with all the support we have received so far.

Now, you probably knew this past week we had a presentation with the Entertainment Business Management Program at Vancouver Film School. This Friday the 13^th (know to be of bad luck, but not for us!) we went and presented the project and invited them to collaborate with us. We had a good response and now we’re proud to say and to welcome on board students from the current classes (14’s, 15’s and 16’s) we’ll introduce them soon and let you know the ways they’ll be collaborating with us!

As well, we would like to introduce our Story Editor: Mariana Pérez, a grad from the Writing for Film & Television Program at VFS. We’re sure that her amazing talent and enthusiasm will enrich our story!

The past weekend we went and record a little video for our Fundraising Campaign (you could watch it tomorrow Monday April 16^th at our Indiegogo site!) and despite the cold weather we had some fun. We even have some bloopers that will be part of our Behind the Scenes Video.

We also just started to upload our information and advance of the project in Spanish (currently just on our Facebook page, but coming soon here) and will add more languages soon!

And lastly but not least, we already did the first approach to some anti bullying and GLBT associations and we hope to hear soon from them.

This week promises t be full of meetings, writing project charters and project plans (we bet our fellow EBMers are well acquainted with those ones!) some scouting of locations ad lots, lots of press releases and social media content, so be sure to visit us often as we’ll be updating with lots of info and surprises.

Thank you so much and have a good week!

The Ancient Lights Team