Teaming up with Sci Fi Channel creative director Joe Loskywitz on the two-and-a-half week project, Rice created the music which served as the inspiration for the project. Motion graphics by Plus Et Plus and editorial by Bionic Media followed Rice’s track and voiceover mix.
The theme of the ‘06 Umbrella promo celebrates the imagination of the Sci Fi Channel viewer. After an initial phone call with Loskywitz, Rice came up with the melodic line of an “unanswered question.”
Working on Apple’s Logic Pro 7, Rice scrolled through Sculpture, a synthesizer plug-in, to help define the soundscape of his score.
”I always find a fresh sound in Sculpture, something I haven’t imagined before. I love the way it uses textures and modulates sounds,” he says. Then Rice went to samples in the Vienna Symphonic Library, which he calls “my ghost orchestra,” to orchestrate the track. “I used tonalities that were open to interpretation to keep things sounding not suspenseful but optimistic and hopeful,” he explains.
Rice then devised the drum rhythm, using raw samples of different types of drums, to approximate the Brazilian samba school.
As the motion graphics were created and revised, Rice was required to rewrite the corresponding music. “If I wasn’t working in Logic it would have been impossible,” he says. “It was a matter of keeping up with each change and re-orchestrating the effect.”
Rice also recorded the voiceover by 15-year-old Valentina D’Angelis.