Charlie Bare (Doug Gresham in the show/movie) is the man responsible for the Season 1 soundtrack, and he’s gonna be a huge part of the movie. He recently recorded a new song for the movie that he wants to share with everyone; give you all a little taste of what’s coming. And it’s breathtaking. But, you can listen for yourself.

The Sorrow

In light of this, I decided to ask Charlie a few questions about his process and about the soundtracks, and what it was like/is like now. So here we go:

MICAH: What was the writing/recording process for season one and how is it changing for the movie?

CHARLIE: The writing and recording process for the movie was very spur of the moment. I was asked at first to write the theme song for season one, which I was glad to help out with, but as it turned out, songs and melodies started coming out of nowhere. In time, I was writing songs several hours before an episode would air, without any prior preparation. Some of the best recordings came about that way. In the movie however, I’ve planned out the soundtrack in advance, and I’ve given myself plenty of time. (Hopefully with some surprises!)

MICAH: What is your favorite song from season one?

CHARLIE: My favorite song from season one… hmm. That’s hard. I’d say “Their Blood is Upon Them” and “Eternal” would have to be my favorites. Gabby did a great job.

MICAH: Which new song are you most excited about?

CHARLIE: I’m really excited about a song coming out for the movie, in which I’m fusing all of the character themes, and the infamous “Gates of Absolution” together, to make a long, 8-10 minute track. It should be something.

MICAH: You play a lot of instruments on the soundtrack. Which is your favorite to play and why?

CHARLIE: I’ve been playing guitar forever, and it’s definitely been my most loyal instrument, but as of late, I’ve really taken to the piano. I’d say 85% of the songs for the new score were composed on piano.

MICAH: How does your creative process work?

CHARLIE: I’m not sure this is something I can explain verbally in detail. For me, it’s all about letting what’s real come out. What’s real, and inside us, is real for someone else and everyone around us.

MICAH: Who is your biggest inspiration in music?

CHARLIE: My biggest inspiration in music. WOW! As far as Absolution goes, my master in mood music would be Akira Yamaoka, who is the composer of the Silent Hill score. As far as my solo career goes, I’d have to say Cat Stevens.

MICAH: You also acted in the movie. Do you prefer to be in front of the camera or behind the scenes, doing stuff like music?

CHARLIE: I really like being in front of the camera. I fancy myself a decent actor, (for never having taken any classes or anything), but my real love is in the music I make. When I sit down and watch “Absolution”, I’m less concerned with how I look, and more with how the song impacts the mood of the specific scene.

MICAH: What are your plans after Absolution?

CHARLIE: My plans after Absolution are to compose and perform music for anyone willing to create a truly inspirational movie or piece of art.

Look for more music and goodies as we move along in editing, and let us know if you like what you see/here by commenting. Your support is what keeps us going.

Hello there; Micah here. Sorry, it’s hard to see you through all the cobwebs on my screen. I’ll get that taken care of ASAP.

Other things that we’re taking care of ASAP? Uh, the Absolution movie. Yeah, I know, right? Took long enough.

I could list off a million good reasons why it’s taken a year to finally get around to editing this behemoth of a film, such as we’re in school, we have jobs, and Nathan’s developed an eating disorder (whenever someone says the word “edit” he goes into a feedy frenzy; frankly, it’s costing us millions). But really, the main reason it took so long? We needed a break. We needed a chance to step away from the project and let it rest; let our brains rest. We needed to disconnect from it so that we could really look at it as whole, with fresh eyes, and get into the nitty gritty of telling the story we want to tell.

So, here we are, a year later, and we’re finally getting into the swing of things. But believe me guys, we’re going full force into this thing. We’re working on stuff every day right now; Nathan and I have started sequencing the film, Peter’s working on some really cool stuff for the DVD and beyond, we’re all working on extras and pretty much anything that needs doing. We’re all keeping very busy with the Absolution universe. And we will try (famous last words) to post here and everywhere else more regularly to help keep you guys up to date. We have some really exciting things and announcements coming eventually that we can’t wait for you to see.

You guys (especially whoever’s reading this) are our motivator; you’re our life force when it comes to this project. You’re the ones keeping us in business. And we really want to show you how much that means to us. So please stay tuned, tell your friends, get ready: we’ve got a long road ahead of us, but the more support we have from you guys, the better it’ll be.

Thanks so much, everyone, and I can’t wait for you to see what we have coming.

-Micah

You’ve all asked for it and it’s finally here! We finally finished it! Sorry for the crappy credits, we wanted to get it out to you guys as soon as possible. And guess what! You can actually hear it this time!

Absolution Season 2: The Movie from Wish House Productions on Vimeo.

Hey guys, it’s been a bit since there’s been any news here. I just wanted to let everyone know that filming for the most part is completed now. We have one or two days of pick up shots left, but other wise we’re pretty much set. We can finally get to editing this thing and hopefully that won’t take too long (but then again I am talking about us, so who knows).

I’m hoping to update the site soon, but I don’t know what will happen there. We need a new theme and logo, especially for the top of the site.

Otherwise though we’re just trying to get this thing done as fast as possible while juggling our actual lives. With school impending things will get harder to do and this site will no doubt be updated even less, but we’ll do our best.

Hey guys, you’re all probably wondering where the pictures that we told you would be here. Well, for some odd reason the gallery is acting up and it won’t post anything to the editing tool. Chances are it’s Firefox’s fault and I just need to change browsers, so here’s hoping!

Here it is! The first Absolution Season 2 Podcast. The next one’s gonna be coming out a lot sooner, because we have a lot to talk about! But for now, here it is: Season 2 – Episode 1.

Hey guys, as I said in a previous post, we would be doing some sort of blog. While it isn’t daily (we’ve realized that this is impossible), there will be sporadic posts about filming. At the moment though you might be wondering how I had time to write this in the middle of a day of filming. Well, the answer is simple: I’m not filming. I’m currently home because I lost my voice (which is also why there was no podcast last night) and I had a few things at home to take care of, but I resume duties tomorrow.

So, on to the first day. There’s been a change in the way we do things since season one, in the sense that we’re actually organized… to a degree. But Steven Rice, our Director of Photography, was also our schedule manager and put together which scenes we’re going to be filming each day based on location and people’s availability.

So, we started around 4:00 PM, everyone arrived an hour earlier and we needed time to set up and everything, but finally we broke the first shot with both Teddy McCormick and Lauren Bahr on the porch.

From there we continued to film all day at Teddy’s house (or James’ house) for both episodes 1 and 2 of season 2. It went pretty smoothly, all things considered, but we did hit a major snag once, but thankfully we were able to overcome that one, at least, enough to continue filming anyways.

Now on to Day Two. Day two was at the McFarlands Church (the exact name of which escapes at the moment). We also had a ton of extras because we needed to do a bunch of crowd scenes, and also some infected scenes. Surprisingly though, when it came time, it was really easy to go around and direct all of the extras on where to move, how to sit, act, etc.

Today was also first day for our season two cast. Yesterday had been entirely of our original cast (the members that were present at least), so this was interesting time as none of them had acted as their characters before. In the end though, they all did really well and it was fun watching new actors come in for season two.

The infected scenes were pretty good too, though they took awhile because they were action scenes and those definitely take a lot more work. We were also running out of daylight and we still had scenes to shoot with some guards and Charlie. Thankfully we got it all done in time though.

Well, that’s it so far. I’m hoping to get some pictures soon and once I do I’ll be sure to post them.

Hey guys, just wanted to let you know that we’re moving the podcast to tomorrow night. This is for many reasons, the least of which is the fact that we really need some sleep. A lot has gone on today and we’re exhausted. I apologize for the change, but we’ll do our best to put it up tomorrow. As always, leave questions here, or in the podcast thread below.

Sorry guys, I was supposed to post this yesterday but it slipped my mind (so much to do!). But here it is now. The first podcast will be up either tomorrow night or Tuesday (depends on upload times), but feel free to post any question you all might have about Season 2, Season 1, filming, ColdShoulder, or something random. Chances are we’ll be able to answer all of them, so post them in comments section!

Hey everybody! Production on Season Two of Absolution is about to begin! It’s true, on Monday (July 13) we’ll officially begin filming. So before that all started I wanted to give you all a look at what you can expect during the shoot:

Myself, Micah, and Nathan will be doing our best to do a daily blog post here on the site about what we did (with minor spoilers). We’ll do our best to include pictures as well.

Micah and I will be twittering as much as we can, normally through our cellphones. We’ll also include the occasion picture on there. Our profiles are @peter_freeman and @brilliantfilms. So be sure to follow us!

Cast photos. Naturally, we’ll be having new characters enter the show, and like we did for first season, we’ll be putting up promo pictures of them, as well as our returning characters with their “season two” look.

And finally, the thing I’m most excited about is that we will be doing a bi-weekly podcast for the show. You’ll be able to find this on iTunes as well as links to it on the website. We’ll talk about what’s gone on the days before/on the podcast. We’ll also take questions from anyone who posts them on the thread (the first of which will be posted tomorrow in preparation for the first podcast on Monday).

That’s it for now, but once filming is over you can expect more in the ways of clips, spoilers, and possibly even and event or two, so keep your eyes out and wish us luck!

Hey everyone, it’s been awhile since we’ve updated, but we have a good reason! We’ve been hard at work on prepping for season 2 and ironing out the last of the scripts needed.

So, the purpose of this post is just remind everyone that if you have Twitter (and you should, who doesn’t anymore?) then you can follow Absolution’s updates (@Absolutiontv), myself (@Peter_Freeman) or Micah’s (@Brillianfilms). We’ll be no doubt giving mini updates about what’s going on during filming, as well as sharing the occasional set picture.

Absolution: Episode Seven – “Sold” (ROUGH CUT) from Absolution TV on Vimeo.

The final episode of Season 1 of Absolution.

This is a rough edit. The audio in the first half of the episode is very poor, and we are working to fix it.

Hey guys, I just wanted to remind those who haven’t been able to view our videos on the site directly (due to memory on the PC) the episodes, promos, and BTS videos are on our youtube channel.

You can check it out here: Absolution on YouTube

Hey guys, just wanted to wish everyone a happy Easter! Enjoy the holiday!

Ok so it’s been a few days (or maybe weeks) since I’ve posted last. Well, I’m here to give you an update on what’s going on here. To put it simply: nothing. We did try doing ADR work for Episode 7 last week but that was a bust because my computer (which the work was to be done on) wouldn’t recognize the audio stuff that Nathan needed… But we think we have a solution for that now and will be trying again soon, once we find a time that everyone is free.

In the meantime, check out the new ColdShoulder site. It’s still under construction, but I’ll still be posting news on as many things as possible in the entertainment world.

http://www.coldshoulder.org/blog/

Hey guys, I just thought I’d post here to tell you all that we’re still alive. Although, I can’t say we’re hard at work on anything though. The McFarlands are on vacation at the moment, so work has been put on hold until they return. At some point after that, I’m going to do my best to get the audio fixed for Episode 7 “Sold” so I can FINALLY post it on here. I’m just as annoyed as the rest of you that it’s been three months since the party and we haven’t seen it yet. But that’s how it works for us. Work, school, it all takes up time. So… hopefully soon… I’ll do my best.

~Peter

When we released the Absolution Original Soundtrack, we knew some stuff wasn’t done. Maybe we had a song here or there we wanted to tweak, and we let them slide. But some things we couldn’t let go. One of them was the song Bolero In Breeze. There were parts of this song that just didn’t live up to what we wanted them to. This song is a really beautiful piece, and so we didn’t want to leave it the way it was on the album. So, from us to you, here is the edited version of Bolero In Breeze.

We have another song or two that we want to fix from the album. And they’ll all be on here. Because we believe these songs deserve as close to perfection as we can get.

ColdShoulder News Break: Episode 2 from ColdShoulder on Vimeo.

We here at ColdShoulder are SUPER excited about Absolution’s 1-year anniversary! In honor of this special occasion, Peter’s got a special treat cookin’…

In this episode: Absolution anniversary, news about Episode 7, cookies, and a dude gets beat up.

It’s true. Exactly one year ago I sat down at my PC, looked on STEAM, noticed Micah was online, and there Absolution began.

It’s a simple story when you think about it. It kind of went like this:

Peter: Hey.
Micah: Hey.
Peter: You know, we should film something.
Micah: Alright. What did you have in mind?
Peter: How’s about zombies?

And from there we spent the next two hours thinking about characters, setting, and how we would present the story. We decided to do zombies because they’re low budget and easy to do. Then we decided that having the story focus more on the characters instead of the zombie would help us tell a more “professional” story. We also decided on doing seven episodes because we knew the scale of our story would be small and wouldn’t last much longer without us having to use “filler” material, something that Micah and I refuse to use. This way, we had two episodes per act, and the seventh episode as an epilogue and complete ending to Volume 1.

Using the “volumes” was helpful to us as a story telling device. It allowed us to tell a complete story, and finish it within the same “season”. Normally television shows will not end the story until the first episode of the next season. We felt that it was much more fun to end that story, and then tease what was to come for the next season.

Absolution: Before the Spread – Episode 1

Once we had a setting, we started on the characters. We knew we would have our friends playing the characters so we decided to create characters that would best fit the personalities of our friends.

Absolution: Before the Spread – Episode 2

Once we decided who we wanted, we built around them. We’re also very thankful that everyone was willing to act for us. After that, it was off to writing and pulling everything together to make this happen.

During the creative process, we came up the idea to do stand-alone promos for each character. These promos would serve as a sneak peek of what the show is about and a glimpse into the lives of our characters. These turned out well for the most part, and are in my opinion one of the more unique aspects of Absolution.

Our very first promo was the one for Jordan Krause (portrayed by Josh Bouquet). It was filmed sometime during the month of May and officially started us on our journey to fully bringing Absolution to life.

From there we continued to write and film the promos until we got all seven characters’ completed. After Jordan came Doug Gresham’s promo which turned out to be one of our best promos. You’ll notice that the musical tastes within most of them are alike. That’s because we used the Nine Inch Nails album “Ghost” and “The Slip” which were both Creative Commons albums (meaning they were free to use as long as we didn’t sell them).

So as fun as it is to talk about how it was filming them, it will probably be more interesting for you if you watch, so here’s a look at us filming Roeber’s promo:

I have a feeling I used that article title before… Oh well. Anyways, there’s going to be a massive (as huge as I can get it at least) article going on the site today. It will take me a few hours to complete it (and Chemistry doesn’t help either), but it will get done today! It must, because today is a very important day and soon, you will know why.

Keep checking the site!