Hope for a Thorn posed an interesting challenge musically. Aside from the score (I went with my go-to composer, the exceptional David Jones, who scored two of my shorts – Life to Go and The Girl Who Couldn’t Dream; you can hear his work in the Thorn trailer), I also wanted a lot of source music, music to be playing in the scene.
As Victoria is very stuck in her memories of a happier time, the 1940′s, I really wanted her house to be filled with the music of that era and earlier (what her mother would have listened to). For my temp music, I used a lot of Billie Holiday, Lena Horne, etc. However, music rights are a tricky business and with our limited budget, there was no way we could afford festival rights to these songs, let alone DVD rights.
This was the single most frustrating piece for me over the last two years, as I was haunted by the question of how to pull this off. I first attempted to find public domain music, but that is also incredibly tricky, as there are multiple rights involved (the song itself might be public domain but a particular recording might not).
Enter David Harper and J4U Entertainment. David and his team of talented musicians, vocalists, writers, and engineers were eager to come on board. They did (what I thought was) the impossible – wrote and recorded original songs inspired by my temp tracks that sound convincingly vintage.
I am thrilled to unveil the new songs to the world at Gasparilla!
Song Credits:
“I Wish You Were Near”
Performed by LaRae Gainey
Composed by LaRae Gainey, David A. Harper, Kenneth Crouch
Produced by Rob Gi’Hana Grissett, David Anthony
Published by Queen LaRae Publishing (BMI), J4U Entertainment (ASCAP) & yesssindeed publishing (BMI)
© 2010 J4U Entertainment
