Guten Tag, Österreich

When looking at the stats for this blog and for Vimeo, I expected to find that the three countries most interested in To Rest in Peace would be the US, Canada and Kuwait. It's a film made for an american school, by a Kuwaiti who grew up in Canada, about an event in kuwaiti history. But it looks like the country with the second most pageviews after the US, with even more pageviews than Canada and Kuwait, is Austria!

Vielen Dank. Vielleicht sollte ich einige Blogeinträge auf Deutsch schreiben?

It still amazes me how small the world has become in the Internet Age. One day I might get used to the idea and take it for granted. But for now, I'm astounded every time I look at the pageview statistics. The Failaka Island video alone has gotten views from 73 different countries!

Thanks for checking in. And stay tuned. Big news to come.

Best World Song Award

I'm thrilled to announce that To Rest in Peace won 'Best World Song' at the Hollywood Music in Media Awards this week! Congratulations to our wonderfully talented composer Leah Curtis, and all the amazing artists who brought the music to life.

We were also nominated for 'Best Original Score in an Indie, Short or Documentary,' which was won by Christophe Beck for Waiting for Superman. It was an honour just to be in the same category as such an accomplished artist (and an Emmy Award winner!)

Hans Zimmer, whose work was an inspiration to us during the scoring process, won 'Best Original Score in a Feature Film' for Inception.

Leah wrote a great blog post about scoring To Rest in Peace, which you can read here. It explains the music track by track, with links to a SoundCloud playlist. The winning song 'Salamun Salam' can also be seen online in the Failaka Island montage.

Congratulations again to composer Leah Curtis, and all the incredibly talented artists who contributed to the score: vocalist Lisbeth Scott, Armen Anassian and Nancy Roth on violin, Lynn Grants on viola, Mary Anne Steinberger on cello, M. B. Gordy on percussion, Chris Bleth on duduk, Dean Parks on oud. Plus music consultant and contractor Alan Steinberger, scoring assistant Karim Elmahmoudi (fellow USC alum!), music editor Dave Lawrence, recording engineer Charlie Paakkari, and scoring mixer John Rodd.

Congratulations also to sound designer Chris Whetstone and re-record mixer Valen Hernandez, who integrated the score beautifully into the sound design of the film. And finally, a special thank you to Dr. Lisa Urkevich who consulted with Leah to help create the feel of Kuwaiti music, and my parents, Faisal Al-Matrouk & Mona Al-Kazemi, who provided the arabic lyrics.

Failaka Video

In January of this year, To Rest in Peace went to Kuwait to shoot b-roll footage. Most of it was shot on the Island of Failaka, which was completely abandoned for twenty years after the Gulf.

As we were boarding the ferry back to Kuwait, we saw tow trucks arriving on the island. You might remember this story from the January post, "News from Kuwait". They were there to remove the abandoned cars, in preparation for a complete demolition of the neighbourhood.

We were haunted by the realization that the footage we had was the last visual record of this moment of history, frozen for twenty years.

With that in mind, I decided to make this video. Some of the unused footage of Failaka is intercut here with the song "Salamun Salam" from To Rest in Peace, which is nominated for Best World Music Track at the Hollywood Music in Media Awards (in a couple of weeks!)

The footage was color corrected by Sean Conaty.

Crossing the Gulf

There's a nice little high speed ferry to Failaka. It has luxury seating, and takes about 45 minutes to cross the gulf. It does not, however, take cars.

So... in order to get our 1989 black mercedes over for filming, we had to take this beast of a ferry, which took almost two hours. There was a long lineup of cars, and you had to get there early in the morning, to make sure you found a spot.

It was well worth it, though. The mercedes was both a good platform for getting the background plates for the green screen shots, and a perfect match for the mercedes we had filmed in Los Angeles.

This will be a busy week, with picture lock coming up soon. Next post will report on a small test screening we're having today. Until then...

There's always time for giant chess...

How can you resist a giant chessboard?

Sean and I stopped for a quick game of chess on Failaka. After a few moves, though, the novelty wore out, and the itch to go filming got too big. So, unfortunately, I can't report on a winner. (There was a moment when my king was in check, but we won't talk about that...)

The cut is coming along nicely. This week we'll be showing it to the project mentors for feedback. Once those notes are addressed, we'll be having a small test screening, before we lock. Updates to come.

Progress

Footage from Kuwait is being integrated into the cut of To Rest in Peace. I must say, I'm absolutely thrilled with it.

There's still work to be done on the cut. Once we picture lock, there's sound design, visual effects, music composing and, finally, the color correct and sound mix. But now that the footage is all there, we can see the finish line ahead!

Thanks to everyone who's kept up with the blog, and sent me comments. As of today, the blog will get a weekly update. This will include a progress report on the film, and maybe a little story about production or post-production.

The picture here is from the police station in Failaka. Sean Conaty (the DP) and Ali Younis (the 1st AC, and major producing help) stand under a blast radius on the wall. The building was riddled with bullets and debris from the first days of the invasion. It's haunting to stand there and think of what these marks meant for the people who fought there.

Until next week...

News from Kuwait

2nd unit production is wrapped!

We filmed for five days on the Canon 7d, capturing b-roll footage of Kuwait. This will mainly be used to replace greenscreens for the driving shots, but we also captured some establishing shots and transitions.

Two days were spent on the island of Failaka, which was like entering a time machine. The entire neighbourhood is a ghost town, left as it was during the occupation, twenty years ago. There were cars in the driveways, and houses pock marked with machine gun fire. One wall had graffiti declaring a "Free Kuwait". Another was marked by soldiers, taunting that "this will be the mother of all battles".

It was a strange journey, made even more haunting by what we discovered as we were leaving. We saw trucks towing the abandoned cars out to the ferry. The very next day, it turned out, they were going to demolish the old houses. We managed to film there just in time.

Thanks to everyone who made this trip so joyful and productive. Sean Conaty, who shot hours of beautiful footage. Ali Younis, who gave generously of his time and equipment, acting both as 1st AC and production manager during the Failaka trip. Abdullah Al-Matrouk, who managed our last day of production, and doubled as an actor. Esam Al-Kazemi, Mohammad Al-Qattan, Abdulaziz Al-Mobailish, Haider Al-Mosawi, my dad Faisal Al-Matrouk, and everyone else who gave their passion and support to this project.