We don’t Out-Source, we Light-Source.
Definition: Luminary-n. a person who is intellectually brilliant with the ability to educate and inspire others.
We live in what Daniel Pink calls a “Free Agent Nation.” Scores of people have chosen to work independently and on their own terms. Today’s technology allows them to stay connected to us and others through the world wide web. Yet of the many who have made this transition, only a few can create award-winning work—work that’s not only creative, but also effective.
These folks are able to navigate both hemispheres of the brain, the left (or logical side) and the right (or artistic and emotional side).
What results is enlightened communication.
Halo’s founder, Mike Sullivan, was Creative Director of a gazillion dollar ad agency. This allowed him to build one of the biggest, baddest Rolodexes in the world. While we have a core team on staff, our lineup of Creative Luminaries include the best and the brightest from here in the Midwest and beyond. Award-winning writers, artists, designers, producers, directors, composers, PR and media planners, market researchers and strategic thinkers.
For each project, we assemble a custom-built team (think Mission Impossible but with less makeup), and do the one thing huge agencies can’t: Deliver glowing results at low-wattage rates.
Each month we introduce you to someone new to our roster. Please read on:
Luminary Of The Month (May 2011)
Brian Belanger, Music Composer for Film and Video
Brian has more than 20 years of experience writing music for film and television. He sees his approach in very simple terms.
“There’s always a secondary element in a scene,” he says, “something that bonds with the primary element to make it resonate on a greater level.”
He scored a scene for a Halo film that involved hikers walking down a path in the woods, while a mentor spoke to them by walkie-talkie, enlightening them with a spiritual lesson. Brian recalls what triggered his emotive solution:
“All the while, the trees were really rocking back and forth in this terrific wind. It must have been hard to shoot. You could really hear it on the soundtrack. I just found something refreshing about what he was saying over the sounds of the forest in that windstorm, which is a sound that we all enjoy. I scored for swelling strings, in major eleventh chords … and over that I wrote a simple melody for harp and piano in unison, playing very soft and slow. To me, that represented the voice of that man, with the trees playing the chords.”
Those of us who make films often describe the first moment an original score is played with picture as “lifting up” their scene. Halo President Mike Sullivan says, “Brian has this uncanny ability to create that one-plus-one equals three moment. It’s as if we were shooting a scene to live up to his music, rather than the other way around.”
In 2001 Brian was chosen to participate in the ASCAP Film Scoring Workshop in Los Angeles, a prestigious invitation-only event that drew 12 participants from all over the world. He conducted his own work with the Hollywood Studio Symphony on the Newman Scoring Stage at 20th Century Fox.
Recent notable works include the energetic, full-blast score, “Bad Astronomy: Myths and Misconceptions,” a planetarium show for the Detroit Science Center based on the popular book and website by astronomer Phil Plait. The show now plays across the country as well as in New Zealand, Australia and other countries.
In 2008 Brian received a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts to compose the score for “November Requiem”, the award-winning documentary exploring the tragedy that befell a small town in 1958, when that community lost 23 sailors to a Lake Michigan storm. The score recently won a 2009 Emmy Award for Best Original Score.
“What’s so gratifying is that people often compliment the film and the music at the same time,” Brian says. “One lady even told me she plays the soundtrack while painting—images inspiring music, and music inspiring images again, like a circle.”
Twenty years has not dampened his enthusiasm for writing. “I still get butterflies when I play a movie file,” he says. “I react to the scene in a heightened way, crying, laughing, feeling love or joy. Whatever’s up there, the music’s already beginning to play in my head.”
Today Brian writes and produces music for numerous film and television productions in his newly renovated studio.
We’re proud to include him as a key resource that can illuminate your project.
