Cancellation Hearts
In the Winter of '03-'04 I composed the underscore for the film Cancellation Hearts. Directed by Alexis Butler, it is a medium length film running about 70 minutes. Cancellation Hearts follows Marga as she attempts to redefine herself after her lover leaves her and she has lost her job.
Video excerpts
Audio cues
1. Main Title (1:28)
2. Church of the Mind - part 3 (2:26)
3. Bliss (1:36)
4. The Fight (1:07)
5. Mirrors (Bliss II) (0:57)
6. Journeys, Vox Box (2:50)
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Marga is a dreamer, and spends hours watching television. Following these upheavels she begins to see visions in the television of her motel room. They are powerful and threaten to overtake her reality. She fantasizes a life in which she is a rich married woman, with a child—a perfect life.
But even in her fantasy she is lost. Her husband leaves her and threatens to take their child. The crises of the fantasy and the pains of reality from which it springs confront one another in a deep corner of Marga's world. This nether region manifests itself as a run-down laundry, a place with its own rules where the personifications of Marga's identities can see themselves for what they are. To regain her sense of self a sacrifice must be made, but will she choose reality?
To emphasize the humanity and universality of Marga's journey, the score uses the voice as the primary musical element. Predominantly natural vocal sounds comprise Marga's “real” world of the motel. For the televised visions I created sounds by altering vocal sources principaly through an old technique called vocoding and granual synthesis. In the laundry, the real and artificial are combined.
Images and film ©2009 Alexis Butler / Falcon Cove Pictures
All other material ©2010 Charles Gran, all rights reserved.