And then there were... none.

For four friends, two strangers and a captain on a sailboat cruise their worst fears come true. One by one each of the seven people aboard a sailboat cruise begin to disappear.

A murderer is among them, or is it one of them? Or could it be the mysterious boat that is following them. There are rumours of modern pirates in these waters.

Soon everyone will discover the truth - or they will die trying.

Sea of Fear was shot on location off the coast of Marina Del Rey, California, in November 2003. Most of the scenes were filmed on a 60 foot sail boat.

In July 2004 the actors had to go back to the studio for some additional dialogue recording of a storm sequence as well as one scene on the beach, where the noise of the LAX air traffic interferred with the filming. The looping was done at the Warner Bros. studio in Burbank, California.

The production of the film was completed in August 2004.

Scoring "Sea of Fear"
By Brandon Roberts

I spent a total of two months developing thematic material, writing, and then recording the score for 'Sea of Fear."

Andrew Schuth, the director, was a pleasure to work with and gave me nearly complete artistic freedom. I think we hit it off quite well at the beginning because we seemed to have similar ideas on the way the score would work in the film fundamentally.

There was a lot of preparation and discussions about the best ways to do the recording because of limited time and funds, however, in the end I believe everyone was quite pleased with the results.

The score was recorded at Warner Brothers studio over two days in July and then mixed over four more days. It was a very interesting ensemble of live players including vocal soprano, whispering voices, and bizarre techniques incorporated with traditional orchestral instruments.

"There was even a six hour long recording session by Disciples of the Abstract Sound as a preliminary sampling session from which to draw and create strange new sounds for the score.That recording session implemented guitars, percussion, Tibetan bowls, chanting and singing, and tape loops and was almost entirely improvised. Later, the recording engineer, Steve Kaplan, went back and manipulated many of the sounds so they could be used as spooky background elements in the score. There are a lot of subtle, subconscious manipulations occurring throughout the score including whispering of the pirate song (which one of the actors says at the end of the film) with delays using surround sound mixing.

In total, there was about 50 minutes of score and it weaves its way through a series of blues, rock, and almost folk-like songs throughout the film which work wonderfully with the picture. I very much liked the use of the songs for the montage sequences or the moments when the score segues directly into (or from) a song. All in all, it was a pleasure working on 'Sea of Fear' and I am very proud of my contribution to the film.

Brandon's music was orchestrated by Tim Davies.

© Brandon Roberts & www.kierenhutchison.de, 31 August 2004