Emil Levasseur

Jesse approached me about doing a 48 hour film festival. He was SURE I would win ‘best musical score’!!
The project was really fun. He had me watch the film Thing and then he sent me the script / story board and I started writing music to match with the story, planning to trim the music to fit the locked picture!!

It was a different process than usually scoring a film, where you have a temp track, cues, and are asked to write songs and certain parts ahead of time. Rather than an extended and protracted discussion over time, this project evolved quickly and was all coming together concurrently, where I had to deliver the final score in time to export the audio for the deadline!! It was a BUSY two days but we’re really stoked with the result!

I put up an artist page on Facebook and about 24 hours later I got a message from a film student studying in Detroit. He asked if I’d be willing to score a live action film and of course, I said absolutely!!
It was a super fun project. I got to write a cheezy song for it and I really enjoyed using music to try and enhance the narrative of the film!!

Ricky Tang needed a score at the last minute and I was in the process of building a new computer. (I almost lost the recorded singers for Ragen because of an incompatible audio driver)
I was living in Winnipeg finishing my degree, but I was visiting Toronto and I went to Sheridan to see the animation students. I spoke with Ricky Tang in person and he told me about how he loves videogame music and anime music, and how he loved the battle music from Greed Island in the Hunter X Hunter 2011 anime. (I watched Gon battle the bomber many times, and then watched the whole anime…)

https://vimeo.com/anthonimation/scrapmetal?share=copy

This was the project that started it all. Christos Hatzis pushed me to enrol in the ‘composing for film’ course at the U of T.
I made a demo reel and Anthony Straus liked my sound and wanted to work with me. He told me he wanted the film score to sound lo fi like an old monster movie! I went for this faux 20th century aesthetic!!

The oboe was recorded in a hallway at U of T and the trumpet and trombone were recorded by my friends at UBC and they sent me the audio!!

https://vimeo.com/qinghan/nightlight?share=copy

No one chose me from Sheridan College this year, much to the surprise of my friends in the program.
Then Bruno Degazio contacted me and said there was a student who needed a composer because she wasn’t able to attend the meet and greet. He recommended me, and I am thankful. I would usually get courted by animators who had dark topics in the film and wanted something broody, angry, or aggressive.
This film was completely different!

When I started the project, Qing Han told me that she had a large following on Deviant Art and online in general. Qing Han had created a temp track using Asian Dream Song by Joe Hisaishi so I use this as a reference and created something quite similar. Little did I know that this film would be my most viewed musical composition ever, and that it would lead to me working with Jesse McAnally!

https://vimeo.com/sprogis/ragen?share=copy

The last of the Sheridan thesis films I scored. Writing something in the style of Alexandre Desplat was not on my bingo card. But, it was a super cool musical reference. When the composers at the U of T were being interviewed by students, Dan Sprogis told me he wanted something like this, but darker and more evil! I told him I was up to the challenge. He told me later that he almost didn’t choose me because I seemed ‘over confident’ but that I ‘definitely delivered’!