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SUNFISH Written by Sierra Falconer, Sunfish (& Other Stories on Green Lake) marks the filmmaker's directorial debut. The anthology drama debuted at the Sundance Film Festival in January and is set around Green Lake in northern Michigan. The film has four chapters: "Sunfish," "Summer Camp," "Two Hearted" and "Resident Bird." It stars Maren Heary, Jim Kaplan, Karsen Liotta, Dominic Bogart, Tenley Kellogg and Emily Hall. Marcus Patterson served as cinematographer and Chelsi Johnston edited the project, which fea- tures original music by Brian Steckler (pictured). Here, the composer (www.briansteckler.com), who is based near Sacramento, CA, shares insight into his process creating the original score. Brian, take us through one of your days working on this project. What is your process when creat- ing a score? "I typically work from the beginning of the film to the end once I've watched it all the way through, spotted the music cues with the director, and talked through the general style, tone and sometimes instrumentation. But in the case of Sunfish, I knew I wanted to create a melodic theme to represent Green Lake that would appear in each vignette to help highlight the connection each story has to the lake. So, I wrote that theme for one of the later cues in the film, and then once that was in place, I went back to the beginning to write each cue consecutively. "Initially, I wrote the cues with virtual instruments, knowing they would all be replaced down the road with the real thing once I had approval from Sierra. I played the guitar, ukulele and piano myself, and hired some great players for the violin solos and string quartet parts." How would you describe the score and where does it compare to some of your past work? "The Sunfish score is fairly minimalistic. It reminds me of some of the chill indie-folk records I've worked on over the years as a record producer. And it's very different than the batch of dark thrillers I've scored more recently. The thrillers have almost non-stop music that really heightens the tension as much as possible, and can be very big and dramatic. Sunfish, on the other hand, has a fairly sparse score that heightens the emotion with a pretty light touch. It's rare that more than two instruments are playing at a time, the exceptions being the string quartet and some of the more action-oriented cues in the vignette about the fisherman trying to hook the big fish." Can you talk about working with the production sound and the live musical performances? "Sierra had the good idea to use a piece of on-set audio from the 'Summer Camp' vignette, played by one of the very accomplished student violinist actors (Giovanni Mazza) in the big fishing scene in the following vignette. It's an emotional callback that links the emotional states of the two lead characters together. Technically, it was tricky because not only did it need to time out perfectly for the scene, but also because the on-set audio needed to be supported by a new score and then continue beyond the length of the on-set audio recording to lead back to the Green Lake theme to wrap up the vignette. I was fortunate that the violin recording from the set was captured well enough that making the transi- tion to the studio violinist was smooth with a little EQ and room matching. "As far as integrating with the film's sound design in post, I was careful to leave room for the film's mixer to massage the music's space if it was needed. I delivered both a stereo mix and a set of stems." How much of the final score was developed in the studio versus being shaped or refined during the editing process? "I was fortunate that Sierra and (editor) Chelsi Johnston had a very nearly-locked cut ready for me when I was brought in to start working on the score. By the time I was recording the live instruments, the small changes in the cut weren't big enough to affect the score cues." What's next for you? "I would love to work with Sierra on anything she's doing in the future, and her future is bright after premiering her film at Sundance. In the meantime, there are some projects in the works back in the thriller/mystery genre, and I'd love to do some sci-fi. That's definitely my favorite genre to watch, and I think it would be really fun to play in that world as a composer. "Thanks for the opportunity to talk with you! The Sunfish (& Other Stories on Green Lake) soundtrack is available now to stream everywhere you listen to music, and I can be found at bri- ansteckler.com (and) @briansteckler on Instagram, Threads and Facebook." Remember Me Remember Me is a live-action short about 40-year old Claire, who recently got dumped and moved back home to take care of her dying father. Claire now decides it's time for her to go on a date. The project was written and directed by Claire Titelman, an actor, filmmaker and comedian whose appeared in Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire, Parks and Recreation and I've Got Issues, as well as on Chelsea Lately. Titelman is also the short's principal character. Remember Me was shot by cinematographer Steve Collins, who describes the project as a "less-typical" story. "The film was made with no crew, no script and no money as an artistic exercise to process some of the feelings director Claire Titelman was going through, having spent the past seven months moving back to her childhood home to help with her father's dementia," Collins reveals. "She very much wanted to make a piece, but was short of money, so we conceived of something that could be handled by just the two of us." Collins teaches film at Wesleyan University and used the same cameras he teaches with — the Canon C200. "They have great versatility," he notes. "You can shoot UHD on a small SD card or raw on the larger C-Fast card. They're light enough for a one-person crew situation, but they're adaptable if you want to build them out into more of a professional rig." In the case of Remember Me, the project began with the idea of shooting improvisations that would help Titelman figure out the story's shape. "We weren't sure what it was yet, only that it would be her going out on a date, while overshar- ing her experience with the long goodbye of taking care of someone with dementia," he recalls. "We kept our tools very basic. I used the zoom lens that comes with the camera and shot in the UHD mode to make the workflow simpler. We had a boom on a c-stand and a wireless mic patched into the cam- era. The whole thing was lit with two 1x1 Litepanels, and I was able to keep at the 850 ISO the camera is rated at. When Claire started improvising, the material was so riveting we immediately had more ideas about where it would go and roughed out an outline for a short film." In hindsight, Collins notes that if they had planned to screen at Sundance, he might have pushed to get C-Fast cards and shot raw. "Our lo-fi approach ended up contributing to the intimacy of her performance," he shares. "The film has a very confessional quality to it, and you can't have a big crew in a confessional booth!"