We just finished a very demanding project involving the music, score and sound for indie film Sabungero.

Sabungero is about the game of cockfighting in the Philippines. The main actors are Joel Torre, Ricky Davao and Maritoni Fernandez together with a stellar supporting cast Syd Lucero, Robert Arevalo, Noni Buencamino and Leo Martinez among others. Produced by Sabong.net.Ph – this independently produced movie will be shown at SM commercial theaters in the last week of September.

For the movie’s sound and score, sound co-producer and audio engineer Jonathan Reynera did a lot of re-recordings of sounds and noises by chickens, in cockfighting action, and the sound of the cockpits with people and bettors shouting their bets and reactions before and after a fight. There was also a bit of custom foley sounds recorded to really embellish particular scenes.

For the movie’s music, producer and composer Gerry Diwa decided to take on a blues rock theme that really complemented the movie from the hard hitting cockfighting scenes to the subtle dramatic moments. Orchestral music was also used especially on the emotional parts of the movie. For the orchestral music, Gerry relied on the VSL sample library played via the Kontakt engine. In fact, the Sound Weavers team used a lot of virtual instruments and sample libraries to really beef up the movie’s sonic landscape.

Here are photos of the music and score sessions for Sabungero Movie.

Film music scoring sessions for Sabungero movie. Chester Manalang (PLUG) on electric guitar, Otep Salvagon (Dr. Crowley) on percs, sound engineers Jonathan Reynera and Neil Diokno.

Here is the movie trailer (also scored by Gerry).