Danny's Bicycle

‘Danny’s Bicycle’ is the love child of my master thesis ‘Fantastic Music’. In my thesis, I analysed the music of one of my favourite film composers, Danny Elfman, and tried to extract the essence behind his powerful and compelling scores. I later wrote an original story, and used what I had learned from my analysis to compose the “images” to it. The result is an imageless film. “What?”

Ambition might have many faces; greed being one of the most recognisable ones. My ambition, however, is of a much more humble nature: I want to make people SEE music. “What?”, yes, literally what you just read. “But how can I see something that can’t be seen?” Well, we actually see with our brains, not with our eyes, which is why we see our dreams while we sleep. Following this basic principle, I decided to try to use music as a means to “tickle the right pickle” in our brain, and stimulate it in such a way that we can actually SEE an imageless story. But don’t just take my word for it, you have to “hear it to believe it!”

Jurre Haanstra, artistiek leider COMPOSING FOR FILM: Naast componist is Nelson Ogliastri ook een geboren (senario)schrijver, zo is mij gebleken. Zijn in eigen beheer vervaardigde demo film van zijn aanstekelijke animatieproject "Danny's Bicycle" eindigde recentelijk tijdens een prestigieus BUMA/STEMRA-project op de tweede plaats. Het beeld bevat de vertelling alleen nog in tekst, maar kan de suggestieve en prima geproduceerde demo van Nelsons orkestpartituur maken het verhaal bijna zichtbaar. Als dit veelbelovende filmscenario in productie kan worden genomen en Nelsons orkestrale score met live musici kan worden opgenomen, zal dit multidisciplinaire project op overtuigende wijze de kracht van muziek als verhalenverteller onderstrepen.

Tessa Rose Jackson: My name is Tessa Rose Jackson, I am a performing artist and composer with years of experience in the field of music for advertising and film. I was recently on the panel for the Buma Music in Motion Award, and selected Nelson Ogliastri’s ’Danny’s Bicycle’ as my preferred winner. To me, the film was an ambitious showcase of independent story-telling and a demonstration of technical musical skill. To be able to tell a story vividly and engagingly using only music, to me, is innovative and rare. Ogliastri made skillful use of the many different timbres in his orchestration to enhance the different characters in his story, keeping the piece dynamic in emotion and tension. Not only is the work technically refined, but the choice of medium is inspirational. In omitting any type of visual imagery, Ogliastri is taking musical independence to a next level. It crosses over to different media platforms to show that music can also be visual. I’d like to see more works such as this pop up in our current media climate, as I think it really highlights the power of music as a storytelling tool in itself.