The official trailer of the CG film Sintel has just been released:

Sintel is an epic CG short film currently in production, with an estimated release date in July 2010. Directed by Colin Levy and produced by Ton Roosendaal, it will be the third open movie under the aegis of the Amsterdam-based Blender Institute. I’m responsible for all audio aspects of the movie that range from the film score all the way to the 5.1 re-recording mix.

You can find out more about Sintel on the official production blog and on my references page.

Sintel is an epic tale about a solitary young girl who finds an unlikely companion in the streets of her inhospitable hometown Ishtar. When the friends are ruthlessly torn apart, she embarks on a desperate journey during which she has to face not only deadly perils, but also come to terms with her real vulnerabilities.

The CG short film is the third “open movie” produced by Ton Roosendaal‘s Amsterdam-based media production venture, the Blender Institute. Directed by Colin Levy, it premiered on September 27th, 2010 at Netherlands Film Festival. A few days later it was released for free online and quickly gathered a lot of public attention. To this date, more than a million people have watched it on YouTube (named a “must-see in HD” and featured on the front page by the YouTube staff); it has been featured prominently on sites such as Slashdot, Cartoon Brew, and Reddit.

Download Sintel in a variety of formats (up to cinema-scale 2k resolution with 5.1 sound)

Watch Sintel on YouTube:

Just like with its spiritual predecessors Elephants Dream and Big Buck Bunny, I’ve written and produced the musical score for the film and was responsible of the sound design, foley and 5.1 mixing. For the ending and credits roll of the movie, I wrote a song based on the movie’s main theme, which was performed by jazz/pop singer Helena Fix. At the International Film Music Festival 2011 in Úbeda, Spain, my score for Sintel has won two Jerry Goldsmith Awards in the categories of Best Score for an Animated Short Film and Best Song.

If you want to support the project, please consider pre-ordering the 4-DVD set! It contains not only the movie itself (PAL, NTSC, HD formats up to 2k), but also a making-of feature, lots of commentary tracks from the creators, extensive 3d design tutorials, and not at least all production data that was used to render the film!

After the old wavemage.com website design had been in use for more than seven years – actually, ever since I began working as a full-time composer – and became a bit unwieldy over the years, it was high time to make a fresh start and give the website’s appearance, content and backend a major overhaul. The interesting stuff is still instantly accessible via the header menu, while the only moderately interesting stuff has been radically threwn out. :)

The new site is based on a WordPress CMS backend with a fully customized theme and should be much easier to maintain. It’s all still in beta, so if you find any irregularities (Internet Explorer, I’m looking in your direction!), I’d appreciate if you could tell me about it.