sucity, Author at Su-City Pictures East, LLC

PraiseMaker News: Alvin Singleton, Composer/Susan Kouguell, Choral Text

January 13, 2012 / sucity / Comments Off

The Alabama Symphony’s annual “Reflect and Rejoice: A Tribute to Martin Luther King, Jr.” will not only honor the legacy of the civil rights icon next Sunday. It will also pay homage to the late Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth, the Birmingham leader who worked with Dr. King in the fight against racial regregation.

ASO assistant conductor Fawzi Haimor will lead the orchestra, along with choirs from Alabama School of Fine Arts and Jacksonville State University. Co-sponsored by the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, the concert will begin with “An American Fanfare,” by Adolphus Hailstork, whose works have been featured several times at ASO concerts.

Mayor William Bell will provide the narration for Alexander Lamont Miller’s “Let Freedom Ring,” a 1998 composition for narrator and orchestra set to the words of Dr. King’s “I Have a Dream” speech. The mayor follows President Bill Clinton, James Earl Jones, William Warfield and Danny Glover in narrating the work. Jonathan Bailey Holland’s “House of Dreams” will be followed by “PraiseMaker,” a work for chorus and orchestra by Alvin Singleton, who has served as composer-in-residence at the Atlanta Symphony and taught at Spelman College in Atlanta.

PraiseMaker News (Alvin Singleton composer, Susan Kouguell, choral text

January 13, 2012 / sucity / Comments Off

The music of Alvin Singleton and Joseph Schwantner plays a major role in the Martin Luther King, Jr. concert tributes this month in Atlanta and Alabama. The Alabama Symphony presents Singleton’s PraiseMaker on January 15, led by Fawzi Haimor.Commissioned and premiered in 1998 by the Cincinnati Symphony for the 125th anniversary of the Cincinnati May Festival, PraiseMaker is a 22-minute work for chorus and orchestra that features texts by filmmaker, poet and frequent Singleton collaborator Susan Kouguell. Fawzi Haimor conducts the event at the Alys Robins Stephens Center in Birmingham, AL – a city historically linked to the Civil Rights movement. Singleton describes PraiseMaker as a “universal, secular and celebratory” work about honoring the past. The title was inspired by the “praise singers” of Africa, who serve as the oral historians and celebrants of the traditions in their communities. A new recording of PraiseMaker was released on the recent Telarc recording The Singing Rooms, performed by the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra with Robert Spano.

ASK THE SCREENPLAY DOCTOR: NEW YEAR’S RESOLUTIONS

January 4, 2012 / sucity / Comments Off

I’ll let you in on a secret — I know what most of my Su-City Pictures East, LLC clients and students are hoping for in 2012:

“This is going to be the year I sell my screenplay!”

If you are among the many aspiring screenwriters who share this same hope and dream, then this is the time to make your screenwriting resolutions!

Ask the Screenplay Doctor: Script Structure

December 3, 2011 / sucity / Comments Off

Structure is the framework upon which your screenplay stands up, and lack of a solid structure — yes, you guessed it — will result in your script falling down, or, in better terms, getting rejected by film industry folks. A solid structure with strong turning points will demonstrate to readers that you know how to craft a savvy screenplay. Succinctly following your protagonist’s journey will enable you to craft a solid structure. Regardless of your script’s genre, careful assembly and construction of each act is imperative to writing a successful screenplay.

Ask the Screenplay Doctor: Behind a Studio’s Closed Doors

November 1, 2011 / sucity / Comments Off

Getting your script submitted to a film studio for consideration is both an exciting and nerve-wracking time, as screenwriters anxiously wait for a response. So what’s really going on behind those studio doors?

Film studios produce, acquire, and/or distribute films. Distribution is where studios really make their money (think about hearing on the radio, seeing on television and reading in most publications about the weekend box-office results). This is often the top news headline on Mondays. But what do those studio job titles really mean and when a script is submitted for consideration where does it go?