Last year in August when I was passing out flyers I met a guy in front of JR Settsumotoyama Station who seemed interesting and was interested in what I was doing. It turned out that he was a recent graduate of the Paris Conservatory of Music and had won a gold metal in classical piano. He was kind of the “proverbial” onion with many layers. As you peeled off one layer it exposed another interesting layer. To start with he was almost two meters tall and had long black hair and always preferred to wear black clothes. He wore his hair tied back in a pony tail. His name is Skander which he explained to me is the Tunisian version of Alexander. So named after Alexander the Great, he started his life in Tunisia as the son of a Tunisian father and Belgian-Swiss mother and has since lived in Tunisia, Saudi Arabia, Belgium, France, England and Florida. So through his travels he has learned many languages and dialects and can easily switch between American English and British English. His greatest love is music and he’s working towards becoming a composer for movies, documentaries and video games. He is an extremely talented musician and composer and knows PC’s inside and out. He has built many PC’s and knows what is needed to run intense applications such as music composition and graphics software.
His latest project is one to make a movie using Everquest II to take the footage and then he edits the pictures with a movie creation software and adds the music, sound effects and voices to create the movie. Take a look at his trailer “Blind Souls” on You Tube. I have listened to some of the final music for the full movie and it is extremely intricate and interesting with Arabic overtones and great emotion.
Blind Souls Trailer (coming actually around Q4 2008)
I am looking forward to the full 30 minute movie which I think will come out later this year. So stay tuned and I will let you know when Skander’s film is ready for viewing.
Have fun!
Al Bartle (Smith’s School of English – Okamoto)
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