Theatre, Film and TV Production Projects
We have been involved in many multi-media projects over the years, including recording, audio post production and original music composition for Theatre, Film & TV projects.
For the past five years Offbeat has been creating and editing backing tracks for THE EDINBURGH KINGS THEATRE pantos in Edinburgh for MD Richard Anderson. Rich has now joined Offbeat as our Theatre Film and TV MD and brings a wealth of theatre audio production experience to the company. Rich has arranged all the music for Songs of Sister Act, which is currently touring UK and Europe and was also involved in Shout, The Musical, Little Shop Of Horrors, Dirty Dancing, Grease & Starlight Express. He is an extremely accomplished classically trained pianist and keyboard player and has played with The Beegees, The Supremes, The Drifters, Neil Sedaka, Petula Clarke and many others.
Five years in the making, The Story of Film: An Odyssey covers six continents and 12 decades. It is the adaptation of Mark 
Cousin’s book of the same name, which showed how film-makers are influenced both by the historical events of their times, and by each other. The film visits the key sites in the history of cinema; from Hollywood to Mumbai; from Hitchcock’s London to the village where Pather panchali was shot, and features interviews with legendary filmmakers and actors including Stanley Donen, Kyoko Kagawa, Gus van Sant, Lars Von Trier, Claire Denis, Bernardo Bertolucci, Robert Towne, Jane Campion and Claudia Cardinale.
Mark recorded the audio commentary for all 15 episodes with Iain at Offbeat. Each episode was recorded freestyle by Mark and Iain had the task of painstakingly correcting the recordings and preparing the recordings for inclusion into the film. As well as featuring on More 4 on Saturday nights for 15 weeks, the film featured at The Toronto, Berlin and Sundance film festivals.
In 2002 I was involved in the composition and production of the music for the Performance art show Fulgor in the Algarve. The Algarve’s biggest ever Theatre Arts Performance FULGOR took place in 2002. It took 150 people three months to prepare this one off breathtaking spectacle and it involved 75 performers combining acrobatics, high wire work and dance along with stirring visuals provided by magnificent sets, pyrotechnics and fantastic lighting effects.
The entire show was accompanied by a continuous musical score, written and produced by Beau McClellan and Iain McKinna, which matched the action so perfectly one had the impression of attending a seamless and state-of-the-art ballet. It involved four stages on one hole of a golf course which was torn apart for the event. Performers came from Portugal, UK, Brazil, France and Spain to take part.
A studio was designed by Beau and Iain especially for the event. It took three weeks to create the music from scratch working with several choreographers including Judite Da Silva who created the idea for the show. Judite had drawn sketches on each scene from the show and the music was created from these. The only way to syncronise the music for each scene at the show was to write the tracks longer than were required as it wasn’t possible to predict the length of each scene until the event actually took place, The multitracked recordings, which were created on Logic Audio, were mixed ‘live’ by Iain at the event and was coordinated using walkie talkies from each of the four stages managers.
For the last couple of years we have produced backing tracks for Daisy Chain Associates. Firstly for a performance at the Scottish Parliament which 
featured Ronnie Brown from The Corries in a production called A Saltyre Sky. We were also involved in a great project called Heritage Detectives in which six young people set out to discover the truth behind the fiction of historical stories connected to the capital. Daisy Chain Associates, which is run by Maggie Aitken, commissioned us to record parts of a multi-media presentation in which kids narrated their stories as part of a ‘live’ event at the Scottish Parliament as well as a presentation and short play at The North Edinburgh Arts Centre, Funded by the Heritage lottery.
TAM WHITE and Iain worked together as far back as 1987 where – along with award winning singer/songwriter Sandy Wright – they recorded one of Tams songs “It Cuts Both Ways” at Edinburgh’s Sonic Studios. In 2001 Tam recorded a collection of his own songs on the last album he released entitled ‘Hold On’ before he tragically passed away in 2011. With Iain and his son Paul McKinna producing at the Offbeat studio, three of the songs from that album were featured in director Norman Stone’s feature length movie Mandancin’ .
The album featured some great session musicians including Guitarist Neil Warden and Frank Usher, keyboard player Foss Paterson & Harmonica player Fraser Spiers.
Tam was the very first solo artist to win New Faces in the 70?s and following that he made records with the legendary producer Joe Meek. He then started up Tam White & The Dexters who gigged for many years. Later in life he performed extensively and did a great series of gigs at the Famous Ronnie Scotts In London. He was equally adept at singing Jazz & Blues styles.
Tam was also a well known actor, he appeared on feature films Cut Throat island with Gina Davies and Braveheart with Mel Gibson as well as making TV appearances on Eastenders.
More recently I created & produced music for FIRST LIGHT MOVIES Kids Movie awards at the Odeon in Leicester Square London in 2007. The music was the soundtrack for the collage of films by various young budding directors and actors from all over the UK. Other contributors to the project were Alex Zane, Kate Winslet, Alan Parker, Minnie Driver, Daniel Craig and Bond movie producer Barbara Broccoli.
WATCH SOME SHORT FILMS ABOUT THESE PROJECTS
In 2003 I composed an advert for the drink Aftershock. The promotion was UK wide and consisted of groups of people who did the rounds of pubs and clubs promoting the drink. The music was used as background for the promotion.
I also composed and produced the music for TV ads for Faulds, Halls & Marr Associates. These include Scottish Power, Clydesdale Electrical, Scotland On Sunday & The Edinburgh Evening News & I also produced the music for Historic Scotland.
Offbeat
1/8 Bailie Fyfes Close
107 High Street, Royal Mile
Edinburgh
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