I’ve done some music for media, such as commercials, short films and educational videos. Here are a couple of examples, all in Dutch!
Documentary – De Maquettebouwer
I love documentaries, and since I’ve worked on a documentary for the first time I can now also say: I love COMPOSING for documentaries.
De Maquettebouwer Tthe Model Maker) is about Constant Willems, a model builder who built a model of the medieval Dutch city Zutphen as it was in 1485, at a scale of 1:500. It took Willems over 5 years to complete and film maker John Post followed him during that period. We learn about Willems, his work, but also the history of Zutphen. The movie also stars well know archeologists Michel Groothedde, Jeroen Krijnen, historian Maarten van Rossem and was narrated by poet Louise Broekhuysen.
The movie is about 1 hour long and contains over 50 minute of original music composed, performed, recorded and mixed by me. I am a resident of Zutphen myself and a super proud of this project!
Most of the time music has to be “invisible” although some of the cues are very upfront with music and help tell the story in just words. I’ve also written a couple of cello pieces for this score, which were performed by my good friend Manuela Verbeek. Many variations of a leitmotif for “Zutphen” are heard on this instrument throughout the documentary. For the main character Constant Willems I composed a theme on piano. I’m planning on releasing this music on Spotify and other streaming services.
The documentary has premiered in Luxor cinema Zutphen on 29 of April in 2023, and will later be shown Dutch television/streaming in 2023.
The soundtrack won the Monza Film Fest Best Soundtrack award.
For more information, see this IMDB page. Or email info@carstenaltena.com.
Commercials
A series of commercials for De Ridder, for their recruitment campaign. I composed music and created sound effects.
Educational video
I created this score for an educational video about dyslexia. Scoring to animation is challenging, but fun!
Short movies
I participated as composer in a couple 48 Film Project projects, where a team has to make a short movie (5 tot 10 minutes) within 48 hours. It was challenging to come up with original scores for these, but a lot of fun. One of the movies even got nominated for best score.
