"Alice D" was recently honored with the award for the best horror film in the IFS Film Festival. The film will be screened this May 29th at the Laemmle's Music Hall 3 in Beverly Hills.
Directed by: Jessica Sinneborn 
Produced by: Christopher Maltauro - Kristina Hammond
Music Score by: Carlos Vivas.

Trailer click here.
Watch clip here!

As part of my new demo reel I decided to re-score one of Warner Brothers classic cartoons, it turned out to be a fun experience.
Animation is one of the most interesting and complex genres to score in film music. The way composers today score cartoons has substantially changed compared to the golden age of animation in Hollywood (early 30's to late 60's). But one thing still remains true, and that is the fact that this style is really fun to score!

Here is an example of what in film music we call "Mickey-mousing" music as close to the action as possible; a style particularly popular in the early days of animation.

I just finished the music score for the supernatural horror film "Alice D" a film directed by Jessica Sonneborn produced by Christopher Maltauro and Kristina Page. The film features beautiful photography by Eric Latek. 

Storyline:
In the early 1900's the Davenport House was a famous and successful brothel, until a young prostitute named Alice killed herself there.  After her death, the brothel became haunted by Alice's ghost, and was eventually abandoned.
One hundred years later, the old structure is renovated into a beautiful mansion.  It is still rumored to inhabit the ghost of Alice.  Despite this, the new owner; the rich and arrogant heir to the Davenport fortune, decides to throw a wild party for his first night in the house.

Jessica's idea form the beginning was to score the movie with beautiful, elegant, yet creepy music that would reflect Alice's personality. Her past as a defiant forced prostitute is represented by a melancholic piano melody accompanied by low strings. Her present as a wild ghost is represented by strong atonal contemporary harmonies showing up her fury, a goal we feel was successfully achieved. 
In my opinion this movie is an example of how far filmmakers can go when passion and love for good movie making are combined. 

I was recently commissioned by Elvis Lemus, CEO of LC Cargo Express (USA), to produce the TV Commercial for his company.
My job was to create, not only the 3D animation and visuals, but the Music and Sound Design for this commercial, which is part of the company's new marketing campaign.

IPi Soft LLC, developer of marker-less mocap software just honored me as the winner of their November animation contest for my film "Gas Station" A Horror Night!
Ipi Soft was the software I used to record and re-target all the motion capture animations of my characters in the film. I've been using this program for almost two years and I'm more than satisfied with the results. I'm currently working on more projects that involve Ipi Soft.
Thank you Ipi Soft LLC for such an honor!!
See the winning announcement Here
Watch "Gas Station" Here

Behind the scenes of  my new animated  film "Gas Station" A Horror Night! It  took me about 4 weeks to complete this 3D animated short including modeling, animation, rendering, compositing, music scoring, sound design and final editing.
The idea came to me on a visit I made to my dentist 20 days before Halloween, something triggered my mind when I saw the waiting room of the clinic filled with creepy Halloween decorations, the horrible sounds of my dentist's instruments on the patient before me, and the very high gas prices
around those days here in Los Angeles inspired me to create this short...Enjoy!

Here is my new 3D animated short film "Gas Station". A little reminder for those who like to drive around with a low gas tank.
For this animation I used traditional key-framing and motion capture techniques to create this little terrifying story.
For the music score I chose to mix harmonies of traditional horror film music blended with a little modern touch...Enjoy!

An animated tribute to a dear friend who has recently passed. Jairo Varela (1949-2012) was the founder and director of El Grupo Niche, one of the most prominent salsa music bands, which I had the opportunity to be a part of. Jairo will always be remembered as one of the greatest composers and lyricist of salsa music....Thank you Maestro!

Cafiño Ep1 (Mal Humor) This is a personal experimental 3D animation (one of my first ones) projects I made back in 2006. The character is a little coffee bean with a complex personality that goes from being very sweet to incredibly mean. More episodes to come.
Enjoy ... Carlos Vivas (Director)

Special thanks to:
Carlos Guerrero, Robert Holguin, Gustavo Mondragon, Julian Plázas, Luz Vivas, Armando Crispino and Edward Vivas.