Kays Al-Atrakchi: director, composer, colorist, VFX artist and filmmaker of the upcoming short film, Everbliss Inn

At long last, we welcome longtime friend and multi-hyphenate
filmmaker, Kays Al-Atrakchi to the Cinepod! Kays feels there are
film composers who love music and composers who simply love movies.
He himself absolutely loves all things film. Born in Florence,
Italy, Kays started to get interested in music as a kid and picked
up a soundtrack to Dario Argento's Inferno in a local record store
because he liked how the cover looked. It didn't sound like
anything he'd ever heard before, and he decided to listen to more
movie soundtracks. Then he bought the soundtrack for John
Carpenter's Escape From New York, and found he could replicate the
soundtrack on his keyboard at home. His only connection to Dario
Argento and John Carpenter was through the music, since he wasn't
able to see their movies. As a teen, Kays' family moved from Italy
to Orlando, Florida. He continued to pursue his love of film,
music, and composition, and attended Berklee College of Music to
learn film scoring. He began scoring student films in Orlando,
where he met future friends and collaborators Ben Rock, Dan Myrick,
Ben Hershleder, and many others before relocating to Los Angeles.
He has composed the soundtracks for several of Ben's movies,
including Alien Raiders. For Kays, composing is more about
interpreting someone's vision and trying to elevate it, and to
create through music an emotional connection with the audience.
Kays felt unfulfilled as a filmmaker, so between film scoring jobs,
he decided to make his own short, Appntmnt, followed by another
short, In Lucidity. For In Lucidity, Kays simply didn't have the
budget to hire someone to create all the visual effects he wanted,
so he taught himself how to do all the special effects and color
grading by watching YouTube videos. Filmmaking technology has
progressed so much, he feels confident that with enough time and
self-education, a filmmaker can learn any aspect of moviemaking.
Kays loves the collaborative nature of film, but as an independent
filmmaker, he finds he has to do the bulk of the work on his
projects alone out of necessity rather than a desire to work solo.
He enjoys sharing what he's learned and has created Right Brained
Tutorials, a YouTube channel for other filmmakers to learn visual
effects. Kays' latest short horror directing project, Everbliss
Inn, will be streaming in November. Kays wrote, directed, composed
the music, color graded, and created the VFX for the film. You can
hear original theme music by Kays throughout The Cinematography
Podcast. Find Kays Alatrakchi: http://musicbykays.com Filmmaking:
http://moviesbykays.com Instagram: @kaysfilmmaker YouTube channel:
Right Brained Tutorials:
https://www.youtube.com/c/RightBrainedTutorials Find out even more
about this episode, with extensive show notes and links:
http://camnoir.com/ep184/ Sponsored by ARRI:
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