When commercial prodco Radke Films went searching to score Everything’s Gone Green, its first feature, it didn’t have to look very far.

Radke, which coproduces the film with Vancouver’s True West Films, turned to Vapor Music, which shares the same Toronto building. But it wasn’t this proximity that sold Radke on the year-and-a-half-old music house. Rather, it was the creative solution they offered.

‘I had heard buzz that the producers couldn’t afford to hire a composer to score the film in its entirety due to budget restraints, but at the same time wanted the music to be hip, indie and cool,’ explains David Hayman, music supervisor at Vapor. (The film was made for under $2 million.)

‘So I proposed that they didn’t need a composer at all. We scored the entire film by licensing pre-existing songs and kept the cost within the budget of an indie Canadian feature. Because of our relationships in the music industry, we got some of the best tracks in the country for great prices.’

Vapor prides itself on its strong ties to record labels and its access to a roster of acclaimed artists.

The music house represents a long list of musicians (including Feist, Broken Social Scene, Swollen Members, Gord Downie and Tokyo Police Club) with whom they collaborate to create custom music, as well as license their existing material for film, TV and commercials.

Then along came Paul Fox’s Everything’s Gone Green, the Douglas Coupland-penned comedy about a slacker (Paulo Costanzo) who gets lured into a money laundering scheme. (The film opened in the U.S. on April 13 and in Canada the following week through Equinoxe Films.)

Hayman licensed album tracks from a wide range of Canadian indie artists such as Final Fantasy, The Melligrove Band, Jason Collett from Broken Social Scene and Sloan.

American label Lakeshore Records was so impressed with the soundtrack that it picked up the disc for distribution. This marks the company’s first Canadian film soundtrack, following high-profile Hollywood releases including Napoleon Dynamite, Mr. & Mrs. Smith and Little Miss Sunshine.

‘[Brian McNeils, the head of Lakeshore] saw the Everything’s Gone Green soundtrack as a diamond in the rough,’ says Hayman. ‘He is a huge fan of Canadian music and was enticed by the artist roster on the soundtrack.’

Vapor is headed by company partners Joey Serlin, a music director, composer and former member of the band the Watchmen, and Gerry Mosby, a jazz musician and composer who has written songs for The Guess Who and Alfie Zappacosta. Roger Harris, former owner of Jungle Music, is company president and creative director.

In addition to a steady workload of commercials, Vapor’s long-form credits include the upcoming CTV miniseries Would Be Kings, Susan Poizner’s documentary series Shades of Blue and the Canada/Argentina feature copro 14 Days in Paradise.

www.vapormusicgroup.com