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PART 1
Overture
Hello YC!
So I've recently had a pretty great opportunity crop up for me, and I wanted to share the experience with you all so that I'm not the only one learning from what promises to be an educational, fun experience. To summarize in brief: I'm a member of the Guild of Canadian Film Composers, and they've set up a great partnership whereby they select a number of their emerging composers and match them up with an emerging film director from the Canadian Film Centre. The composers get to score a short promotional segment video made by the directors to show off to potential producers for funding to complete their feature-length films. The clips are basically poignant scenes from the full-length feature they've written that they feel can stand independently and show the potential of the full film. My job is to make sure the audio enhances that potential as much as possible without interfering.
Once the writing is completed, my score will be performed by members of the Royal Conservatory Orchestra up here in Canada, and recorded. After that, I will have a session with a professional mixing engineer to mix the score in 5.1 surround sound and lay it into the film clip, after which the clip — music included — will be screened to an audience of industry fellows and such. From then on, I'll have a cool piece to add to my demo reel and some new contacts for future networking and work opportunities.
In this thread, I will take you through the entire process of me scoring this clip, preparing it, recording it, mixing it, and presenting it. It will take me several posts between now and February 11th when the final screening occurs, and some may be quite long, but you need not read them if you're not interested. I will include pictures and other visual aids where I have them and will attach any files that I think people would be interested in seeing (my score template for this project, for example — see attachment). I will explain some of my thought processes, some of my techniques, and some of my perspectives on the craft. They are not rules, so please do not treat them as such. Certainly don't follow them. Do your own thing, always. But perhaps be inspired, be intrigued, be curious, or simply be...and read on!
Spotting & Stylistic Considerations
Yesterday, the first phase of the match-up began and I had my meeting with the director to spot the film. For those who are imagining a polka dotted television, the "spotting session" is where the composer meets with the director and sometimes also the producer or other folks to watch the film and discuss the role and placement of music within it. For a feature-length film, this can obviously take some time, but because the clip in this instance is 4 minutes long, the process was considerably shorter — I was in and out of the CFC headquarters within about 3 hours, during which time I also met with the program coordinator to discuss the technical details of what would need to be prepared for the recording session. Musically, the clip is going to be quite challenging; not because it lacks emotion or because it will require thick, spectacular writing, but because it's an extremely intense and gritty scene and it really only calls for the most minimalistic of musical accompaniments. I have a 26-piece orchestra to work with though, so making use of them and finding a way to do so while maintaining authenticity and not pushing the drama into the realm of melodrama will be an interesting challenge.
When it comes to film scoring, that's a primary concern: not overdoing it. Perhaps it's only a result of the more modern scoring idiom, but the tendency is for directors to want composers to highlight and express the emotional content of their films in a way that's far less flamboyant than in previous generations. In fact they tend to want you to just shut up a lot. Or be subtle — "just a hint of sound, just a faint instrumental presence". You're not likely to hear many sweeping orchestral fanfares and soaring love themes anymore simply because the style of the films and the tone that is desired is not that anymore. Take, for instance, Gabriel Yared's recent score for Amelia. That was a pretty old-fashioned score. Sure, it took some pointers from the modern styles, but at heart it was an old-fashioned dramatic score: sweeping themes, big orchestra and all.
What did the composers say? Wow, been a while.
What did the critics say? Lisa Schwarzbaum from Entertainment Weekly called his music “as distracting as sirens” and an “intrusive messenger”, while Peter Travers in Rolling Stone called it “sudsy”, and Justin Chang in Variety called it “hyperactive”.
So there you have it. Changing tastes for changing times.
In any event, this clip — as I've said — is pretty intense, and I instinctively don't want to tread on it too much simply because it's very powerful by virtue of the interaction between the characters. I'm being vague, right? What the hell is it about? I hear you — I'm not sure I can tell you anything about it yet, so bear with me while I find out. Hopefully by next post I can put up a screenshot or two and tell you something about the film so you'll get an idea of the context for my concerns. In the meantime, just take my word for it and use your imagination. Which brings me to my next point.
Brainstorming, Sketching, Chocolate, and the Nature of Film Scoring
The film is spotted, I have my notes, I've set up my template, and here I am. Sitting. Staring at the document you see in the header. Writing this post. More importantly, brainstorming.
This is actually my favourite part of the film scoring process (until the next part of course) because this is the part where I get to immerse myself in the moods and imagery of the film. I watch it a few times, then I go do something else. Like write informative posts on an internet forum. Then I watch it a few more times. I doodle. I play piano and listen to what my brain creates in response to the clip. I eat chocolate — generally in copious amounts. That isn't actually part of the film scoring process, I pretty much eat lots of chocolate all the time anyway. My blood is probably 84% chocolate by volume. Anyway, eventually I begin to get a concrete score in my head.
Depending on the film clip, this can take 2 minutes or 2 days. Some films really "speak" to me more clearly in terms of emotional content, and others take a bit more time for my ideas and responses to assemble themselves into a musical form. I think this part is where you're most likely to encounter a composer's most interesting quirks. The ways in which we respond to the film and create our musical responses tend to be very personal, and everyone seems to have their own funny little tricks and techniques...whatever works, basically. I won't tell you any of the more, er, odd methods that I employ, but suffice it to say that when you're in my position you will find yourself spontaneously trying interesting and totally unrelated-to-music things and having them unexpectedly trigger a vivid reaction to the project at hand. Maybe it's just me, I don't know. I don't care. It works, and it means that my scores are as authentic as I can possibly make them. I'm not crafting them based on stereotypes or principles, I'm simply transcribing my innate musical answer to the visuals. This answer will of course be coloured by stereotypes, by music I listen to, by any number of outside influences....but the crux of the issue is that those influences are not the foundational aspect of the music: my personal reaction is.
In this way, I find that scoring a film is a wholly personal thing and that it is actually not at all about submitting to the wills and whims of the director and thereby sapping all creative content from the work, as certain concert composers are happy to claim. There is, of course, an element of submission involved in that one must work within the framework of what the director describes and has given you to work with in terms of imagery, but how you respond to that imagery and how you work within those descriptions is a matter left up to you in any good director/composer relationship. And I think that it's important for composers to choose their partnerships carefully (when they can, naturally) so that they are allowed that freedom of expression and creativity. Having done concert work myself, I see the issue from both sides and look at it thus: if I'm writing only for myself, for the concert stage, I am writing to express my feelings about something, or I'm exploring a new technique, or I'm implementing a mathematical system to produce a work of absolute music. If I'm writing for a film, I'm still writing for myself, but not exclusively: I'm still expressing my feelings and exploring new techniques, but I'm doing so through a more interactive and less self-centred process. I'm writing music about the film, for the film, for its audience, for its characters and producers, and for the messages beneath and beyond the film.
Do I feel creatively unfulfilled as a result? Stifled? No, I do not. Do I sympathize and understand why some composers would and do see it that way? Of course, and we're all welcome to our opinions. Ultimately we need to do what we're passionate about, and in my case that is writing music for media.
Moving Forward
At this point, I've introduced you to my world and what's going on in it right at this moment. I've told you a tiny bit about the project and will hopefully share more as the weeks progress. So that you all have an idea of the timeline I'm working with (which is a VERY comfortable one, by the way, for this amount of work), here's a quick breakdown of the schedule, quoted from the outline:
Quote
January 22nd:
Composition should be done and mock-ups approved by director.
January 26th:
First draft orchestrations should be done
February 1st:
Pre-Session Prep.
February 2nd:
2 hour recording session with members of the Royal Conservatory Orchestra.
Wednesday, February 10th:
Mixing and editing.
Thursday, February 11th:
Screening
Composition should be done and mock-ups approved by director.
January 26th:
First draft orchestrations should be done
February 1st:
Pre-Session Prep.
February 2nd:
2 hour recording session with members of the Royal Conservatory Orchestra.
Wednesday, February 10th:
Mixing and editing.
Thursday, February 11th:
Screening
I will go over why some of those dates are ridiculous next time. I will update this thread with new posts whenever I've made progress, and I will do my best to attach any manner of files that I think you'd benefit from seeing. For now, I've attached my template for the score to this post and you are welcome to join me in staring at it and waiting for the ideas to assemble themselves into what I hope will be a compelling score for this short film clip. Thanks for reading — see you soon!
Quick Links:
PART 2
PART 3
Attached File(s)
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Score Template A4.pdf (55.88K)
Number of downloads: 115
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