As a part of the music and sound for film module, I had to create around ten minutes of original material that I had composed for various film clips. I also had to fit in some collaboration where possible as part of the criteria. Here are the pieces I came up with on one long showreel:
The first clip in my showreel, ‘Temporal Distortion,’ is the longest clip and features time-lapse footage of the sky and landscape in various locations. When writing for this film, I wanted to create a piece of music that has a very space-like and relaxed vibe, but also include some kind of repeating melody. To do this I used a couple of synth instruments to accompany the piano and bass line. I also recorded some real audio of an electric guitar in the middle section, with the help of one of the other students on my course in regards to adding a layer of effects to this part. Overall I was the most happy with this piece as I’d spent the most time on it due to it being much longer than the others. To improve upon this though, I would like to experiment with the use of techniques such as mickey mousing, by trying to time some of the chord changes at the beginning with the camera cutting between shots.
The next clip was titled ‘Forgotten,’ and features two friends who appear to be mourning, although it’s not shown why or over who. Due to this darker and more gloomy atmosphere, I wanted a simplistic piece which added to this feeling. To achieve this, I firstly used a long drone note played on a cello and violin over the top to give the film an unsettling feel. Then, I wanted to try my hand at the technique I previously mentioned, ‘Mickey Mousing.’ I used two chords on the piano and switched between them whenever the camera angle changed, and managed to sync them up fairly well, and this technique works perfectly for the setting. I feel as though I could develop this further if the clip were longer as it wasn’t really much to work with.
My third clip is titled ‘Alice,’ and features two settings. One where a girl (presumably Alice) is alone in their room not really doing much, and the other is what seems to be a hostage situation aboard a boat somewhere. With this clip I tried to get a contrast between the scenes. For the bedroom scenes I went for more of a ‘song like’ piece as I wanted to portray the girl’s obliviousness to the hostage situation occurring at the same time, and this was also an excuse for me to play with some percussion in my music. I actually used a programmable drummer in Logic Pro X to do this, however I relied heavily on help from another student who is actually a drummer in order to get the feeling right for the piece. During the hostage section, this somewhat relaxed music fades to a long held drone note on a pair of violins as this for me added a real feeling of unease over this scene. When the scene changes back the original piece resumes. This was the piece I was probably most unhappy with, as I couldn’t seem to get the transition between the scenes as fluid as I would have liked. I feel with more time I could’ve written something much better.
My final two clips go hand in hand as they’re both from the same film, called ‘L1FE.’
The first clip is the opening scene where a man has been apprehended and is being taken towards a prison island for reasons unknown. I was going for a suspenseful sound with this piece, and I did this by playing very staccato, and by using augmented 4th’s as well. I added a delay over the top which I think really added to the piece. There is also a violin melody where the track builds up some more, however I would have liked to spend a bit more time getting it perfect for the piece.
The final clip is the last scene from this film, in which the protagonist and his friend escape the prison island and swim away. In this composition I tried to break away from the solid structures that I had been using on the others and write a bit more freely, starting with the descending chord progression, and ending on some long held C chords. I also tried to bring back the augmented 4th’s from the first part of the film when one of the guards gets taken out. I could improve this with more time to work on it, but my main issue with it is how unbalanced the sound is. It’s far too loud in parts and the the opposite in others.
Overall I have learnt a lot about what can go into a film’s soundtrack, and I feel my composition skills have been impacted for the better. Some problems I ran into were things like syncing up sound to visual cues, which I found really difficult at first. And also I had issues with the sample rate and FPS of the films, but I managed to get by just fine.
Some targets for the future for me are;
- Spend more time on writing pieces
- Using more film specific techniques
- Use several ideas instead of just sticking to one
- Try using a more diverse range of instruments
- Collaborate with musicians more (and record more audio by doing so)
- Get more input/feedback from people instead of throwing away ideas