I am going to be looking at different movie music pieces so that I can find musical ideas and inspiration for Casino Royale’s chase scene.
I want to change the genre completely of the original piece, which is orchestral, consisting of many string instruments that are unable to be named from any source of information I can find. It will likely be using violins, cellos and violas with the obvious double bass. As for percussion, I don’t believe I can hear any that makes a huge difference.
For my own piece I would like to throw out the orchestral arrangement that was originally in place for some hard beats, something more jazz fusion-like that uses a full drum kit and electric guitars. I feel like this is a good direction to go in.
At some point I would like to have the ‘James Bond’ leitmotif somewhere in the piece as it wouldn’t feel like it belongs in the scene otherwise.
“Spotting is the process of watching a film to determine how the music should interact with it. You are looking for cue starts and stops, critical moments to focus on or “hit”, tempo choices and musical structure.” (Brantingham, 2017)
Typically to find out if the soundtrack fits with the movie, both director and composer will have what is called a ‘Spotting’ session to watch the movie over where there is a lack of audio so they can pinpoint emotional shifts, action sequences and points where the music should take a turn.
If the director and composer can agree on what works, the movie will (eventually) get released.
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I already have experience in making my own music on another DAW, a free platform called LMMS. Because of this, I have some knowledge of how to make a digital track, but I will need more time to get used to Ableton.
I have been recently listening to The Beatles and I am particularly fond of “The End – 2009 Remaster” as Ringo Starr’s drums sound crisp and clean in the remastered track, and includes his very first drum solo that I myself have been trying to learn. It was originally the last known recording of a song done by all four Beatles together and I want to take major inspiration from it – Ringo’s drumming and use of the whole kit to serve the song makes for a strong foundation for the other members to build off of, and this is clear throughout the whole song.
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Bibliography
Brantingham, J. (2017). How to Spot a Film. [online] Art of Composing. Available at: https://www.artofcomposing.com/how-to-spot-a-film [Accessed 21 Nov. 2023].