Getting the Score

One thing that became clear while working on Silkboy was that melody and the function of a scene are intertwined.
Some scenes are more important than others in a movie: some scenes are big, important, flashy scenes, while others are transitory, functional scenes that take you from point A to point B so [...]

Hey there, I got offered to write a guest post at the popular film composer website Score Cast.
I wrote a post about finding form during spotting.
So check it out here!
Alain

[Excerpt from Alain Mayrand's blog.]
I just completed a dialogue scene which had a difficult mix of moods to navigate; emotional discussion/sharing of wisdom interspersed with some slap-stick humour. It was tough, but I pulled it off.
Another thing I wanted to write about here was pacing. It something i am very conscious of and that makes [...]

How many times do we state a theme in a film? Once? Twice? Most director really don’t pay attention to this, and that’s fine, because I do (and your film composer should, too) so they don’t have to.
Some films take more melody than others, such as fantasy films, animation and similar genres, but for the [...]

In “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade” there is a scene where Indy and his father go the get the diary back and, in the process, meet up with Hitler.
That scenes begins with the score functioning as source music. John Williams wrote music that an unseen brass band would be playing in the square as [...]

The “Where the Hell is Matt 2008?” video is a great example of the impact of music on images and changes how we look at it.
In case you haven’t seen this, This video shows him dancing all over the world.
TURN OFF THE SOUND BEFORE YOU PRESS PLAY. Watch it for a bit.
Keep the sound off [...]

I have begun composing the score for a computer animated feature film. I have just completed the second week of work on it.
I will be keeping a weekly diary where I will keep track of all steps of the production, the good and the bad, giving a detailed look into what a composer goes through [...]

Structure is a crucial element of beauty, and film is no different. As I wrote in the previous post, a music cue can do more than just highlight action or represent the subtext; it can also play a large role in clarifying or even creating structure.
To that end, here are some questions to ask during [...]

During the spotting session it is time to decide where music cues start and end. There are many reasons to bring in music, many points of entry.
From on “The Track: a guide to contemporary film scoring.” by Fred Karlin and Rayburn Wright.
In general, music starts most effectively at a moment of shifting emphasis. This might [...]

From Claudia Gorbman’s “Unheard Melodies: Narrative Film Music”. 1987, Indiana University Press.
I. ‘Invisibility’: The technical apparatus of nondiegetic film music must not be visible.
II. ‘Inaudibility’: Music is not meant to be heard consciously. As such it should subordinate itself to dialogue, to visuals - i.e., to the primary vehicle of the narrative.
III. Signifier of emotion [...]