Story Time - Short Film
Link to film: https://vimeo.com/208204611
Film Log
11-02-17
I sent Will a mock up of the kind of orchestration I can achieve. I used quite a variety of sounds to give him a broad idea and spectrum of the styles and moods I can create (audio below).
22/2/17
Will - “I’ll give you a quick rundown of my whole film so you can get some ideas/inspiration.
Essentially the story is about a kid called Ron who believes his dad is a superhero. The first scene is an alleyway scene that needs to be really tense and dark but have a grand superman/batman style flare when the superhero gets revealed. (You'll see what I mean when I picture lock the film.
The rest of the film is a very childhood/homely feel with lots of strings and mellow tones but it takes a dark turn when he sees his friend being bullied - but the superhero theme needs to be reprised when he tried to be a hero and stand up to the bully.
If you want any reference music I can go hunt for it but I'll send you the picture lock edit once it's done today and then you can have a look”.
I started working on the score, I began by working on the main super hero theme.
11/03/17 - Final Master of the score completed and sent to the sound designer.
Writing for this film presented me with some key challenges. Firstly, making the music sound like a typical super hero theme, but without being too cliche and cheesy. There was quite a fine line between being too serious/ emotional and too heroic and epic. After all the film wasn’t trying to be the next Marvel blockbuster.
Secondly the interchanges between scenes were often quite sudden and contrasting, so getting cues bang on was important to capture the different visual contexts. For example, in the transition from the first dark alley scene to the bed room scene, the music had to emphasise the change by dropping out suddenly on a loud hit. Later on in the film there is a mirrored scene in which the boy is placed in to his Dad's shoes as the super hero, and the scene ends on the same sudden transition to the bed room scene with the line "and... what happened next?". I wanted this transition to have exactly the same effect to emphasise the mirroring of scenes, so I used the same hero theme. However, this time I changed the rhythmic feel and instrumentation to represent the scene more appropriately.
For example, earlier on there is the grand majestic orchestral sound with the theme stated by heavy brass with large taiko drum accompaniment below:
This is in contrast to a more light hearted child like sound in which the softer woodwinds echo the theme and smaller percussion accompany.
The film is primarily verbocentric in the sense that language is the main focus (Chion, 1994, p. 6). I needed to write something atmospheric that wouldn’t mask the dialogue. The obvious choice was to score for strings. I used slow drone like movements carefully avoiding any intrusive harmonic changes that might stray the viewers attention from the script. I tried to capture the atmosphere in the room and move with the emotions being expressed.
I wanted to write something that would build up suspense in anticipation of a particular scene where the Dad slowly builds up an answer to a question. So to add another dimension I wrote a build that moved in sync with the visual content and climaxed just before he drops the answer 3:46 - 4:09.
There was freedom for some creative license for the end credits, so I made the most of this and went to town on some big majestic orchestral writing. The key was to write a new piece of music that was exciting and engaging whilst keeping continuity with the rest of the score. I did this through a number of conventions: using the same harmonic centre throughout; using a similar staccato string accompaniment as the first scene and built layers upon that; ended on a brief recapitulation of the hero theme to round it all off.
Bibliography
Chion, Michel. (1994) Audio-Vision: Sound on Screen. New York: Columbia University Press.