Why am I a Composer?: Film Scoring Secrets #3

AFX Industrial (film scores)

Greetings, here is a long overdue update to my film scoring secrets series, please check the blogs from January and February 2013 for the previous installments.

In film scoring secrets #2 we looked at the embryonic stages of the process which involved sitting down with a director or music supervisor and deciding on the 'time in' and 'time out' points for the music cues. This is often called a spotting session. However, I think that most people in the industry are really interested in the gritty, technical aspect of the scoring process and that's what I'll be touching on today.

The Process

So, we are happy with the in and out points of our cues but what happens now? What do composers do when they are left alone to create that magical music for a movie?

As you have probably guessed, practically everything to do with post production (music comes under this category too) is now computer based, the director will leave a digital copy of the film with me (usually a Quick Time movie) and this will be my official reference copy. There are two major pieces of professional software that composers use to write their scores, one is 'Sibelius' and the other platform is called 'Finale' there has been a debate raging for the last ten years as to which is the better of the two. Personally I don't see a lot of difference between them and, as a composer you tend to specialize in one or the other simply because you were exposed to that platform first.

I use Sibelius and have been since around 2004 prior to that I pretty much worked solely by hand using traditional manuscript paper and a pencil. Sibelius is just a virtual version of that traditional method. So now I can have the film in a digital format I can import that into Sibelius and have it appear in a window on my desktop > see illustration below:

Sibelius

Here we have a our film within the Sibelius software and now we can start composing our music to the picture. There are various ways to lock the picture to our software so that when we scan through our score we can see the picture moving in perfect sync with it.

"composers typically take their cue from the scene, it's always the film that demands what it wants musically"

The Ideas

Now we have the picture locked to our virtual manuscript I think the most burning question I'm asked is always 'where do the musical ideas come from?' We hear the word 'inspiration' overused and abused within the arts and the most cliched question is always 'where do you find your inspiration?' ...

I know I'm not alone in this but I don't really subscribe to the notion of inspiration! I mean there are four hundred years of musical heritage to draw from, there are more manuscripts, symphonies and film scores in existence than I'll ever, ever have time to read and, as they say, 'good artists borrow, but great artists steal'.

We are now well into the twenty first Century and to me 'inspiration' sounds like something you would have needed in the 1960s - whilst recovering from a drug habit. It's the equivalent of me asking an accountant where he gets his inspiration from so that he can achieve a decent level of accountancy. No, and to quote horror writer Stephen King 'inspiration is for amateurs, the rest of us just go to work'.

The Ideas #2

Here is a good analogy:

If you like blues music then you'd expect it to follow a familiar pattern (technically the chords known as I, IV and V) if we replaced chords I, IV and V with a random selection of unrelated notes then it wouldn't be blues anymore. The same thing happens in scoring albeit on a much larger scale, there are certain recognized methods of orchestration that evoke certain feelings - everything that could be done musically has already been done! Trying to be 'original' just leads to a lot of tail chasing and non-productivity. No, it's much more productive to hone your craft and to do the recognized but do it more sympathetically than the competition. And, bear in mind, because composers typically take their cue from the scene, it's always the film that demands what it wants musically.

There are also two distinct schools of thought when it comes to scoring and the first (the initial interpretation of what a film score should do) is now lovingly called 'Mickey Mousing'. Although it's origins can be found in opera, this technique takes it's name from the Mickey Mouse cartoons and the way the orchestra would ape the on-screen action ... if Mickey was sad there would be a solo violin playing, if there was a fight the percussionists would bang dustbin lids together - you get the idea. Later on Tom and Jerry took this literal kind of scoring to a whole new level and, in The Simpsons, Itchy and Scratchy took it to even more maddening heights! The second school of thought is to do the opposite and play against the action, although both are still acceptable scoring techniques today it's how and when we use them that makes all the difference.

The Scene

So here is my imaginary scene Cue #13:

Cue #13 (each separate piece of music in a film is traditionally called a cue) it's a slow dialogue driven scene that takes place in a church. OK, so let's look at our two schools of thought, it's in a church so maybe we can use liturgical music? So that would be 'Mickey Mousing' but remember there's nothing wrong with that, or we could play against expectations and underpin the dialogue itself with a non-liturgical score. Or maybe no score is required because the music is a diagetic sound, like a church organ being played during the scene.

As you can see our need for inspiration diminishes as the scene itself presents us with many more musical choices than we could ever use! I know you are hungry to know more ... how can inspiration not be necessary? And where does the music ultimately come from?

I'll let you into those secrets next time!

Peace!

David.