Arcade Fire "Her"

A friend (knowing that I love Spike Jonze) sent me a link to the following video today. I was instantly gripped by the music and surprised to see indie rock band Arcade Fire working on a film score. The video shows the band working in a manner I would expect to see if they were working on a small scale project. However they are working on Spike Jonze's award winning "Her". This method of recording intrigued me and seems fairly relevant to my project aim.

After watching the video I decided to watch the film and was griped by the music from beginning to end, the music is so simple but really adds to the picture, after watching the film I discovered this was Arcade Fires first attempt at writing film score. The trailer video below shows the use of the score alongside visuals from the film.

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo: Trent Reznor

When I explained my project to a friend and talked about some of the composers previously mentioned in this blog he picked up on the mentioning of Trent Reznor and asked if had seen "The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo".

I have just finished watching it and was thoroughly impressed with the use of music throughout the film. However the focus of this blog post is is not the music itself but the composer. After watching the film I quickly investigated Trent Reznor and was surprised to see that he has only scored for two major pictures: "The Social Network" and "The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo".

Personal Note: Examine Trent Reznor's composition techniques as part of the case study?

1st Mentor Meeting

Today I met with Laurie for the first time since the very first pitch session; obviously my project has changed dramatically since then. Laurie liked my new project aim and suggested that I get the video footage off James straight away so that I can begin my practiced based research. Whilst talking about my my project methodologies i.e. the case study and practice based research Laurie said "The purpose of your methodologies is to identify useful information that you can turn into steps that will be incorporated into your guide"  I this found extremely beneficial, and so completely obvious that I couldn't believe up until now I haven't been looking at the project this way.

Research Proposal Feedback

Two days ago I received my grade and feedback for the research proposal submitted before christmas; I was relatively disappointed with the grade I received (14/20) however upon reading the feedback provided there is no doubt this is the grade I deserve for the work I submitted. I think I realised my research proposal wasn't focused appropriately while I was trying to create mock-up score for James Calderwood's video clip. For example my research proposal stated that I would carry out a case study focused on the technologies available to assist film composition; although an understanding of the tools and technologies available to assist composition is fairly important it wouldn't have helped my create score submitted in my Pre-Production Portfolio.

The following post will examine the feedback provided and identify the steps I will take to make the project more relevant:

• "The introduction is relatively brief, and could be benefited with examples/citations to help demonstrate the need for the project to be carried out and to illustrate the topic for the reader more clearly. As you jump to the aim and objectives fairly quickly, the topic itself is not very well established."

My current project introduction is only a page long and focus's quite heavily on the technology aspects of film score production which I no longer feel is the most important area to be researched. The introduction will be updated so that it provides a more detailed overview of the research aim; focusing on developments in the film scoring industry and where my project will fill gaps in information. 

"Try to structure the lit review by clear categories rather than as responses to questions, which is much more informal and less coherent. It would be good to see these laid out for easier reading and also to help you to establish your critical framework. As you indicate in the methodology, the aim is to develop a practical framework based on your research, but some form of critical framework is required prior to the case study in order to give you the language (and means) to analyse and deconstruct an example of soundtrack production in the case study. So the lit review should really serve to clearly establish criteria for analysis at all stages of research, probably under the following headings; Film and Film Score (this isn't really discussed at length, but some foundation of the aesthetics of film scores in relation to the film is really needed - i.e. a theory of film score aesthetics, how to align music to visual content, narrative, characters, plot etc. Without this, you can discuss how to align music with film and the tools, but the inexperienced user will have no concept of the artistic qualities of the work they are producing. Why do films have scores?) Film Score Composition (a section on process, drawing on your discussion of techniques, practices etc.) and Tools, Technologies and the Inexperienced Composer (where you discuss the free or cheap tools that can be used by inexperienced users, and the knowledge they will require before commencing an production - there must always be some basis in sound and music production, presumably?)"

I plan on redoing the literature review in a way that is becomes a critical framework which can be used to analyse the worth of film score. The sentence "there must always be some basis in sound and music production, presumably" Was a real eye opener for me, and has led to the decision that instead of attempting to create a framework which someone with absolutely no musical abilities can use to create film score the project will focus on creating a practical framework to be used by musicians with no previous experience in creating film score. 

"I'd expect a case study to be of an applied example, e.g. analysis of the process and outcome of scoring a film by a relatively inexperienced composer using readily available tools. In this case you'd need to identify examples of amateur or low budget films where there is sufficient information on the film score production for you to examine."

 

Rather than doing a case study on the tools and technologies available to assist in film score creation I plan on researching small/low budget films and emailing composers to discuss their methods of composing and base a case study on this. 

"What fllm footage will you use? The focus group needs some explanation, in terms of; who the participants are, what levels of experience they will have, whether one focus group is really valid for proper evaluation, how they will be given a chance to use the framework within the timeframe of the project and whether the method is valid if they are simply being asked to read and discuss the framework."

I plan on using more film footage provided by director James Calderwood to test my practice based research on; as for the focus group this really needs to be thought about, perhaps a focus group isn't the best method of analysing the value of my practical framework?

James's Feedback/Mock-Up

James seemed to like the feeling of the music on all four of the clips I sent back to him. This was great news however made narrowing down which temp track to work on a harder task. I feel this was maybe my fault as three out of the four tracks I used were written by Thomas Newman and therefore had similar characteristics. However between myself and James we chose to use "Temp Track 4" which was Newman's piece discussed in the earlier posts of this blog "Walkaway".

Focusing on "Temp Track 4" I created two "mock up" pieces of music using apples GarageBand. Ther term "mock-up" refers to the creation of music using synthesised instruments so that a director and/or producer can get some idea of how the music is going to sound.
 I found this process fairly difficult, composing music for a 10 second clip proved difficult and I still feel like my score was below standards as I am still relatively uninformed on the actual process of creating film score.

Below are the two mock up videos I created.

Temp Tracks 2

Temp Tracks 1

After submitting the Research Proposal back in December I took a short break from my project work over the holiday period however today I received a teaser clip from local director "James Calderwood" for his up and coming film "Waiting Room" although the clip is very short - approximately 10 seconds long - I plan on using it to test the process of applying "Temp-Tracks". I plan on finding, what I feel to be, suitable pieces of already existing film score and syncing them with the clip he sent me, I will then send them back to him for feedback and further direction.