Mentor Meeting: Discussion Of Practical Framework

Today is the first time I have been able to see Laurie since I blocked out the first draft of my practical framework as last weeks meeting was cancelled. Since my last blog post all I have done is begin to write up elements of the dissertation based on practical work discussed here. The main focus of this work has been my Practice Base Research section.
Laurie appeared impressed with my framework and said it almost felt like reading a module brief. While discussing how I should include the film work and scores I have created in the honours project hand in we came up with the idea of treating my framework as a sort of "idiots guide to creating film score" This basically means adding a DVD containing video/audio clips as well as writing a small paragraph about what each clip contained and how it was relevant to the process.
I love this idea and feel it will definitely make my framework more interactive and easier to understand/use.

Practical Framework First Draft

Below are the steps I have gathered through research produced either in the honours project or the dissertation. I feel these steps can be used successfully by musicians inexperienced in producing music or film to actively do so.

1. Establish the mood/feeling of the film – In order to write and produce a suitable score, the overall feeling of the film must be established. It is important to consider the character(s)/setting(s) and narrative of the film. Communication with the films director is the best way to identify the moods of the film; a good director should be able to communicate their creative vision and what they want from you. 

2. Find Inspiration – Finding inspiration is crucial and enormously beneficial when creating film score. This could involve looking at existing films and basing elements of your work on their scores or finding pieces of music that reflect the mood/feeling you have been asked to create. Having something to work towards will help keep you motivated and allow you to benchmark your work. 

3. Limit your sonic world – Establishing the atmosphere of the film and finding inspiration should allow you to limit your instrumentation/equipment choices. Narrowing your sonic world to specific groups of instruments should save time in the creative process i.e. stops you from browsing through hundreds of synth sounds and getting lost in the writing process.  

4. Write a lot of music not to picture – By this point you have established the mood of the score you intend to create, identified the instruments you intend to use to do so and have found inspiration/something to work towards. At this stage of the process it is important to experiment, create interesting sounds and melodies. By writing a large amount of music you will give yourself options at later stages of the process. Take some of the skeletal ideas created and begin to build on them, take the interesting sounds and melodies you have produced and start to piece them together, figure out what pieces work together.

5. Adding music to the film - Take the refined pieces of music you have generated and sync them appropriately with the films emotive key points. This stage of production should also involve a large amount of communication with the director; he/she will have a clear understanding of where they want music to be placed. At this stage of the process you may have to alter the music created in the last stage of the process in order for it to best suit the needs of the film/fit with narrative.

Syncing Music To Picture

Research uncovered in the literature review and the case studies highlighted the fact that without an experienced understanding of the aesthetics of film score an inexperienced sound practitioner would not be able to place score into film. However my case studies also revealed that where the audio is placed in film is usually decided by the director with some input from composers. This been said I  identified the emotive high points of my own film as: 00:00:11, 00:01:04, 00:01:18 and 00:02:01 and decided that the film score should reflect and support these. 

In the video below you can see the that the score created (discussed in previous post) has been deconstructed and placed back into the film to best support the identified emotive peaks. This process required a lot of experimentation and patience however I am fairly impressed with the results of my work and feel I now have enough information to create my practical framework.