Film Scoring Workshop

session-cover-postThis workshop is designed for musicians and composers who are interested in writing music for film. This 5-day format serves as an introduction to film scoring. Participants will have the opportunity to score a scene from a feature film, “The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada”, written by Guillermo Arriaga (“Babel”, “21 Grams” and “Amores Perros”) directed by Tommy Lee Jones. Hollywood composers, Marco Beltrami and Buck Sanders will use this film to review the entire scoring process. They will spot the film and select several scenes for the participants  to create new original music.

With direct support from ASCAP, we will record and produce the students’ music with members of the of the Hollywood Studio Orchestra, contracted by Decrescent & Rotter. The session will be mixed by award winning engineer, Jon Kurlander (Lord of the Rings: “The Fellowship of the Ring”, “The Two Towers” and “Return of the King”), and streamed live. 

General Outline - Roadmap

Workshop Objectives

• Spotting the film with the director, the film editor and the music editor

• Working with temp tracks

• Concepts, instrumentation & sound palette

• Creating your setup – software & hardware options

• Sequencing  101 – configurations, templates, working with plugins

• Programming 101 – tools and techniques for translating your ideas to project files

• Sample players & libraries – developing your own setups with NI’s Kontakt

• Mock-ups & Music Preparation

• The director – composer “show-n-tell” meetings

• Adding live instruments to the session

• Orchestration

• Music contractors & production budgets

• The film mix & final dub

Artist/Teacher

Potential artists/teachers include;

Tommy Lee Jones

Marco Beltrami

Buck Sanders

Marcus Sjowall

Peter Rotter

John Kurlander

Guest Artist(s)

Check with primary artist for additional guest artists PLUS; invite a Copyright & Publishing expert and, if possible, a direct connect with the folks at earbits or similar…

Sponsors - Production Partners

the film company (SONY), ASCAP or BMI, hardware & software  manufacturers; Native Instruments, Ableton, Steinberg, Cinesamples, Novation, M-Audio, Avid, Yamaha, Roland, Line 6, U-He, Izotope, etc.

Marketing

• secondary schools in the NY area, can we cross over to schools like MSM, The New School, NYU, Columbia, etc.  By inviting a variety of artists to lead the workshop we create a unique offering for schools like MSM…

• reach out to BMI and ASCAP – their current roster of songwriters and musicians could be interested in the scoring process

• need to create the announcement and manage communications and enrollment, in 2 parts; one for the physical space, and a second for the online participation only (audit)

notes: clearly define the value for online participants

• include a “free” software lottery drawing for all participants

musictechworkshop-contest-splash

Technical Requirements

– check with NS for availability of in-house team for lighting, sound and staging

Production Costs

• Basic live streaming package per day $600

• Check with NS for day rates for in-house audio engineers & video operators

• Check on options for basic food and beverage per day

• See “Additional Notes” for other items

Content Management

• The lessons delivered for each workshop may require a component for managing the transmission of audio & video files, PDF scores, powerpoint slides, etc.  Check with NS to see if this can be managed with NS personnel.

Scheduling

• This is a 5-day workshop but can be modified to include additional hours and/or days.  The total enrollment will determine the final schedule for this workshop.

• As with all Ethos workshops, the day to day schedule will be adjusted, as needed, to accommodate the current NS calendar of events and performances

Additional Project Notes

• Determine special needs to manage and facilitate the “free” software/hardware contest

• Clearly define the 5-day format as an introduction to film scoring. For a more complete experience we could consider offering another 5 week module which allows time to organise lessons in writing for strings, brass & woodwinds, percussion, etc. to include a masterclass for each family of instruments. This opens the door to orchestration in a practical way, where the participants have an opportunity to write for each masterclass presentation. And for there final scoring project, we can plan a budget for a live session with a small group of players – like the final project for the Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada.

Related Projects

Workshop Sample

This 5-day workshop will cover the complete scoring process. Participants will create their own music to one or more scenes from the film. The work will be revised as per the teacher’s critique. The composer will prepare a revision for playback as a mock-up for final approval and presentation. This completes the work.  The sample session in the video includes a live scoring session with musicians. In order to facilitate a live scoring session, like the one in the sample, we would need more time than the 5 day format allows.  If the interest is there, we could consider offering a more in-depth workshop schedule, or course module.

Nathan David Matthew

scoring-layout

The Uninvited

A scene from the feature film, The Uninvited. This is the student’s final project; re-score a scene, orchestrate the cue for a live ensemble of strings and woodwinds. Here’s a look at the student’s live recording session, including an insert of the music preparation (printed score) of the work.

NOTE: at 1:30, the video cuts to a shot of the student conducting the ensemble on the scoring stage.

The Spotting Session

Award winning composer, Christopher Young, talks about the process of “spotting” the film with the director and other members of the filmmaking team. During the spotting session the director reviews the film with the team and discusses where the music should be used, where it begins and ends, from scene to scene, and what it should be doing at any given moment. It’s become common practice for directors to assemble the 1st cut of their film with a temporary music track, which includes music from several different sources. Essentially, the temp track is pre-recorded music selected by the director, the film editor and/or the music editor and mixed into the cut. After the spotting session, it’s the composer’s job to replace the “temp” with an original score.

Daniel Wehr scores "Sinister"

Refer to the video playlist to view Daniel Wehr’s process of creating the original sound palette for the sound design score for the feature film, Sinister. Note: Christopher Young is the composer of the film score. Daniel is credited with additional music, and music design and programming. Click on the thumbnails on the right of the video to select each of the 4 video clips.