Working with a Professional Composer

The Christian Filmmakers Hangout has been a tremendous success and we are gearing up for Season 2, which will start in October. The Breakout Sessions are individual Google+ hangouts to more specifically focus on special guests and topics surrounding their involvement in independent filmmaking.

In our first Breakout Session we will talk about Hiring and Working with a Professional Composer. Ever wondered what it is like bringing in a composer to create that additional dimension for your film? There are a number of aspects of working with a composer and the goal is to give you a concise picture of what you can expect from your composer, how to help him/her understand what you need, and many of the finer details of making it a smooth and enjoyable process.

Who This Is For

This is a Breakout Session specifically geared toward directors and producers. So, if you are currently in pre-production, post-production, or simply just in development of a film and you have questions, this is the right place for you to bounce them off of two working composers and get straight answers.

The Guests

Our first guest is John Doryk, an award-winning film and television composer who has been creating original music and sound design for almost 30 years. John’s original scores can be heard in numerous productions ranging from feature films, documentaries, commercials, and more. He draws from a wealth of experience and has wisdom galore to pass on.

Also participating in the Breakout Session is the host of the Christian Filmmakers Hangouts, Jurgen Beck. Jurgen is an award-winning composer who has a passion for creating unique musical signatures for films and to educate filmmakers in the art of telling their compelling stories through the music in their films.

So, if you are a director or producer, make room in your schedule for this tremendous opportunity to hear both of them answer your questions and help you reach your goal of making your film a success!

Save The Date

Where: Google+ (See Instructions Below)
When: September 20th, 2012 at 8PM CST

How It Works:

• If you don’t have a Google+ account, sign up for one, as it will be needed for the hangout. You’ll also need to install Google Voice.
• Important: You must leave a comment below with your real Google+ name so I can add you to the hangout circle.
• Space is limited, so I suggest that you log into your Google+ account enough ahead of time to reserve your spot when the hangout begins. (Google only allows 10 participants, so make sure you’re there early.
• Be prepared to have one question or issue ready to throw into the ring. Anything that relates to your creative work. We want to make sure we have a great time chatting about topics that we are passionate about.
• If you previously left a comment here to participate, you’re automatically on the list of creatives. Simply just be there when the hangout starts to secure your spot.

See you at the Breakout Session on Google+!

Here is a good example: If you have followed the LOST series, you’ll be able to emotionally relive the story even without the actual film just by listening to the music in the video below and seeing the images of the characters. This is due to the emotional impression that the music and the visuals left on the viewer.

The visual aspects of a film convey a certain emotion without having to add any music at all. Picture a well acted scene, whether it contains dialog or not, the viewing audience will pick up on a certain feel and will respond emotionally to that scene. Then there is the overall look of the film, which is all targeted at putting the viewer into an emotional mood. Presenting something familiar in a new way is the desired goal. If we can help the viewer make a connection with a past experience or feeling, the film will be that much more engaging and hopefully an ultimate success.

Music goes a long way in achieving that goal. Graeme Revell talks about the dilemma we often face. The music essentially tells the viewer how they are to feel about a specific scene. Therein lies the difficulty. An example of this was brought up by Ryan Dunlap in one of the recent Creatives Hangouts. If the music is leading the viewer into a certain direction he or she is not prepared to feel, things start falling apart and we may loose the viewer’s attention in small increments.

This, of course, doesn’t just happen with the music alone, but the music is often the culprit if it doesn’t closely match the emotional sense the majority of viewers want to perceive at any given moment.

We need to carefully consider the emotional imprint we leave with the viewer. This effort includes looking closely at the choice of music style, the scope of the film (large, small, etc.), the emotional leading we employ with the music, the production quality of the music, the characters in the film and how we want the audience to feel about them, and a number of other factors.

It requires learning to master the musical language of emotions. You don’t have to be a musician to know when and how music affects you emotionally. It is part of our human fabric. However, as a content creator, whether as a filmmaker or composer, we have to pay attention to what the music does in the context of the film. Too often we cut corners, either in production quality, the way we seek out the composers to create the music for us, or how we approach the importance of the musical context in film. Good questions to ask are “How do I want to feel about this scene or the character?”, or “Where is the music leading me?”, “How big should the music sound like?”.

As directors, when working with your composer, express yourself in emotional terms, such as “I want the audience to feel the emptiness the death of that character has left.”, “The music needs to express confusion right here.”, or “Let me feel the excitement the character feels right here.” There is an underlying story to consider and we are giving the viewing audience hints, while at the same time having to carefully consider how far we go with those musical hints. Audiences want to figure things out for themselves and if we are giving them too many emotional pointers, they may loose interest after a while.

Emotions in film have to be carefully controlled. Otherwise we run the risk that the audience will ultimately reject the film, if it doesn’t allow them to connect with it on an emotive level.

Without doubt, being able to chat with other creatives about the processes involved in filmmaking is valuable on so many different levels. Often, the biggest challenge in learning to improve our craft is to glean the knowledge and insight from those who have more experience than we do. Mentoring has become a lost art and finding those who are willing to invest into others is difficult.

The Christian Filmmakers Hangout is designed to give creatives in the Christian filmmaking industry an opportunity to chat about the challenges and successes they are experiencing in their craft. We use a Google+ hangout each week for creatives to gather and talk in a relaxed environment about anything related to Christian filmmaking.

The Google+ hangouts will be limited to an hour and are scheduled at a time that allows creatives from different timezones to participate.

Note: We are now on Goole Air, which means that if you are not able to make it into the hangout room due to space, you can watch the hangout live, or after it concludes at http://youtube.com/jurgenbeck.

So, here is how it works:

• If you don’t have a Google+ account, sign up for one, as it will be needed for the hangout. You’ll also need to install Google Voice.
• Important: You must leave a comment below with your real Google+ name so I can add you to the hangout circle.
• Space is limited, so I suggest that you log into your Google+ account enough ahead of time to reserve your spot when the hangout begins. (Google only allows 10 participants, so make sure you’re there early.
• Be prepared to have one question or issue ready to throw into the ring. Anything that relates to your creative work. We want to make sure we have a great time chatting about topics that we are passionate about.
• If you previously left a comment here to participate, you’re automatically on the list of creatives. Simply just be there when the hangout starts to secure your spot.

See you at the hangout!

The full podcast episode is on iTunes, as well as on the Actors Talk Podcast website.

Below is an excerpt from the interview. Use the links above for the full-length podcast:

• Genre: Documentary
• Music Style: Orchestral, Ambient
• Director: Jesse Winton
• Studio: The Wintons Motion Pictures
• Score Length: 22:12

“Rescued: The Movie” is a documentary about the heart of adoption and caring for orphans. Composing the music for documentaries requires special care to ensure that the music truly sits in the background and does not interfere with the dialog, which in most documentaries is almost constant. However, I wanted to deviate a bit from the standard approach of creating almost unrecognizable underscore music that simply just sits in the background. The music needed to support the attributes of the story, while at the same time supporting the call-to-action in the film, which is to raise awareness of the current state of adoption and mobilize the viewing audience to become involved and provide solutions.

Being an adoptive family ourselves, there was the desire to let the music tell the story from a child’s perspective, even though all interviews were conducted with adults. This is audible in the music, as many child-like themes are introduced and developed, along with elements such as a boys chorus and other attributes. The music takes a gentle and delicate approach with soft themes and lush melodic string movements.

The original soundtrack for “Rescued” is available in the online store.

• Genre: Short Film
• Music Style: Orchestral, Electronic, Ambient
• Director: Jean-Marc Le Deux
• Studio: WarCry Entertainment
• Score Length: 07:50

Working with Jean-Marc on his excellent award-winning short film “The Save” was an iterative process, making refinements to the score as it was composed. This was done to ensure that it became the integral part of the film that it needed to be. With the exception of short narrations at the beginning and end of the film, no dialog was used. So the sound design and the film’s score became central elements and as such needed to not only stand out, but become actors in their own rights. The approach taken was to direct the music scoring in similar ways as the director would approach working with an actor.

This was a very gratifying process, especially knowing that the music would play this pivotal role in the film. So very often, the music takes a backseat and becomes a supportive element, and rightfully so, especially when dialog is present. Not so with “The Save”. The music’s job was to stir the scenes emotionally and complement the story in a creative way.

This is the film’s log line:

“A distraught young pitcher finds himself alone on the mound facing a dire situation of his own design; it’s bottom of the 9th, bases loaded, no outs. With his team only up by one, and the crowd roaring in disapproval, the pitcher stares at one empty seat… this was never about a game.”

One of the festivals has selected the film out of 500 submissions in the category for Best Music. It will be screening at the Super Shorts International Film Festival in the UK and on Dailymotion on December 11th, 2011.

Among the judges are notables Philip Bloom and Rupert Grint who has been acting in the Harry Potter films.

I am honored to have had a chance to score the music for the film, which is an allegorical story about a distraught young pitcher finding himself alone on the mound facing a dire situation of his own design; it’s bottom of the 9th, bases loaded, no outs. With his team only up by one, and the crowd roaring in disapproval, the pitcher stares at one empty seat. This was never about a game.

Follow the film at http://thesavemovie.com/

The Save Original Soundtrack by Jurgen Beck

• Genre: Promotional Trailer
• Music Style: Orchestral, World
• Director: Robert Cook
• Studio: Submission Productions LLC
• Score Length: 2:00

This is a new production by Submission Productions, LLC. The film is currently in pre-production, which may be surprising to see a promotional trailer of this magnitude and quality created at those early stages. This speaks of the extremely high quality that director Robert Cook is shooting for as the production moves forward. It was a pleasure working with both Robert Cook and extremely gifted cinematographer James Burgess in creating the score for the trailer.

The progress on Eleventh Hour can be followed on the official website or on Facebook.

• Genre: Short Film
• Music Style: Electronic, Orchestral
• Director: Trey Ore
• Studio: Quiet No More Pictures
• Score Length: 20:00

Trey Ore could be described as the dream director, at least from a composer’s perspective. When a director fully trusts the composer to create a compelling score for his film, creatively anything is possible. This has been one of those opportunities and not only was the process of creating the music for the film extremely satisfying, but with the creative freedom given by Trey, we were able to explore a number of interesting aspects of the score.

Set in a parallel time, the film has a sort of post-apocalyptic feel and the music needed to represent it. We could have gone into a number of different directions, but decided to use a musical signature for the film making use of electronic elements merged with an orchestral approach to scoring.

This is the film’s log line:

“Notorious for his role of judge, jury and executioner for the corrupt modern Government, Paul meets with a terrible, blinding accident that transforms the way he sees the world and the dreaded ‘Way-People’.”

The film is directed by gifted filmmaker Trey Ore and includes a very talented cast, among which is his wife Vanessa and daughter Micaela Ore.

After having seen the rough cut and having had a chance to enjoy the extremely high production value of the film, I am looking forward to adding the musical signature to the film. Production details can be found on the film’s Facebook page and the official website.