How to Approach Scoring a Film
I recently entered a Film Scoring competition by The Indie Film Music Contest. This is a great site that tends to host competitions twice a year. What’s pretty unique about these competitions is the fact they offer feedback on entries. For me entering a competition is not about winning, but about exploring different compositional ideas and approaches, and practicing working to a deadline.
Having just submitted my entry for this competition, I thought it made sense to release a blog on my approach to writing for the film. You can view my entry below:
My Old Approach
In the video above, there is just over 3 minutes of film that needs music, as the competition states that they would be judging up to the start of the credits. This is how my younger self would have approached the competition:
Watch the video a few times
Put a few markers pointing out key moments in the film
Start composing chronologically through the film
All in one Cubase file
Once at the end, I would go back and chip away at it until I was happy enough with the final product
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Let’s first talk about why this a tempting way to approach scoring:
1) Speed
A fear that a lot of composers have is getting stuck in a dead-end. The tempting thing about this approach is that it allows you write quickly. You can start pretty much straight away, and when you reach the finish line you can always go back and fix any problems.
2) The Music should develop naturally and intuitively
Often when writing music, you want to stay in the ‘musical zone’. A magical place full of inspiration. As this approach doesn’t have much preparation to get through, it allows us to dive in and start searching for that magical place.
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This all sounds pretty great! But unfortunately there are some huge setbacks to this approach:
1) You’ll go into the project with a closed mind
With little to no preparation, the chances are that you'll be writing music in your comfort zone. Sometimes this is fine, but it doesn’t give you the chance to musically progress and explore new things. Often the first idea you come up with isn’t the best option - or needs some chiselling away at it in order for it to reach its full potential. Also when a film calls for you to write music in a style you’re not used to, you are in trouble.
2) Your first impression of the film won’t be completely accurate
Your soundtrack has a huge role to play both narratively and emotionally. The danger of rushing into the writing is that we miss important details, or even worse completely change the message and tone of certain scenes. What’s particularly dangerous is that once you get used to your music playing at a certain moment, it becomes harder to spot whether it’s appropriate or not. By listening repeatedly we train our brains to accept the music as it is.
3) It is far harder to develop themes if not planned beforehand
Themes and motives are the bread and butter of film music. They have the ability to say so much, but in order to do so, they need to be planned ahead of time. You need to dig and dig, until you find something that is flexible enough to say everything it needs to say. It needs to completely connect with the character, as it will become that character’s identity. Another problem is that if you are writing themes to the actual scene, you’ll lack the freedom to really explore those themes. By the time you’re just getting into a theme, the scene would have changed, and you’ll need to move onto new material. This leads to a lot of under developed themes, often lacking cohesiveness.
The Cubase file will suffer hugely from this approach
Practically this approach leads to all kinds of problems. It is perhaps just about doable if the film is only a few minutes long, but even then there are problems. First, you lack flexibility when using one Cubase file. Say you have written the whole score, but then you realise there’s a problem at the start, or you want to change the time signature somewhere. Suddenly with every change, you’re having to constantly check to make sure the rest of the score is still in the same place. Second, you are vulnerable to the file corrupting. Even with constant back-ups, a corrupt file could end up with you losing a lot of your work.
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Obviously the negatives outweigh the positives, unless you are under a very strict deadline. I think one of the reasons this approach is so tempting is a lack of confidence. When approaching a big project, there is always a little voice in the back of your head doubting whether you’re capable of getting to the finish line. So naturally it’s tempting to sprint towards the finish line. The problem you have is once you get there you’ve inevitably left an incoherent mess behind you. What is worse is that after listening to it a few times, you’ll get used to the incoherent mess, and start to feel it actually makes perfect sense. Once in this mindset it is incredibly hard to make any more improvements to the project.
Writing good music, particularly music that supports what’s on screen requires planning and patience. If you are prepared to do this, you will grow as a composer. You will hone your musical intuition, and feel a lot more satisfied with your end result. You just need to have the confidence to be patient and ignore that voice telling you that you won’t make it.
My Approach
So how have I changed my approach? There are perhaps a few clues in the above text, but a lot of what has changed has been on the preparation side. I am no longer so quick to jump into composing.
Research & Preparation
1) Watch the film and take notes
I think this step is one of the most important steps in the whole process. Your first impressions of the film are going to be pretty similar to the first impressions of a lot of other people. So make sure you note down anything that surprises you. I guarantee that once you’re deep into the project, you’ll have gotten used to the twists and turns, meaning the possibility of missing something. The way I take notes is both with pen and paper, and voice recorder. Sometimes it’s easier just to say what you are thinking, particularly if you have loads of things going through your head.
2) Study the Characters involved
Here I like to have a document that lists all the characters in the film. Exploring their main goals, main fears, and what kind of emotional journey they go through (ie how do they change?). This approach helps when writing their themes, but also further down the line when determining whether I’ve been successful in supporting these elements with my music.
3) Summarise the Story
Once done with the characters, I like to write down the story, and separate it into story beats. Within each ‘beat’ I think about who the main character is, who is on top, who’s happy with the current situation, and who isn’t. This file becomes one of my main ‘go tos’ when sketching out the music, and deciding who’s theme plays where.
4) Research Plan
At this point I should have a pretty good idea of the film, so now I create a file that lists everything I need to look up and research. For example, during the final scene of this film, there is a nod to Western films. So that would have gone on my list of things to research. The list can contain anything, it can be music genres, film genres, or even specific instruments. It gives me a to-do list, helping me research with purpose.
Once working through the list, I sometimes open up a Cubase file, and start playing around with the orchestration and harmonies of various musical styles I’m looking up. This was particularly helpful when preparing for this film. I transcribed a few excerpts from different Mariachi tracks, giving me a better understanding of what kind of instrumentation and harmonies were expected from that genre.
Themes
Once I have a good idea of the style of music I’m going for, and the type of characters I’m dealing with, I create a list of themes I want to explore. Important: Not all of the themes you write need to be included in the film, don’t restrict yourself here to the flow of the film. I like to take few screenshots of the various characters or situations, and then open up an empty Cubase file to explore in. This is your chance to really explore motives and variations for your characters, so don’t rush this process. My list for this film had 4 entries. The Piñata, the girl, and two others: ‘Call for Freedom’ and ‘Time Travel’.
For the Piñata theme I wrote a 16 bar theme. You can hear a rough version of it to the right. Note that these themes don’t need to be polished, they are more for your inspiration. If you listen to my entry at the top of this article you’ll notice that the middle section of this theme doesn’t make an appearance. This is simply because there wasn’t an appropriate moment for it in the film. But that doesn’t mean it was a waste of time. Having the freedom to write in this way, allowed me to explore the musical identity of the character, and actually led to some interesting new variations in the film.
Not every theme has to be a success either. Eventually I chose a different approach for the ‘Call to Freedom’ theme. I initially wanted to have a separate theme that represented the Piñata’s desire to be free and happy, and that would come into focus more as it got closer to its goals. However what ended up working better was tying this to the style of music. An extra theme would have confused things, particularly as the film was pretty short. So instead as the Piñata got closer to its goals, the music took on more a Mariachi feel to it. On the flip side, when the Girl was on top, the Mariachi style faded from view.
Spending time on the themes also gave me the freedom to come up with a cool idea for the girl. The girl at first seems to be the answer to all of the Piñata’s problems. But as the film continues we realise that she is in fact a huge obstacle! To represent this I went for a quirky unpredictable theme with erratic leaps, loosely based on the lydian mode. Upon revealing her darker side, I flipped this theme on its head using an inverted version of the theme in its parallel minor form. Have a listen to the two versions of her theme that I initially came up with.
Cues
One of the big changes to my approach is the fact that I now divide up my films (even short ones) into cues. These cues usually cover one or two story beats in the narrative. They take a bit of planning - you need to look at the film and have a think about where there should and shouldn’t be music. You also need to factor in that sometimes the entry of music says more than the actual music itself!
To begin, I first create one master Cubase file, where I prepare the video and sort out things like frame rate and timecode positions. This is also the file that will eventually hold all the audio from the different cues, and where I will produce my final mix.
With the master file sorted, I then use it as a template to create each of my cue files. As I finish writing each cue, I then update the master file by dragging in the cue’s audio files. Further down the line, I also create stems for each of my cue to give greater flexibility at the mixing stage.
To keep track of everything I use a cue list
Cue List
This is vital to the whole process! It tells me the starting point of each cue, so I know where to place the audio in the master file. It also keeps track of the completion of each cue, which still needs work, and what file version I am on.
This seems a lot of hassle.. Why do I bother with cues?
1) They give me a huge amount of flexibility!
By having separate Cubase files for each cue, I can play around with different time signatures and tempos without affecting any of my other cues.
2) Less Vulnerable
If one file corrupts, then I only lose one cue, not all of my music! Having small files also means that they run quicker on my computer, and allow me to play around with more plugins without threatening the file.
3) You don’t have to score chronologically!
As I have a set list of cues, I can choose to compose wherever I like. If I get stuck in a particular place, I can move on. If I’m not sure about a theme, I can test it out in multiple places to make sure it feels appropriate!
I strongly recommend anyone interested in scoring for film to try this approach. Even if not using cues, just simply being patient and planning ahead makes a huge difference to your end product. The best thing about it is that you come out the other side of the process a better composer.
That’s it for today!
Dan
