On the 19th of November, 2021, I finished conducting my recital to a crowd of over 150 people, alongside the 17 musicians, 1 sound technician, 15 animators and 5 voice actors who made it possible. It was an amazing night filled with lots of excitement, love and support for this project I've been working on for over a year and a half. STORING & DISTRIBUTING THE WORK The scores and technical / logistical requirements for the whole show were documented in a google drive that all the performers, animators, voice actors and sound technicians had access to. All aspects of the recital's content were organised into these respective folders: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1yEqAKuzWYmTqXcJUUt-MTm2sVwyKMRRe?usp=sharing The "Audio Files" folder contains snippets of dialogue that the animators could time their work to. None of the musicians had access to these audio files - just the music files, rehearsal videos and logistics folders. The "Music" file contained sheet music and midi audio of all of the scenes of music (with and without dialogue). The sheet music section contained the updated versions of the conductor's score, the individual scores of each scene and the individual scores for each performer that they could print out themselves. The "Logistics" folder contains all of the technical requirements for the show including a yearly timeline for when each section of the composing and animating process needed to be complete by (including when rehearsals should be), a list of the number of chairs, stands, mics, and other equipment we needed, the layout of the RGA and a run sheet for the night of the show. The "Scripts & Scenes" folder was mainly for the voice actors so they could read and annotate their own lines when we were recording in the downstairs WAAPA sound studio or my home studio. However, there is an annotated version of the script that the Producer and Director used to divide up the scenes into more manageable chunks for each of our storyboarding artists to illustrate. And of course, any of the "Design" or "Storyboard" folders were strictly for the animators to upload their work into once they had completed a scene or section of work. We would have weekly Monday night meetings on our Discord Server for this project where the animators would touch base with the director and producer to say what scenes or designs that they had completed and what scenes or designs we needed. A link to the full first draft of timed storyboards with dialogue and music can be found here: drive.google.com/file/d/1RZfGUB2pbE0OP6KxSeZW8oAOLSSMT7Uk/view?usp=sharing THE COMPOSITION PROCESS My process for writing the score for the recital was to piece together the thumbnails for the storyboard panels in Final Cut Pro with the dialogue. Then, I would export it into Logic Pro so I could compose to what was happening on the screen and time it to the dialogue and action. Before this, however, I figured out:
I would also determine whether the scene needed music at all. This pre-planning stage of deciding where there should be music is what the film industry calls “spotting” and normally happens with the editor, director and composer. Since I took on all three of these roles, I had the creative freedom to choose where the music would have the most narrative impact. For example, the start of scene 9 had such strong acting performances that I didn't want to take away from the moment by overdoing it with underscoring. Instead, the music sneaks in at the turning point of the argument between Chase and Asim and makes a call back to a previous scene at Asim's house where he is looking after his father by himself. This choice works better to emphasise Asim’s own cycle of loneliness and self-reliance and more importantly, it marks the start of his character development by asking for Chase's help. All of this preparation I did before diving into the actual composing was written down in my Composition Seminar notebook over the course of this year. The PDF of the complete conductor's score is just below.
SCORING ISSUES Some of the biggest issues I faced during this process were with translating the MIDI score into an XML format. Any time it was opened in Muse Score or Sibelius, the instruments wouldn’t be converted over and the score would be a mess, with rhythms in the wrong places and note heads pointing the wrong way. This was slightly infuriating, and I managed to curb some of the frustration by making certain that the Logic Pro session was entirely quantised before converting it into an XML. This was easier but still difficult to work with and made the editing process longer, when I was trying to rush to finish the scores in time for the first rehearsal. I used Muse Score as I found the user interface easier to manage than Sibelius. Using MuseScore also meant that I was able to work from home, and that saved me the travel time of going to and from uni. As frustrating as this was, I believed it to be an easier method for composing to film and it felt more natural to me than some of the other scoring options were. In general, working with Alice Humphries, my principal study teacher, was what helped me with composing and arranging my scores the most. She really got me to think about my scores and arrangements in a more intricate and structured way, such as voicing brass chords with the overtone series. This means that tonics and fifths would sit in the bass instruments like Trombone, as they naturally incorporate the early harmonics of the treble instruments like French horn and trumpet, which would be playing the thirds, sevenths and seconds of a chord (the later harmonics of the tonic being played by the Trombone). This way of writing, where you have to actively consider the size and timbre of your ensemble, hadn't crossed my mind and really made me re-think the dynamics of the whole recital. Showing her the updates and edits of scores and arrangements over the course of each week was an invaluable experience that helped me write these scores to the best of my abilities. She also calmed my nerves about my scores feeling unpolished for the first rehearsal, saying that unless I needed to add more music or swap bars entirely, that cutting bars and adding extra dynamic annotations during the workshopping process was a normal thing to do. A piece of advice that really helped me during the scoring process was from Jeremy Zuckerman, the composer for the hit Nicklodeon TV series, Avatar: The Last Airbender and The Legend of Korra. I was feeling burnt out halfway through the semester and had developed writers block for composing for the scenes. So I sent him a message over facebook, and to my great surprise, he sent me this as a reply: "Hi Hannah! Thanks for the kind words. I think this is the time for you to not always get everything 100% right. So first off, I'd remind you to have fun and enjoy this process. Don't be afraid to take risks and try things you're not sure will work. That's how discoveries happen... One piece of advice, if you're having trouble with a scene, ask yourself what the music is doing. What is it's purpose? If you don't know, then there's a good chance you don't need it there. Also, remember to play with density/complexity. Sometimes all you need is a very simple, functional cue for a scene. Something that doesn't really stand on its own but is there simply to serve. Good luck!!" This piece of advice was a lovely reminder that I was doing this because I actually enjoy writing music. So if I was feeling stressed, I should try to take a step back to just enjoy it and relax into it. After this, I did double back on some of the scenes I'd already planned out, and reduced the number instruments in them, now realising that a solo instrument could be better for a scene than a quartet would: Because the music is there to serve the scene - not to overshadow it. Once I'd completed all of the scores, the first rehearsal went fairly well and we ran through the biggest pieces e.g. scene 2, scene 8 and scene 10 & 11, where the whole ensemble was involved. We realised that some of the pauses in the music were confusing to count so I decided to mark them as G.P. (general pause) and asked my musicians to mark the start of the next bar as a new section. This meant that instead of trying to lock in with the click track when I got lost, I could lock in with the dialogue and cue the instrumentalists when I heard the next line coming. I wrote extra annotations in my first conductors score with what each dialogue cue was for each sting so that I knew where I was in each scene (or whether we were too far ahead and had to pause the episode, which I did in fact do on the night). Since it was my first time conducting an ensemble like this, I was quite nervous but got some good tips from all of the performers, such as when to use the 6 beat patterning for 6/8 time and when to stick with the 2 beat pattern of it. This was good for helping to keep everyone on the right track. Unfortunately, I didn't communicate enough with the musicians when writing the score beforehand, and used too many "octave above" and "octave below" symbols, since I was unaware of how comfortable the musicians felt reading too high or too low on the ledger lines. I also discovered a bit later on in the process that French horn players are more comfortable reading without key signatures. I asked my French Horn player, Milly, if she would be okay to read the sheet music with all of the key signatures and she confirmed she was okay with that (which gave me some confidence). Some of the brass parts were written a bit too high for some of the players, so I suggested to pencil in an "octave below" symbol whenever that was the case, so that it sat more comfortably in their range. Where possible, I tried to ask musicians how they felt with their registers when writing the music and how they preferred certain phrases to be dictated. For example, dictating a legato line differed in style from instrument to instrument and it was especially useful when asking the woodwind players and comparing that to the string players. This was the same for vibrato, tremolo and other terms such as "martele" for the strings (an annotation note handed to me by Kathy Potter, who was also an amazing source of guidance when learning how to communicate and workshop with the instrumentalists). Aside from the odd miss-type of different time signatures or wrong notes, this is where most of the issues with the score come to an end and where the issues with the logistics of the rehearsals and the performance come in. LOGISTICAL AND AESTHETIC ISSUES / SOLUTIONS One of the biggest problems I had when conceptualising this recital, was how to sync up the click track with what was playing on the projector screen. Initially, I had imagined creating two different versions of the video, one with a click and one with dialogue, and then just trying to hit play at the same time on both devices. However, after consulting with Arran O'Mara, we realised that the easiest way to do this was to simply use Logic Pro as the software that both the click and the video were playing from and to use my iPad as an extra controller / interface where I could turn the click track send up or down as I liked and I could even pause the whole thing so that the music could catch up. This whole setup was amazing, however, it did have some very particular specifications that it needed to run as smoothly as possible.
We ended up being able to do all of this, with Arran adjusting the dialogue audio where needed when the music was too loud. However, on the night of the performance, there were still some glitches happening in Logic Pro which made it slightly delayed and made the levels of the microphones for the ending credits song way too low at the start of the piece. On the night, these were small nitpicks, but on a re-run of this performance, it would be crucial to have more time to sort out these bugs in the performance space. Another issue with preparing for this performance was organising rehearsals for everyone. I knew it would be hard to have a rehearsal with all the musicians present, so I booked 3 rehearsals in the last week of October and told my musicians to make at least 2 of them. Most of them did, some of them didn't and there was a musician who had agreed to help me but was too injured to play and never got back to me in time for the first rehearsal, so I had to replace them with another player. This made it quite tricky when reminding players to fill out their new annotations. I would encourage them to check with other players in the ensemble for any new notes and recorded 3 of the rehearsals. I then uploaded them to the google drive and sent a link to the performers group chat via messenger. However, in many cases, some musicians hadn't had the time to do this until the day of the performance because of work, uni commitments and sickness. The day before the recital, one of my flautists came down with tonsillitis, so I madly scrambled for a replacement and was very VERY lucky to find one in time - she was sent all of the annotations for the music from our previous flautist, who did everything she could to help, considering the circumstances. My solution to performers being unable to make rehearsals was to record small videos talking about how I would approach the conducting, send links to the rehearsals videos and send updates of where the newly cut bars and general pauses should be. I think this helped to mitigate some of the confusion but unfortunately, not all of it. On the night, there were quite a few slip ups and the performers got so lost in some cases, that they would refuse to play any cues in the piece. This was a little disheartening, however, I later realised that the huge crowd of people may have made them slightly more nervous than our rehearsals had, since previously, the number of musicians on stage had outnumbered the small crowd during our soundcheck. Luckily, this confusion was offset by a very strong finish to the final ensemble pieces and a very encouraging and appreciative crowd. Other issues we had were that our front of house crew were only able to test out the lighting during our soundcheck. I was fortunate enough to run the lighting for Heather's recital the night before and had become familiar enough with the lay out of the RGA's lighting to create a lighting sheet for them which was apparently, easy enough to follow. To ensure that I didn't have too many people running up to me before the show, asking lots of questions, I made a technical requirements sheet along with the running sheet for Remal's and my recital and soundcheck that night. This had a "To-Do List" for all of the musicians, crew and composers for the night to make sure they had everything they needed, and that if they had a problem not addressed by that sheet, to then come up and ask myself or Remal. Thankfully, I had my friend Gem run around and post that up in the Green Room on the whiteboard just before our soundcheck, which, when I arrived, Ethan Bellhouse, Tayla Rattray, Cass Evans-Ocharern and Arran O'Mara had already set everything up for soundcheck, since I was running late having picked up the final edited video file. This really helped to reduce the amount of stress I was feeling after the soundcheck since I knew that I had done all that I could to make the night run as smoothly as possible for everyone. And when the performance was finished, I was ushered outside by all of my musicians before I could even start packing up and had bouquets and hugs thrown my way. It was a wonderful feeling to have so much love and support for this project and it was especially cool, because I finally got to meet all of my animators in the flesh! They all sat in the reserved seating in the front row, where they wore black and white outfits to the performance to differentiate themselves from the rest of the crowd. It was fantastic to see them and to get to thank them for all of their hard work at the end of the performance, where the whole audience could hear it. SO WHAT WAS THE POINT ... After explaining a years worth of hard work from the dozens of passionate people that were involved with this project... Why did I decide to do this in the first place? The first and most obvious answer is because I really REALLY wanted to. Film score is something I've always been intrigued by, and TV shows like Avatar: The Last Airbender shaped my childhood and my tastes in media. I was also struck with inspiration by the WASO concerts where they perform the scores for epics such as Star Wars and Lord of the Rings live to the film playing in the background. All of these things, plus my love of writing, combined together to make this project possible. Although that was my first reason for beginning the project, my main aim was to explore the impact of working collaboratively with others in the film-making process as a composer. As Australian Screen Composer, Brett Aplin, stated earlier this year in our composition workshop, "Being a composer can be a lonely and often isolating process. Most of the time, it's just you working by yourself, and sometimes, the director and editor will judge your work". It's common knowledge that in the film industry, composers often get treated as an after thought, when the entire film has already been shot and edited, resulting in very little time to score and record the music for the film. Ultimately, this means there's very little time to get to know and care for the film you're supposed to be scoring for. Naturally, I am a social person and the idea of such a lonely and stressful profession for an intricately human art such as music and film seemed wrong to me on so many levels. When directing this whole process, I wanted to be involved in as many aspects of it as possible - sometimes as a director or writer, sometimes as a composer and editor. I know that by working with the animators every Monday night, they helped me to build a greater sense of identity for the whole project through the music. I sprinkled in some leitmotifs here and there, I was able to re-time the scenes either to the music or to the animation and I was even able to get a sense of how each individual animator was interpreting the music. The added layer of involvement and collaboration made the process of composing the music more enjoyable and rewarding for everyone involved. Watching the animators get excited when seeing a scene come together with the music was really encouraging for me. On the flip side, getting to watch a scene unfold timed out the beats or mood I'd laid out for the montage scene or the battle music inspired me to write even more. The whole process was a collaborative work, and it never would've LOOKED or SOUNDED as cohesive and unique as it did without the animators, directors and voice actors having a sense for the piece by hearing snippets of the scores or by knowing how a character sounded, looked or moved. This type of collaborative film making is unique in the world of film score, and there are very few composers who ever get to be onboard with a project before it's even been filmed or animated. My developing philosophy is that the best art comes from collaboration. Sure, it may start as one person's vision, but that vision will grow into something more vibrant if it's allowed to be interpreted influenced by other creatives. If the cast and crew aren't familiar with one another, too much of the responsibility for the creative identity of the project falls onto the shoulders of the director and it can lead to them getting burnt out, and the film having a narrow field of view. The BEST work that happened on this project was when an animator, director or voice actor said to me "actually, how about we do this instead?". Let me share a few of the many examples from this year. I was editing the script with the visual director, Robin, in January of this year. I read it aloud whilst they gave me notes whenever a scene felt too long, too difficult to pull off from an animation standpoint, or just unnecessary. At scene 3 when Chase arrives home, we had a character named 'Auntie Jackie', who races out the door to the Dojo to teach a class. Robin just said to me "You don't need this character - that's a whole other design that would have to be drafted and finalised and it makes the cast too big". Initially, I was defensive, since Auntie Jackie's character hinted at Chase's familiarity with martial arts. But the more I thought about it, the more I knew that Robin was right. I didn't need the character there, I could just allude to the fact that this character existed and frequented a Dojo in the dialogue. When I was recording the voice lines for Yoshizumi, we had tried to go for an American accent (as is typical of anime English voice overs). But it just didn't seem to be working with the dialogue and I had no idea what to do about it... until the actor said something along the lines of "How about I go for a low key English accent? He seems a little more put together and more 'Obi-Wan-ish' than Asim does". We re-recorded the previous lines and they sounded so much more suited for a calm, dry English accent. When we were designing the character for Yoshizumi, Coda (the producer) asked me if he had more of a "relaxed, Literature / Drama kid energy." I was working on Yoshizumi's theme at the time and as soon as I said yes, he added some cool earrings and some big, round glasses for the character, something I'd never considered before when drawing him previously. And it just WORKED. The flowing, water-like music fit perfectly with the relaxed character design, almost completely by accident - all because we were working on them at the same time. When I received the thumbnails for scene 2 for the first time around August, I had no idea what I was going to get. All the animator had for the scene was the music and some basic descriptors of each character's journey home. What I got was both charming and HILARIOUS - Sally Henderson was the set designer for the project but soon we realised that their visual comedy was outstanding. In the scene, Chase looks behind to see if anyone spots her cutting through the supply closet to get to the bus on time and she ends up with her feet sticking straight up in the air. It added a lightness to the scene that I'd never would've known to convey otherwise. Same thing with the thumbnails for scene 3 B when Asim enters his house. I had written descriptors of making Asim feel small and insignificant in the frame and what I got was these wonderful dramatic wide shots of Asim walking through his mansion with the windows casting enormous shadows on top of him. I hadn't even written the music for this scene so receiving such striking imagery really helped me to build a sense for the weight of it - so I wrote these yearning suspended, seventh chords in the strings to convey it but no melody. I could tell from looking at it that the music in the scene needed space to breathe. In scene 6, our animator, Anna Brockless (who did the incredible stylised opening scene) dived into the realm of horror conventions, using intimidating low angle shots of the characters, stepping inside the classroom to see the Spirit of Manners literally dripping onto the teacher. I had initially struggled to write the music for this scene but as soon as I edited the shots together and imported it into Logic where I could see the frames, it was much easier to hear what it should sound like and what the scene needed from the music.
The point I'm trying to make is that when creating a film or an episode or a video game or generally any kind of multi-media art, you will work best when you work with other people who can bring something else to the table that you can't. And this doesn't just apply to the film's director - this applies to everyone who is apart of the film making process. I want to see sound designers involved in the spotting process and checking in with the composer to see how they can work together to declutter the sound, or even when no music or no sound effects would work better to convey narrative meaning (or would just sound cooler). I want composers working with cinematographers and asking if mimicking the sweeping shot of the battle field with a sweep in the orchestra would be awesome, or, if they reckon it wouldn't work with the tone of the shot. I want to see composers throwing little leitmotif cues at the character designers and to watch as they listen to it on repeat as study music when illustrating them. I desperately wanted the process of creating something like "Gradient" to be more than scoring a picture locked version of the script by myself. I wanted to rely on the expertise and experience of my animators, and to let them inspire me. I wanted them to get excited about the project by being included in each step! That includes the voice acting, the scripting and most of all, THE MUSIC. When I got into the swing of writing the music, it lit this spark in the project. When people got to see the scenes they drew actually scored and timed and feeling like a fully produced episode, they got excited. It was at that point, I no longer needed to keep them invested and motivated to finish the project. Everyone wanted to finish it because we started to see what we were creating as a team. And I can say with certainty that this project was everything that I wanted it to be and I am so unbelievably grateful and thrilled that team got to prove that it was possible and made it happen.
0 Comments
The script for my recital depicts an urban fantasy setting where spirits exist alongside humans in Yurahi, the modernised city of spirits built in a valley. These spirits are heavily inspired by Hayao Miyazaki's spirits from "Spirited Away", with the world building particularly inspired by "Naussica: Valley of the Wind", with the exception being that it's a more modern era. The character dynamics were inspired by "Avatar: The Last Airbender", with two high school students being gifted the powers of the spirits of balance - Yin & Yang - so that they may carry out their duties as Spirit Hosts to balance upset / corrupted spirits. Our main protagonists are Chase Withers and Asim Essa. When creating this story and world, these two characters were the first thing I drew and fleshed out. Chase Withers is a snarky, high school loner, and since she isn't the smartest cookie and comes from a poor family, she gets quickly defensive around her peers . However, at home, she has a strong family life. She asks her little sister, Mei, for help with her homework and encourages her with her own academic endeavours. Not only that, she has hobbies outside of school such as training in martial arts, which is supported by her Aunt Jackie. Here, we see her relaxed and warm, especially with her little sister. This dichotomy between her home life and school life serves to directly contrast our other main protagonist, Asim Essa. Asim Essa is smart, charming, and wealthy, making him very popular at school. He's confident, if not a bit arrogant, and often has to be lectured by his more emotionally mature boyfriend, Yoshizumi (AKA Yoshi) when it comes to social tact. However, this completely changes with his life at home being quiet and cold. We find out that he is his father's carer and that due to his mother's fame, he rarely sees her. This striking contrast helps Asim and Chase be fantastic foils for one another when they are forced to work together in the narrative, and helps them help each other. They are not opposites; they simply balance out the other, as Yin & Yang do. Throughout the script, the trio of Asim, Chase & Yoshi try to figure out how to calm down the Spirit of Manners, who has taken to possessing the school students and staff after being corrupted by Chase & Asim's arguments and rudeness to one another. This plot and premise allows me to draw many musical parallels between the characters, spirits and setting without overcrowding the episode and I'm excited to tackle the score! Overall, I'm proud of the work I've done with the script, characters and world building as I feel like I've taken what I loved from all the anime inspired media I consumed as a kid and distilled it into something new and original that I made. Image by Robin McMahon (Chase & Asim's older 2020 character designs) - if you're interested in their art, look up their instagram tag @hollowchimes. Full script PDF can be found just below!
Here is the first draft of the dialogue between Yoshi, Chase & Asim (our three main protagonists). The recording of Asim & Chase has been recorded separately in the sound studio on the 27th of May 2021 with two waapa students providing the voices. Yoshi's lines were originally recorded back in January 3rd 2021 and I'm planning to re-record his lines so that the actor can match the energy that Chase & Asim's actor's are providing.
The soundcloud link can be found just below: Gradient Scene 5 Dialogue Draft 1
Due to the COVID lockdown during mid semester, we had to postpone / cancel many of the sound spectrum concerts, including the ecuatorial concert I was going to perform my piece at. I rehearsed with Raph, Belinda and Hanae for a Piano, Clarinet and Viola trio called "Young Truth". This piece is an extended character theme for one of the main characters in my recital named "Yoshizumi". Of the three main characters, he is the level headed and emotionally mature member of the group - the "literature driven, emotionally chill drama kid" as my visual director for my recital.
We were forced to record in a rehearsal room as when I showed up for my sound studio booking, the grand piano was removed from the room. So I had to improvise and ask a favour from the loan store guys at WAAPA, as they provided me an interface, two XLR cables, two microphones and two microphone stands. We were very lucky to find an available rehearsal room during study week on such short notice and the recording went very well, especially with Ethan Bellhouse's help in setting up and packing down. What was really cool about this is that the animators were finishing the final character designs for Yoshi when I was finishing the compositional piece. When we had our next discord meeting, we shared our files and were pleasantly surprised with how well the visuals of the character and the soundscape matched up. You can see the character design here (including the animators notes on how to avoid drawing harmful stereotypes when drawing characters of diverse backgrounds). Soundcloud Young Truth I got the wonderful opportunity to work with Nina Brown on her 3rd year recital. Her piece was based on the mythos of Pandora's box and she extended this meaning to surround how we treat each other - with contempt and pettiness or genuine love and care. To get this across, she used 2 different composers, including myself, to make the different sections. I was asked to compose the second half of the piece, that was all about "hope" and the best parts of human relationships. So we traded back and forth for the kind of vibe she wanted with reference tracks and after creating a vague mock-up of the track, we messaged back and forth to make tweaks to it, sometimes with me coming into rehearsals to edit on the fly. Nina was fantastic to work with and had a really strong vision of what she wanted - but I felt like I got to slip in some stuff of my own including this waltz at the end of the section that she liked so much, that she choreographed new material for it!
"Thanks so much @Hannah I just listened to it and its perfect exactly what I needed thank you!" - Nina Brown You can listen to the final draft of the piece on my Soundcloud right here and the final performance in a later post. Soundcloud Link "Pandora's Hope" 2020 has been a tough year to say the least, but my dog has been dancing through this year, despite getting a slipped disk in April, making one of her back legs a little less than functional. So I wrote a song for her - not only that, I made a music video for her - because she's a good dog. After a years worth of procrastination and losing / gaining footage... here it finally is. Posted January 2020. I had a great deal of fun working with this animator earlier this year to create a cute, folk driven song for their DnD inspired gif...
I worked with ECU film students this semester alongside my friend Ethan on the soundtrack for "Bird Meets World" This collaboration was a blast to work on! I loved the basis of the film and its message, using absurdist humour for deep insight into important mental health issues. Our directions for the sound track were "acoustic instruments, mainly guitar, ukulele or piano" and the director gave us a Spotify playlist of references and influences. After chatting with her, she seemed to admire an artist I evoke quite strongly in my music; "Dodie Clark". This was pretty much a blessing as I knew exactly the direction the music could take.
Ethan's work ethic and input was invaluable for keeping us on track and creating a diverse yet cohesive soundtrack. We met up several times to discuss themes and ideas around character music and ambient music. After a bit of an improvisation session we came up with the main character "Bird's" leitmotif for the film and the kind of chords we thought we would e.g. "F sus 4 major 7" was the main reference for the film score process. During one of these sessions after getting a copy of the script, we read through and completely annotated it with musical cues to divi up the work. After recoding and mixing everything, we sent it off for evaluation from the director who gave us back a full and overall very positive review of each individual track. Ethan suggested sending the annotated script over our sound production group chat. "Yeah if you can, that would be appreciated!" responded Jesse, the sound designer. "(It) will definitely help during the editing!". That was a happy little coincidence that I will definitely keep in mind for future collaborations and film scores. "Hannah and Ethan were really easy to work with. They were professional and dedicated throughout, and carefully listened to any information I gave them. Due to getting very ill, I had to ask them to speak to our sound designer, Jesse, while I caught up, and they immediately adapted. The music they created suited the film perfectly , and their attention to detail on the final song "Meet The World" actually made me cry when I heard it because it was so perfect," Bethany, the Director on "Bird Meets World" The track I was probably most proud of was the song for the final montage "Meet The World". I wrote it on acoustic guitar with the chords and lyrics in mind to reflect the scene and mood. The progression flicks between the F and C starting on the chord IV - I. Ethan plays parts of the piano and the spacious electric guitar as I sing. The melody for the start of the chorus is also the beginning of Bird's leitmotif and the turn around before the F chord is a D major. Ethan had stated beforehand that D major was supposedly the colour red and so I used this chord to symbolise the girl in the red dress that Bird briefly meets before the climax of the film and at the end of it. This is subtly symbolic that she helped to turn his perspective on things around. Overall, this was a really rewarding process that was a blessing in disguise right before exams. Receiving the very positive feedback and enthusiasm from the crew was super uplifting to read after I feel like flopped a couple of exams. It's reminded me how much I love narrative tied in with music and that it is something that still engages and intrigues me. You can read the lyrics for "Meet The World" below and listen to the song "here." Lyrics for "Meet The World": Hold your tongue Bite it tighter than you've ever done Don't you hide Today was a bust but maybe someday You'll be much better and brighter Hold it tighter Picking it up From where we are Starting again just to Figure it out It's all up to us Tough and remade Gently you start to unfurl So step outside and go meet the world |
Categories
All
Artist SummaryI'm a WA Fremantle based singer-songwriter / composer. Here, you can have a gawk at my studies, compositions and performances. Archives
August 2022
|