making music for films

[dan the acid man]

right, i know a few friends who are going to make a little film using a pc game, now they've asked if im upto having a go at making the film score :shock: so i said i'd have a go, i'll probably fail miserably, but im up for a challenge.

right, so im asking is there any do's and don'ts before i start to have a practice

[vadarfone]

It really depends what kind of film it is...

Haha... Vague I know...

In my experience making music for film is much more about the contrast between quiet parts and loud than anything else...

Also, you will have to be prepared to abandon any ideas of a regualr structure to your music when you are cutting it to a film... it is all about transitions and matching mood with sound.

If you make a music video, you are basically time syncing visuals to the audio so it is pretty easy artistically. Matching music to an already made film is not so easy...

Basically the best way to do it is to just go for it.

Sorry to be wishy washy with my answer but thats all I can really say on the matter!

:)

Good luck!

[stjohn]

im in the middle of a final year thesis at the moment and we're doing a short film for it. me and another lad are doing the audio (as well as loads of other shit). we had a smaller project last semester to warm up for this one and we did something similar, just shorter, and what i found is, its very easy fall into a trap of making the film look like a music video.

what i would say is sit down with the sciptwriter when the film is being storyboarded and try to grasp the feel of each scene and then group the scene with the relevant scenes before and after, therefore telling a story (part of the bigger picture). heres an example:

a man is being told by an official that every memory he has, has never happened, its all being a figment of his subconscious. cut to the mans face in shock, flash to the man in a dark room covered in polaroids, each depicting a memory. with a swoop the image from each polaroid disappears.

this is something from our script. so what we did was wrote down the emotions that the man experienced throughout the scenes.

so we kinda did confusion-> shock-> epic realisation

once its broken down like that it makes it alot easier. another thing is lay off the heavy beats (big kicks and snares), unless it works of course, usually i would start a techno track with beats, whereas beats in a film are often left for when huge developemnts happen IMO.

that my 2 cents anyways, hope it helps. id love to hear other comments, coz we've just got started in ours

[Ritzi Lee]

A little trailer from a Dutch thriller production. Produced bij a couple of student studying at the Amsterdam Art academy. I've made a piece of ambient kinda techno, which you can hear in the trailer!

[Ritzi Lee]

woops:
http://www.lenteveld.nl/video/teaser1.mov

[vadarfone]

"a man is being told by an official that every memory he has, has never happened, its all being a figment of his subconscious. cut to the mans face in shock, flash to the man in a dark room covered in polaroids, each depicting a memory. with a swoop the image from each polaroid disappears."

Nice to see the students pushing the boundaries of original script writing... Ho Ho

;)

I do like your idea about discussing the emotions of a scene though.

[stjohn]

tell me about it......... we've been writing the script for yonks and its getting us nowhere.. none of us have a creative writing bone in our body.

the whole film is supposed to be arty farty, with the focus being more audio/visual then narrative. we're (6 of us) are going to perform the film Live, with me and another lad on audio, and 2 other people on the visuals and 2 runners. im very nervous coz ive just started with ableton for the sake of the project, and ive alot to learn :(

[dan the acid man]

cheers people, most of the stuff already mentioned i'd already thought about, i just wanted to make sure, i'll just go away and practice, see if im upto the job

[RDR]

TRy these dan..

http://www.northbeachpost.com/handy_glossary.html

http://www.filmsound.org/

Film sound is all about imagination, you can really go wild with it..

if you want wierd sounds, pay CLOSE attention to your reverbs...

this link is extremely important

http://www.filmsound.org/marshall/index.htm

You must read that.

[dan the acid man]

cool, nice one oh dodgy one, checking those now :cheese: