Cinéformation

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Music For Film

South West Sound 2007

For this month, Cinéformation became part of the annual South West Sound event at the Watershed on April 24th and, as such, the theme, “Music for Film”, was a very appropriate choice.

SOUTH WEST SOUND – THE DAY

The South West Sound day ran under the moniker “Beyond DIY” and kicked off with a keynote address “Lighting the Touchpaper” hosted by Bristol Music Foundation’s Matt Booth. Fellow panellists Feargal Sharkey (of Undertones fame and currently heading BMR – British Music Rights), John Webster (ex Virgin Exec and Chief Exec of the Music Manager’s Forum), Tim Smith (a secondary school music teacher of 31 years’ experience) and Jack Kingslake (Music Leader at High Road Studios in St Werburghs, Bristol) provided an enlightening and enjoyable insight into issues affecting the Music Industry in Britain, and especially the South West, today.

In a period where Britain is earning more money from the Music Industry than several other major industries including, perhaps surprisingly, Financial Services and Chemical Industries, the following subjects were of particular significance: The progress of Music Education; the importance, in the future, of Collecting Societies (PPL, MCPS, PRS, etc); Music Management training courses; a recommendation for Artists to keep their copyrights and to use licensing instead; a nationwide government-led scheme to open well-equipped rehearsal rooms following the model of a pilot scheme in Wrexham; The use of new (music) technologies in schools; extending links between music students and the industry in order to provide sustainability within both education and industry; and how music students can “monetize” their work.

With the near future promising “light-speed downloads” of music (120 albums worth of material in less than a second!), it is timely that results of BMR research into P2P (peer to peer) file sharing and music and film downloads, etc., is soon to be released – it will make very interesting reading.

Feargal Sharkey called this “one of the most exciting periods in the music industry” where there is “more demand for music than ever”, and everyone agreed that, although it would be hard work, it is nevertheless a great time for Musicians and Students of Music to “get out there and do it!”

After the keynote address, there were three midday panels, the most relevant to Cinéformation being “Scoring for Film”, which was hosted by film, television and theatre composer, Miguel Mera. Other panellists were Martin Kiszko, who was later to be guest speaker at the evening’s Cinéformation event (see below), Alex Heffes whose recent work includes helping to arrange the “Sweeney Todd: the Demon Barber of Fleet Street” soundtrack and the score for the oscar winning “The Last King of Scotland”, Ex theatre director turned composer, Dan Jones and Film and TV Music Publisher Sarah Liversedge.

Useful advice from the panel to less experienced composers included trying to find their own original voice; the use of drama to aid compositions; phoning production companies to find out at which stage in the production they are before sending unsolicited demos/showreels; creating their own temp tracks early in the music development process rather than allowing directors to get too used to someone else’s music; and approaching people such as Film Editors or Sound Designers when trying to secure work, rather than always approaching Directors/Producers head on.

Sarah provided a very interesting angle on the discussions, as it is not often that we hear things from a publisher’s perspective. I’m sure that all composers would find it invaluable to talk to someone like her reasonably early in their careers.

Following a networking lunch, the afternoon session commenced with Jaqui Hague who announced the start of MusicLeader South West – an initiative offering information, advice, guidance and training to Music Leaders (people who are experienced in the Music world and who can pass their knowledge on to the next generations of music makers) in the region.

Next came an open forum where delegates had a chance to ask questions of a panel comprising Sean Divine (of ASCAP – the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers), Matthew Tyrell (Ex of Music Week, now running an organisation called London Calling), Cindy Dalgleish (interfacing Higher Education and industry), Rick Rogers (of Dartington Plus and head of South West Recordings) and Jim Maudsley (Newcastle based and offering regional music advice through the organisation Generator).

There followed the inaugural meeting of the South West Music Forum, which has been established by Bristol Music Foundation over the past two years on a county level, but was the first time that forums from each county in the South West had all met under the one roof.

And a successful afternoon was rounded off by a Demo Panel where delegates had the opportunity to hear their tracks reviewed by a panel of judges comprising speakers from the afternoon’s events and others including Richard Pitt and Gary Smith of BBC Bristol’s “Bristol Uncovered” show. A highlight for me here was a young MC calling himself “Gecko” who brightened the airwaves with some amusing observations and quirky lyrics – keep your ears peeled!

CINEFORMATION – THE NIGHT

The evening brought the event we had all been waiting for! Cinéformation presented their “Music for Film”. The ever lovely Beth introduced composer and educator Jean Hasse who led us into the first part of the evening, a period of “Networking and Drinks” with a twist in that, during that time, students from The University of Bristol MAFTV composition course, on which Jean lectures, had the chance to play us their compositions on laptops located at strategic locations in the room.

I think that the students (Michael Fergusson, Blair Mowat, TyLean Paisley-Hixson, Jane Qu Yi, Aaron Whitfield, Chris Willis and Alex Wise) were a little hard done by in that the atmosphere of a networking room was so buzzing, it was not the best possible showcase for their work. But what I was able to make out seemed very impressive. It was, also, a very welcome treat to get a free glass of wine courtesy of Cinéformation and was good to have time specifically allocated to networking. It also made a change from the usual guest speaker and Q&A format that resumed during the second half:

Martin Kiszko, a film composer with over 200 soundtrack and concert credits under his belt, spearheaded this part of the evening as he took us enthusiastically through “The Psychology of Sound”. His first question to the audience was why do we need Film Music: “Why egg emotions?” As composer Schoenberg once asked of the director Thalberg, who was in the throws of explaining all the complexities of the soundscape of one of his films, “with all that going on, why would you need music?” Martin started to answer his question with another quote, this time from Cinema Great, Bernard Herman, who said that the correct placement of music “lifts dialogue into the realms of poetry” and then went on to describe the great power that music has to manipulate the audience.

To be able to do this most effectively, however, he argued, that first the Film Composer “must be bilingual”, i.e. able to converse in not only the language of music, but also must be versed in the vocabulary of the film world. In his/her applied craft the composer needs to be aware of the structure of story narrative including the three-act structure of classical story telling, or the three act with displaced narrative version, such as that told by Quentin Tarantino in “Pulp Fiction”.

The composer should be able to understand the physical and emotional arc of the characters and then use the music to highlight this drama. Martin listed nineteen different ways in which music can be used for this purpose: As well as the more obvious uses, such as source (diegetic) music, character themes, dramatic and emotional impact, etc., this list also included things such as “meaning and signification”, e.g. political stance of a character/situation, “subliminal”, for example to emphasise the shape of something on the screen, “humour”, “illusion of continuity” and to provide a “neutral background” such as in a documentary when there is not enough interest inherent in the existing sounds. He then showed us an excerpt from the Kiszco scored Dreamworks SKG/BBC Natural history Promotion showing us a range of ten or so of those methods.

Martin was joined by the evening’s first speaker, Jean Hasse, and by Jonathan Scott, Manager of the Composition and Recording Studios in the Department of Music at the University of Bristol. This pair had aided Martin in realising the score for the recent feature film The Killing of John Lennon (dir. Andrew Piddington), a feat that they achieved, from nothing to recorded and mixed, in “24 consecutive 18 hour days”! In helping to examine the process of film scoring, Jean talked about the Director’s Brief, and how it is difficult for the Director to communicate exactly what they require. It is therefore useful for the composer to ask questions and even to be able to improvise proposed parts, maybe on a piano, during meetings. Martin added that it is the main job of the film composer to figure out what the director wants: to extemporise, to agree; after all, the reason they are there is “to help realise the film”. Following on from this, Martin discussed the Key and Palette of the score, which, in terms of numbers of musicians available, etc., is intimately tied to budget and timescale. He said that few directors have “educated their ear” and so they either trust the composer in this respect, or they learn as they mature: the worst thing a Director can say is “I’ll like it when I hear it”! It is far better for them to have some sort of idea what they want. Martin then read us a horrendous brief he had received from a Director who obviously thought that he knew what he wanted, but was so dictatorial that he made it seem impossible, and also gave an anecdote about how Directors can often test themes out on a straw poll of people: their daughter, their daughter’s cat, their daughter’s cat’s brother, etc! We heard how the score for “The Killing of John Lennon” was particularly awkward as the director had already provided an extensive “Temp Track” and that the Sound Designer had been made to do the Sound design in the same key (pitch) as that music. The implication was that this was also very limiting for Martin.

Next up was the Mechanics of “spotting” the film, as “it is critical to be able to know when to stop and start the music”. Should a theme or effect anticipate, be synchronous with, or comment on an action? Martin showed his DVD, “The Art of the Film Score” (available from his website), which covered this point and also the following: Music Cue Sheets; M Numbers; Timecode; Scenes, Sequences, Cues; Entries and Exits; Binary, Tertiary and Rondo forms; Stings; Action; the use of no sound; and Iconic Reference.

Returning to the creation of the “The Killing of John Lennon” soundtrack, we learned how Jean had taken the “digitised” string parts from Digital Performer software and had transferred them to Sibellius Software in order to generate the score parts needed for nineteen cues where ten live string players added a touch of life to the more static electronically created “samples” (from the East-West Quantum Leap Sound Library), which had nevertheless been skilfully programmed with the help of David Hamill who regularly works at Martin’s studio and is also an accomplished composer in his own right. David had also added some more electronic textures using the Native Instruments Absynth Plug-In. “Imagine,” said Martin (I’m not sure if the reference was intentional, but I appreciated it); “Imagine recording and mixing a film score in eight days”: Apparently Jean was still printing parts out for the second half of the film whilst the first half was being recorded!

The string players, members of Bristol’s own Emerald Ensemble, were recorded in the University’s Victoria Rooms by Jonathan, and he explained how it was necessary to use specific mic techniques in order to blend the real strings with the electronically generated ones. He was also responsible for the final Music Mix and further Remix and Remastering stages to prepare the music for use on a Soundtrack Album.

We learned that even at the later stages in the production the Music was having to undergo constant change due to a “Paring” by the Director, negotiations with a Music Supervisor whose very existence was not made common knowledge until the last minute, and at one stage, as if the pressure wasn’t enough, the score actually got stolen from the studio!! There is a lesson to be learned here too, because, fortunately everyone had been very professional and proficient and had backed up the files.

The evening was rounded of with more pointers towards what it takes to be a Film Composer: MK: “You have to be able to cope with disappointment and rejection”; “Writer’s block is not an option – you just have to do it!” JH: “Take a break”; “Push Through”; “See it in a different way”, MK: “Make something beautiful from your first mark” (i.e. you don’t have time to keep changing your mind). And then an opportunity to look at some real life examples of Story Boards, Scores and Sketches from Martin’s portfolio.

Both composing for film events during the day were well attended by aspiring composers and I’m sure that they were able to glean much useful information from them especially with Martin Kiszco’s knowledgeable, informative and generous approach. However, it is my personal opinion, also reflected by the panel members of the midday session, that it is a shame that more Film Directors and Producers do not attend these events in order for them to gain a better understanding of what is involved in the creation of a film soundtrack. Any composers reading this, should be informed that, apparently, it is your task to educate them!

Alan Deacon

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Author: beth at 09:02 on 07.05.08 Leave a comment

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