Over this semester I’ve learnt a lot about working on films and a lot about working in groups. I worked with a few groups I worked with Stonethrow Films, 88 Days and a group making a short documentary.
My original group for this semester 88 Days decided that they didn’t want to produce their film this semester so I had to find another group to work with. This was a bit disappointing as we had been talking about making this since me and the producer Katherine were in America together. I found another group thanks to Aidan and he got me in with his group on music. Making music wasn’t my first choice for this year as it’s not something I feel I can just walk into and work with, with any group. I like to know both what they want and what I am capable of doing are both fairly close.
Working with Stonethrow I composed 3 pieces for their film. I’ll talk through them all in the order that they appear in the film. The first piece is called ‘Why Would I Lie?’ a piece with cello, piano and violin. This song was the least fleshed out and clear song I worked on. From the start it wasn’t really clear what they wanted for this one so I just worked on an idea that I’d already had. I had the first few bars of melody and that was it. The group had given me a variety of examples for this but they were each very different, one had said they want something like the vocal group The Ink Spots with a 30’s or 40’s sound, someone else had said they wanted something like British indie band The Enemy with a loud distorted electric bass and heavy guitars. I had also been given examples of music from the 70’s and I wasn’t exactly sure where I was supposed to be going. It wasn’t that they weren’t good at communicating or telling me what they wanted it was just that each person in the group had an idea about what they wanted it to sound like and there wasn’t exactly one person in control of the project they were all really invested in the film. This was good at some points but for making the music it was a bit of a pain. In the end from what I’d gathered was what they really wanted was something slow, calm and old sounding. I wasn’t really happy with this piece in general but I just knocked something out and hoped for the best. The first feedback was mixed but after it was put with the film they all agreed that they liked it and were happy with it. If I was to work with a group like this again where one person isn’t clearly leading the project I’ll just explain the issue to the group and get them to all agree on something before I get started working on songs.
The second piece is called A Unit of Measurement. It’s a piece made of different recordings I’s made with the group on location. Again I wasn’t given a clear direction for this one but I knew they wanted droning, ominous and dislocated from the image. Time was important to the film so I included the clocks ticking throughout. The scene it was being used in was where the character John was having an episode where he wasn’t sure what was going on and could hear noises in his house. I liked making this piece but I struggled to say when it was finished because I had complete control over this piece so I just kept playing with different samples and I kept editing. The version the group were happy with wasn’t the one I would’ve picked but they liked it. I wanted to include more edited vocal sounds and something possibly more melodic but they preferred the simpler version without so that’s what we went with.
The third piece I made was a big band piece. The group had said they want something upbeat with brass giving me In The Mood by Glenn Miller as an example piece. This was the easiest piece I had to make, as I knew exactly what they wanted so I took the most prominent characteristics of the song and used them to make my own. So I went for a swing style drumbeat and a walking bass line with a brass melody over the top. The thing I most enjoyed about this track was mixing it, I just had to make everything sound degraded so I found some vinyl emulator plugins and some saturators and really destroyed the quality of the song and it sounded pretty good.
I made all the pieces in Logic like I’d planned and I learnt how to navigate much more quickly. If there was something I found myself doing a lot with the mouse like changing tools, windows and muting and soloing tracks I looked up how to do they with keyboard shortcuts. It sounds like a really minor thing but it really sped up my workflow. Instead of having to look up from what I’m doing I just tapped T on the keyboard and the number of the tool I wanted and I found myself saving time during editing.
What I took from this project is that I should get a clear understanding of what I’m doing before I start work and making sure both the group and me have the same idea about what’s happening. I would say that making music for film isn’t my favourite thing to do and I think it comes across that I lost interest in this project. I far preferred my work on location with this group and the other documentary group I work with.