Culminating Experience Project Abstracts

The main focus of this project is the process of composing for a 3-minute film. It describes pre-production, production and recording in London, and post-production. My goal was to record very different musical genres that I can use as my portfolio in the future. I started this project looking for an original video to write the music for, and ended up recording it with a videographer so I could write the music I liked, and I could use all the instrumentation we had available. The project led me to a review of every part of the process and make every detail my own. Even though I could be better in some areas, I feel like I am ready to work in the professional world at any of these stages.

After a year of trying to find myself as an artist and as an ever-growing person, I am now at the culmination of that experience. I finally have the chance to set my final piece of music, which will be recorded at Air Studios in London. The amount of grace I feel at this moment is incredible and overwhelming at the same time. I cannot put into words what is going on in this moment not only in my head, but also in my heart and emotions. Everything is a beautiful jumble of realisations, adventures and new bonds that will surely last for a long time.
Since I graduated from university, I knew I wanted to go down the path of film scoring. Actually, I just thought I wanted to be a storyteller, whether it was through films, theatre, or just using music as a path to bring the audience together. I've studied music since I was a little kid, and it's been with me for a long time now. So I wanted to show the world how much good music has done for me, and how much better and greater it can do for future generations.

The goal of this Culminating Experience project was to write a 3-minute piece of music for a video or script to serve as the exemplification and reflection of everything I learned during my year in the Scoring for Film, Television, and Video Games Master’s program at Berklee Valencia. To achieve this goal, I wrote an original score for the animated short film, "Superhero for Mayor", in collaboration with its creator, Hank Farr. To accompany the theme and tone of the video, the music incorporates elements of the military topic, and recalls the scores of classic superhero films, such as those of John Williams. The process of completing this project included the composition of the original music, orchestration, score and part preparation, conducting during the recording session with a 51-piece orchestra at AIR Studios in London, editing and mixing the recorded music, and finally, the placement of individual cues from the final mix at their sync points in the animation. The experience I gained through the creation of "Superhero for Mayor", particularly with the opportunity to score for an unfamiliar genre and the challenges it brought about, will definitely benefit the completion of any future projects to come.

Keywords: film scoring, orchestration, animation, recording, editing

This project describes the creative process, the technical development, the search for resources and the human growth that have culminated in my first composition for orchestra, inspired by a fairytale. I have attempted to describe through music the most intimate and human emotions of the characters, making visible what is invisible to the simple eye. For this I have put into practice everything I have learned throughout this intense and fruitful course, which has led me to create an orchestral work and experience recording it live with the most expert musicians in one of the best studios, Air Studios in London. At the same time, I can recognise the importance of the support, the help and the accompaniment that my family, teachers and close friends have given to me in this culminating experience. I am excited to imagine that this is just the seed of a very enriching professional future, because I want to continue growing to share my best professional work and my passion to the world.

In this reflective paper, I address the philosophical quandaries that I have confronted this year as I learned to adapt to this industry of music for visual
media. The Master of Music in Scoring for Film, Television, and Video Games program at Berklee culminates in a final project requiring the student to
compose, orchestrate, conduct, and produce a three-minute score for a full symphony orchestra to be set either to picture or to a narrative. The cue was
recorded at AIR Studios with some of the finest orchestral musicians in the world. I decided to dedicate my project to spreading the message about the importance of renewable energy. I re-scored a video from the World Wildlife Foundation about the melting of the ice caps in hopes that it will draw attention to the impact of our economy’s actions on the environment and the effective and ineffective methods of combatting this very real climate crisis. In tackling this cue, I was forced to draw on every single skill I worked to develop during these extremely intense nine months at Berklee. I've had
struggles with mental health, with imposter syndrome, with work inefficiency, and with time management. During this year, I have worked to develop skills to combat all of these much more effectively than I ever could before. These skills were put to the test in this project, and I am quite satisfied by the findings.

In this reflective paper I will attempt to summarize my experiences here at Berklee, both in general and most importantly in relation to our final project.
I’ll be looking into my journey, trying to explain my personal, musical and composition choices I’ve made towards writing this piece. Though this project might feel similar to our previous tasks here at Berklee, this one was far different and challenging than everything we’ve done, and certainly one of the most interesting and more challenging projects I was lucky enough to work on.
Throughout my time here in Berklee I got to learn so much more than I can fathom. Beyond the much needed technical skills, and theoretical knowledge, I’ve learned mostly how to develop my own musical language. Learning through trial and error, with each and every time I try to dip my toes in freshwater, looking at new horizons and connecting my new experiences with the past. I’ve learned to look at stories and narratives in new and refreshing ways while trying to constantly make the musical and emotional connections.

Keywords - Film Scoring

The power of improvement is in many cases a process of flow in a subconscious mindset. Humanity learns by experiencing new scenarios in a practical environment and by shared wisdom provided by experts in (master)classes, books, internet, and other theoretical sources. But to truly master the craft of a profession, it takes dedication, awareness and control.
In this paper, I will describe the whole process from being a starting Berklee SFTV1- Student to a fully prepared professional Film, Television and/or Videogame composer. With as cherry on the cake the final result of the music I have made for the game ‘The White Raven’, which is recorded in the AIR Studios in London. I am going to share my experiences, thoughts and feelings based on the successes and failures of this year. Information about acquisition, networking, inspiration, music composition, music preparation, conducting, recording and post- production are included in this paper.
Primarily the information written in this paper could be useful for aspiring (starting) musicians, who would like to know more about what it takes to be a composer for Film, Television and/or Videogames.
Keywords: Game-audio, portfolio, creative project, synthchestration, hybrid composition.

This project describes the pre-production, composition process, recording at Air Studios, and post-production of an orchestral piece based on the narrative of some parts of the ancient Greek poem The Odyssey. In doing so, I applied the knowledge and techniques I learned this year in my master's program in Scoring for Film, Television and Video Games.In this process, I tried to find three different musical atmospheres to develop my compositional skills in three different musical genres. In this master thesis, I will talk about the technical steps I took to create a midi mockup, the analysis of the musical themes I composed for this piece, and the orchestral techniques I used in some passages. I will try to use my words to take you on my trip to London, where I had the wonderful experience of recording and conducting my piece at Air Studios. I will also show you the post-production process I follow when mixing and mastering an orchestral piece. Finally, I will show you how I worked with an illustrator to create images for a piece of music based on a story. I hope this project will inspire future students to pursue an idea that motivates them to make music and work to make it happen.

Keywords: The Odyssey, musical themes, orchestral techniques.

This final project for the Scoring for Film, Television and Videogame’s Masters (SFTV) at Berklee Valencia, consists of a score for a 3 min. video of timelapses and drone takes by the Guatemalan astrophotographer Sergio Montúfar, which will be included in a documentary called “La Antigua Guatemala Suspendida en el Tiempo” (Antigua Guatemala, suspended in time), recorded at the lockdown, and produced and directed also by Montúfar. The video scored is a chronological collage of different footage of the Guatemalan town of Antigua Guatemala and its surroundings, from early morning to midnight; it’s worth mentioning that the nature of the video is temporary as the photographer is going to do a re-edit based on the final version of the cue. This paper describes my overall process, from the initial approach to the whole Culminating Experience (CE), the analysis of the video, the dissection of its thematic and musical construction and some brief details about the recording and the postproduction of the result, a 3-movement little suite, called “Timelapse Antigua”.

The Culminating Experience (CE) is the final project for students enrolled in the Berklee Valencia Master of Music in Scoring for Film, Television, and Video Games. Students select a piece of audiovisual material or a script, and compose a musical cue of no more than 3 minutes, which they must then mock up, orchestrate, and provide completed, professional sheet music for. At the end of the process, students travel to London to record their cues in the world-famous AIR Studios Lyndhurst. The CE is less focused on the “getting it done” project-based aspect of the recording, and more focused on the experiential learning process it causes students to go through. This learning experience is invaluable as an opportunity to synthesize and apply the numerous skills learned over the course of the year-long master’s degree program. I found the experience to be enlightening, motivating, and extremely valuable. By pushing me well outside my comfort zone, the CE induced substantial personal and professional growth, and motivated me to begin setting goals that will eventually lead to similar recording experiences in the future.

This paper shows the result of the Culminating Experience that I have carried out as a student of Berklee's Scoring for Film, Television and Video Games master's program. After a very intense year in which I have acquired an amazing variety of knowledge, I have been able to apply everything I learned to produce the animated short film La Historia de la Sima. This Culminating Experience requires knowledge of musical composition, as well as interpreting the narrative of a story, audio mixing and editing, and the ability to find and work with potential collaborators to make the production. That is, apply everything learned during a year in the same work.
In this document I will explain the entire process that has led me to create this animated short film, from the search for an idea and the creation of a script to the contact with collaborators to record the voiceover and design the animation. I will also talk about technical aspects that have been a great motivation for me. I will mention the musical techniques used and the relationship of the themes with the characters. I will also talk about post production work, editing and audio mixing.
Being able to carry out this work on "la Historia de la Sima" has been especially exciting, since it has a very personal background. For this reason I have tried to reflect in the final result the importance of this story for me, trying to capture my personality as a composer in the music.

Keywords: film scoring, composition process, orchestration, recording, reflective paper

My Culminating Experience project, “The Wolves of Jericho” is a composition intended to be presented with a registered screenplay I wrote with my brother and my father. Both of them are also both professional journalists; my brother is a senior editor at the Los Angeles Times and my dad is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter. So, it was a good way to learn from them and share our interest in film, television and storytelling. The purpose of the composition is to provide a sound and tone for the screenplay when presenting the story to filmmakers. The script is registered with the Writers Guild of America and is currently undergoing revision based on feedback and notes from industry contacts, and thus, I felt that creating a trailer type composition that constructs a musical tone and feeling with the script could help when presenting the idea to producers and potential collaborators. The script is based on true events and tells the story of a woman who worked as a detective during the U.S. Civil War era. My culminating experience project describes the process of writing the script as well as the methodology used in conceptualizing and writing the music for the story, and how I envisioned the types of scenes and imagery that would be present for each section of my final project. The project concludes at its highest point of recording at Air studios, the preparation for recording day, and the process of mixing and mastering the final recording.

2022 will undoubtedly be an important year for me, in which I have experienced recordings of film scoring that I will never have in my previous scoring career. In this reflective paper, I’ll talk about the whole process of my film scoring process for my CE collaboration project. Including finding the collaboration short film from the beginning, analyzing scripts and plots, composing, orchestrating, recording, conducting at AIR Studios, and post-production. I hope this reflective paper can completely register the whole process in detail and make a summary for this year.

Keywords: film scoring, reflective paper, collaboration short film, scripts and plots, composing, orchestration, recording, conducting, post production, summary

Composition for visual media is a multifaceted practice. I have learned that it requires many different skill-sets spread across several parts of the process. Establishing oneself within these industries is the culmination of years of study, practice, and probably a bit of luck too. In addition to this, creating a professional film, television show, or game, requires teams of people, each an expert in their own respective field who have come together to produce something. It is the marriage of these different people; the musicians, conductors, engineers, editors, and many more, who bring our compositions to life, and eventually, onwards to the big screen.
In roughly the first third of this thesis I have chosen to not so briefly highlight some of my musical past, leading up to arriving in Valencia at Berklee’s Campus. I feel that the journey that has led me here, like everyone else, is unique to me, and has helped to shape the kind of composer and person that I am. In the second two-thirds or so, I have explained my process for creating my Culminating Experience Project, from selecting a scene, analyzing the score of the original, and finding ways to best navigate it on my own through a combination of insight new and old. Mostly, the cue I wrote stems from intuition, drawing on harmonic and melodic ideas that could have come from any number of influences soaked up over the years. I like to think that everything can be an opportunity to learn, grow, and better oneself when approached with the right attitude. I do my utmost to take new things and add them to my ever-brewing stew of musical information. The key after that, is to figure out how to strain out the bits that go together best when pouring that stew into a bowl. Because the goal is certainly not to have a stew with every ingredient in the world, the goal is equally not to write something with every idea you’ve ever learned. I believe therein lies the kind of musical maturity that can only come with experience and intuition.

Keywords: Film Scoring, Recording, Creative Project, Orchestration, Mockup, Mixing, Composition, Film Music

Finding Haku represents the culmination of what I have learned at Berklee. This paper aims to reflect and analyse how I approached my time here at Berklee and what I did to prepare for the final stage of the program that is recording at AIR studios with a world class orchestra. Although the pressure and responsibility felt immense at times, the process of creating a piece to record was incredibly enriching and exciting. From the early stages of looking for a project to score, to standing in front of the orchestra I will reflect upon each step taken over the previous months. Through the analysis of my piece you will see the musical and narrative decisions I made as well as the struggles and realisations I made along the way. There were many composers and artists that inspired me to compose Finding Haku, I’m sure much of it subconsciously. I’ve included some of the most important inspirations and how they informed my writing process.

Paperman is a final project representing the culmination of a year's worth of study at Berklee College of Music, Valencia Campus. The main focus of this project is to provide the making of the orchestral music cue for a short animation film from WALT DISNEY Animation Studios to establish a sense of who I am as a film composer, reflecting my challenges, desires, and dreams of being a storyteller through the music. This thesis explains my entire process from the beginning: how I found and searched for a video, how I prepared before creating music, and then the process of composing, orchestrating, and preparing the score and parts for the orchestra recording session. In addition, it pointed out how I prepared the conducting for the Air Studios recording session in London, the post-production about mixing, and the conclusion of the learning journey and this final project. In addition, this thesis mentions how the music reflects through the film by the composer herself. This project is designed to ensure fulfillment of the Degree of Master of Music in Scoring for Film, Television, and Video Games at Berklee College of Music, Valencia Campus.

Keywords: composition, film scoring, orchestration, studio recording, mixing, conducting, production, dreams, and love.

Light Years is a project that showcases all the new skills I have gained from Berklee Valencia’s Scoring for Film, Television and Video Games Program. As my craft continues to develop, it is imperative that I take advantage of these new compositional techniques that my professors were gracious enough to teach me. One of the most valuable lessons they taught me was the importance of truly capturing the mood of the film’s trajectory through our own soundtracks. I sought to achieve this motive when scoring Light Years, where I was challenged to experiment with using certain instrument groups, like the brass section, to add texture and warmth to the piece despite their brazen, bombastic tonalities. This dreamlike quality to the music played an important role, especially because I dealt with an animation short film. My thesis discusses my entire process for this project, including my sources of inspiration and my experience recording at the legendary AIR Studios.

My culminating experience is a three minute orchestral piece inspired by the book, The Boy, The Mole, The Fox and the Horse, by Charlie Mackesy. It includes a reflective paper piecing together the narrative behind the music, uncovering the right theme and harmony to do it justice, exploring the colors of the orchestra and finally detailing how the final piece came to be. The piece incorporates the essential themes presented in the book, namely, fear, love and hope, and is an ode to following your instincts and forging your own path.

Man Against Dream is the score to a script, but it is also a deep exploration into the bridge between music and the written word, and my attempt to tell a story – or a portion of a story, more accurately – through music alone.

I chose this project for my Culminating Experience because I wanted to explore the essence of storytelling and the language of music, and because I wanted to challenge myself to score to something more ethereal than picture: words.

My approach was to use a combination of literal scoring, in chronological order and following a timecode, and a more conceptual, less linear approach, centered around creating specific moods and developing themes. I worked hard to find a balance between extremes,
and my hope is that I have succeeded in creating a final product that is capable not only of telling a story but also of standing alone as simply a piece of music.

In this academic work, I will examine and go through the composition progress of my Culminating Experience Project, MC Fox. This project is a musical piece I composed for a full orchestra for a short animation movie called “MC Fox”, created by the Israeli animator Tamir Zehavi. This short is my first credit as a film composer and the first film that I wasn’t re-scored.
I will start my work by examining the exposition of the piece, and then I will analyze the different parts of the piece one by one in the following order. In each part of the score, I will share the themes I composed to this animation short and discuss how I used them during the movie. I will also share my orchestrating progress and the way I used the different instruments of the orchestra and the different sections of it. In addition, I will touch on issues such as the style I chose to compose, the way I divided the short into different sections, and how I synced the music to the picture.
I want to thank my Directed Studies Professor Sergio Jiménez Lacima for guiding me through this proses.

Labyrinths is a documentation of my process of writing music for the film Perspectives and all the events that took place and lessons I learnt that led up to it. Writing music for film is always challenging in a variety of ways. Composing the music is, of course a vital part of the process, but there are many others. Interpreting the film, communicating with the director, working around last minute changes and making hundreds of tiny decisions that will affect the whole outcome in convoluted ways are just a few of the other parts of the whole process – each as significant as the rest.
The first half of this dissertation provides an insight into the challenges I faced during the process, starting from trying to find a film to score for my final project to the day of the recording sessions at AIR Studios and the ways I found to overcome them. The second half of this paper talks about the musical aspects of the cues I recorded – analyzing them from thematic, compositional, orchestrational and developmental lenses and how the two cues became what they are. It also describes some of the tools that were used to tell the story of the film musically.

After a year filled with active learning, getting our hands dirty with DAWs1, orchestrating duets and many sleepless nights, this project finally came to fruition. This project aims to discuss a subject that I am very interested in; how music can redefine a whole story. Since music has that ability, it goes beyond saying that music has a very intimate relationship with films, hence the importance of music in movies is one that should never ever be understated. This project however takes a look at how music can redefine a written-based story and transform the reading experience.
I have always been fond of reading and most often when I take up a book, there is some sort of music accompanying me while reading. This is because music can always transform the underlying emotion of the imagination the reader conjures up and because of that the reading experience is heightened. This is why for the Culminating Experience I decided to compose a piece based on a short story and apply all the things we have learned this year from understanding the narrative, creating a realistic mockup, orchestrating, creating the score and parts on Finale2 to finally preparing the Pro Tools3 session to record at one of the most renowned studios in the word with some of the best musicians in the world.
It goes to say that the process of composing a piece based on a text was very different than that of composing a piece synced to film, but the purpose of this piece was to capture the true essence of the emotion of the story rather than syncing and spotting everything to perfection.

This project describes the process of creating music by MIDI, having a live recording session at AIR Studios, and the post-production of mixing. Moon Jelly is a project that I implied most of what I have learned in my past 10 months at Berklee Valencia as a master’s student. Every music that I write for new projects could always be done better and improved in any way after looking back to it, which I think is a natural thing that happens to a lot of composers including my peers. However, for this project I was able to reach the point where I was satisfied enough with the result considering the provided environment. The provided environment here meaning not only the unexpected external obstacles but also the internal struggles which will be described shortly.
As a classically trained person for half of my life, there was not a limit or an end for learning which tremendously helped me as a starting composer. However, this had a snowball effect on me which at some point I was clearly overwhelmed while not noticing it. I have always had to spend more time trying to run away from the ‘predictable’, ‘obvious’, and ‘simple’ progression subjectively judged by myself in my own circle. After this short but long thesis project I am now realizing that I do not have to run away from it, but I honestly can’t say that I have figured out the solution for this yet. I am sure that it will take a while for me to find the exact answer if there is one, but I see myself at the end of that tunnel soon.

Keywords: Film scoring, composition, orchestration, MIDI, live recording

This dissertation explores the techniques, skills and mindset required to be able to marry music to picture in the most fitting way possible. The mindset and way of thinking is just as important as the technical skills as it will show what is the appropriate way to mentally approach, to many, a daunting task that is film scoring. No matter how motivated or inspired a person can be, it is a tough industry to be part of and the program is not afraid to announce that to its students. The paper will also go through an in-depth look into the compositional process in relation to the London recordings at AIR studios, and my personal approach to having a successful project overall due to the habits that I have developed across the entire academic year.

This project used an animation video titled “Spring” and is composed, considering the organization of an orchestra of 51 players to be recorded in Air Studios in London. “Spring” is a result of a new creative work produced with the existing video and my music through analyzing the existing music for visual media scoring, finding my visual narrative scoring method that well matches various storylines, and using various musical genres and my musical background. This study includes my approach using musical elements and analysis of transformation techniques for musical forms and themes to support narrative storytelling. The effect created by audiovisual elements for visual media presents to us a stronger impact than listening to music or watching a video does. “How does film music operate?” “What are the processes in which the music is made?” “What makes one make musical attempts in the processes?” “What makes composers excited and move to make them?” This study is a course of a long journey to find the author’s answers.
KEYWORDS: Film Scoring, Orchestration, Composition, Compositional processes, Conducting.

The thesis is about analyzing scoring for animation from my own Air Studio Recordings. The topic is approached from historical, psychological and musical perspective to shape a broad understanding of techniques like Mickey mousing.

This piece of music has been made to culminate my education at Berklee College of Music. Through this project, I focused on developing the key elements of my creative process, and my own musical style. I developed a task-list style creative process that proved to be invaluable as unforeseen circumstances arose during the compositional process. I also showed my own musical style by combining orchestral scores with contemporary elements from rock and pop genres. Here is the vanguard disclaimer stating that the world we live in was changed after March 2020 due to COVID-19. This piece of music has been impacted by the pandemic, and Berklee has enabled me to prepare this cue despite obstacles. This project is to ascertain my fulfillment of the Degree of Master of Music in Scoring for Film, Television and Video Games at Berklee College of Music Valencia Campus.

Keywords: composition, film scoring, orchestration, recording

This thesis described all the processes of rescored the short film One Man’s Walk in the Snow Creates a Giant Masterpiece. From searching for music and video materials, getting inspirations from the materials, compositional process, to scores analysis.

Keywords: film scoring, compositional process, analysis.

This project, as part of the fulfillment of the course of study for the Master's in Music in Scoring for Film, Television, and Video Games program, is a three minute overture for use in a theatrical production. While not specifically for screen, the skills and techniques employed here include the same that are used in both linear and non-linear visual media. Furthermore, through the use of this overture, a wide variety of themes are introduced, developed, and concluded in order to clearly illustrate the narrative content of the larger theatrical work.

This project describes the motivation, intention, and compositional process behind Fleeting Recapitulations, a piece for piano and orchestra set to Chapter Two of Edmund White’s 1973 novel Forgetting Elena. Throughout his career, White has utilized music theory, terminology, and references
to compose modern-day literary masterpieces that seem almost musical in nature. As an avid reader of White’s, I have been motivated for many years to compose a series of short tone poems to accompany some of his works, including Forgetting Elena. For Fleeting Recapitulations, I began the compositional process by creating a palette of tonalities, motifs, and a subtle bass ostinato to reflect the breathing, heart rate, and neurosis of the amnesiac main character. To further incite creativity, I implemented a self-imposed limitation by restricting notes above F4 to all instruments except piano, percussion, and string col legno. A drawback to scoring a novel, which I realized early in the creative process, was that the listener would not see the written material as the music played. As a solution, I created a video containing key passages from Chapter Two of Forgetting Elena which spotlighted the neurosis of the main character and created a cohesive, linear storyline. I then utilized the training I received in visual media scoring at Berklee Valencia to adapt the tone palette I created into a unique, well-synced score for written material. Although my original intention was to use MIDI piano in the final deliverable, a classmate requested to perform and record the part at Berklee’s Ann Kreis Scoring Stage. This further contributed to a cohesive, organic track which captures the novel’s island setting and anxious nature of the main character.

Keywords: film scoring, orchestration, conducting, compositional processes, diary, literature, novel, book, scoring to written material, Edmund White.

‘The Last Travel Of Orpheus’ represents the culmination of what I learned in the Masters’ program with Berklee Valencia, but also the hard work and culmination of my past studies with Berklee Online, which I started back in 2015 as part of my professional reconversion as a film and video games composer. This short film is an original story, based loosely on the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, which takes place many years after Orpheus failed his first attempt to reunite with Eurydice. It uses only travel materials that I filmed and photographed in June 2020, in the island of Madeira, Portugal. The initial premises of the movie were not known at the time of the shooting, so the idea of making my own movie came much later, as the original scoring project that I found became delayed and the chances to score it for my CE became compromised. This essay explains my working process, from writing the story and creating the movie, to the various aspects of working with sound; from researching the music style, to spotting, composing, orchestrating, sequencing, mixing and mastering, but also planning for sound design and voice-over recording. The later steps of recording and conducting with Air Studios will be presented as how my studies prepared me for this highly anticipated session.

The purpose of this project is to provide an analytical discussion about the creation of my culminating experience project of the Scoring for Film, TV, and Video Games program: the music for the trailer of “The Lost Crystal of Sakara” by the Chilean director Ignacio Walker. This includes the process to find the project, the analysis of the story, working with the director, and the research for musical and orchestration ideas. Furthermore, I explain the complete creative process which includes the composition, the leitmotifs of the main characters, the orchestration, the preparation of the Vienna Ensemble Pro and Cubase template, as well as the creation of the final mockup. Finally, I describe the preparation for the recording and the submission which includes the music preparation (score and parts) and the Pro Tools session. I hope this will help further students and film composers to get extra ideas about the process of writing the music for a film and its story.

Keywords: film music, film composer, leitmotifs, composition, creative process, working remotely

For My Culminating Experience in the Scoring for Film, Television, and Video Games Masters Program here at Berklee College of Music in Valencia Spain, I chose to Rescore a Short Animation titled “Mice: A Small Story”. Mice a Small Story was a graduate project by students Jade Baillargeault, Nazli Doale, Dimitri James, Quang Daniel La, Morgane Lau, Mélanie Pango and Manon Pringault at the animation Institute, ISART, in Paris, France. The Synopsis is “In a dark subway tunnel, a group of mice find a gold ring-pull that seems to have a mysterious effect on one of them. Not so far from them, an owl and his enslaved rats are watching. The owl sends his rats to get hold of this strange object...” . If you are like myself, a fan of high fantasy and epics, this plot may sound familiar to you . If you watch the film and are a fan of Fantasy and Epics then you surely won't miss the story the short is referencing. The inspiration behind this animation is the Lord of The Rings trilogy for which Howard Shore composed the music. Throughout the film you will see references to the trilogy not only in the plot but visually as well, which we will talk about later.

Anxiety is a work whose purpose is the alienation from the most primitive as a feeling towards the most abstract as the art of music. To achieve this objective, I will explain in the different areas such as: harmony, rhythm, motives, orchestration, etc. the different use of resources for such alienation. How the three major sections of music work internally and together will be presented. Although the theme to be musicalized may seem monotonous, the intention is to give it heterogeneity but without forgetting the overall structure and aesthetic homogeneity of it. The video presented in this work was created by me, not the images, but the editing and the script were made by me. The music I have composed will try to convey that elemental feeling.

Keywords: film scoring, harmony as a descriptor, music composition, orchestration, rhythm for image.

Song of Achilles is the culmination of a year of growth and exploration. My personal objective when I started this program was to go as far out of my comfort zone as possible as frequently as possible in order to grow rapidly and to get the most from every opportunity. After providing myself with challenges in every project up to this one, I had to find a new mountain to climb to continue filling in the gaps in my artistic range. Having been unable to find visual media to score, I had the ability to choose something compelling to me both emotionally and intellectually that would once again stretch my limits. With these criteria in mind, I opted to adapt Chapter 30 of Madeline Miller’s novel The Song of Achilles. This narrative excerpt would push me outside my comfort zone, allowing me to experiment and find other aspects of my compositional voice within a familiar orchestral style. In preparation to write the piece, I researched and analyzed examples of films from the Peplum genre to find appropriate stylistic references and figure out what the key musical idioms of the genre were. After that initial research phase, I experimented with how my own style fit within these boundaries, and how far I could stray from cliches while still being stylistically appropriate and conveying the story’s setting clearly. As a result of the global pandemic and postponement of the recording session, this essay shall cover the process of finding a project, its development, and an analysis of the cue’s compositional elements as related to the narrative.

The following reflection paper presents an honest journey of an aspiring film composer (me) who came to SFTV Masters program from the Silicon Valley world (although previously having a degree from Berklee in Boston) with a dream to firmly follow her calling and become a true film composer who enjoys what she is doing by creating beautiful, cinematic music for films and TV. The final project is the culmination of a nine-month journey of composing and learning new skills in the renowned Masters in Scoring for Film, Television and Video Games at Berklee College of Music in Valencia, Spain. While we still wait for the final recording at the AIR studio in London, this reflective paper will walk you through the process of creating the final composition and its analysis.

Ode to the Nymph of the Luo River is an animation short collaborated project between me and director Yifeng Zheng. This project is an 8-minute-long animation with multiple cues for different scenes. The music for the CE submission and recording is one of cues that are scoring for the script written by director. The impulse of creating this project originates from my passion for creating music for visual media, and always being inspired from my cultural roots. In this reflective paper, I will demonstrate the whole creative process of being the composer and one of the crew members of pre-production team. This paper are aimed for documenting the journey of completing this project, and being a contributive reference for any future prospective projects that might relates.

Keywords: Composition, Film Scoring, Orchestration, Poem, Art, Animation

All film scoring consists of solving problems: technical, logistical, and of course creative. Nowhere is this more true than with animations, which require some of the most nuanced and precise musical treatments in any medium. In this essay, I explore the process of scoring the stop motion animation Easy as Pie, including the research I conducted to prepare, the challenges I faced along the way, and an analysis of the score I eventually wrote to overcome those challenges.

My culminating project was a re-scoring of Eric D. Howell’s film Strangers (2015). I wanted to make sure I wrote a score that really reflected and refracted the film’s simultaneously deeply personal yet superficial narrative. In Strangers, the viewer follows two mysterious, torn, yet oddly connected characters with no obvious motivating source for their feelings and actions. There is no clear hint of where the narrative will turn, why, how, or when. This is aided and augmented by the setting and environment which reflect the characters’ psycho-emotional instability.

Looking Glass aims to provide insight into the process of composing music for animated films through an analytical discussion that identifies and evaluates key scoring principles. This paper contributes to a better understanding of how to integrate certain compositional devices in animation scoring, all the while serving to guide the novice music composer in developing their own approach to the art of composition. The resulting thesis is the culmination of a long personal academic journey in music, and also serves as a personal stepping-stone to the world of professional practice. Finally, this project was produced as a compulsory element towards the fulfilment of the Master of Music in Scoring for Film, Television and Video Games at Berklee College of Music.

This is a project that two fans of the game called Skyrim made and enjoyed.

For my CE and final recording in London I have written an original score for an original art project. The project in this case is an animation film, made by a student from the HKU (Hogeschool voor de Kunsten Utrecht, The Netherlands). In close collaboration we have strived for a great animation short, combining the art of telling a story in sketches and graphic skills on one hand and music on the other. What where the exact characteristics of this project and what makes it special?

I have explored the ability to write a musical score that both serves its picture and is effective as a standalone piece of music. I wanted to understand the longevity the music we write has. This is important for numerous reasons, foremost our financial income. With our upfront fee’s often not meeting expectations and backend royalties challenged at every turn, making sure our music is listenable and consumable on a mass-scale is, in my opinion, more important than ever in order to receive streaming royalties. - that is, royalties generated only by the audio being played. The benefits that come with this are extremely rewarding to any composer. To gain an audience with the work you complete is, I believe, crucial. To write music that only serves the picture can result in the soundtrack ‘dying with the film’, so as long as we do serve the picture and write music that fits (as a priority), why not then try and get the best of both worlds and make it then next YouTube hit?

A three-minute video condensing a typical year in the world of board sports and the weather, climate, and environments they occupy. Includes skateboarding, snowboarding, and surfing. The accompanying music is a hybrid score using a traditional orchestra, a rock band, and modern electronic production to help tell the narrative that goes beyond the individual skater.

In Event of Moon Disaster is an ungiven speech discovered in the Nixon archives 30 years after the historic moon landing. This was the speech he would have given had the mission failed. Had Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin not been able to return to Michael Collins orbiting the moon, they would have had to starve to death or commit suicide in space. William Safire, the speechwriter, had not intended to write this version, until a NASA liaison for the White House told him he needed to do it for the “widows-to-be”.

This project is the final composition of my year in the Master’s program “Scoring for Film/TV and Videogames” at the Berklee College of Music, Valencia Campus. I rescored a science-fiction animation short movie about a female character who is stranded on a foreign planet and is looking for a way to get back home. I faced a lot of challenges scoring this intense little short movie because it has a lot of different moods and I needed to be very precise on the cuts and the action in the picture. Besides that, I had to program a very convincing mockup because at the moment we are not able to record in London as this is usually the case for the culminating experience. Because of the unexpected happening of Covid-19 and the consequences of public life shutting down in almost every European country, we still don’t know when this session is going to happen. Having the possibility to record a three-minute piece in one of the best recording studios of the world is a big honor and I am really looking forward to this experience. Due to the Lockdown Berklee continued with a lot of interesting and additional online workshops which definitely helped us to overcome this unusual situation. At this point I really would like to thank the whole faculty (Lucio, Sergio, Alfons, Vincente and Pablo for their big effort and those extremely useful and inspiring workshops. I tried to use the time at home studying different scores from various animation movies to prepare myself for this final project. I especially tried to include all the things I learned during this past year at Berklee. I hope that this piece of music is the ideal representation of my abilities of scoring to picture and I hope that my personal voice as a composer is recognizable as well.

The Culminating Experience Project encompasses a year’s worth of work, education and experience accumulated during the time a student enters and leaves his or her designated program at the Berklee College of Music, Valencia Campus. It is meant to reflect on a real-world experience, which differentiates this paper from other graduate, research-based projects. In the Scoring for Film, TV and Video Games (or SFTV) department at Berklee, this project would typically be referencing an SFTV student’s journey to their final recording project with a 50+ piece orchestra at AIR Studios in London, England. Unfortunately, COVID-19 has delayed the annual SFTV trip to AIR Studios indefinitely. Because of this, the following focuses solely on the writing process and the creation of a realistic mockup that best represents my piece and my accumulation of knowledge at the Berklee College of Music.

With this paper, I finish an intense year of learning and working in one of the best programs in the world that exists to study scoring for cinema, television and video games. Berklee College of music has given me the opportunity to meet and work with many of the greatest composers on the current scene. Thanks to the intensity of the course, the facilities used both on and off campus, and the excellent work of the faculty, I have learnt and mastered various skills I couldn't even imagine one year ago, before Berklee. As a culminating experience of the program, we have the wonderful opportunity to record our composition in one of the best recording studios in the world, which will allow all of us to meet again in London and conduct one of the best orchestras performing our work. In this paper, I will explain all of the steps that I have followed for the creation of the piece and the project. I will talk about my musical background, my year of experience at Berklee, and how both have helped me in order to create and fulfill this experience. Thanks to my perseverance in composing for an original short film, I met “Dennis”, and I am extremely happy to have been able to compose the music for this fantastic animated short film. This is undoubtedly the best way to end my year, with what has certainly been an experience at a personal, academic and professional level.

Keywords: Film Scoring, Composer, Narrative, Orchestration, Animation, Mockup, Mixing, conducting.

A short film by Glasgow School of Art student, Sean De Francisco, with music composed by Christopher Gough. 'Bosco Regina,' tells the story of a hunter who decides to take a more unconventional, yet beautiful approach to hunting.

Final Recording Project: As part of the culminating experience (CE), all SFTV students have the opportunity to record at Air Studios in London. The goal of the trip is to record a piece of original music performed by a fifty-plus instrument orchestra at an industry-leading studio. Before this, I am going to create a mockup (that sounds as real as possible) and write the score and parts for the orchestra. The final step of this process is to edit and mix the tracks to then deliver the final piece. Since this is a very special situation, I am not going to be able to include the last phase in this document due to force majeure causes; I am going to focus on the previous steps.

Keywords: composer, orchestration, mock up, edit, mix, film scoring, MIDI.

This project represents my progress and achievement this year in Berklee Master in Scoring for Film, TV and Video Games. This paper records my process of research, choosing the project, composition and my personal experience. Each course I took in SFTV, whether it is composition for different genres, MIDI sequencing, conducting, orchestration or sound designing, have provided me strong support in completing this project. I’ve been through some difficulties working on this project, but good things are a long time in coming. In this special circumstance which COVID-19 swept across the world, college was closed and the recording in London Air Studio was delayed to an undetermined date, I am looking forward to the final recording of this Master program and pray for peace and health for mankind.

My thesis paper revolves around my CE project, "HELGA'S SOUND", a film score of about 3 minutes, composed to a screenplay adaptation of a short dramatic sequence from one of the Icelandic Sagas, "Harðarsaga og Hólmverja" written in the early 14th. century. In it I start out by discussing the underlying challenges of scoring audiovisual narratives in general. Then I describe my own process in dealing with my own actual scoring project, discussing the process from the choosing of the material through various bits of research and preparations to the actual work of composing the music. Finally I address my own choices and their consequences as well as writing a few sentences about the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic.

There are no human words to express the pain and the sadness. To begin to understand the reasons why a life so young ends, one must do it through a divine glance. Whether that is love or God herself. I try to do it through music, with the hope to heal that emptiness that is left in the world. I hope that by swimming and submerging yourself fully in the pain, it helps loose the fear of it and therefore, in consequence, we can see the love and happiness again that we only but missed.

Growing up, my ideas of love were often in duel. Although I spent the majority of my upbringing in China, I consumed mostly Western media and culture, through which many role models of love quickly took root. American films, books, friends, and social environments together shaped my ideas of emotional expressiveness. From them, I observed majority Western romantic values of intensity, passion, drama. And for a while, this was cultivated in many of my own experiences as well. Recently, however, as I make space for myself to dig deeper into my own inner fulfillment, I have found myself leaning further and further into my parents’ version of love. From their more traditionally Chinese values of love and emotion, I’ve observed simplicity, harmony and trust— hues of blue, rather than red. This piece,《那时候很单纯的》 a sonic mosaic of simpler times, is one that, to me, feels timeless, personal, and makes me smile. My parents have been married for 31 years now, and I hope this piece will put a smile on their faces, too.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a self-reflection and summary of the whole experience gained during a one year Master Program in Scoring for Film, TV, and Video Games (SFTV) at Berklee College of Music in Valencia. The Culminating Experience Master Thesis project The Spiral of Life focuses on the idea of understanding life, its source and cycles, as a reference point and example for the divine fingerprints of music creation and its beauty. There are many technical aspects to consider for music making nowadays, and composing, now more than ever, can be considered a craft as much as an art made through the act of unconscious channeling. This reflection paper focuses on the creative process, music production skills and techniques, qualities that a composer specifically trained for the purpose of scoring for visual media must have, and challenges they face on a daily basis. The paper contains of xxx chapters that thoroughly describe all phases of the creative, production and post production process, and explains how it all works together starting from scratch - an inspiration, a single motif, connecting musical ideas and building a climax while maintaining the overall structural arc, using technology as a tool to record, produce, edit, mix, and master the composition for visual media or narration. The outlook for success and psychological profile of a composer in media business also represent an important aspect and relevant point for discussion and analysis in the paper.

Keywords: composing, film scoring, narrative, music production, art, product, business

This project represents the culminating experience of my one-year study at Berklee College of Music. Through this project, I will show my learning experience and how I learned to promote myself to communicate and cooperate with the directors. I will show the creation method of how I work on a video from a comprehensive perspective. I will analyze my composition and show my ways of thinking regarding harmony, orchestration, music production, conducting, etc.

The Culminating Experience aims to provide a real-life experience for the Scoring for Film, Television and Video Games Program. This paper elaborates on the process of a creation of a score and a mockup. It describes choosing the type of score, customizing the sounds, creating a palette of timbres, mixing and mastering. It includes also an analysis of the score, reflection and conclusion about the whole process. Since the recording with the Air Studios orchestra in London is postponed due to the worldwide situation (COVID-19) the paper does not include a description of the recording day itself.

This project was inspired by the Black Lives matter movement. After multiple considerations and changes in my CE plans, I was finally sure of the project I wanted to work on. My friend, Michelle Raymond and I wrote and produced, I also mixed and mastered this song. We released it on all streaming platforms on the 20th of June 2020. It took almost 2 weeks to complete the project. I then proceeded to write and arrange parts for the orchestra to be recorded in Air Studios, London. I am proud of this project and I hope this brings hope to people and inspires change. TOGETHER WE STAND!

Keywords : Writing, producing, recording, mixing, mastering, Black Lives Matter, orchestra, orchestration, pop, anthemic, hybrid, choir

Composition is often concerned with delving into intangible, unseen and internal worlds and watching and waiting for ideas to come into focus. This Reflection paper seeks to map my compositional journey from ‘micro’ to ‘macro’ during the creation of ‘Microscopia’- a piece which celebrates worlds that cannot be seen and yet affect us in minute ways. It explores the challenges I navigated in providing a sonic backdrop for footage of bacteria and mold by Genèvieve Anhoury in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. The paper is split into three parts, firstly examining the formation of ideas and inspirations behind the project. It then delves into looking at ‘de-composition’: breaking down the process of creating a three-minute orchestral piece and mock-up. Finally, it reflects more broadly on the struggles of composers during their composition process and simply surviving in the current challenging socio-economic climate.

Keywords: Microscope, Bacteria, De-composition, Orchestration, Texture, Movement, Survival

Scoring for a short animated movie.

The objective of this project is to re-imagine the musical representation of The Matrix’s dark vision of the future, with acknowledgement of the 20 years of musical, cinematic and societal development that have taken place since it’s release. The project’s first component is an excerpt of the original screenplay, which was chosen in place of the motion picture so that the music could inform the images rather than being attributed to a vision of the future from 1999. The remaining part is an original score written to this excerpt, composed with the objective of creating a sonic world that reflects the powerful underlying themes of The Matrix, and generating a modern musical interpretation of the world of The Matrix, with the additional challenge of achieving this objective through exclusively orchestral textures.

Keywords: The Matrix, Reimagining music

The contents of this paper are the culmination of all the knowledge, experiences and work acquired during the year of Master of Music in Scoring for Film, Television and Video Games. Using all that we had learned, we started by finding some media that we would like to score (short film, animation, video game, script, etc.), and the tempo and markers in the media, create a mock-up and several revisions of our score for the media, prepare the score and parts, prepare for recording in one of the most esteemed and respected studios in the world, and mixing/mastering the recording for premier. Having gone to undergraduate for composition, I felt comfortable in my composition, orchestration, and preparatory skills coming into the program. I knew that my biggest challenges would be reading scenes to extract the emotion out of them and creating realistic mock-ups. I had done a little work with mock-ups and scoring for media in my undergraduate, but never really dedicated much time to either of these things. I wanted my thesis project to really showcase my style and be unlike anything else I had done before. I also knew that it was going to be hard work, but it would be worth it. This year has certainly been a strange one with the coronavirus breakout, especially with the thesis project. I hope that someone looking at this reflection in the future might be inspired, guided, and/or calmed by seeing what it was like to prepare this project in the midst of a pandemic, when nothing is certain and everything is changing all the time.

Keywords: composer, animation, orchestration, sequencing, mixing, coronavirus

Animated short film that I scored from a Director in LA.

This paper provides a reflection on the process of completing the culminating experience project for Berklee College of Music’s Scoring for Film, Television, and Video Games Master’s program. The reflection first examines the author’s musical and cultural background and his process in deciding the project’s focus. It then provides a detailed musical and narrative analysis of the composition and how it relates to its subject matter. Topics such as thematic development, harmonic development, orchestration, music production, music mixing, and music preparation are covered. The paper concludes with a reflection on the project as a whole.

Keywords: Music, Composition, Orchestration, Production, Indian, Folk, Rajasthan, Desert

The musical narrative in modern animation. In this project, I will be reflecting on my study experience at Berklee, and evaluating the progress I have made. In regards to the reading of narrative, it has changed my vision there are some and comparison from then and now. My experience working as a studio composer has changed my understanding of scoring a scene, and some of the decisions influence my writing. For this research, I will be looking into how I approach my music in order to compliment this modern aesthetic of animation. The challenge of this project is also keeping the consistency throughout, additionally, condensing the amount of material for score, and adapting my music to the new structure of narrative. There are also things related to the construction of this cue, for example, giving a corresponding musical emotion, right tone colour, instrumental tessitura, transposition, and ways of making the best use of an orchestra. I will demonstrate the importance of construction versus the abstraction of the artwork and edits, since this cue only showcased one third of the original content, building a firm and convincing structure is an important support for the animation. I am going to walk you through my process of reading and interpreting this 2D animation, and the decisions behind the scene to make this music convincing and effective to enhance the visuals.

Keyword: Narrative, structure, emotion, tone colour, aesthetic, animation music

The primary purpose of this project is to represent the Culminating Experience (CE) of studying Scoring for Film, Television, and Video Games (SFTV) at Berklee College of Music. After a year of personal and professional development, students are tasked with writing music for a 51-piece orchestra to be recorded at AIR Studios in London. For my project I chose to write and score a scene from an original narrative. This paper strives to reflect on the idea of ‘Crossing the Threshold,’ a part of an archetypal narrative structure. Additionally, this analysis documents the creative process of writing original music and story. I will describe my artistic development in a continued journey to express my vision of reality, time, and the transformative power of music. This project is a survey of the signs and symbols within the language of film music, and an experiment with the musical grammar and vocabulary that composers have developed for decades to translate music into emotion. Finally, this paper argues that small musical fragments can be assigned to signify specific emotional responses, and this CE is an effort to implement many of them.

Keywords: narrative, composition, orchestration, harmony, emotion, music

For my Culminating Experience, I scored the ending sequence from a short film by the name of "Jardín entre paredes" (Spanish for 'Garden between Walls'). The film is directed by Anna Llargués, a student from the ESCAC that I had met through Berklee. In this paper, I go over the research that went into developing such a project, and analyse the score I wrote for it. Through various case studies of films, scores and original pieces from different genres, I determine the technical and artistic tools necessary for the creation and writing of the score. I mobilised these tools throughout the process. On the cinematographic front, I delve into the editing, photography and pacing, while analysing sheet music and recordings on the musical side. I then break down my compositional process by discussing orchestral techniques, musical language and overall sensibility to the scene. The final product blends feelings of nostalgia, triumph and promise to the boyish adventures portrayed in Anna Llargués' "Jardín entre paredes".

Keywords : montage, ambient, post-romantic, screen reading

As a general description Evergreen is a celtic-inspired video game in development by Grentacular Studios. It represents so much more to me, however. Evergreen represents my entire journey through this master’s program, as well as the birth of my professional career. From the first draft I made for the main theme to the current Suite of themes to be recorded in London, one can hear an enormous amount of growth - all of which I have Berklee to thank for. The growth is palpable, so much so that when I listen back to the first draft I made in September, I barely recognize myself in it. My voice is still in that draft, albeit muffled and hidden. Over the course of the year I have learned to let that voice out and be heard in ways I never thought I was capable of. Evergreen also represents my overcoming a fear of failure. If you had told me a year ago that I would be scoring a full length video game with primarily orchestral elements, I would have a) had a panic attack, and b) not believed you. Admittedly, I accepted this job before I was entirely ready. When I was given the cue sheet of all I would have to do (just for the demo) my insecurities began flooding in. I have always struggled with this in my music. It’s never good enough, I can’t do this, I can’t do that, etc. However, in this master’s course the most important knowledge I have gained is learning that I can do this. I can do that. And after all is said and done, it is good enough. I have the entire faculty to thank for this growth, as every member of the teaching staff has instilled in me a different and unique kind of courage. Finally, Evergreen represents my future. Not only have I made a wonderful connection with the director of the game, it has also given me enough courage and credit to seek out new opportunities. In my application to Berklee my biggest desire was to get my foot in the door in the world of Video Games. Now the door is open before me, waiting to be walked through to the next chapter in my life.

I tried to orchestrate with Korean traditional musical instrument Gayageum. Through this project, we can see how Korean traditional musical instruments blend beautifully with Western orchestras.

The music I composed is for an animation called Dap Pang Man, which is scaffolder in Cantonese. Using a full orchestra to create a heroic mood of the music. The animation is a short film about Hong Kong culture. I would like to bring Hong Kong traditional culture to my music.

A Diamond ́s Roots is a very personal project, born from the merger of cinematic music and the folklore from Gran Canaria, the place of my birth . I composed the music for a 3 minutes video-spot that shows the island in a really different way than usual, like a fairytale. Through this paper, I would like to display the process of analyzing every little detail of the pictures, narration and sound design, to compose the music for it, as well as how I did the fusion between epic and fantasy genre combined with the island folklore. Furthermore, I also explained about my experience with the directors and producers of the short movie, explaining the problems that we had and how we resolved them. Finally, I showed the more technical part: from mockup to orchestration, how organize we must with all the preparation be before the recording at Air Studios in London (score, parts, conducting, etc.), during it (be always there before your recording time, to place correctly each part..) and after it (to organize all the material and mix it). I hope that this can help future students to be more prepared for this kind of recording sessions, as well as to know a little how to deal with directors and producers.

Keywords: music fusion, composing for media, recording, orchestration.

This project represents the culmination after a year's worth of study in Berklee College of Music. The main focus of this project is to provide a making of the cue for short film “Rise” and me as a film composer. I explained from the very beginning how I find and search for a video, how I prepared before composing and then the process of composing, orchestrating, the preparation of score and parts for orchestra recording session, the preparation of conducting for the cue, the London recording in the Air Studios, the post-production about mixing, and to the conclusion of the learning journey and this final project. This project is designed to ensure fulfillment of Degree of Master of Music in Scoring for Film, Television and Video Games at Berklee College of Music.

Keywords: composition, film scoring, orchestration, studio recording, mixing, conducting, production.

In the 2018-2019 school year at the Berklee College of Music Valencia class, I have been given the task to produce a project with the purpose of scoring to visual media. This includes composition, orchestration, music preparation, conducting, and mixing. The primary focus of this project is to go through all of the typical tasks of scoring for visual media and handling the preparation and execution for working with fifty-one piece orchestra at Air Studios in London. This paper represents all of the creative and technical decisions I have made in order to execute the entire process. Thus, representing my fulfillment of the curriculum in the Master’s Program for Scoring to Film, TV, and Video Games.

This project highlights the creative process of scoring to picture by detailing the various stages of production. I believe that it is important for all persons involved in the creation of visual narratives to better understand the amount of work that is required to produce a quality underscore. For my culminating experience project, I followed the steps of the creative process and composed an original, three minute cue which was then recorded at AIR Studios’ Lyndhurst Hall. I will make a copy of the full score, audio recording, and video with synced audio of my original composition available for analysis in conjunction with this paper. This endeavor has been a successful one which has allowed me to learn a great deal about scoring to picture at the highest level. I hope that this project will provide valuable insight into the world of scoring for visual media and that aspiring composers and other visual media collaborators alike will better appreciate the level of skill and dedication required to be a media composer.

Keywords: composition, creative process, film music, mixing, score, orchestration.

At the beginning, when I just realize about the final CE project recording, I started looking for a video that can really match the idea that I had in mind, I wanted to compose an amazing piece that would be able to translate all my orchestration, composition, and screen reading abilities that I have, as well as all the improvements I made the whole year in Berklee. With this in mind I told my tutor that I was planning to compose for three videos instead of one. All the composition process would take place in the Digital Work Station (DAW) Cubase in which I was still getting used to, instead of Logic or Digital Performer programs in which I have big experience working on, with this I wanted to force myself to learn a new process with this new tool. After composing for the three videos I was planning to select one of them and start creating the score and parts as well as cleaning some of the orchestration in my score editor Sibelius. This I just mention was my first plan and I started doing it with more than one month in advance.

The ‘Culminating Experience’ for all graduate programs at Berklee Valencia embodies an emphasis on real-world experience, which is what distinguishes it from a research-based Master’s Thesis. The following is an analysis and reflection on my process of creating and producing the final product that is associated with this Culminating Experience, which is a 3- minute musical cue that accompanies a work of visual media, recorded with a 51-piece orchestra at AIR Studios in London.

Fantasia is a project which represents an entire year's worth of education at the Valencia Campus of Berklee College of Music. To a bystander, this project could look very similar to many others we were assigned throughout the year, since it is not the first time we were asked to (potentially) choose a scene ourselves and rescore the music for it. However, the added pressure of knowing that this piece will be recorded in one of the best studios in the world combined with the knowledge that this piece is meant to represent all of our growth has turned this project into a completely new experience. And it is without a doubt the hardest thing I ever had to experience this year, and in this intense course it is surely saying something. I will go into more detail about the effects of the added pressure, but I can honestly say now that the experience has made me grow in both confidence and in my professional attitude.

This culminating experience paper reflects the process of identifying a congruent thesis film, studying and analyzing the film, scoring the music, preparing the score along with all the parts for the orchestra to play, practicing conducting the score appropriately for a recording session, recording the composition at a professional studio in London, and mixing the recording which, as a result, fashions a broadcast ready cue. The film that was chosen was “Cosmos Laundromat: First Cycle”. This animated film proved to be a challenging one that taught me many valuable lessons. As a result of my experience, I am able to fully compose and produce broadcast ready music for movies, television shows and video games.

Keywords: film scoring, composer, orchestra recording, session conducting, mixing, animation

The purpose of this project is to compose a score to a picture to be recorded at Air Studio in London at the end of the academic year. This paper includes the process I went through from searching for a collaborating video to mixing and delivering the final mix, and a sincere reflection of myself as a composer and a human being. This project is to ascertain the fulfilment of Degree of Master of Music in Scoring for Film, Television and Video Games at Berklee College of Music.

Keywords: composition, film scoring, orchestration, recording, self-reflection

Woman of War is a final project that sought to reflect my challenges, dreams, as well as establishing a sense of who I am as a composer. As an indecisive individual whom grew from two different cultures, (American and Chinese) I wanted to find a piece that truly identifies who I was. The project is a reflection of what I have learned from Berklee College of Music in mixture with my childhood dreams of being able to write for Superheroes in the near future. This thesis explains my entire process from inspiration, to theme, and finally to screen. In addition, I included an analysis on the similarities between my source of inspiration, how the music reflects through film, and an layered orchestration analysis.

Keywords: Composition, Film Scoring, Themes, Identity, Dreams, Orchestration.

This project represents the culmination of my one year of study at Berklee Valencia as well as my personal project ‘TWO DIFFERENT EYES.’ This paper is an account of how I started the project, how I struggled in the middle, and how i finished until the last recording in London, how I worked with my older brother as a both family and co-worker as well as my philosophy of life. This paper briefly discusses how my life was and How I have overcome my difficulties. This paper contains the script, some parts of scores, and DAW screenshots. This paper is more focused on how I developed my thematic materials, how the development process of documentary, my struggles as a composer for documentary as well as my struggles of transition between music. This paper contains the recording process of my voice, Budapest recording, and trailer for the documentary as well. As a result, Along with our success of trailer, I will finish my documentary until the beginning of July. I am strongly excited to finish this project and share it all around the world.

The purpose of this project was to find artistic identity through compositions. Because of my background as a classical musician growing up in a non-musical family, composing had been a foreign subject. I believe that artistic identity is closely tied to compositions and the sonic atmosphere they create. In this project, I created nine compositions, through which, I discovered my artistic identity: Organic Electronic Indonesian Indie Music. I combine the elements of Indonesian Indie chords and melody, lyrics, acoustic instruments, combination of vocal and violin, electronic instruments, and electronic processing. The purpose of combining acoustic and electronic elements is to preserve and augment the natural element of the acoustic sound. This combination of genre created a new color that will contribute to the Indonesian music scene.

Keywords: artistic identity, composition, organic electronic, Indonesian indie

This project shows the culmination of a year full of hard work and different experiences happened in our Masters in Scoring for Film, Television and Video Games. Going through all the processes that we have been taught during the year, we started from finding a video to compose for, preparing a tempo map and markers, doing different versions and preparing a proper Mock-Up, write a score, record in one of the most important studios in the whole world, based in London, and editing and mixing the cue to premiere it finally. I come from a classical background, and some of the parts of this process sound kind of easy to do. But it is true that before doing this degree, I always composed directly on a score, and doing it first on a DAW and then writing down the score was one of my main concerns. But knowing that the goal was going to be recording with top musicians at Air Studios, a famous recording stage where composers like Alan Menken or Danny Elfman recorded, I knew the hard work would be worth it. I only hope that this experience can help future students to understand better what the SFTV Master’s Degree means, and share with everyone what my journey to London meant.

Keywords: composer, film scoring, orchestrating, conducting, sequencing, editing, mixing.

The War Within, represents a reflection of the way I choose to think and live my life, which led to the composition of this objective composition recorded in London, AIR studios. This is the second time that a project “reveals itself” to me as a sort of realization. I am on a conscious path of re-awakening myself from the illusion we call our life here on Earth, and all the belief systems of good/bad, right/wrong that come with this illusion. I believe that as a society we have grown to call normal what in truth is actually abnormal. Tradition is passed on from generation to generation without necessarily questioning its value and ground on which rules we abide to. We consider fear, judgement (meaning condemnation) competition, negation and separation, normal in our life. Although, deep inside our hearts there is a voice that wants us to break free of this way of living. Fear of the unknown and the attachment to feeling comfortable is extremely difficult for us to tackle and change. We base our lives on sayings such as “no pain, no gain” and within the subconscious the term “pain” is embedded. In fact, pain is considered something normal, while true joy of living, is considered something that only a few lucky people are able to experience in abundance. What if for example we said “no passion, no gain”? Our educational system, from a very young age does not teach us to find who we truly are, what are passion is, and to follow it with commitment. The system wants us to be moulded into what is considered normal, because normal feels safe and normal is accepted by the majority of people. We stray away from who and what we truly are, until the time comes in our life that we are “forced” to start searching for who and what we genuinely desire. All this and more is what The War Within is about.

Keywords: film scoring, relationship, self, passion, integrity, reflective paper, orchestration.

This CE paper focuses on my progress of scoring for an animated short film - starting with contacting the studio, composing for the short film, recording in London and ending with mixing and mastering. This project is not only about my progress, but also my inspiration and mindset while working on this music piece. My music background and the inspiration that I had over years are also discussed in this paper. The main reason for choosing an animated short film is because animation, as a genre, allows a composer to show his/her compositions skills. regarding the complexity and constantly changes on emotions.

Keywords: composition, animated film, short film, process, inspiration

When I first bumped into the movie Sintel, I was astonished by the many analogies I was able to find with my life. That story really strokes me. In this paper, I am going to describe the whole process starting from the early stage. I will talk about how I found the video and how I organized the entire music production process. Information about the music composition, the fantastic experience we lived in Air Studio and the post-production work I did on the recording are all included in this presentation.

Keywords: film scoring, compositional processes, orchestration, post-production, reflective paper.

The purpose and intent of this project is not only to reflect on the things that I learned and achieved in Berklee College of Music, especially focusing on my London Recording Project, for my maturity in musical aspects as a composer , but also to suggest the better way to record in London Air Studio in the future. To do this, I will describe how I prepared the London recording specifically, how I overcome the difficulties in this process, and Musical Analysis related to each scene of the film. Finally, I will explain how all these processes affected my musical growth.

Keywords: film scoring, compositional process, reflective paper, orchestration.

This thesis is based on the process of composing and recording a three minute piece of music for a short film. In my paper I outline the stages of my compositional process and describe how the music changed over the course of the project. I also reflect on the process of writing and recording the music, the challenges I faced as well as on the most to me noteworthy moments, positive and negative. This project has helped me develop my technical and artistic skills and has made me aware of ways to improve my compositional process on many different aspects. Through this project I have also increased my understanding of the creative decisions that go into composing music for film.

Birth of the Nemesis is my humble attempt at recreating the wondrous world of Action/Adventure/Fantasy genre of swashbuckling movie scores that our generation have loved through the past few decades. Acquiring the tools, ammunition and mental process to write such a piece was one of the main reasons behind me coming to Berklee. This project is a truthful culmination of all that I learned here at Berklee and all that I imbibed from the environmental exposure such a creatively conducive atmosphere offers. The music for this piece is inspired from and specifically written for selected scenes from the story of an original screenplay called "The Hellenic Saga" written by an upcoming young brilliant film maker from India, Kishore Prakash Menon. Coming from a composing career in India and already having a process that "works", up and running, unlearning and learning anew was initially tough, but a truly rewarding process. I can state with utmost conviction that I'm not just taking newly acquired knowledge and sharper technical skills back to my home base, buttruly great memories to cherish of a beautiful place called Valencia and its even more beautiful people.

Keywords: film scoring, orchestration, compositional process.

This project has helped me to make an investigation about some historical facts that have been erased in which we talk about the origin of flamenco, its influences and with this the birth of a new style, Afro-Flamenco. It has helped me to develop my skills to the front and management of a large project, which needed a lot of pre-production. It also has to be able to meet many people who have collaborated in this project and without those people it would not have been possible. To be able to develop my skills as a composer and orchestrator and find my own way and style, also know what I want to do in the future and know who I am. Finally to be able to have the opportunity to record with the orchestra of Air Studios in London and face to conduct the work in front of some wonderful musicians. a very enriching experience, which I will not forget.

Keywords: Afro-Flamenco, historic, opportunity, collaborations, composition.

This paper is a reflection of a Culminating Experience created for a specific learning outcome as provided by Scoring for Film, TV and Video Games master program. In this experience an author was set with a task to create an original piece of music based on a visual media, script or any other available source material, that could serve as an inspiration for writing music. Once selected, an author was tasked to compose and orchestrate an original composition, to be recorded at Air Studios located in London, with a 51 piece orchestra, and mix and master the recording to its final release form. The complexity of the task is a test of the skills acquired through the academic year, which in theory a composer for the media should posses and be familiar with. The ability to take the process from the very first initial stage and successfully finalise the piece of music up to a high standard is a crucial test for any aspiring professional. Even more so if the composer is dealing with a great standard of expectations at such professional environment as was provided and expected by Air Studios. In this document an author will take the reader through all the major stages of a production, as part of which he’ll explain the process and reflect on the challenges that might have occurred. Lastly, an author will reflect on the overall outcome of the project and provide an evaluation of the achievements as well as failures.

The 3-minute musical piece Murderer with the Mask is a very personal and intimate track, which reflects my musical personality in its truest sense, as of today. I have always been fascinated by Thriller and Horror movies and this track is a reflection of all those emotions, experiences and passion for such genre. The track is also a well-thought of and constructed score that incorporates methodical musical phrasing, experimental yet relatable motifs along with clichés that have been proven to amplify the desired emotion through decades of successful film scores. I am proud of my work on this score, since it incorporates analysis of dozens of scores, my Indian theoretical ideas of scales along with a professional film scoring approach. The pleasure of recording in one of the esteemed studios of Hollywood was the icing on the cake for this thesis. This piece has prepared me to take care of the complete end-end production of a music score for any media right from concept to final deliver.

Keywords: film scoring, thriller movies, Indian scales, scoring process

Disorder is the final project I did this year for the London recording. In fact, the type of the music is not what I am fond of. Nor do I write this style in usual. But I believe it is end up being my best work so far, and I am proud of it, since it marks a starting point of my career life. I am trying to take the challenge of accepting what I have and writing something I am not familiar with, instead of looking for a style of music I am good at and compose. I had so much fun and was fully enlightened during the work. This reflective paper is about the whole process of the culminating experience project, starting from preparation before composition, steps of writing and experience of recording in London Air Studio to final production, including analysis of the score and difficulties I had experienced during the work. Then I will present a short reflection on my music, discussing about any self-evaluation I have in general and what I can do to improve.

Keywords: compositional process, orchestration, recording, lesson, reflection

SPRING is a project that represents my culminating experience after years of study and hard work; from beginning to end I will guide you through this journey of creating a piece that represents knowledge, technique, sentiment, and primarily, soul, concluding in an intense and self-rewarding experience. It is believed that a musical compositional process is a gift that only certain people possess, and it’s a mystery for the rest of the world how they can create dancing melodies and intricate rhythmic patterns. However, this reflective paper will demonstrate and demystify the development and creation of music according to my personal perspective. I believe that this reflection is not a conclusion to this stage; on the contrary, this is just the starting point of an extremely long, hard and particular path that I chose for my life.

KEYWORDS: Film Scoring, Orchestration, Music, Composition, Reflective Paper.

This paper describes the preparation for composing, conducting and recording my final project for my Master’s in Scoring for Film, Television and Video Games at Berklee College of Music. This project was important for me because it represents all of what I learned during the course of the year. It shows my progress as a composer of film music, orchestrator and conductor. I came to Berklee with my main area of expertise being contemporary music so it was important to me to try my hand at a new genre and to see whether or not film music would be a got fit for me. To achieve my goal I examined scores, studied orchestration from the masters, I analyzed music from movies and practiced conducting both my own music and that from famous films. The culmination of which was the delivery of video with music written to picture and recorded at Air studios in London. At the conclusion of the project I had gained a huge amount of technical knowledge in the field of film scoring. I am proficient in writing, sequencing, recording and mixing my music and am now prepared for a career as a composer in the Film Industry.

Keywords: Film scoring , composition, conducting, recording, music for video games.

The process of musical creation of my London recording project In the beginning. This thesis not only describes the different stages in the composition of a musical piece, such as creation of the main motifs, orchestration, edition or conducting, but also offers an approach to the subject of marrying music to visual media, making briefs reflections about topics as the close relationship between music and mathematics or the importance of developing your own voice as a composer.

This project represents the culmination of a years worth of study, the end of the most intense and rewarding learning experiences of my life. This paper is an account of how I came to conceive, research and write my final piece for my Masters in Scoring for Film, TV and Video Games and a reflection on the recording session and the year as a whole. For this project I had to source a piece of media to write for, research orchestration and form in classical music and film scoring and prepare to deliver parts to the recording session as well as conduct the session. the result of this project is that I now have the skills and confidence to write for large orchestra, I can conduct the session and communicate in a professional manner with the musicians, I have experience of potential common mistakes made and I am now prepared to undertake such a project should it arise in the future.

Keywords: Film Scoring, Orchestration, composition, conducting.

The purpose of this project is to offer a small inside look at my composition process when it comes to scoring a short film, as well as my experience with the final recording session at AIR Studios and my thoughts on the end results. This project has forced me to look inside myself in a way I am not normally used to doing, and has been highly beneficial in revealing things I never fully realized about myself. I hope you enjoy taking a look back with me at my musical process, and hopefully learning something new as I have!

Earth In Oblivion is an introspective project willing to represent my personality, my goals and my doubts. During the writing process, I have faced issues and troubles but in the end it happened to be one of my best works so far. My piece is a summary of all I learned at Berklee Valencia, mixed with my childhood memories and hopes for the future. It has been a fight against standards in music but also a fight for the survival of our beloved planet Earth. As I am trying to find my own style and push away all kinds of voluntary inspiration, my struggle to make our planet a better place to stay is stimulating myself in finding a natural inspiration coming from the heart and not from the books. Classically trained, it has been hard for me to get out of the classical harmony and orchestration. But I noticed that I didn’t necessarily have to run away from it. The important thing is that all these rules stay as a starting point to my creativity.

Keywords: film scoring, nature, passion, integrity, reflective paper, orchestration.

The underlying purpose and intent of the project described below is to establish an open communication regarding the process creating a film music score for the film Burying Yasmeen, from the beginning to the end. The analytical and theoretical approach to the music described below is intended to aid in the process behind the creation of film music as well as encourage an in-depth discussion of how film music is designed to benefit and support a visual narrative. For the data collection, much of the compositional process was documented in a personal diary that has been kept up to date since January 2015, as well as personal emails between me and the director. Examples and descriptions of different themes and motifs are given below in clarity in order to understand different types of orchestration and composition when creating music for film. This project was designed to provide sufficient evidence to fulfill the Degree of Master of Music in Scoring for Film, Television, and Video Games at Berklee College of Music. It is my hope that the paper in its entirety will be of help, benefit, and enjoyment for musicians and non- musicians alike, as well as provide an in-depth look at the work involved on a film score for future students at Berklee College of Music.

This project describes the compositional process, the recording and the postproduction of a recording session at AIR Studios London. I looked for an appropriate video for a long time and finally decided to use a landscape- time-lapse movie about Bavaria, a region in the south of Germany, produced by David Palmen and Merit Golka. I composed the music for it and decided to use a strong melody, which I introduced in the high strings and later continued through the whole orchestra. After that, I created the score in Sibelius and printed and taped the parts on my own. During the recording at AIR, I conducted the orchestra. Here I experienced first-hand the difficulties of headphones and the communication with the orchestra. There was also a video recording of the performance. After the session, selected musicians gave feedback and I learned, that some parts of my score were too small to read and that the conducting is confusing for the players, if the conductor does not follow the click track. I learnt a lot about a professional recording with so many players and realised, that a good preparation decides about success or failure.

Keywords: film scoring, orchestral recording, London

This thesis described the process of the whole London recording session, the script writing, the composing process, recording preparation, post production and suggestions for future film music writing and recordings of the recording sessions in studios. I wrote a script for my London recording session, and scored music for it. In the thesis, I explained how I write a script, and what are some inspirations of my composition, and how I tried to score without pictures. Then I prepared Pro Tools session, score and parts and conducting for the recording session. After the recording, I mixed the session and realised what can be improved in my composition and how to arrange the orchestra will make it sound better. I hope this paper could help future students to get a clear idea of the process of London recording and be prepared for it.

The whole purpose of this reflective paper was to break down every single aspect of what I did in the culminating experience of the Scoring for Film, Television and Video Games Master’s program in Berklee Valencia campus. I took in account several advices I had from my directed studies teacher and supervisor Lucio Godoy, and quoted them in order to show how the preparation of the project was. I analyzed and reviewed in detail all the references, inspirations and influences I used to bring this project to life, focusing specifically in the works of American horror fiction writer Howard Phillips Lovecraft and the story and universe of Sony’s PS4 2015 video game Bloodborne. The preparation of this project was vast and extense, where I reflected and analyzed my progress, all throughout its creation, a lot. I centralized this document mostly in the process of settling down all my ideas and explaining my personal investigation through Lovecraft horror stories and the video game’s plot in order to write an original horror story within the Bloodborne universe and, as well, the creation of the London piece. Finalizing with the description of my own personal experience assisting to Lyndhurst AIR Studios in London and conducting in front of a 51 musicians orchestra, mixing the whole piece with the help of teacher Pablo Schuller, and doing the final delivery. This paper also contains lots of contemplation of my own strengths and weakness, from the best moments of the process of composition, to the very worst and frustrating experiences I had to overcome in order to finish the last project.

This thesis described the methods of finding a video, the composing process, recording preparation, post-production and suggestions for future recordings of the recording session at London AIR Studios. I used a time-lapse video called “ERRONKARI - Pyrenean Paradise” from Vimeo and did a rescore. The original music was composed by Vanessa Garde. In the thesis, I explained how I tried to find a video and why I choose this video, and what are some inspirations of my composition. I came up with a flute melody as theme one and the piece was developed based on two main themes. Then I prepared Pro Tools session, score and parts and conducting for the recording session. After the recording, I mixed the recording with the help of experiences gained from a previous mixing project for the Pac-Man anniversary animated short. After the recording, I realized what can be improved in my composition to make the orchestra sounds better, and I proposed some suggestions for future recordings. I hope this thesis will help future students to get a clear idea of the process of final recording and be well prepared for it.

Keywords: film scoring, compositional process, studio recording, session preparation, mixing

This paper is a reflection upon the process of creating a piece of music for visual media. In a narration format, I take the reader through the steps of the process, from conception to production, while hopefully shedding some light into this sometimes obscure and, for many, mythical process, which is the art of writing for visual media. On a personal level, through this document I reflect on my own process and, in doing so, new details of the creative process in general are revealed to me which I didn’t realize before. Ultimately, it is my desire that through this manuscript the reader will acquire a deeper appreciation of the process of creating and producing a piece of music for visual media. The project in which I will focus is one that occurs in an educational context, as opposed to a professional one, which makes it a very particular case study and provides for a specific approach to its analysis. I emphasize an educational approach to my experience and focus on the learning outcomes of the project as a starting point for the undertaking of later professional projects.

Keywords: Creative process, film music, videogame music, recording, music production, electronic music, orchestration, conducting

Toussaint Leads the Fight is a documentary Series that is being created by Karlyne Félix and animated by Kendal Brouet. The idea came when I started to look for ideas for my CE project. This project starting from THE IDEA to and ending at THE CREDITS is a experience that takes you through each episodes of my creative journey. My first season which is my CE paper is accompanied with a three-minutes orchestral piece orchestrated for an animation visual. This visual trailer is a pitch to market my idea for an animated historical fictional television series about cultural history geared for young school children.

The purpose and intent of this project is to provide an analytical discussion about the creation of a musical piece; from beginning to end. As so often, most believe that the compositional and music process is: one of intrigue and mystery in which only few talented people possess and can forge. However, this project serves to demystify the development and creation of music; as it will lead you through the following stages: initial concept, the writing of musical notation, recording the music and finally assimilating the final audio that will be distributed for use. Additionally, the initial leg begins with the music, and so it is a reversed look at the relationship between music and media. This project was designed to ensure fulfilment of the Degree of Master of Music in Scoring for Film, Television and Video Games at Berklee College of Music. The implications of this project are written for the assiduity of both musician and non-musician to provide a wholesome approach in which all can partake and enjoy!

Keywords: filmscoring, conducting, retrograde, music to picture, reflective paper

For the Culminating Experience of Master in Scoring for Film, Television and Video Games, I wrote a 3 minutes piece of orchestral music with original script, for a 51-piece orchestra, which was recorded in AIR Studio London, one of the best possible options for sound production around the globe. Since the student has the freedom to choose to work with any visual element, I chose to work with an original animation storyboard. I want to showcase my orchestral sound in a fantasizing way.

The purpose of this document is to reflect on the process of scoring a video with orchestral music as part of the culminating experience in the Master of Music in Scoring for Film, Television and Video Games in Berklee College of Music, Valencia Campus. The picture used for this project is called Star Rock, a short animation movie made by the students of the Centro oficial de estudios Barreira Arte + Diseño. During the process, it was a challenge to make all the process involved in scoring for a film, getting the concept, writing the music, presenting mockups to the director, conducting, recording, editing, mixing, and presenting it to pursue my master. I learned a lot about all the mentioned aspects related to this job and I also had the opportunity to interact with a real project, having feedback from a director and working together with a foley artist who will be responsible for the sound, sound effects, dialogues, and the final mix of the project. I hope my work could be useful and inspiring for upcoming students in Berklee Valencia.

Keywords: Reflective paper, compositional techniques, film music, culminating experience, orchestral music.

In the paper, I will talk about the pre-and post-production process of my Berklee culmination experience piece “The Last Wish” recorded in Air Studios, London as a part of my culmination experience at Berklee Valencia. My piece is based on a script which I arranged using excerpts from the book “The Last Wish” by a polish writer Andrzej Sapkowski. “The Last Wish” is a part of Witcher series books which were used as a setting for one of the most successful AAA video games ever released “The Witcher” 1, 2 and 3. This music piece is the culmination of a whole year of study in film scoring, and a combination of many related fields of study such as music composition, orchestration, orchestral conducting, recording, applied synthesis, and mixing.

This Project serves two purposes: the first being a journal, providing a full account of my actions, artistic decisions and final results, with the second purpose as a self-critique and analysis of my performance throughout the course of the project. I opted to score music to a drone shoot of the Wind Rivers, Wyoming. However, the video needed to be edited to an appropriate length which by the nature of the act doubled somewhat as a spotting session. My first draft I ultimately scrapped; one of my greatest weaknesses is with the digital half of music and music production so I altered my project which was originally designed as an orchestral work to that of hybrid score. I needed to be able to orchestrate from MIDI faster, so I took the time to experiment with drafting software. For an extra challenge I wrote the score to demand special additions to my mix. My intention is that my work and assessment will provide insight and a guide to future composers who similarly have faced these challenges.

Keywords: Film Scoring, Hybrid Scoring, Post Production, Mixing, Orchestration, Journal, Critique

This thesis is the description of steps for finding a project, the composing process of a hybrid score, mixing and some suggestions for producing an orchestral recording session. I used a cinematic from a triple A game and did a rescore for my CE. In this thesis, I’ll explain my musical background, some compositional and technical aspects of producing a hybrid score and finally I’ll explain some important steps for the mixing process. For this project, I used a lot of synthesizers and contemporary compositional techniques. Creating a hybrid score requires the expertise in orchestral and electronic music in order to merge the two worlds correctly. This thesis reflects all the experience that I obtained in the master program including the disciplines of composing, sound design, conducting, creating parts and preparing a Pro Tools session for the recording. I hope that this thesis helps future professionals to prepare an orchestral recording at any studio around the world.

Keywords: video game scoring, compositional devices, conducting, sound design, mixing

This paper aims to describe the process of the last project of the SFTV program, the London recording, which I called ‘Holyhan’. It is a project that portrays the process of film scoring: from the recording at London Air Studio to the post production, after selecting the image I wanted to score. I have included detailed stories in the process addressing the video selection, the musical decisions, the ideas composed and the inspiration, and I tried to analyze my music. Additionally, I explain in detail the recording at the London Air Studio and compare it to previous recording experiences as a composer and conductor.

Keywords: London recording, composition, score, reflections, mixing

Writing beautiful music is easy. Scoring is difficult. Narrativity. Every audible decision you make, has to multiply each frame from the picture. Where to sync. Where not to. Where to explode. Where to hide. To breathe together. To live and die together. So sophisticated. So sacred. Ten years ago, my composition teacher was so proud of his illiteracy in notation software. I despised MIDI emulations of real instruments. I thought art is only alive on stage but dead with computers. Nowadays, no writer cannot type. No composer does not use Sibelius or Finale. Samples become vital components to enrich the sound, to sublime the art. Studios record alive sound to computer drives and you can customize desired takes and insert vintage plugins to refine the “lives,” so that your grandchildren can feel your existence. I just get addicted to analog synth and can play with it all night. Unbelievable. The world changes. I changed too. This paper recorded my Culminating Experience London project from embryo to completion. It is not an assignment. It is my journey of “soul redemption.”

Keywords: narrativity, musical narrative, music composition, film scoring, orchestral music, studio recording.

The main focus of this project is to provide a story of myself as a composer, creating an orchestral piece for a visual media and providing the full analysis of the big recording project. From the very beginning where I had to search and choose a video, how I started to compose and the process of making and orchestrating the whole piece, the process of preparing for fifty-one-piece orchestra recording session, the London recording experience at the Air Studios, the post-production, and to the reflections I had after the whole project. This project is designed to ensure fulfilment of Degree of Master of Music in Scoring for Film, Television and Video Games at Berklee College of Music.

Keywords: composition, film scoring, orchestration, recording, production.

The purpose of this paper is to describe in a simple way the whole process, from beginning to end, of creating our final music piece. This includes discussions about the methods of finding a script, the composing process, recording preparation and post-production of the recording session at London AIR Studios. This thesis aims to demonstrate the development of the concept through all of the stages: initial concept, research, writing of the music, preparation needed, recording and mixing the final audio. This is the culmination experience of our Scoring for Film, Television and Video Game (SFTV) program on Berklee Valencia, and our chance to expose our talent and acquire knowledge on the last year.

Keywords: composition techniques, film scoring, reflective paper, composition process, recording, mixing.

I am writing about this project with the intent of explaining to and sharing with others that which means much to me and is the great adventure of writing music for media. From the first musical idea, through to being in front of a 50- piece orchestra; recording the fully developed musical piece that will be part of the film; there is a lot more to Film Scoring than meets the eye. It’s an exquisite adventure from beginning to end! So, dive in with me, as I go through my personal individual steps of creating the music, sound effects and dialogue for my final project for the Scoring for Films, TV, & Video Games Master’s program at Berklee College of Music: 3m16 – The Face of Extinction.

Keywords: film music, reflective paper, conducting, orchestration

The author takes a close look at the process around his final composition project tackling everything from how to acquire video material to how he composed each individual element. He tells of the journey to AIR studios in London to record, his expectations, shortcomings, and victories, his post process, mixing and the general feeling of his final weeks at the Berklee college of Music Masters’ program: Scoring for Film, Television & Video Games. This paper is best read with a copy of the original score of the composition "Krogulous" which is in the appendix of the paper.

This project is about the session we recorded in London as our final project. We wrote music for films, trailers, or cinematic for video games, or scripts of a scenario, and in case of mine, movie clip from Spider-Man 3. We were allowed to use almost the whole orchestra, including two percussive instruments. Maximum of the length was 3 minutes, but we were strongly encouraged to write more than 2 minutes, at least. The recording date was June 3rd and 4th, and the time we were given to prepare the whole project was about a month, starting from May.

Keywords: Film scoring, composition, orchestration, London, mock-up, mixing.

Through detailed analysis, I will identify and compare various cue’s taken from all zones in the game with regard to use of slavic instrumentation and vocals, orchestration/arrangements, with melodic and harmonic structure. Furthermore, certain methods of implementation, use of diegetic score and song scoring will be touched upon in correlation to the analysis in order to identify how a sense of immersion is created in the video game.

The shifting dynamic toward a more involved approach to film scoring is glaringly evident in Marco Beltrami’s work for the 2014 western drama, The Homesman. Beltrami’s involvement in the early stages of the project’s production and his propensity for adopting unorthodox, innovative approaches to sound work in symbiosis with the other aspects of the film to create a richer, fuller, and more meaningful piece of cinema. In the body of this paper, I will aim to analyze Marco Beltrami’s work on The Homesman to better understand the processes and logic he utilized to create this phenomenal score and the effect his increased involvement had on the overall narrative of the film.

Storytelling is an ancient art that inevitably impacts our lives everyday. From mundane conversations with one another, to the music we listen to, to the television series we watch, and the movies we see, storytelling permeates society’s atmosphere. Furthermore, storytelling is an entity that contains great potential to transform people’s lives. If the audience is effectively engaged, the storyteller wields the ability to frighten them, make them cry, laugh, sing, yearn, and hope. However, in modern day visual storytelling there is a hidden force that the storyteller must consider. Regardless if the storytelling is facilitated through a movie or television series, if the hidden force is not combined in synergy, storytelling can substantially lose efficacy. This hidden force is the emotional driving entity behind every legendary movie and it is known as the soundtrack. So how effective would an award-winning movie be without the soundtrack? In my analysis, I will be examining “Superman: The Movie” (1978), which was awarded a Special Achievement Academy Award for Visual Effects, nominated for an Academy Award in Best Sound, Best Film Editing, and Best Music, Original Score. Composed by John Williams, how does the soundtrack function together with the movie to forge a story that not only reached critical acclaim, but that also facilitated hope to many individuals?

Diversity is a big topic in the movie Zootopia, in which music plays an tremendously important role in presenting the concept. This essay aims to identify and investigate the different musical styles that influence the score, how the various styles are put together, and how these influences are translated for the storytelling purpose in the film.

Analysis of Thomas Newman’s artistry, compositional approach and creative tendencies.

How did "The Good the Bad and the Ugly" become what it is today?

This paper will analyze the cue Test Drive from the movie How to Train your Dragon and it will demonstrate which elements the composer uses to represent the characters’ feelings. The study will examine which specific melodies and instruments are associated with each feeling. The proposal is to find the compositional technique that the composer employs to associate each emotion with a specific melody or instrument, and therefore be able to reproduce these techniques in future compositions.

Is it worth it to investigate music from a video game? Unlike linear non- interactive music for visual media such as films and television, video game music is somewhat restrained by the essential interactivity, limiting its horizons of melody and harmony, probably leading some to criticize the simple and looped nature of video game music. One can argue that the Halo series/franchise has grown to massive popularity because of its unique combination of characters, plot, gameplay and art direction – one simply cannot resist being a super armored soldier shooting different aliens across the galaxy and on gigantic ring structures called Halo. But I strongly believe that Halo’s music also plays a huge part in its success; for the player conquers the galaxy and protects Earth with allies of orchestral rock and roll, choral and synth-y ambience etc... With this interest I would like to show the reader how themes are used in the Halo trilogy and how they help to connect the three episodes of the game and enhance various plot points for a game that tells a story a little more than shooting things.

On this paper, we will focus on this storytelling approach and how the production side of it gives more resources for effective storytelling. We will see how music was used in the film, the structure of the themes, the unconventional timbres of the score, the mix, and much more to see how all of the decisions are based on one premise: To help tell the story of the film.

When my first time to watch The Grand Budapest Hotel, the strong color comparison and unique narrative music texture tightly catch my attention. I’m curious about why this combination of color and music can make me so impressed. Then it generated my idea of this paper.

In this paper, I will analyze the compositions by Jun Seok Bang in the historical period drama movie The Throne (2015) because Bang brings together elements of Korean traditional music with western orchestration in strategic ways to strengthen the emotional narrative of the film for the contemporary Korean audiences and beyond. More specifically, I will analyze two songs that are central to portraying the key concept of the film: forgiveness. These two songs reflect the stages of forgiveness from anger to sadness. I will highlight how the composer achieved emotional effects through his musical choices in instrument use and orchestration.

This thesis aims to make a comparative analysis between different music scores written for Battleship Potemkin. The film, directed in 1925 by Russian filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein, is considered a landmark in film history by a large part of historians and researchers. Many of the techniques used today in filmmaking are due to experiments and innovations translated by Eisenstein in this film and in others produced by him by the time.

This study has two main objectives. The first of these is intimately attached to the composer, Kosma, and lies in finding out the main features of his hungarian-french contribution to the typically casticist, folkloric and symphonist music of the Spanish 1950’s cinema, as well as locating and connecting his work to the context, establishing a comparative framework between Kosma’s work and his Spanish, American and European peers’s film scores, in order to set up parallels and differences between them, and study the first contribution of a "French"avant-garde composer to our cinema. For that purpose we will analyze the soundtrack of Main Street in depth, with the aim of identifying the most relevant features of the music itself and the relationship between music and picture. Previously, we will conduct a broad study on the context of the work: the culture situation, with special attention to cinema, during the first two decades of Francoism, and the different film music models that consolidated during the 1940s and 50s, which were mainly based on a dichotomy between the European authorial music, and the American industrialist one. The second objective of this work encompasses not only Kosma’s music, but also the movie’s diegetic preexisting music, selected probably by Bardem himself. It lies in discovering to what extent and by which procedures Main Street’s score contributes to the movie’s political detractor character and its realistic and testimonial purpose.

There are a lot of movies for analysing, but I choose movie LEGEND by Ridley Scott. When you watching a movie sometimes you think: “I wish in this moment was another scene, or why director not showing more about this character?” Well, Ridley Scott gives a lot of opportunities to find out more and more about this movie because there was released several versions of it. I took two most popular versions that are European version (director’s cut) with Jerry Goldsmith score owned by 20 Century Fox and American Theatrical version with Tangerine Dream score owned by Universal. I will analyse how different music blends for the same picture and what feeling it brings for both versions. How small changes in picture making influence for the score, music approach and story line.

“Loreak” (2015) a Basque film by J.M. Goenaga and J. Garaño tells a human story about relationships and hidden emotions. Pascal Gaigne developed universal concepts that help the visual aspect and immerses the viewer, especially (audio wise) in a deep self-journey to his/her own emotions, that is, emotions and concepts that every human has experienced: “Flowers, bodies, souls, thoughts, secrets, vibrations, breaths, silents, shadows, presences”. Would the listener be able to recognize the different concepts that Pascal Gaigne has developed without knowing them beforehand? If so, what are the reasons that make the listener identify these concepts? How does he succeed to transmit these emotions through the music? Is it the use of different textures, and if so, what tools are determinant to achieve that The purpose of this thesis is to carry out a research into music cognition and work on Pascal Gaigne’s music in order to support the idea of universal common patterns shared among humans, musically speaking. Moreover, the effectiveness of Pascal’s music in relation to the concepts raised in the movie will be analysed. Therefore, the psychological aspect of the music will be analysed, and special attention will be paid to the arousal of different emotions of this soundtrack.

Keywords: film music, music cognition, emotions, psychology, composition.

Understanding the foundational bonds between music and memory in "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind."

It is the goal of the paper to identify the aspects of Dorian that allow for its frequent and effective use. Since the practice of music notation, the pitch set currently understood as Dorian has been used as a prominent scale with a wide range of usages. Ultimately, the underlying thesis indicates that the Dorian church mode’s large range of affective qualities and general versatility is the product of its underlying inherent neutrality.

In the Academy Award winning score for Slumdog Millionaire, A. R. Rahman combined electronic music, Indian classical music, orchestral music, and other styles into one unified score that takes these styles out of their context. Rahman also used a unique compositional process, which combined Bollywood and Hollywood styles of film scoring with a heavy empahsis on collaboration. In my thesis, I would like to explore how Rahman weaves these different ideas to create the score.

This project will analyze the likenesses and idiosyncrasies of transitional and compositional devices utilized by film composers of various eras.

This paper will focus on the world of The Legend of Zelda in particular, one of the oldest and most celebrated video game franchises of all time, beloved by casual gamers and dedicated fans alike, sometimes to the level of cult following. The thematic and interactive music of Zelda plays a significant role in establishing its identity as a major game franchise with an influential cultural effect. To examine this phenomenon, let us explore several principal musical themes and their treatments throughout selected games, primarily: Ocarina of Time, Twilight Princess and Skyward Sword. These are three of the most recent and popular titles of the franchise. So far, they contain some of the most developed versions of the principal themes and are therefore among the most interesting, musically speaking. Furthermore, by examining aspects of game music such as timbre and colour, orchestration and instrumentation, meter and tempo, harmony and melody, tempo, texture, style, technique and implementation, we can see why these principal themes or leitmotifs are so effective in establishing identity and loosely track their shape end evolution throughout the previously mentioned titles.

In this thesis, I am going to show the music connections between The Good, the Bad and the Ugly and The Hateful Eight. I will firstly talk about Morricone’s film scoring approach in Western Movies, in terms of composition techniques and instrumentation. Examples will be listed from previous western movies he has scored, i.e. A Fistful of Dollars and For A Few Dollars More as these two are closely related to The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. Then I will talk about how he used the same approach in writing music for these two movies, in the same list of category as in the discussion of Morricone’s film scoring approach in Western movies. All these will prove the new gun – The Hateful Eight resonates with the old gun – The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.

Analysis of Kobo and the Two Strings (2016).

Having won two academy awards for best original score in two consecutive years, two BAFTA awards, Grammys and several others, Gustavo Santaolalla has become one of the world’s most accomplished and renowned composers in the modern industry. In June 2013, Video Game Developer Naughty dog released a new game: titled The last of us, published by Sony. It received worldwide critical acclaim being the fifth highest rated Playstation 3 game on Metacritic, which also received the “Game of the year” award. Gustavo Santaolalla was chosen to be the composer and his musical approach along with the game has been considered to be one of the best video game scores ever made. This paper will analyze several techniques used, which instruments were considered, and also how he approaches his music to be mixed in several game situations, changing the mood according to what the player is experiencing, providing a new psychological and revolutionary effect. A new approach to melancholy in video games.

Inside Out is a movie from 2015 that has gained a lot of success, becoming one of the top movies of Disney Pixar. It won the Oscar in 2016 for best animated picture(1).It is a concept of cinema that tries to go further, presenting two different statements of reality: the interior of the human being vs. the exterior and his/her environment. This is reflected in different aspects of the movie: two different types of animation as well as two different environments that involve different characters. What apparently can seem complicated to understand for a child becomes something simple, moving and fun, due to the fact that the narrative in the movie is very clear and concise. The implicit psychology in every situation, as well as in all the characters, is softened by Michael Giacchino’s music, which gives a relaxed mood indispensable in a film mainly directed to children. My purpose is to show an analysis of a soundtrack that supports a kind of ethic animated film, whose intention is to transmit good values to the children of our society.

The Social Network (2010) has been recognized, by both critics and audiences, as one of the best movies of 2010. Its peculiar soundtrack and film editing techniques enhance the sparkling script in such a way that the result is an incredibly dense, almost hard to follow, movie about the creation of the nowadays most used social network in the world. In this paper it will be discussed the unusual creative process that led to the finalization of the soundtrack and it will be analyzed whether such creative process could be an innovative and more efficient way of composing music to picture.

The purpose of this research paper is to explore the quieter oeuvre of Williams’ film scores, as well as the key concepts that shaped this stylistic side of his over the last three decades. The topic is approached by selecting and analyzing a specific sample of movies, all scored by Williams. The paper will then put the movie specific findings into relation with each other, demonstrating reoccurring patterns in the composer’s scoring approach.

Since the release of ME 1 in 2007, the Mass Effect universe has rapidly expanded: two sequels, three mobile platform spin-off games, five graphic novels, ten comic books, two film adaptations, as well as the parallel Andromeda series. As such, the Mass Effect mythos is immense and highly refined; for readers unfamiliar with the series, a general summary of the storyline of each game can be found in Appendix A. This analysis will try to streamline all necessary story-related information in as straightforward a manner as possible, but the use of some story-specific terminology, however, is unavoidable. Moving forward, all underlined terms will be defined in greater detail in the Glossary of Terms found in Appendix B. While referring to the index is not necessary for general comprehension, it will enhance understanding of the plot for those unfamiliar with Mass Effect.

As is known to all, adventure music, which usually has a complex and multi-layered orchestration, is hard to write. If the music is written for an animated movie, the piece shall be added an extra feeling of innocence by the orchestrator. Nowadays, a number of orchestrators which are good at adventure music are active in Hollywood. Their compositions exist in various well-made animated adventure movies and really impress the audiences. As a result of their impressive and famous works, the soundtrack of animated adventure movie has been fixed in a certain pattern. In this article, I would like to explore and approach this pattern by analysing the soundtracks of "How to Train Your Dragon", and try to give a review and summary to it, in order to help inexperienced composers familiarize themselves with this type of music quickly.

This paper analyzes Harry Gregson William's soundtrack for the Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe. Specifically it examines both the inclusion and use of non-standard instrumental color in the sonic palette of the soundtrack, and whether said inclusion helps to establish the world of Narnia as a physical, non-earth location. A two-fold analysis is presented, focusing first on the contextual placement of timbral elements, and second on the development and repeition of thematic material.

An Analysis Through the Lens of Breakfast at Tiffany’s.

Research of Minimalism in Film.

The evolution of the score will document Mychael Dana's year long process for creating the score for Life of Pi. As well, it will look into his previous works and study the effect of how this influenced the music for life of Pi. The paper will explore territories that I will personally discuss with Mychael (with a scheduled meeting via Skype) such as making a score for a film that had never been created before. Through studying other works by Dana, I will compare how he chooses specific instruments/specific musical content in order to make a score that is truly unique to the picture.

This paper examines the musical representation of the Science of Deduction throughout the many cinematographic adaptions of Doyle’s novels of Sherlock Holmes during the last 50 years and how they relate to the novels. The aim of this thesis is to ascertain whether David Arnold and Michael Price’s musical characterisation of the Science of Deduction is the first example that represents in an all-rounded way the deductive reasoning process as described by Doyle in his novels and as perceived by the reader. While the overall quality of the OST in each example is never in question, personal opinions are given throughout when it comes to the characterisation of the detective’s deductions.

Exploring Creative Liberty in The Peanuts Movie.

This essay will set out to analyze the main musical theme in the film “The Master.” My interest in this research is due equally to my admiration for Greenwood’s music and Paul Thomas Anderson’s films. I find that the squeamish subject matter portrayed in Anderson’s films is complemented well by the indeterminate, and sometimes chaotic orchestral music written by Greenwood. By focusing on the reoccurring theme in the film, Overtones, I will show how it is informed by Krzysztof Penderecki’s concert work, Polymorphia. While this analysis will go into theoretical detail with the time constraints provided, I find that it would be beneficial to complete a thorough analysis of the whole soundtrack and compare it with more of Penderecki’s work.

When analyzing music in video games, a few considerations must be made. Compared to film and television, story-based video games often have much more footage than there is music. As a result, directors have to get creative about how the music is created or implemented. With certain games inheriting these characteristics we associate from television and film, how does the role of the composer and how we storytell through our music fit in? In this paper, using Square Enix’s Final Fantasy XIII, the connection between the story and the music will be analyzed in-depth. As games have been growing as a artistic medium, my analysis will be based on how Final Fantasy XIII approaches the problem of staying coherent by utilizing motifs and strategic placement of music in a game.

Video games often require a large variety of musical styles to match the content of the game, but blending them together is not always simple. This paper analyzes the score of Rayman Origins by Christophe Héral to find what techniques he used to bring cohesion to his eclectic music. Direct study of the music with a focus on instrumentation and orchestration was used as the basis of the analysis, with some outside research done to identify specific traits of various instruments and genres.

The first time I watched “King Arthur” was when I was 10 years old and from that day onwards, the soundtrack was fixated in my mind. Most notably the haunting voice of Moya Brennan together with the intense action score by Hans Zimmer. I have watched the movie several times and I never fail to get goose bumps whenever the music comes in, especially when I hear the cue entitled ‘Tell Me Know”. Undoubtedly, the movie owes part of its success to the music. In this paper I will explore the different aspects which characterize the score, in order to convey the legend of King Arthur. In addition, I will also be giving an analysis of the themes and the way they are developed throughout the movie.

The project focuses on the challenges faced by the composer of "The Theory of Everything", Jóhann Jóhannsson, in creating a timeless underscore for a movie that depicts a time period covering three decades.

In terms of organisation and creativity; how did they share their work and how did this affect the score?

In this paper I will be discussing the similarity between The Imitation Game and the 2001 classic A Beautiful Mind in terms of plot, character development and soundtrack. The Imitation Game is therefore a terrific film to analyze considering the fact that it could be studied in parallel with the aforementioned acclaimed classic from 2001 as a modern day take on the following topic: Does the score of the film The Imitation Game successfully portrays the internal struggles, thoughts, enlightenment and ingenious mind of Alan Turing?

The paper will consist of a musical analysis of co-composers Burkhard Dallwitz and Phillip Glass’s score to the film The Truman Show. The first section will consist of a brief plot summary as well as a look at the overall relationship of the music to the narrative of the story. The other sections will cover a more detailed analysis of the musical themes, especially as they related to the main characters of the story. There final section will examine the unique artistic voice each composer brings to the film, both as individuals and in the synergy of their collaboration. The musical portion of the culminating experience will consisted of a composition to a student film that is currently in production.

WALL•E has much to offer its audience. The movie explores many good moral themes, has stunning visuals, and impeccable music. Perhaps its most interesting quality is its lack of dialogue. In the entire movie, there are 862 spoken words. This is a small fraction of the amount of dialogue in other films. It is necessary then, that the film rely other auditory sources as well as visual communication to tell the story and relay its information. Films from the Silent Films era function in this same way, but completely relying on non-verbal communication, short of the speech cards that pop up at very important moments. This idea highly motivated me to study WALL•E and its use of music. My main focus in this paper will be on analyzing Thomas Newman’s music in WALL•E, and how the uses of music parallel those found in silent films.

Since 1983, the world of MIDI has developed to a point to redifine the entire process of creating music. Through the years this has led the client (such as a film director) to expect high quality mock-ups that give a true representation of the final work, while before that the composer used to play at the piano a minimal idea of a larger scale work. Convincing a client that spending the money about to be invested on the movie was worthy was a matter of trust, while nowadays technology has given the opportunity to the composer to fully prove his abilities. Having said that, technology has led to the issue that while in the analog era was enough to write the score to achieve a complicated orchestral arrangement, now the composer has to also be able in sequence it. This led to an impoverishment of film music, that sees less and less the advent of new composers like John Williams. But sample libraries and the sequencing process should not be seen as an obstacle: with the right tools the composer can still be able to produce fantastic music with no excessive efforts. Also, samples are a fantastic weapon in the hand of the composer to deliver a good product saving time and allowing him to use the budget the way he prefers with no need of having to record every single instrument included in the composition. In this thesis I will talk about all this factors as seen from the perspective of an acclaimed composer in the UK such as Maurizio Malagnini, whom I had the priviledge of studying with for many years. Most of the content of this thesis comes from an interview I had with him on April 29th 2016 in his house in London.

An example of a composer who has always been a great inspiration to me is Gabriel Yared. I find his music to be very interesting because in my opinion it adapts so well to picture and characters and I think he is very good at capturing the essence of the movie with his music and making the audience become extremely involved in the story. As a composer Gabriel Yared has a very unusual way to go about it when he composes music for film and through this research paper the aim would be to gain a better understanding of how he works and what makes him special as a composer.

An analysis of the use of different musical stylistic time periods in the video game "Assain's Creed 2".

The aim of this paper is to analyze Horner’s soundtrack to A Beautiful Mind by particularly focusing on what effects it has on the audiences’ understanding of the film. Since the movie itself is rather complex and can be interpreted in many different ways, due to its various conscious and subconscious levels, this paper will look at how these levels are coded into the score and how the music enhances the experience of the viewer.

Navigating the Past, Present and Future of Jane Eyre.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze how eastern and western musical elements interact with each other in the music from the 2008 American computer-animated action comedy martial arts film Kung Fu Panda, produced by DreamWorks Animation and distributed by Paramount Pictures. It was directed by John Stevenson and Mark Osborne. The music was written by the RCP (Hans Zimmer Remote Control Productions). The main composers are Hans Zimmer and John Powell, with additional music from Henry Jackman and James McKee Smith. The results of this analysis can be used to find out how music can serve as a universal language and apply to film scoring in a better way. The finding may be useful for not only film composers, but also for orchestrators and for people who want to get a better understanding about world music, especially eastern culture and music.

While most games have a straightforward objective, Bioshock Infinite as a game has been known to skirt the delicate line between being story-oriented and being a video game where the player can choose what to do. This brings forward an interesting opportunity for music to provide a sense of narrative to the game, which helps in establishing the key role of the music across various different levels and locations in the video game. This thesis aims to explore the strong connection between the narrative elements of the characters in the storyline of the game with various themes and motifs found throughout the music score.

Diversified ways of approaching instruments and variety of the use of the main motif (fullground) of “Briony’s theme” according to the scenes in “Atonement”.

This thesis describes the music in Gravity (2013) and it explains the use of electronic and acoustic elements that brought the score to life. A hybrid score which contains musical texture that melts into the picture pointing out of every small narrative detail, taking into consideration characters’ state of mind, surroundings, camera perspectives and the idea that mirrors what it is like to be in space. A score that plays a vital role in the movie, which demonstrates a thorough structure and a firm statement of the great amount of planning made ahead before the scoring process. The music never overtakes the importance of the picture; it does so without drawing your attention away from it. This C.E. will include a musical and dramatic analysis based on three parts of the movie, Gravity: Above Earth, Don’t Let Go and Tiangong (Price, 2013) Steven Price recorded a 80-minute score, which contains elements of traditional classical music and avant-garde sound-designing that will blow you away.

This paper aims to analyze the role of the music within the movie Wall-E, and especially to deconstruct what it is that makes the narrative move forward in a movie that has very little dialogue.

This thesis examines Peter Kam’s approach in applying Fado’s musical elements to his film score for ‘Isabella’ (2006) and the effectiveness of his score in relation to the context of the film. It is a study to examine approach in composing music to relate the content and emotion on the film. Also, it provides references for scoring film music in Fado or Portuguese music styles.

‘All my life needed was a sense of someplace to go. I don’t believe that one should devote his life to morbid self-attention. I believe someone should become a person like other people.’ – Travis Bickle.

These words are spoken by the protagonist in Martin Scorsese’s 1976 film, ‘Taxi Driver’, the subject of this thesis. My intention of this thesis is to explore and uncover some of the reasons why this screen character has become almost mythical to generations of wrought, social alienated youngsters the world over. His dialogue is quoted arguably more than any other male lead and his famous lines have resonated with every person who has ever felt acute loneliness and worthlessness. It is this inalienable fact that draws us in and makes the viewer confide and emphasize with this character, Travis. However there is another ‘character’ that permeates alongside our tragic hero in this narrative, Herrmann’s score.

The first hour of Wall-E is a crazily inventive, deliriously engaging and almost wordless silent comedy of the sort that Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton used to make. In almost 100 minutes of movie there are about 80 minutes of music. My analysis focuses mainly on the styles used by Newman and his aesthetic approach to this amazing score.

We will explore the approach of Sound and Music in Gravity, how it has borrowed elements from the FPS VideoGame world, and how the Sound Design is deeply woven into the film, critically boosting the impact of the story. It is no coincidence that Gravity’s Music Composer Steven Price, specialized in Sound Design work before diving deep into Music Composition for Film, and it is perhaps this, what sets Gravity aside; regarding Music as Sound, and taking that notion to the nth power.

The goal of this paper is to identify, analyze and evaluate the compositional techniques used by composer Michael Giacchino in his score for the animated film ‘Ratatouille’ (2007). In the first part, an overview of the film is presented including plot and chapter list. The thesis then examines the music and how it relates to the characters and events in the film. The composer’s influences are identified. In conclusion, the thesis argues that while the influence of early cartoon composers such as Carl Stalling is undeniable, Giacchino takes it a step further by creating emotional arcs and not simply ‘mickey-mousing’ the on-screen action. This thesis hopes to offer an insight into the way of thinking of one of Hollywood’s finest composers.

A Critical Analysis of The Ways In Which The Score for "There Will Be Blood" Was A Groundbreaking Addition to The Literature of Film Music.

A Musical and Psychological Analysis of the Music of "Homeland" : Season 1.

The current study is deliberate to be an analysis of the music and its narrative function for the movie.

The objective of this paper is two-fold: Firstly, I, the writer, will attempt to analyze three music cues in the “300” soundtrack, and study its use in the imagery of the film. Secondly, I will cross-reference these cues with the supposedly original sources to which these cues had plagiarized from. From this
thesis, I hope to gather some findings, conclusions, and lessons that film composers can avoid in future.

Super 8: Sci-fi monster movie meets coming-of-age love story. Although this film was slightly overlooked at the time of its release, its creativity, significant themes, and incredible musical score make it deserving of detailed analysis. Super 8 was produced in 2011 by Paramount Pictures, Amblin Entertainment (in association with Steven Spielberg), Bad Robot, and K/O Camera Toys (Abrams, J. J., Spielberg, S., & Burk, B., 2011). The film was written and directed by J. J. Abrams, and the musical score was composed by Michael Giacchino. Primarily, this paper will analyze the unique use of theme duality by Michael Giacchino in the film Super 8. In addition, this analysis will also examine the effectiveness of the music in assisting character and story development and in portraying the director’s vision for the film.

Through the history of film, film directors have been telling a lot of story about human’s life, fantasy, drama, etc. Among others, the true story, based on real events, has been most attractive elements for the directors. Especially, the mystery of serial murders is one of the most important things because the directors want to show the story in many ways, unlike TV News. They bring the audience into the story as a kind of witness with a lot of dramatic elements. At this point, music, called film score, connects the audience to the story and the director. Especially, in the serial murders movie, music can help the audience to understand how the story goes, who the criminal is, how to follow him or her. Further, if the story has been unsolved yet, which means we cannot see the actual criminal in the movie, the audience might feel stuffy and a gap between the detectives and the criminal after watching the movie. The aim of this paper is analysis of ‘How Music Follows the Criminal”, through a Korean serial murders movie, “Memories of Murder.”

Film Soundtrack Analysis Of Leon the Professional (1994).

The purpose of this paper is to provide a thorough analysis of Javier Navarrete’s score for Pan’s Labyrinth, as well as a researched argument for the use of music as psychological expression in the film.

Danny Elfman is known for his dark, quirky musical style. In the contemporary Hollywood world there are only few composers that can vaunt to posses this personal and unique style. The industrialization of Hollywood’s cinema has created a standardization in the production, including the music department, but Elfman is an exception in the main trend mainly because of his musical background. He is a self-taught musician that came from rock music, that managed to write several very original orchestral scores such as Beetlejuice, Edward Scissorhands, Batman and The Nightmare Before Christmas. How can a person that never studied notation, harmony and orchestration write so much complex and well written music for orchestra? Which are his musical roots, and his masters? Why is The Nightmare Before Christmas so unique and memorable?! In this paper I will answer to these questions focusing on the musical elements that Elfman developed during his career; these approach will bring us back to the beginning, trying to establish musical connections that explain how his style has developed. Some of these connections/relations are direct (for these I will make a graphical representation), others more subtle (non-direct).

In the world of Japanese animation movies, the way composers work on the creation of the soundtrack is quite different from the way we’re used to in the western world. The creation of what is called an “Image Album”, often based on simple suggestions and ideas about the movie, before it is actually completed is one of the most relevant differences. The music created for this album, which is published as a trailer months before the movie itself, sets the boundaries within which the composer should remain while composing the final soundtrack. There are many consequences to this habit: the music is used often as a simple commentary to the scene (or to the emotions that are expressed or that are proper to a specific character) without a proper syncing, and many editing and re-writing or re-orchestrating techniques are involved, in order to use the pre- existing material in a proper way. With this paper, I would like to concentrate on the soundtrack of Hayao Miyazaki’s “Spirited Away”, written by his usual collaborator Joe Hisaishi. Through a selection of different cues I will analyze the relationship between the Image Album and the final soundtrack as well as the editing and re- orchestrating techniques that allow Hisaishi to adapt the themes to the actual images. Due to the frequent “commentary” nature of the music, I will also concentrate on the symbolic role that it has in relation to the dramatic action.

James Newton Howard (JNH) composed the score for The Last Airbender and was the only member of the film’s team to be congratulated instead of criticized for his role in its creation. Howard’s score earned him an IFMCA* nomination for Best Original Score for a Fantasy/Science Fiction/Horror Film and his composition track “Flow Like Water” gained him a nomination for Film Music Composition of the Year. In the end JNH won nothing, but he must be condoned for his ability to create music that can flourish and shine, even through the smog-polluted film for which it was composed. By all looks and appearances Hollywood had a classic case of bad movie, brilliant music. However, there is hesitation in labeling this an open and shut case. Despite Howard’s seemingly successful film score, one might suggest we narrow that definition. What does it mean to write a “successful film score?” What is its purpose? Music that sounds brilliant off screen does not necessarily possess that same enlightened genius when paired with the cinematography that inspired its creation. For the purposes of this paper, we will define a “successful film score” as a body of music that compliments/enhances the quality of cinematography as well as helps to translate to the audience the films intended emotions. This paper will not only analyze James Newton Howard’s score for The Last Airbender, but will delve deeper into its placement and function in order to determine if it can (by the above definition) be considered a “successful film score.”

In the soundtrack for the motion picture “Se7en,” Howard Shore uses simplicity to his advantage, implementing the number seven as a quantitative value into his compositions while still delivering an incredibly powerful and unique score. Whether it be the note length, phrase length, or other serializable musical values, Shore draws upon these aspects throughout the entirety of the film - following the build of intensity with orchestral and electronic elements. All of this aids in creating a thread of continuity that manages to pair the music with the story in a seamless way. To outline some of Shore’s writing and the psychological aspects I will demonstrate his motivic approach with the final product being analyses of sections as they each pertain either to characters or to the seven deadly sins.

In this paper, I aim at analyzing the function of music in this film and the way the music conveys the very sensitive and subtle emotions of the film that couldn’t have been conveyed without the music’s role. My goal is to understand how the composer has approached this completely non-conventional setting and his treatise of music according to the newly created culture and emotional quotients.

I have prepared in this work a description of the Principle of Immersion, a theory I have about Film Music and Storytelling Media in general. Within the first section, I plan to explain my Principle of Immersion and the reasoning behind it in a broad fashion. I will then clarify what it means for Film and for Film Music. My goal is that the Reader should have both a clear understanding of my thought process as well as the ability to apply it to other forms of Media, provided they meet a certain criteria.

The story of Pride and Prejudice is based on Jane Austin’s 1813 novel which leads the viewer back to the late 18 century society. In relation to this fact and classical conception of the movie Beethoven’s early piano sonatas became a point of reference for the score to Pride and Prejudice. Nevertheless, Dario Marianelli abandons historical correctness for a more intimate and emotional treatment of the story when needed. The spirit of the historical époque is thus preserved while a contemporary flavor intended to touch present day audiences is pursued. The architecture of the score and the employment of themes and their character will be analyzed in the following text. This will bring a closer insight of how Dario Marianelli uses classical musical material while giving it a contemporary character when desirable.