We’re only three weeks in and I’m really feeling the workload!

We’ve been working like crazy on our western film in scoring class. I’ve had to rewrite the same cue from scratch three times now, which just goes to show that you won’t always get what the director wants on the first try. You’ve really got to put an insane amount of research and work into each individual project to achieve the sound the director wants for their film. You also learn to not get attached to your favorite ideas too quickly, as they might be shut down immediately.

Working with Jeff on this has been incredibly insightful, too! He’s had us write sketches for three different themes before bringing them to picture. This has been quite useful with having well-written, developed material once you start scoring to picture. It makes the actual scoring process much easier, especially considering the fact that you don’t have to come up with new themes and material for your scenes. We can spin our entire cues out of the sketches that we write!

Outside of scoring, we’ve started getting to work in the Music For Games course! I’ve been waiting for this for an entire year! So considering I want to write game music, I’m a little excited. Learning to write for games is so much different than film. We have to be able to write music that is completely nonlinear, meaning that it can be looped over and over without having a single musical arc like a film cue would. It’s been so much fun for me since I feel I can really bring the atmosphere of the game environment to life in a better way than I can in a film cue.

To prepare, I ended up playing through Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice to study more about how important audio is in video games. Most of the audio in the game is recorded binaurally, meaning that it gives the listener the illusion that there is a 360 degree space around them. This really made me think about how important immersion is in video games. It’s really the job of the composer and sound team to make the world sound absolutely real.

What makes this program so cool, is that we really understand how integral a composer is to visual media like film and games. We get to make these worlds come to life, and turn them into living, breathing realities for the viewer/players.

That’s all for now, I’ll see you guys in a few weeks!

 – Chris