Goose's Film & Animation Studio

I'm at the home stretch of this assignment. With each composition down, I can move on to the final stage of mixing, mastering, and video editing. Before I rendered any video, I applied some basic AI mastering with iZotope Ozone 12. Although AI mixing/mastering has a long way to go, these plugins are a lifesaver for producers (like myself) without audio engineering knowledge or experience. While the results can vary, their function is quite simple: all I needed to do was play a loud section of my track and then tweak some parameters to get it sounding half-decent. The bypass toggle lets you hear the night-and-day difference between processed/unprocessed audio.

Next on the agenda was to balance the spectral frequencies between the music and film audio. For this, I used a dynamic EQ – Soothe2 – and sidechained the MSX channel to the film's audio, enabled sidechaining in the plugin's processing tab, and lightly adjusted some of the EQ bands.

Now for the final stage—Video Editing. Surprisingly, this was the easiest part of the entire project because the audio assets had been synchronised beforehand (thanks to Fruity Video Player). This allowed me to gain stage and balance in FL Studio – far easier than DaVinci's Fairlight tab. From here, all I had to do was render the audio and drop it into DaVinci Resolve's timeline for one final export.

One last tweak was made to refine the project's quality, running each render through Topaz Labs Video AI — upscaling the video to full HD with additional frame interpolation. Although this was not mandatory and could be deemed somewhat controversial (considering that 60fps is well above the film industry's standard framerate), I felt that these enhancements were the icing on the cake and significantly elevated the cinematic experience — better quality and clearer view of the purposeful synchronisation between audio and video.

Yeah… that's the project… I'm kind of in disbelief. Compared to last semester, I spent hours upon hours in Davinci, so I certainly wasn't expecting the final week to go this smoothly, but I guess a straightforward workflow discovery can make all the difference. This project was so much fun. There were many firsts for me with this assignment, but the big one that sticks out is my venture into orchestral territory —something completely uncharted. I'm going to wrap it up here and sign off on the final entry.

From sound design for video games to film and animation composition, it's been a wonderful year of learning.

Cheers

Goose

References

The final week of the regular semester (as well as my entire bachelor's degree!). When I started my studies, I had never considered music as a career; this degree was something I undertook as a passion project of mine – studying purely out of my own interest and love for music. This has remained true throughout my degree. Given how competitive the industry is, I highly doubt I will ever pursue a music career. However, at times, I have considered pursuing it in music-related work as a side gig, such as distributing sound-design sample/preset packs or collaborating with some of my computer-science friends to build my own VST plugin. Sound design has become a vital monetisation mechanism for artists, with many of their careers sustained by small (but) loyal followings that subscribe to Patreon pages, purchase sample/preset packs and instructional courses online. This is particularly common among EDM artists such as Slynk and KOAN Sound, but it also extends to artists from other genres.

Much of the financial success of modern guitar virtuosos – like Polyphia – is credited to their sales of guitar tablature in PDF and Guitar Pro formats.

In the unlikely event that I pursue a music career (even if not in film/animation scoring), awareness of the financial potential available through these monetisation mechanisms is highly valuable. Furthermore, over the years, I've amassed quite an impressive collection of instruments and studio gear, so it wouldn't be a bad thing to put it to good use. Funnily enough (as mentioned in the lecture), I recently upgraded my interface to a UAD Apollo x8, which is more than capable of industry-grade recording thanks to its excellent AD/DA (digital-to-analogue) conversion.

References

I am almost finished with the main compositions for the major project, polishing it off this week with the president's decision scene from "2012". Amongst all the cues, this one was (unexpectedly) the most tedious and challenging. Building a good chord progression took up roughly half the time I spent on this individual segment. However, once I had a decent harmonic sketch, I loaded the MIDI information into Scaler, which tightened up some of the voice leading.

While those greyed-out chords are technically "out of key" (according to Scaler), they were intentionally included to add harmonic variation. The B♭ major chord functions as the V of the relative major (E♭ major), briefly tonicising it before returning to C harmonic minor. The next interesting sequence – C7 > Fmin > F7 – uses secondary dominants to create chromatic tension before ultimately resolving back through the standard Gmaj > Cmin cadence.

With the harmonic progression laid out, I went ahead and copied the MIDI info into ghost patterns and painted over the voicings in the Brass, Woodwind, and String orchestra selections (courtesy once again of the Metropolis Ark libraries).

Next, I needed some melody. For this part, I followed the ghost patterns, but instead of entire-orchestra selections, I opted for only violin and viola (to keep things simple).

Now…the final part was by far the most painful. Unlike previous cues where I simply timed the MIDI information to the video/dialogue, I instead tried to achieve synchronisation through tempo automation. Although the synchronisation is not the greatest (and definitely off in some parts), I still felt this was a good concept to explore, since it gave the melodic lines a lovely rubato feel that was far more organic than an approach that edited the MIDI grid alignment.

References

With the semester coming to an end, this week's lecture sparked some further exploration into another one of my less-informed areas of music – Musicals. Just like any sub-genre of film music, each has its own respective nuances; however, musical compositions appear to be a particularly specialised practice due to the emphasis between the characters and film score. The overall structure of musicals – e.g., Opening Number > "I Want" Song > Love Ballad > Villains Song, etc. – closely corresponds to the thematic progression of operas in the 18th and 19th centuries. This strong lineage in the operatic traditions of previous centuries reflects the importance of Wagnerian principles, such as leitmotifs. Although this topic deviates from my own (previous) musicological research, with some light web surfing, I discovered that many jazz standards, such as "There Will Never Be Another You" and "All the Things You Are", were initially derived from musicals.

References

This week, I'm dialling it back from the dark nights' orchestral theatrics with the commencement of Star Trek. Now, before you head through and listen to these segments, I know what you're thinking, Jazz? Really?  Why not something a bit more "modern" to fit the movie's theme? Well… the reason I opted for this style of Jazz is its cultural resonance with cocktail/lounge music during the 1950s-1960s space age— put simply, it just works.

The workflow for this piece was a bit different from the previous two – I sketched out a chord progression! Starting with my guitar, then the MIDI input. I used lots of chromatic voice leading and varied the chords; for example, it might start on the standard Amaj7, but for the next cycle, I went for an Amaj6. Also used lots of Dim7s and b9s, followed by #5s, to really build that tension. I paired these chords with Ample Sound – Semi Hollow, then used FL Studio's strum tool to roll the chords out.

The next step was to add a walking bassline; for this, I copied the guitar chords into another pattern to leave some visible ghost notes (for reference of the chord tones/scale degrees). From there, I loaded up Ample Bass – Upright – and clicked in the notes on the piano roll.

Following a basic drum swing groove (nothing to write home about), I felt the piece was a bit empty, so I added some electric keys with the Korg Triton VST. I got this plugin for free way back when I bought the physical keyboard (which I don't use anymore—only the digital version). The Triton is one of those synths that works very well as a basic sound bank for a wide range of instruments. You probably wouldn't want to use it for designing any complicated synth patches, but in this context, it serves a great purpose. I used the guitar chord pattern but switched around some of the voices — lowering or raising the 3rds or 5ths.

The second last touch to the song was to get a groovy vibraphone going. For this, I used Soniccoutures – Vibraphone and repeated the process of copying the chords to a ghosted instrument (experimenting with the chord tones and chromaticism). I deliberately used some odd timings to humanise the MIDI playback and better accommodate scene changes.

On the topic of synchronisation… since this film cue has less explicit on-screen motion (compared to The Dark Knight or WALL-E), I opted to align the scene transitions/cuts with the chord changes. An additional effect I included was a magnitude transition using RC-20's retro colour, with automation controlling the slider while the spaceship is flying for the duration of the scene.

References

Although the visual elements in horror are usually seen as the bread and butter of scares, it's the score and Foley work that do much of the heavy lifting. One example of this I can think of is a specific scene from Jordan Peele's "Get Out", when Walter menacingly runs towards the protagonist Chris, accompanied by an ensemble of eerie strings. During this scene, the on-screen direction was scary; however, those orchestral strings elevated it to the next level. The film's unsettling feel is further enhanced by the classic scoring technique found in many horror films – intentional silence (as noted in today's lecture). There is an abundance of terrible horror movies with generic plots and cheesy jump scares. Compared to blockbuster action movies, horror films are cost-effective, profitable, and easily churned out of Hollywood, but you can really tell that the film score is one of the less prioritised expenses (compared to visual production/special effects).

References

Getting started on what I imagine to likely be the most challenging film cue for this assessment – The Dark Knight's chase scene. However…I discovered a game-changing plugin that has facilitated the entire workflow of the major project. The Fruity Video Player is a simple (yet effective) plugin that permits real-time playback of video files within the DAW. This means that instead of having to click between a bunch of windows and set timeline markers (in the hopes that it lines up correctly), I can just line up synchronised hits between the piano rolls grid and the video playback in real time.

With a streamlined workflow sorted, I could really focus on the overall arrangement of this piece. I approached the harmonic and melodic qualities with simplicity in mind – primarily around the E-minor/harmonic minor scale.

After Joker crashes, the first section concludes and is continued through a transitional section with minimal instrumentation. Here, I added a few bongo fills and exchanged the off-beat percussion clicks for a timpani at low velocity.

Speaking of velocity… these orchestral libraries – Metropolis Ark's 1, 3, and 4 – are incredibly precise in how they handle MIDI velocity; even a slight adjustment can add a great deal of emphasis to articulations. I used this to accentuate the off-beats for dynamic contrast.

I rounded out the piece with a buildup of its central themes, with each instrument group sequencing another after 1-2 bars – unsure whether this would fully constitute a leitmotif, but Wagnerian principles were considered here. While the composition is homophonic, I did break into some more polyphonic territory with this flute/piccolo melody dancing around in the upper register. This crescendo was finalised by an "8va glissandi" on the strings as Batman is sliding across the ground, then followed by a comedically timed one-shot of the lower strings, bassoon and tuba as he crashes.

References

Got started this week by sketching out some rough ideas for Wall-E. Before I even opened FL Studio, I already had a basic melody and bass line internalised alongside the chiptune-style synths—Plogue Chipsounds VST. There isn't anything too crazy here, just following the chiptune fundamentals with some simple octave jumps in the bass and a VERY basic B-major descending melody.

I found a free drum sample pack online and decided to apply parallel compression. I'm never sure whether I implement it correctly, but the drums did end up being "punchier." At the very least, the dry/wet channel routing from the master bus > compression bus is somewhat logical, allowing for an easy blend between the heavily compressed and raw drums.

I was on the fence about indulging in some sound design, but I figured it was appropriate for this cue. Laser and bubble SFX were on my mind, so I opened Serum 2 for the first time since last semester and surfed over to the sound design tutorial side of YouTube. It's amazing what you can do by throwing some LFOs or envelopes over the course pitch of a simple sine/square wave. What's great about these sounds, as well, is that they're fairly atonal but musical enough that I can probably get away with bouncing them individually and then syncing some of the music to the film clip in Davinci Resolve.

This last arpeggio progression came to me while I was looking through some of my old Black Octopus presets and experimenting with sequences in the piano roll. Even though I'm a music performance major, my theory isn't too sharp, but I still have some "safety" strategies for composition, and this was one of them, a sort of simple? –  I > iv > I (7) > I – I tried to do some chord borrowing from the parallel minor as well as making the tonic a dominant chord.

References

I can only imagine the challenges involved in producing period dramas in the 21st century. From costumes and scenery to the lexical content of scripts, accurately reflecting a specific period of history and simultaneously conveying an interesting story necessitates further consultation with professionals who typically work outside the entertainment industry. However, capturing all this historical context delivers a unique cinematic experience to audiences – especially in the modern era. Before this week's lecture, I was not aware of the term "period drama," but thinking back to my viewing of Mad Men – as well as Fallout's cinematic adaptation – I realise that the periodic reflections in both shows were an essential part of my enjoyment, since I'm unaccustomed to the cultural depictions.

References

Unfortunately, I seem to have gotten ahead of myself in last week's entry, as the panning technique I previously described was further explored during today's lecture. Although the previous entry would have better suited this week's material, I'm thankful that my thought process is preemptively aligning with fundamental film scoring practices that emphasise the importance of stereo image and audio positioning. Nevertheless, the discussion on minimalism has (yet again) taken me back to previous semesters, with Steve Reich remaining relevant for the 4th consecutive subject in a row. Not that this is a bad thing; Reich's procedural approach to composition is particularly applicable as a concept to integrate into the upcoming major assignment. Reich stressed the idea of music as a process – not to be confused with the act of writing music – in which the idea evolves within the composition itself.

References

Orchestration is like a specialisation embedded within the specialisation of composition itself. I was recently challenged to overcome some of the typical hurdles of orchestration (such as proper dynamic balancing and appropriate register scores for the assigned instruments) in one of my own arrangements of a North Korean song for guitar ensemble.

As I was notating all the different parts, I (unfortunately) forgot to account for the dynamic balance between classical and electric guitars, as well as voices in the below octave being less audible. One (potential) way to overcome this hurdle (that I forgot to consider) is to export the parts from GuitarPro/MuseScore, import them into a DAW with a collection of VST plugins, and pan each part in a direction that reflects the ensemble's setup.

References

Nothing too "major" to write about for this minor project, but I still thought it would be good to document how I arrived at the conclusion about the total minutes of music between the two Pinocchio films – Disney's (1940) animated and Guillermo Del Toro's (2022) stop-motion adaptation. In each of my viewing sessions, I had a stopwatch ready on a separate tab positioned on my second monitor, stopping/starting at each musical sequence.

In addition, I kept a Word document open and jotted down general notes on the music playing — genre/style, instrumentation, and whether it was diegetic/non-diegetic.

References

As we delve further into this semester, I am starting to uncover fresh concepts… in small, bite-sized bursts throughout each lecture. This week's discussion pointed me towards the development of existential cinema – a post-new-wave genre of French cinema.  I found the wrong-note approach particularly intriguing, as it relates to some of the foundational material taught to me in Music Language 2. Utilising chromaticism for leading tones and tension-building has found its way into my compositional practice. One of my favourite harmonic tricks is the classical Maj7-Dim7 (one semitone above).

References