liampeacockmusic - The Dark Knight ReScored Part 1
The Dark Knight ReScored by LIAMPEACOCKMUSIC - SOUNDTRACK COMPOSER
THIS BLOG POST FEATURES ORIGINAL CONTENT BY LIAMPEACOCKMUSIC
In this blog post, I am going to take you through the exciting world of composing music to picture, or scoring to picture. This will involve looking at how I organise my project (fun, right?), prepare the cues being scored for and actually composing them. I will also show you how I went about mixing the 3 cues in this project and then if you're still reading and haven't got too bored, you can go check out the final finished product over on my Projects page
LETS GET IN TO IT!
Organising a project of this size is extremely important. So although it isn't necessarily the most fun part of scoring to film, it will save you so many headaches down the road. Where is that clip? Which scene am I writing music for again? Oh sure, I have the mixed project somewhere, let me just look for it a while. Nobody wants to be in that position, especially in front of a client.
Step 2: The Spotting Session
So the next step in the process is 'Spotting'. This is usually when the composer sits down with the director or at the very least, a producer. Typically, the director and composer would agree all the points in the movie that require 'separate' cues of music and also discuss scenes or moments in the movie that they do not want music in. For me, in this process, I was the 'Director' and the Soundtrack Composer for this project. And I had time constraints as the project was my final year major project for my Bachelor of Arts in Music Practice. Hence only scoring three cues. In selecting the cues to score for my major project, I tried to pick cues with varying moods and shades of light and dark within them, to give myself a challenge but still in keeping with the tone of The Dark Knight.
Step 3: First Sketches
Naturally, the best thing to do, once you have decided what scenes need music and so on, is get building a template to 'speed up' the composing process.
The two images above are the instruments, sounds and effects that I thought would be useful in composing the material for the project. The important thing about creating a single template, for all the cues for this project or any movie score, is creating a single sound palette for all the scores, so that the music for all the scenes, although composed individually (usually) still sound like they come from the same idea. Otherwise, what you would end up with is a movie score that sounds like a different composer scored each cue.
So now that we have the project ready and the soundboard figured out we move on to the sketching process.
Like any creative, you set things up and then sketch some ideas. The below image is a sketch of what the first cue might have sounded like. As it turned out, it wasn't too far from the eventual result but it is always a good idea to get your thoughts down, and make that blank canvas, a little less scary.
The below track is the audio from that first sketch if you are curious and have almost 6 minutes to spare. If you like what you hear, any of the atmospheric textures, motifs, anything, comment on the blog, let me know!
The Dark Knight project -The first cue
After fiddling about with ideas and little bits of the composition during the sketching process, it' was time to actually start putting some of the more serious ideas to 'paper'.
This process is where the fun comes in. This is where you can start creating layers, textures, atmospheres and putting them behind the footage. Remember, the music is always secondary to the footage, just like the Director's vision for the movie is paramount.
The writing process is a gradual one and it takes time but putting in the time is well worth it.
I began by watching the cue from beginning to end, in isolation. I then watched the cue as part of the full movie, because it is always important to have a sense of the bigger picture (pardon the pun).
Then I go through and start paying attention to dialogue and places where sound effects are going to be. These things are important to pinpoint because the dialogue is more important than the music and the sound FX can cause many issues with the composing process. Imagine I wrote in some deep sub-bass boom and the scene features an expensive car's engine growling. Just wouldn't work, would it?
Then I go through and conduct a once through. What this means is, I take my favourite string ensemble patch from Spitfire Audio's Albion One Library and play the movie clip while playing my ideas directly in, using my MIDI keyboard.
This gives me a decent basis for orchestration and arrangement. I guess most composers generally do this with a piano or piano sample but I am a guitarist, not a pianist and that kind of makes me less inclined to trust myself to create some wonderfully emotional cue on a piano/piano sample.
Once I have come up with some ideas and a rough framework for my ideas and thoughts, I start taking the ensemble part and breaking it up into the different sections. For example, maybe in the beginning of this first cue, I only want percussive elements or some bass parts to set a certain tone or mood. So then I start taking my ensemble string ideas and converting them into the equivalent of a different instrument.
The First cue mixed - how?
Once I have the cue composed and arranged, all the right bits are in the right places, so to speak, I take a break. Always important to let your eyes relax, give yourself a break from the project, else you'll start missing things.
While I am taking my 'well-deserved' break, I do some grunt work. I take all the tracks, all the sounds, effects and so on, and bounce them all in place, section (orchestral section) by section. The reason I do this piece meal is simply due to CPU. If I try to bounce all 100+ tracks in one process, the print won't work properly. There will be several tracks that don't print the MIDI information properly or certain plugin FX that I have applied might be missing. Heck, even Reverb plugins might vanish (true story).
Once THAT is out of the way, I address any creative mixing first. This includes places where I want a certain sound to move from the left speaker to the right repeatedly for example, or make a sound something different, based on some idea I had while composing.
Usually, unless you are being really creative, there isn't much to do in the way of mixing with sample libraries and orchestral composition. Most (not all) sample libraries with orchestral instruments are panned properly when recorded and set up, meaning that Celli and 1st Violins are exactly where they should be.
And here concludes this little blog post where I introduce you to the process of how I developed my major project and created three unique scores for The Dark Knight.
I am going to follow this blog post up with three more. Each subsequent post will be devoted to one of the cues, talking about my decisions for the composition decisions and arrangement ideas and so on.
I hope you enjoyed this post, and if you have any thoughts on my writing (blog or music) or anything else, let me know!)