# Wrote my first film score, would love feedback



## Meredithmoo25 (Oct 20, 2020)

Hi everyone, I am a french horn player but a budding composer. I took a film scoring class at Berklee this summer and scored my first short film. I got a high mark and very positive feedback from the professor and my classmates but would love to get some constructed feedback to help me grow as a composer. If anyone has a few mins to spare to watch the film, I would love any and all feedback. 

it's unlisted on Youtube so you'll need to click the link below 

 

Thanks so much!


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## Noeticus (Oct 20, 2020)

I like that your score takes me back decades. 

Is your name not in the credits?


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## Meredithmoo25 (Oct 20, 2020)

No, it's a film from 1996 and Berklee stripped the original audio and gave it to all the students as a final project. So no credit given I'm afraid


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## José Herring (Oct 20, 2020)

I liked it. Certainly a better film than what I had when I was a student. Also, your tools are excellent. 

My only critique is really not your fault. Maybe the director or if there was a music supervisor could have pointed you in a more gradual approach to introducing the themes. The music doesn't develop in the same way the story develops. Your themes are fully developed from the beginning and so felt like there was no place to go. Could have been more Miles Davis like sparse in the beginning then more and more could have developed as the the story unfolded. It would have also created more of an intriguing interest at the start of the movie.

But, nobody ever notices that stuff anyway.


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## José Herring (Oct 20, 2020)

In the Miles Davis example check out from about 3:00. Music in movies creates a mood first, then is interesting music almost second.


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## tf-drone (Oct 20, 2020)

Hello Meredith,

the music itself is awesome, but it is too much. The pictures support the music, not the other way around. You did music with accompanying pictures, not a movie with accompanying music.


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## Noeticus (Oct 20, 2020)

Hello Meredith,

You are very talented!

Just remember that art is very, very subjective, and so if you love what you have done then you are victorious.

I heavily dislike rap music, but many like it.

I love "Prokofiev’s _Romeo and Juliet_", but most would not even know what it is. 

Where you given any direction on this score? Or, could you do as you pleased?


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## Meredithmoo25 (Oct 20, 2020)

No artistic direction whatsoever was given. The professor pretty much sent us the film and then we were on our own to do with it as we wanted. We also were told to pick the source music and do all the editing and sound design work too. Professor didn't hear any sort of rough drafts or sketches of what I composed, their only listen was the final project. The course was a Film 101 course, so there wasn't a whole lot of talk about composing since there was a lot of basic technical stuff to cover. 

Also I am very familiar with Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet...I am a french horn player and my first gig with the London Symphony Orchestra was playing 4th horn on that piece with Valery Gergiev. Still get royalties on the recording!


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## Meredithmoo25 (Oct 20, 2020)

tf-drone said:


> Hello Meredith,
> 
> the music itself is awesome, but it is too much. The pictures support the music, not the other way around. You did music with accompanying pictures, not a movie with accompanying music.




Thanks so much for your feedback. I had this feeling this was the case, but there was no artistic direction given or oversight so I had no one to reign me or offer me guidance on how to avoid this. 

However, wondering if you could elaborate more on it being "too much"...is this is mixing thing like the music is just too prominent, or is there too much going on in the score and the music too similar to "song" and fully realized pieces? 

I've studied composition at Juilliard and have a Masters from the Royal Academy of Music so I have solid musical training and know-how to get ideas out, but my training was very much in writing and performing concert music and not in writing for commercial and film. I do worry that the music I wrote is too coherent and structured like concert music, where it seems a lot of film music is more mood and gesture (please correct me if I am wrong about this!), and the film music I am most familiar with is John Williams, Michael Kamen and Korngold, since my "day job" is an orchestral horn player and their stuff gets programmed on a lot of concerts. 

I liked my class a Berklee a lot but it was very much focused on covering basic technical stuff and there wasn't a lot of talk about composition, or "style" or more aesthetic stuff. Would love to learn more about writing music that fits the film medium better.


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## Gene Pool (Oct 20, 2020)

Overall it seems like separate scores that don't hold together as being from the same score or film.

It begins with the 50's-ish TV music, which is fine in and of itself, but it sets a tone that's inconsistent with the rest of the score.

Then it's followed by the ambient, contemplative music for the sad man, which is again fine, but the dropout at 1:30 is too abrupt. Typically on something like that you wouldn't drop until after the cut, and much more subtly, or else you would transition to the criminals with no drop at all. The latter would probably work best, but the music for the criminals here is suddenly humorous, so you'd have to redo one or both scenes—if you could come up with a common thread between them.

There is too much trumpet overall; it's busy, dry, forward, and doesn't mesh with the other music or with the picture. It draws attention to itself.

If you were to do this again, you'd wanna find something that unifies the score as one concept (including the overall mix and ambience). More unified, like a regular piece of music that has to hold together. Not jumping around so much, but malleable enough to serve the various elements of the picture.

Your composition technique is good so no problem there.

I like the horn in your avatar. Do you use hand horn technique for period performances?


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## rnieto (Oct 20, 2020)

Hi Meredith, 

I really liked your music. However, as others have mentioned, it does call too much attention to itself — the music is not supporting the storytelling, but using the images to adorn itself.

It's a bit unfair that you weren't given creative direction, since you would most definitely have it in a real world project. It can be a little bit like shooting in the dark if there is no director or music supervisor with a clear vision of the film to guide you.

I think the most important thing is that you have the skills and the tools to write the music necessary to fulfill that vision when you get the chance.


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## Noeticus (Oct 21, 2020)

Hello Meredith,

If you had no direction, then your work on the video is great, as it is hopefully what you wanted.

If someone gave you directions then no doubt your work here would be rather different.


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## JohnG (Oct 21, 2020)

Hi Meredith,

Nice work overall, especially given the absence of direction. Unlike a lot of beginning composers, you have MATERIAL!! So many beginners just play a drone and "cool sounds," and you have real music here. You should be very proud of your work and definitely I encourage you to keep at it.

I particularly liked the (unfortunately short) material when the main character is drawing the circle. You have a solo trumpet, which the audience could associate maybe with that character (as he's solitary).

In line with other comments, for a short film (or even a long one), it's good to come up with a compelling piece of material like that and then work it in gradually. Sometimes there are cues that hardly do anything -- the visuals are telling the story at first, so the music could be just a few chords and a single chord on the piano, or even just a single note -- leave space. 

Moreover, for a short movie, you just want maybe two main ideas. The jazzy thing for the would-be car thieves is funny, so I am not saying (and nobody is saying) you should confine yourself to just one idea.

The composer Carter Burwell is particularly adept at the slow burn stuff. If you have Spotify or Amazon Music, or something else, you could listen to his score for "The Good Liar." Tracks like The River Styx take a while to get going but then take off when the ground is prepared (so to speak). The first track on "Goodbye Christopher Robin" called "Tree of Memory" also starts minimally but then gradually goes somewhere, building up for nearly three minutes before making an emphatic musical statement. And then it returns to simplicity -- musically asking questions, not reaching conclusions (if you follow me).

Another way to think about it is "accompaniment without melody." Maybe there's a voice-over, maybe there's dialogue being whispered, maybe it's just visual. But, as @José Herring wrote, "sparse in the beginning then more and more could have developed as the the story unfolded...."


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## Meredithmoo25 (Oct 21, 2020)

Gene Pool said:


> Overall it seems like separate scores that don't hold together as being from the same score or film.
> 
> It begins with the 50's-ish TV music, which is fine in and of itself, but it sets a tone that's inconsistent with the rest of the score.
> 
> ...




Thanks so much for the feedback, all really good stuff and good ideas that I didn't learn in my class but will definitely bring to my next project. 

Yes, that's a natural horn in my cover photo. I use to live in London and did a lot of natural horn/hand horn work with period instrument orchestras in the UK and Europe. Haven't done a lot since I moved to NYC but I did manage to make a recording of the The Beatles' "For No One" for no valves arranged for natural horn quartet during quarentine though. Nice thing about the natural horn is that if it sits in the case for a while, you don't have to worry about any valves rusting! You can hear some hand horn technique in the Beatles cover


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## Meredithmoo25 (Oct 21, 2020)

JohnG said:


> Hi Meredith,
> 
> Nice work overall, especially given the absence of direction. Unlike a lot of beginning composers, you have MATERIAL!! So many beginners just play a drone and "cool sounds," and you have real music here. You should be very proud of your work and definitely I encourage you to keep at it.
> 
> ...




Thanks for the listening recommendations, will certainly be checking them out. I have to admit, the most exposure I have to film scores and film composers is as an orchestral french horn player. I am very familiar with the music of John Williams, Michael Kamen and Korngold since I have played a lot of their scores with an orchestra. Always keen to learn how more contemporary film composers use the medium though.


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## Meredithmoo25 (Oct 21, 2020)

Thanks everyone for the very helpful and constructive feedback. A lot to think about and good to know for my next project (if one hopefully comes along!)


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## JohnG (Oct 21, 2020)

Meredithmoo25 said:


> the music of John Williams, Michael Kamen and Korngold since I have played a lot of their scores with an orchestra.



You must be pretty good to play their stuff. Congrats.

The thing is, one normally plays only the "big hits" in a concert; sadly, in a typical 60-80 minute score there is a fair amount of rather less fun material.

It took me forever as a composer for media (film and TV) to corral the impulse to write something big and busy all the time.


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## Meredithmoo25 (Oct 21, 2020)

Yes, especially for John Williams, a lot of his stuff gets arranged into suites that are on almost every Pops concert, but a lot of orchestras now make their money by giving live performances of scores to films. I've lived performed the entire first two Harry Potter Films and West Side Story while the film plays above the orchestra. These types of concerts are guaranteed moneymakers for orchestras!


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## JohnG (Oct 21, 2020)

Meredithmoo25 said:


> These types of concerts are guaranteed moneymakers for orchestras!



It's the opera / oratorio of modern times.


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## jaketanner (Oct 22, 2020)

Since you asked, I will give constructive feedback...however I am not a "sandwich" feedback person...really doesn't help anyone to sugarcoat stuff, so hopefully you won't take offense.

I think when learning, it's fine to score without any direction because as composers, we need to be able to read the emotion of a scene or overall story, and tell it with music. As others mentioned, yours didn't support the visual very well throughout. There are times however, when a scene seems very clear cut as to the direction, and then the director has an opposite vision...but for the most part, I think the biggest hurdle in composing is the interpretation. For me it is anyway. 

When the boy got hit, the music felt a bit comical. I was expecting the boy to maybe have run off with the thieves when the camera panned out, but when he was lying on the ground motionless, is when I realized the music gave a contradicting emotion.

Also...to quote a famous line "there are simply too many notes..." LOL 

Hope this helps.


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## TintoL (Oct 23, 2020)

The music is great, love the trumpets. 

I find that both the film and the music feels like different parts taped together with lack of clean continuity. In this case seems like the film is dictating. So, it's not surprising that it feels like that. In terms of the music, I like the jazz style and the sound.


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