Music to accompany the film!
So as I edited in after effects I started to write and perform the music I wanted to use in the film. All music I made was written on my Yamaha Rm1X Sequencer, my most prized possession! All guitar music was composed by my brother from which the film benefits a great deal. The process of adding the music to the scenes is done by first rendering out one scene from after effects and then I would watch it through to get an idea of the sort of thing needed and this also depends on the theme of the scene. I would then come up with a few ideas for each separate scene and try them out to see what would work best. Blade runner is a film I much love and especially the sound track composed by Vangelis, I find the music creates a sense of perculiar soft sci-fi melancholy to the images so the sounds I like to create are definitely of an 80s period, the time of the synthesizer. I first found out about sequencers by watching a documentary about the beginnings of chicago house and the instruments they used were of a similar vintage as mine, they were used to created mainly for a bass line, the beat and the synth. I love chicago house so I after a lot of research I found the yamaha and managed to nab one off ebay for hundred or so quid, bargain!
It’s such a helpful piece of equipment to have because I find it easy to lose myself in it and just use it endlessly so I have many hours of experience of it so am confident in using but their is countless amount of other things it can do as well which I have yet to explore. It’s helpful because it means that I can score my own little videos or short films, and the more original material I use in my work the more skills I can show to potential employees. It’s important to stamp my own mark on what I do to set me apart from someone who may be competing to get the same job for example.
What I like most about the film is the credits as I like the shot, there is good mise en scene. It also shows a nice image of the boys because in that shot they are just chatting normally, even when they walk down it’s because they think we’ve finished filming and there just being themselves. So with the chatter there is the guitar music written by my brother which is my favourite song in the film. It works well at the start as it fits the story and images and to have at the start and the ends works as a nice parallel to close off the story. The other guitar music playing is in the river scene where again I think it works well with the images because we are seeing the boys just chatting and being themselves so it’s more fun and real because it’s more natural and more spontaneous then anything I wrote in the script.
The guitar was recorded in Ableton live using a microphone through a iMic to my apple macbook, the mic also came through a mixer before reaching live so I’m happy with sound quality of the guitar. So with the theme song, that consists of 3 layers of guitar tracks which I would tweak each one separately using effects offered by ableton to increase feedback or bass.
The sequencer was recorder straight through the iMic into Live which just shows what a great piece of equipment the sequencer really is. It’s between 10 and 15 years old so to be able to record it perfectly onto my laptop is fantastic, the iMic is also just as good. When I record it for the scene I would have it all planned out to how I will perform the music then render out a mov from after effects then watch the scene in quicktime whilst I record so I know the music fits with the scene. With the guitar I would edit the track in Live so I could match it up with the visuals.
