Composing for film

5 point guide of how to compose music for a film

• Watch the film without sound because this will allow to notice more detail and other things and if it's very still or very fast. As well your brain won't be distracted by the sound when watching so it helps you be able to focus on the images.
• Select the instruments, you need to do this because instruments are often chosen depending on the atmosphere and you could end up be using instruments you've never used before.
• Make sure you understand the 'beat', you need to do this so you can stick to the rhythm of the editing as it may be fast or slow and it varies throughout the video so you need to be able to adapt it.
• Stick to the feeling of the film, when making music for a film, its all about emotion. You need to be able to understand this in the film so you can give off the right feeling to the audience. 
• Experiment with music, it's important to do this so that you can get a feel for less obvious music choices. This allows you to have a wider variety of choices to work with.

Describe how Hans Zimmer and Christopher Nolan worked together to create the music for Dark Knight?

Hans and Christopher spoke about it very early on, Christopher would send Hans stills and shots of clowns to help inspire each other with ideas. 

What was the process that Hans Zimmer used to come up with the music?

He was after stuff that built a lot of tension. He tried to make it as minimal as possible but still say exactly what he wanted. So you could hear something really small but you'd identify easily it's the joker lurking somewhere. He also recorded lots of extraordinary sounds to potentially use. 

What was Hans Zimmer's intention when making this soundtrack? 

His intentions were too not make a summer blockbuster, he wanted something truly provocative and people could really hate because it was uncomfortable to listen too.

What qualities did Hans Zimmer want the music to have?

He wanted it to be very minimal yet effective, as well as be able to build extraordinary amounts of tension. Also having the feeling of a punk influence absorbing in the character.

How do you feel about the final score and explain why you feel it works/doesn't work?

I feel that it works well overall because it's very minimal but still works as it does build tension in the sense of a mysterious way and helping you sense danger as well.

Research into Recording Foley Sound and Sound Effects

Foley is the process of putting everyday sound effects to film, TV, adverts and video games which are added in post-production to enhance the quality. They put in the physical sounds such as kisses, skin touches, handling of guns etc. Movies often feel unnaturally quiet and uncomfortable without these sounds.
Quite often the actors will have a microphone under their collar on the costume and when filming, their priority is to record the dialogue. For example, a plane may fly over head in a period drama, which then makes the sound useless meaning you'll have to re voice everything from the actors as well as create a soundscape for the voice to sit on. So it makes it easier to put a recording of a plane over the top of the pre recorded dialogue.

The order in which foley artists create sound is they start off by doing the footsteps of the main character and the lead actors and then the background footsteps and then they go through the 'prop pass' which is where they provide a sound for anything moving on screen

The key skills and qualities foley artists need are creativity, good imagination and good timing as well as the ability to think outside the box because these types of artists have the ability to come up with unusual ideas to create the specific noise. Another skill they could do with is being computer wise because they need to be able to use a variety of different types of equipment.

The advantages of using real objects when creating sound FX rather than using digital production or sound libraries is that real objects show a bit more realism and bring it to life more. This is because they have more depth meaning you can hear every fine detail better because of the microphone quality.

In the star wars clip, he began to hit a guy wire from a radio tower, and it bumped and made a 'twanging' sound, this is where the laser gun became about.