Music For Digital Media: Memory Collection Box

The two minute scene I used for my film piece was the classic and untouchable final scene in James Camerons 1986 movie ‘Aliens’. If you are yet to see this then you are completely oblivious to good science- fiction film. I felt compelled to do this scene. When the task was set this scene immediately struck a chord in my head. I remember this film was the film I was first drawn into and everything about it put me in that world and atmosphere.

Firstly, before working on the musical composition I wanted to keep similar atheistic that the original score has because I especially like the way that James Horner created mood into mysteriousness and tension into terror with the London Symphony Orchestra. He evoke these feelings from the audience by using discordant pharses, suspended drones, out of tune violins and syncopated dissonant brass sections (all treated with a large amount of reverb). Having researched a little up on James Horner I came some across some interesting facts about the scoring for this particular scene on the internet. According to Wikipedia:

‘The final cue for the scene in which Ripley battles the Alien queen was written overnight. Cameron completely reworked the scene, leaving Horner to rewrite the music. As Gale Hurd did not have much music production experience, she and Cameron denied Horner’s request to push the film back four weeks so he could finish the score. Horner felt that, given more time, he could get the score to 100% of his satisfaction, rather than the 80% he estimated he had been able to achieve. The score was recorded in roughly four days.’

He earned an Academy Award nomination for his contribution to the movie. Anyway, after visiting Julio in an office hour with some well received criticisms I decided to concentrate solely on the sound design aspect of the narrative live action film project (also condensing the length of the piece). I decided to do this because I started to lose enthusiasm and creative flow around the half way mark. We came to a decision that the diegetic sound was not encompassing the atmosphere of the room or as Walter Murch coined it ‘worldizing’. The set of the scene is a large metal structure which you could imagine make sounds trail of and bounce around of each other.

I decided to revise my sound design work and found there were a few hidden movements in the visuals that I had originally missed out. So, in keeping with the ethics of mondays lesson I decided to rent out a portable recorder and do my own field recordings, which was a pretty amusing hands on activity. I preferred this aspect of sound design because today it is as easy as pushing a button and getting a sample from freesound.com it loses the passion from if you had done it yourself. It is also more organic and less digitalized. Some of the sounds I recorded included hitting the metal railings of the staircase in the musical department with a metal leg from a chair which created this incredible clash of echo and metal. Perfect for putting over the image of the Queen Aliens tail striking Ellen Ripley’s loader machine. To authenticate the sound of the loader I recorded the sound of automatic doors opening/closing running in-between each door (quite fun). I also decided to record the sound of a printer which fed me some great robotic sounds; with a little bit of compression and beefing up the sounds I found would fit perfectly. I also missed out drips coming of the Queen Alien’s mouth in my first attempt so I took the portable recorder into my houses shower room and turn the dial up a little so the shower head would let out droplets of water which sounded exactly as I had heard it being, the acoustic of the room worked well with the interior of the space ship. Im still in the process of touching it up a little at the moment but will have the finished product to show in next mondays lessons when we present are pieces.

In other related news I watched both the 15 minute original (1967) and 85 minute feature film (1971) of George Lucas’s ‘THX 1138′ to pay attention to Walter Murch’s sound design work. However, I soon found myself transported into the dystopian future world of THX which only tells me that Murch was right on the money with what he was working with to the images. I also thought the short film had a much better use of sounds and created more of a suspenseful compressed society.

Hi, I was wondering if anyone could help me out for a second. Firstly, the last few attempts I have had at uploaded my CMT media projects onto YouTube they have uploaded with no audio. Is it me or is there a hidden mute button in there somewhere? Im pretty sure there is no option to filter out the audio when the video is in the uploading stages.

Secondly, I have been trying for a day or so to get a really authentic and satisfying ‘Theremin’ sound using the VST’s and effect’s plug in’s in Logic 8 but it all sounds a little to midi. My first attempt I put a sine wave through the sound of choir into a bit crusher which was all put under heavy compression. However, it didnt sound nearly as good enough as I know I could be getting it on the program. Does anyone have any tips or advice? If they have tried to do this before. I have recently found out there is a VST called ‘Mysteron’ made specifically for imitating the sound of the ‘Theremin’ but it is only available for PC applications. If you are unlucky enough to have PC instead of a Mac (although not under this circumstance) then download it as soon as possible.

Must appreciated

I had come across 3 or 4 adverts that I wanted to work one, each one had a lot of interest there visually and they were big company names. The commercial I wanted to be stuck with was Michel Gondry’s work that he did for Motorola in early 2007. He was basically asked to create a film based on the experience of the RAZR2 Phone. Typical of Gondry’s work the is a sparse dreamy nature to his mechanical eye. Before I started I had a basic idea for orchestration and the fundamental idea of what instruments I wanted to use and how the structure would flow. Due to the sparse nature of visuals I wanted to marry this to the music which I achieved successfully with reverse to adjoin some of the more difficult parts of the advertisement. I tried to delve into the thought of how a viewer would perceive this on a television screen, and what would attracting. In conclusion I tried to make the music inviting yet mysterious.

The first impression I got from the commercial was that the musical phrases should start of with a dreamy nature then lift into something happier. I took my insperation from the film composer Danny Elfman (best known for his work with Tim Burton) and Jon Brion (who has also worked with Gondry before). The composition is split into five segments introduction, middle, diagetic sound, outro and brand. The whole composition is in a major form the happier part of it is introduced around the 23 second mark to exemplify the jumpiness of the character in the advertisement. For the sound effect I used the same technique I used in the cartoon of watching it a few times and making a list of all the sounds that were needed. I found the FX that come with Logic 8 very helpful, I had never used them before and its library has some incredible effects which I would recommend to other users. Around the 34 second mark of the commercial I utilize the same idea that the original music to the commercial used, there were a few problems. Firstly, there were a few ideas of mine that share similarities with the original, not at all musically but the aesthetic behind it. For example; the idea to put different musical genres reacting to the way the visual changes and the instruments that the musicians are playing. Suddenly before I realized it I had packed all this intricate detail into what seemed like a 4 – 5 minute piece. I found it extremely challenging and enjoyable.