Composers Ticker Tape Parade!

RMI Studios

RMI Studios

Active member
Congrats to the TOP 10 Original Sci-Fi Scores!

A Brief Case 7.1 1st (tie)
CPU 7.1 1st (tie)
The Sequence 7.0 2nd
We Are Not Alone 6.9 3rd (tie)
Pandora 6.9 3rd (tie)
Wages of Sin 6.7 4th
Synthetic Love 6.5 5th

In The Beginning 6.4 6th
Dead Inside 6.1 7th
Mi, Robot 6.0 8th
The Wooligans 5.8 9th (tie)
Signal Decay 5.8 9th (tie)
Home Invasion 5.8 9th (tie)
Bass Cops 5.7 10th (tie)
Insurance 5.7 10th (tie)



good job guys!
and good luck on Hero Fest!


I don't know everyones name, so if you were the guy or gal behind the score, step out of the shadows and say hello!

And don't forget to mention your score! :)


Chris Rojas
(Pandora)
(click for Score Samples)
 
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:beer:

Well done to everyone, congrats to the The Odd Squad's composer...step up! :)
Score sample from CPU: Into the Darkness

Great job on your score for Pandora, Chris R.

-Chris
 
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You too Chris H! I had forgotten that you worked on so many films...good deal! Any cool behind the scenes info, mishaps, footage, images you care to share with everyone?


C.R.
 
Oh, and great job on Gaussian Project! I wish I could have heard the score better, it was really buried..but oh well..go ahead and post that score too if you can!


C.R.
 
Hey Thanks.

Actually I wrote the score like that mostly, I didn't want to overpower Chad's awesome dialogue. :)

I had very little time to write it (I think 2 days) - and wanted to save time on mixing on Chad's end. Here's a screenshot I took while working on the score:

musicwork.JPG


I use Cakewalk Home Studio, Garritan Personal Orchestra. For this project I also pulled in a very interesting drone, which ended up being very effective with the harp harmonics I used. IMO.

Here's some trivia:

For CPU, the music was written without seeing the film. Since it relied on so much visually, and wasn't ready to be handed to me, I was given descriptions from spidey, and I wrote the music to that. I think it worked well.

Mi Robot's music was done in a few hours. Aram sent me the clip a few days before the deadline and I still hadn't got Chad's, so I was really pushed for time. Fortunately Aram knew exactly what he wanted - there was some temp music in there which he wanted me to try and stick to, style wise.

-Chris
 
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Hey gang. Composers unite! :P

http://crisislab.com/kevin/Home-Invasion_score.mp3

That's the musical-score alone for Home Invasion... although RMI_Studios... I don't know what list you're looking at for that top-10, b/c on the one I DL'ed I didn't make the list. But at least I'm on someone's list. I certainly put a LOT into this score. It starts kinda slow with lots of creepy-crawly stuff, but really gets going about half way (these aren't solo musical pieces after all, they have to follow on screen action).

-Kevin
 
Home Invasion got a 5.9, which ties it for 10th! I have 5.9 in my excel score sheet...


HERE'S SOMETHING WEIRD!

gratuitous post-prod footage...shot with my cell phone in January...
let me know if it makes you laugh as hard as it makes me! i believe it was like 4 in the morning and i was messing around with some french horn stabs, what else is there to do at that hour?

Pandora Scoring Session - french horn action (right click/save as)


C.R.
http://www.rmistudios.com
 
I noticed that a lot of you guys wrote seperate cues for your films. For some reason, I attacked this movie as a whole piece, don't ask me why. I scored it quite literally from start to finish, from opening credits to closing, completely in order. And all within the same ProTools session (I'm probably going to transcribe everything in Sibelius3 for fun, nothing like transcribing a big orchestral score for no reason!)...It definitely made things easier mix wise, which allowed me to both record and mix as i went along (in retrospect this might be why I worked this way), but I can't help but wonder how the score might have turned out differently if I had worked on seperate cues...

I'll get some crazy screenshots up for your guys tomorrow..


Oh and in terms of gear/software used for this score:

ProTools HD, Roland XV-5080, EastWest Symphonic Orchestra library, MOTU MachFive, and I ended up playing a lot of live violin overdubs myself to simulate a real orchestral string section at times.


C.R.
http://www.rmistudios.com
 
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Vienna Symphonic Opus 1 in Cubase; PreSonus Firepod for the live recording portion.

I ended up playing a bit of percussion live to simulate a real orchestra... it's the only orchestral thing I play. :P
 
I was just told that jdanstan's #1 score for THE ODD SQUAD was compiled from stock music, which would make it a SOUNDTRACK and not a score. Does anyone have any opinions on this, being that it received the highest marks for Best Score?

I have nothing against jdanstan's awesome entry or his excellent musical selection and music supervisor skills, I just wonder how fair it is to award top Score honors to a film that uses stock music when there were like 50 composers working very hard to provide some great original music for this festival.

Thoughts?


C.R.

ps: jdanstan I love everything about your film so i hope you don't take offense...
 
CR,

I think that's a tough one. Lots of people also used Apple Loops, which is scoring, but it isn't the same as writing a score from scratch. JTyner wrote our whole score from beginning to end from nothing (other than our end credits). I don't know how I feel about it or how you could separate out these differences (when it comes to scoring). In the sense of grading a film, aren't we essentially not just grading the quality of the music itself, but how it best fits in with the story and the emotions the music brings to the film?

I see music as an important piece to the film ... it plays a huge supporting role, but often doesn't stand out on it's own. What do you think?
 
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my gear was an acoustic guitar, an accordian, an egg shaker, a yahama S80 keyboard , and i actually went out and bought a triangle specifically for this music. it was vital. everything was recorded using the microphone that came built into my DVX except the S80 which i used to play the piano, upright bass, and congas direct. everything was mixed in Vegas.
 
EditPhish said:
I think that's a tough one. Lots of people also used Apple Loops, which is scoring, but it isn't the same as writing a score from scratch. JTyner wrote our whole score from beginning to end from nothing (other than our edit credits). I don't know how I feel about how you could separate out these differences (when it comes to scoring)... in the sense of grading a film, aren't we essentially not just grading the quality of the music itself, but how it best fits in with the story and the emotions the music brings to the film?
Click to expand...

EditPhish,

I hear where you're coming from...my concern though is that the category was SCORE and not MUSIC. If it was MUSIC then yes it would encompass apple loops and royalty free samples and and other such tracks. It would then also emcompass soundtracks. Any music in a film that is not written FOR the film, is called SOURCE MUSIC, and would thus be labeled part of the SOUNDTRACK. We weren't supposed to be grading the music in the film, we were supposed to be grading the SCORE of the film! If someone used a 5 minute Aerosmith song but then had an original cue written for the key montage at the end of their film, you would have graded the montage score, not their placement of the Aerosmith song.

A modern day romantic comedy like an Along Came Polly, is made up of mainly Source Music (random love songs and music from popular bands/artists) but the score itself is the music that a composer writes for the scene changes, for the segways between two pieces of source music, for the heartwrenching scenes that might require an orchestra or another similar element etc...

While jdanstans use of source music was SPOT ON (very tarantino of him!) it was clearly a Soundtrack and not a SCORE. I mean, I think it can be somewhat compared to DVXTrek's BEST ACTING nod. Did it really have any acting? If the category was BEST MUSIC or BEST SOUNDTRACK, I could see how Odd Squad would qualify. . .

But it was BEST SCORE :)


C.R.
 
TheMacB said:
my gear was an acoustic guitar, an accordian, an egg shaker, a yahama S80 keyboard , and i actually went out and bought a triangle specifically for this music. it was vital. everything was recorded using the microphone that came built into my DVX except the S80 which i used to play the piano, upright bass, and congas direct. everything was mixed in Vegas.
Click to expand...


Now that's what i'm talking about! Whoa, how did you sync up your playing if you played things one at a time into the dvx? just played to an external click?


C.R.
 
Ok, I'll list my friend Matt's gear, since he's not on here. He composed our score with Protools, Reason, and his Korg Triton keyboard.
 
RMI Studios said:
Now that's what i'm talking about! Whoa, how did you sync up your playing if you played things one at a time into the dvx? just played to an external click?


C.R.
Click to expand...

i started with the shaker while listening to a click track (Vegas' metronome tickin away). then i captured that and dropped it in vegas. then while listening to the shaker i recorded the accordian. then captured that and dropped it in vegas. etc. etc. etc.
 
TheMacB said:
i started with the shaker while listening to a click track (Vegas' metronome tickin away). then i captured that and dropped it in vegas. then while listening to the shaker i recorded the accordian. then captured that and dropped it in vegas. etc. etc. etc.
Click to expand...

Props man, that must have been difficult!
 
RMI Studios said:
EditPhish,

I hear where you're coming from...my concern though is that the category was SCORE and not MUSIC. If it was MUSIC then yes it would encompass apple loops and royalty free samples and and other such tracks. It would then also emcompass soundtracks. Any music in a film that is not written FOR the film, is called SOURCE MUSIC, and would thus be labeled part of the SOUNDTRACK. We weren't supposed to be grading the music in the film, we were supposed to be grading the SCORE of the film! If someone used a 5 minute Aerosmith song but then had an original cue written for the key montage at the end of their film, you would have graded the montage score, not their placement of the Aerosmith song.

A modern day romantic comedy like an Along Came Polly, is made up of mainly Source Music (random love songs and music from popular bands/artists) but the score itself is the music that a composer writes for the scene changes, for the segways between two pieces of source music, for the heartwrenching scenes that might require an orchestra or another similar element etc...

While jdanstans use of source music was SPOT ON (very tarantino of him!) it was clearly a Soundtrack and not a SCORE. I mean, I think it can be somewhat compared to DVXTrek's BEST ACTING nod. Did it really have any acting? If the category was BEST MUSIC or BEST SOUNDTRACK, I could see how Odd Squad would qualify. . .

But it was BEST SCORE :)
Click to expand...
I totally hear what you're saying.

But as viewers, unless it's OBVIOUS that it was source music, or soundtrack-type stuff (as per your above definition), there's no way to know. Not all movies had end credits. Not all music would be recognizable as original vs. loops vs. stock... And considering a lot of people here are multi-talented (or have multi-talented teams/friends/family etc.), how COULD you judge?

For example... JTyners first love is music... and we have a recording studio in our home. If we were to put rock music into a film, at least at this low-budget level, it would probably be something he wrote, or something he had a friend come in and write/record with him. It would be original, and while it might go more to the soundtrack, it wouldn't be "source music" or "stock music".

So as the judges of these films, how would it be possible to KNOW that oh, these guys did everything in the music vs. oh, they used some stock/source music written by someone else?

On this same conversation, how do you feel about a film that used downloadable 3d models vs. models generated uniquely for the film? This occurred in the fest as well, and the same type of conversation could apply.
 
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