Composition for Film Exercise

While I was studying at Goldsmiths University, I was asked to produce two miniature compositions for film. There was a choice of film clips from which I chose l'illusionniste and A légy. L’illsionniste is a French animated film from 2010 and the clip shows the main characters journey from France to Scotland. A légy (the fly) is a Hungarian animated short film describing a p.o.v experience of a fly.

For l’illusionniste I chose to write a melodic piece with simple harmonies. Inspired by Yann Tiersen and similar French composers. The theme was very pleasing but my challenge was to make the idea cinematic. I spoke to a friend who had a very nice orchestral sample pack. Together we orchestrated the idea with some professional standard virtual instruments.

The piano remained a central voice, complimented by pizzicato, bowed strings and clarinet. The switch from day to night is complimented by a timbral change. While a repeated piano note emerges to generate a sense of motion, as the scenery flows past behind the train window. The wider shot of the train moving is complimented by an embellishment to the piano part. As the character arrives, a return to the original motifs marks the journeys conclusion. The music was accompanied by a vinyl distortion to provide a sense of vintage warmth.

For such a visually chaotic and conceptually discplacing film, I chose to work with sounds rather than music. A lot of the noises that represent the flys voice, are sampled from vocal pieces by Trevor Wishart and from my own voice. Sped up and repitched. The rest are found sounds from around my house, with added reverbs, delays, reverses, repitching, stretching and other basic audio techniques.

I decided to avoid too much synchronisty between the audio and visuals. To aid the sense of chaos and confusion. Some examples of this include hearing a piano when no one is playing, voices and coughing when no one is seen and having sounds repeat at unpredictable intervals. The fly noises continue even after the fly is presumably dead. Building up into an intense climactic finale which reflects the morbidity of the films conclusion.