Scoring for Film, Television, and Video Games

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  Up The Green!

  Gabriel Bango
  2026

  In 2025, Vermont Green Football Club became the USL 2 undefeated national champions. Founded in 2022, the Burlington, Vermont-based soccer team’s mission is to embed environmental justice into its competitive strategy, operational processes, and culture. In an effort to blend my love for music, my home state of Vermont, and passion for what this team stands for, I wanted to collaborate with the team for my culminating experience in my Master of Music program at Berklee. This thesis follows the process of creating an original score for a short film of their championship game. It explores writing music that encapsulates community, perseverance, and celebration. The thesis debriefs the challenge of using compositional techniques to reflect the energy of the players and the spirit of the sport. Along with composition, I will discuss the experience of conducting and recording the piece live at Air Studios in London, and conclude by describing the audio mixing and editing approaches used to polish the recording, and the personal and musical growth I experienced because of the Culminating Experience and school year at Berklee, Valencia.

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  The Wildhearted Two

  Tomáš Borl
  2026

  The Wild-hearted Two is an orchestral score for Bilby (2018), an animated short film produced by DreamWorks. Even though the original score was already composed by Benjamin Wallfisch, I took the opportunity to present my own interpretation of the film and create a rescore as part of my Culmination Experience at Berklee Valencia. In this thesis, I aim to describe the main criteria for selecting this picture, its challenging aspects, the compositional process and analysis, the recording experience at AIR Studios, postproduction, and reflections on possible future steps. While describing my creative process, my main aim was to embrace musical storytelling through various emotions and precise timing, ensuring coherence with the picture, as this 3-minute-long film offers a complete story arc and a vivid palette of expressions.

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  Uxía Caneda - The Red Balloon

  Uxía Caneda Cao
  2026

  This project represents and immortalizes everything learned during this year in the Master's in Scoring for Film, TV, and Video Games at Berklee Valencia, thus constituting the culminating experience of my academic development. This thesis investigates and goes deeply into the process of creating, preparing and recording an original re-score of a self-made edit of Le Ballon Rouge, a French short film directed by Albert Lamorisse. This movie, from 1951, became a reference to poetic language in films, and still remains an inspiration for contemporary cinema nowadays. The compositional process drives the audience along the narrative arc, working with different emotional stages and musical ideas throughout the visual piece. In the following paragraphs we are going to go deep into the details of the different stages, from the initial ideas to the polishing touches. This thesis will be talking about musical, technical, technological and theoretical aspects of the process of composing. recording, editing and mixing a cinematic cue. Starting in December, when the researching and networking process to find the movie begun, until June, when the mixing and mastering stage ended.

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  Tears of Steel Trailer

  Weiyu Chiu
  2026

  This thesis presents the creation of an original trailer music project, developed as a fully self-managed audiovisual production. The work includes video editing, composition, sound design, score preparation, printing and organizing parts, conducting, and final mixing, with the exception of the original filming. Rather than approaching the process solely from the perspective of a composer, this project expands into a broader production role, integrating both musical and visual decision-making. The trailer is constructed around the idea of cinematic tension and large-scale narrative progression. The music focuses on continuous forward motion through harmonic expansion, frequent modulation, and delayed resolution, allowing intensity to build gradually over time. Instead of relying on traditional formal closure, the score prioritizes direction and momentum, reflecting the aesthetic language commonly found in modern trailer music. This project reflects an interdisciplinary approach to music production, where composition, editing, and post-production are treated as interconnected processes within a single workflow. It demonstrates how trailer music functions not only as a musical style, but as a form of audiovisual storytelling shaped by timing, structure, and emotional trajectory.

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  Elias Hafner - MEMORIA

  Elias Hafner
  2026

  The journey of MEMORIA began in December, 2025 and this thesisdocuments the complete process of that exact project, with a particular focuson pre-production, composition, analysis, recording, and post-production. A central aspect of this project was the collaboration with director Dominik Plohovich. The film MEMORIA was developed through a shared creative vision and as soon as the concept was developed, the process of filming began. The director flew to multiple countries in Europe to complete the shots he already built in his mind. With the movie in the making and having seen the first pieces of visual content, I was able to start building a musical world for it. From the start on, it was clear to me that the score would be hybrid. Therefore, the search for synthesizers, textures, and plug-ins became an important part of the early stages. The actual scoring process began in March 2026 and continued until the end of May 2026. During this period, the musical landscape of MEMORIA was developed and fine tuned. This thesis focuses on the main part of analysing the composition and its interaction to picture. Finally, the thesis explores the recording process, the challenges and advantages of a live recording, and the post-production of both the music and the film. The paper ends with a reflection on the complete creative and technical process behind composing, recording, and producing the score for the Culminating Experience at Berklee College of Music Valencia.

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  STILL HERE - Overview and Analysis

  Sebastien Jospitre
  2026

  This thesis examines the creation and implementation of an original musical score for STILL HERE, an animated short film centered on themes of grief, trauma, and emotional healing. The central objective of this thesis is to analyze the creative and technical decisions involved in the scoring process and how music can be used to support and enhance narrative meaning in visual media, particularly through the relationship between compositional choices and the emotional trajectory of the film. The compositional approach is a mixed combination of thematic development, modal and tonal contrast, and orchestral textural design. The score employs a primarily tonal framework centered around E minor and F♯ minor, while incorporating modal colours and functional harmonic structures at important narrative moments. The score was recorded with a live orchestra at AIR Studios in London and subsequently refined through editing, mixing and mastering in post-production. The findings of this project highlight the effectiveness of integrating harmonic contrast, orchestral colour, and motivic continuity in supporting narrative storytelling. Furthermore, the study demonstrates the importance of aligning compositional, recording, and post-production processes in the realization of a cohesive film score.

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  Broken

  Ilan Leventhal
  2026

  This paper reflects on the creative, technical, and analytical process behind composing an original score for the sewer fight sequence from The Dark Knight Rises. Starting with the challenge of finding a proper thesis project, the paper follows the development of the score from scene analysis and sync-point mapping through orchestration, hybrid sound design, recording, and mixing. Central to the compositional approach was the idea of a dramatic pendulum, which helps illustrate how power changes hands between Batman and Bane over the course of the scene. This approach informed the tempo, harmonic movement, dynamic shape, and orchestral palette of the piece. The paper also discusses the use of an “Intensity Map” inside Cubase to illustrate the dramatic arc, as well as the assembly of a dark instrumental palette concentrated around low-register orchestration, use of extended woodwind and string techniques, and processed electronic elements. A special consideration is given to the blending of live orchestral recording with electronic textures, and to how orchestration served the larger dramatic goal of mirroring Batman’s physical and symbolic collapse in the music.

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  The Eiffel Tower Chase

  Kexuan Li
  2026

  This report details the comprehensive production workflow, including conceptualization, composition, orchestration, conducting, recording, and mixing for the animated sequence “The Eiffel Tower Chase” from the film Home (2015). Serving as a Culminating Experience (CE) project, this score showcases the advanced screen-scoring and music production capabilities acquired during my Master’s studies in Scoring for Film, Television, and Video Games at Berklee College of Music, Valencia Campus. The paper explicitly analyzes the technical and artistic processes of the cue, highlighting the rhythmic structure, harmonic frameworks, and thematic development. Musically, the piece features a high-energy, kinetic drive interwoven with comedic textures. It heavily utilizes the “mickey-mousing” technique to demonstrate precise synchronization with rapid visual action. The narrative of this report follows a strict chronological order, tracing the project's evolution from original video selection to final mixing and mastering. Crucially, it documents a high-yield recording session with a professional orchestra at AIR Studios in London. The report concludes with personal reflections that contextualize this project within my artistic growth and outline my career expectations within the media scoring industry.

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  Catch me if you can

  Muying Li
  2026

  This thesis documents the creative process behind the rescoring of Catch Me If You Can (擒贼), a cinematic sequence from the video game Honor of Kings. From the beginning, I was drawn to the character of Yunying because of her energetic, playful, and unpredictable personality. Rather than approaching the scene as a traditional heroic action sequence, I wanted the music to reflect her agility, humor, and constant sense of movement. An important turning point in the project came unexpectedly while watching Zootopia2 one evening. The rhythmic energy of the chase scenes inspired me to explore flamenco rhythms as a driving force for the score. Conversations with a close friend Emilio Parra from Barcelona, whose passion for flamenco music helped me better understand its expressive qualities, further influenced this direction. At the same time, I sought to maintain a strong connection to Chinese musical culture through thematic material inspired by Jiu Kuang (酒狂), one of the most celebrated pieces in the guqin repertoire. The resulting score combines Chinese motif influences, flamenco-inspired rhythmic patterns, and Western orchestral writing within the limitations of the AIR Studios recording ensemble. This paper follows the project from initial concept to final recording, discussing the creative decisions, orchestration techniques, recording process, and post-production workflow. Through this documentation, the thesis reflects on the challenges and discoveries involved in creating a cross-cultural action score for live orchestral performance.

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  Therefore I Am

  Petrosso Lindsey
  2026

  This thesis dissects and analyzes the compositional process of the original piece, Therefore I Am, written for an animated monologue based on the short story and video game “I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream”. This piece examines the idea of evil through the lens of the villain. The score follows dark imagery and topics as it creates a mood to match the antagonist, A.M. Ideally, this piece provides perspective on what drives someone to be evil and if they can be understood. This thesis analyzes the main character, narrative picture, and music as the emotions throughout the piece ebbs and flows.

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  LiQiyu-Eons Aether

  Qiyu Li
  2026

  AI film production covers a complete post-production and creation pipeline combining artificial intelligence and traditional filmmaking. First, creators draft scripts and precise prompts to guide AI to generate concept art and storyboards, unifying character appearances and scene styles. Next, AI video tools produce raw footage, which requires manual revision to fix frame jumps and inconsistent details.For audio work, AI voice generators create dubbing and backing vocals, while composers blend orchestral live recordings, MIDI tracks and electronic sounds to make original scores. During mixing, engineers balance the volume, frequency space and dynamic headroom of all audio layers to avoid frequency conflict between instruments, electronics and vocals. After audio polishing, using color grading, clip trimming and transition adjustments. Finally, the whole project is rendered and exported into finished films with synchronized picture and sound.

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  Krungthep Amara Nakara

  Pannita Mamanee
  2026

  This thesis paper serves as a journal and reflection on the Culminating Experience project, Krungthep Amara Nakara (Bangkok, the Immortal City), a musical composition accompanying a short film compiling footage of Bangkok city, featuring the poem “กรุงเทพฯ” (Bangkok) by Naowarat Pongpaiboon. It documents and explains each stage of the project, from the project’s conceptualization to planning and composing the music, as well as the recording and post-production. The objective of the composition is to express my voice as a composer, along with incorporating subtle references to traditional Thai music, bringing to life the poem, and contributing to the film. The paper also discusses the challenges encountered during the process and how they were navigated.

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  Final Rise

  Sofia McCann
  2026

  This Thesis will discuss the creation and development of the musical piece, “Final Rise,”a piece from the in-development game: Pure Rise. The game follows the journey of Ferry, a spirit creature whose goal is to restore his kingdom, Schism, from eternal darkness. He is the Queen’s son, and was born pure at heart. He has watched his home turn to evil, and his friends and family along with it. Throughout the game, he must overcome many trials and eventually he reaches the source of the corruption. His final task is to climb the Watchtower, and close the portal which has let the corruption into Schism. This music’s task is to follow Ferry as he makes his final climb. Throughout the game, the player has heard Ferry’s theme multiple times. “Final Rise” is an encapsulation of Ferry’s theme into an epic ending, with three distinct parts that highlight each stage of his journey and each area of the tower.

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  Metropolis

  Harvey Morland
  2026

  This thesis documents the process of conceptualising, composing, recording, and producing my original score for a selected scene from Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1927). The project was developed through the study of orchestral composition and the analysis of how composers use musical techniques to communicate narrative, character, and emotional progression. My compositional approach was primarily inspired by my listening to and studying of classical orchestral composers throughout the year. During my studies of orchestration and narrative analysis, I have become more adept at learning from the masters through my analyses of their thematic development, harmony, orchestration, and texture. These techniques have formed the foundation of much of the orchestral language later adopted by film composers, whose work has also influenced my development as a composer. Rather than attempting to imitate existing film-scoring styles, this project explores how studying the compositional methods of earlier orchestral composers would sculpt and develop my own individual voice in the context of film scoring. The chosen scene from Metropolis provided an opportunity to explore a wide range of emotional and dramatic states, from uncertainty and intrigue to chaos and terror. The scene’s rapid shifts in tone proved to be the main challenge in scoring the image. I aimed to support the on-screen moods while maintaining continuity within the overall musical language. The thesis examines how my musical decisions support the visual narrative. The project documents my creative process, from scene selection and conceptual development to composition, orchestration, mock-up creation, mentorship, live orchestral recording at AIR Studios, and final production. It demonstrates how the study of orchestral composition can inform the creation of original film music that supports the visual narrative and expresses my personal musical style and ability.

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  Seven Worlds, One Planet: Finding Unity in Diversity

  JUne Oketch
  2026

  This thesis explores the rescore for Seven Worlds, One Planet, a trailer for a nature documentary narrated by David Attenborough. It takes shape with lush imagery showcasing the beauty of planet Earth, before exploring some of the harsher realities of our dying biodiversity. It finally reaches its climax displaying all of the continents in succession. The score aims to characterise each passing moment with dynamic movement and unique instrumentation, designed to be a sonic embodiment of diversity.

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  J.P. Ovens - Baymax and Hiro's First Flight

  J.P. Ovens
  2026

  “Baymax and Hiro’s First Flight” is a rescore of a scene from the 2016 Disney animation Big Hero 6. This flight sequence is adventurous, exhilarating, heroic, and heartfelt. The score was created to support these feelings as well as the actions on screen. This thesis covers the journey of the Berklee Valencia Culminating Experience project. The layout of this essay is in chronological order. The first few sections explain the process of everything that has happened leading up to the actual composing. It is then followed by a breakdown of the compositional analysis, the AIR Studios recording session, and post-production work.

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  Garrett Owen - The Bell Tolls

  Garrett Owen
  2026

  When looking to score modern film, or media of any type, the combination of multiple styles will often be more impactful and unique as the sum rather than as its parts. To provide an example of this principle, this paper will conduct a deep dive into a scene from Puss In Boots: The Last Wish (2022) and how a score composed of both orchestral and uncommon electronic elements elevates the emotions and heightens the tension of the source material. The scene selected for my culminating experience follows two characters: Puss in Boots, a cat with an over-confident desire of pursuing his heroic nature, and Death, a physical and symbolic manifestation of Puss’ fleeting mortality. The music for this scene needed to provide a variety of emotions: ominousness, heroism, danger, and hopelessness. To do this, I used a variety of compositional techniques, both orchestral and electronic. Everything from romantic style to contemporary orchestral writing, from a creeping electronica to a blasting of metal drums, were used to convey the wide array of emotions the scene provides. There are multiple moods and feelings throughout the cue, which is part of the reason I chose to write for it in the first place. The story of the scene transitions from ominous to heroic, ultimately ending on a huge finale of overwhelming fear. This forces the music to be crafted in such a way that sways from one end of the pendulum to the other, keeping a sense of constancy as to not disorient the audience. This paper will explain how exactly I was able to follow this rollercoaster of a scene and do so while combining some of my favorite aspects of music into a single, unforgettable experience in London and beyond.

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  Jinyi Shang - CE Project

  Jinyi Shang
  2026

  This work "Oiseaux Tristes" was recorded at AIR Studios in London, UK, in June 2026. It is a purely orchestral instrumental piece. This piece was composed for a story about a murder. In the story, the murderer is symbolized by a white crow, while the victims are represented by the imagery of birds hunted by this white crow.

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  In Full Swing (Toby Stone - CE Project)

  Tobias Stone
  2026

  This thesis explores the parameters involved in writing a swing jazz composition for a full orchestra in the context of scoring for visual media. The composition is used to score a montage sequence from Baz Lurman’s film adaptation of F . Scott Fitzgerald’s book, The Great Gatsby . This montage sequence highlights the protagonist’s first impressions of one of many wild parties hosted by the namesake of the book, Jay Gatsby. By utilizing the sound and style that were common throughout the 1920’s and later, this composition offers a stark contrast to the modern pop song that is utilized for the scene in the film. It also presents a challenge to both the composer and recording orchestra, posing the question, “How can a traditional orchestra best relate a style which is not typically considered idiomatically conventional?” Through the use of jazz harmony, experimental and textbook orchestration, meticulous notation, and research of the style and its idiosyncratic elements, the music draws a unique approach to scoring for full orchestra. Despite a limited recording time of 21 minutes at AIR Studios at Lyndhurst Hall, this work aptly demonstrates the robust and exciting experience of a “swinging party” and achieves an appropriate sonic aid to the visual images of the aforementioned film.

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  I'm Not Done

  Birraj Taneja
  2026

  This thesis explores the creation of an original hybrid score for an advertising film featuring a collaboration between an athletic brand and an Olympic athlete. It explores the process of writing music for a film that is dialogue-heavy, centred around the narration supporting the emotional weight while not intruding or competing with the narration at any point. It outlines the entire process of the idea from music preparation, composition, recording, post-production and mixing from start to finish, including the orchestration choices, the live recording session, and the technical decisions made to balance clarity and emotion, resulting in a piece that's both commercially accessible and emotionally resonant.

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  Weiyi Li-Wuthering Waves-CE project

  Li Weiyi
  2026

  This paper presents the complete creative process behind an original orchestral score composed for a character showcase sequence from the game Wuthering Waves. The sequence depicts the character Fulou, who possesses the ability to command various monstrous creatures and gracefully directs them to carry out her will. This allows players to adopt the perspective of the in-scene audience and experience the Fulou's elegant yet almost unhinged sense of leadership. The music was composed to closely follow the emotional trajectory of each frame featuring the protagonist. The style is playful and charming, with a pronounced tango influence that lends it rich dramatic expressiveness. The composition involves multiple voice parts, creating a multi-layered texture that achieves a full and grand effect without losing its rhythmic vitality. The thematic motif is clearly established and reinforced throughout the piece using various instruments, with subtle echoes of the motif also embedded within different musical phrases. This paper reviews the complete process of music with visuals and explores the following question: in a character debut cinematic for a video game, how can music immediately capture the player's attention and contribute to rendering the character more vividly and three-dimensionally.

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  Moving Away

  Xuantong Xian
  2026

  This final project is about my thoughts and my changes. The whole process is how I saying goodbye to the past. During the music composition part, I learned a lot from my advisor. The last month before recording, I modified my orchestration and harmonic arrangement everyday, though sometimes I couldn't tell if it became better. Also the recording experience is so amazing and cannot be replicated. All in all, the whole CE project is very meaningful to me, which is the most valuable thing as a project.

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  Xiaoyue Xu-CE Project

  Xiaoyue Xu
  2026

  This thesis provides a comprehensive overview of the creation of the rescore for Tales of Runeterra: Freljord – “The Raid”, an animated short film by Riot Games from League of Legends, which is my culminating experience project for the Master of Scoring for Film, Television, and Video Games at Berklee Valencia. This thesis includes the process of selecting a suitable video for the project, preparing for the rescore, and an analysis of the composition with score, including harmony, main themes, and orchestration. It also covers the complete creative process behind all musical ideas, and the mixing of recordings and midi instruments. This thesis aims to provide inspiration for other students and composers by sharing my own experience with a complete project. I hope that my working process and composing ideas will be helpful to others who are learning scoring for films, TV, and video games.

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  Regular Old Living

  Weiyi Yu
  2026

  This report outlines the process of composing, orchestrating, recording, and mixing the music for a selected scene, titled "Regular Old Living" from the acclaimed animated feature Soul. As my final project, it served as the culmination of my Master of Music Degree in Scoring for Film, Television, and Video Games at Berklee College of Music, Valencia Campus, and allowed me to put into practice both the technical and emotional skills I’ve built over the years. Even though the selected animation clip is short, it covers a deep and nuanced range of emotions shifting from overwhelming existential confusion to a warm, profound appreciation for the beauty of everyday life. This emotional variety gave me space to explore musical storytelling and strengthen the connection between music, visuals, and character psychology, reinterpreting the film's philosophical themes through a fresh musical perspective.The report is organized in chronological order. It starts with how and why I chose this project and an analysis of the scene's visual narrative. It then goes through the composition and orchestration process designed for a fifty- piece orchestra, score and part preparation, recording at AIR Studios in London, and final mixing. The report ends with personal reflections on the challenges of rescoring an established cinematic masterpiece, as well as thoughts on my future work in the field.

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  Yutong Zeng - Breaking the Whispers

  Yutong Zeng
  2026

  This thesis presents my Culminating Experience: a hybrid orchestral rescore of the pivotal late-game cinematic sequence from Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, tracing Cloud’s transition into the dreamscape following his farewell with Aerith and his subsequent descent back into the real world. The study explores the integration of music and sound within multiple subconscious spaces and narratives of psychological alienation. This cinematic sequence presents highly complex narrative dimensions, weaving together Aerith’s protective guardianship, Sephiroth’s psychological contamination, and Cloud’s ultimate awakening and resistance. To address this, the project constructs an aesthetic framework centered on a large-scale traditional symphonic orchestra, introducing rigorous instrumental motifs to carry the dramatic emotional tension. Concurrently, at the threshold where Cloud initially enters the dreamscape and consciousness intersects, the score constraints the integration of a floating ambient pad from Spectrasonics Omnisphere with binaural friction textures, thereby externalizing the genesis of psychological alienation. The composition incorporates the avant-garde, dark orchestral orchestration aesthetics of Alexandre Desplat and Bear McCreary[ Bear McCreary, composer, The Cloverfield Paradox: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack (Sparks & Shadows, 2018), audio recording.], while deeply neutralizing Nobuo Uematsu’s iconic harmonic design from the Final Fantasy series[ Alexandre Desplat, composer, Godzilla: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack (WaterTower Music, 2014), audio recording.]. Utilizing the original orchestral score Breaking the Whispers and corresponding acoustic dynamic automation, this paper provides a detailed analysis of how pure orchestral orchestration, complex voice-leading textures, and subtle timbral contrasts shape the spatial displacement of consciousness and the character's internal cognitive struggle. Ultimately, this study demonstrates that within contemporary AAA games and multimedia storytelling, a hybrid orchestral score can achieve immersive world-building through the precise synchronization of polyphonic leitmotifs and psychoacoustic sound design.