Files
Download Full Text (37 KB)
Abstract
My CE project was for me the best introduction of me as a composer and a creative person. I really wanted to find a way to express myself, to create something individual and special, that only I would do. My preferred style throughout the year revealed itself as heavy deep music. I did have one change of mind, after thinking I’ll write a heavy loud and angry piece, all ways led to drama. Another thing I cared about and did was talking about a meaningful social or emotional subject – something that should be spoken, that should be more exposed, from a moral point of view. It’s a big part of my engine as a writer. I also cared a lot about the connections I created along the way while finding the video, because I think that the original piece is a masterpiece and I would love to work with anyone from that team in the future. I hope I did my best using all the skills I learned so fast over the year and reached a climax where my artistic ideas can come true through my skills and abilities.
In many ways, I was culturally and artistically educated through TV series and film. As I grew up in Israel, in a cultural world led from far away, in English, by people from different cultures and countries then mine – by European countries and the United States, I was looking for my way as a musician, an artist. I mostly found it in series and films. I found stories about the places that my favorite songs came from, people speaking the language of those songs. But mostly, I found my role models and answers in there as stories about society and relationships. I was also a woman in a feminism-wise-wings-spreading world and was coming out of the closet looking for answers about my Sexuality. I watched, for example - the very first Avatar movie, 90210, Grey’s Anatomy with the amazing sync work by Alexandra Patsavas, Enigma, the boy in the striped pajamas, Game of Thrones, and later on - sex education and big mouth (And more...). All had a message about society and people that I needed to hear. Many of my friends felt the same, we were creating our music and also noticing how powerful it can be. I noticed that the music was always the part that made me cry, laugh, understand, connect. I think it effects most people like that.
The strongest moments in my opinion are the ones where the music brings to the picture a part of the content that’s not obvious from the picture itself and tells us something new about the story, even convincing us. Contrasted music in TV and film has an eye-opening effect and ability, strong enough to send important messages that can’t be seen in the actual picture of a film without it.
In my piece for our final recordings project, I chose a scene that has a strong human message, and I tried amplifying it and making it come alive through my music. There are numerous examples of scenes in all kinds of films and TV series when the inner message is too big to be said in words, and although it is told within the story itself, the moment of conclusion and complexity in many cases couldn't have been transferred through without another layer of “voice” representing another hidden side of the story, contrasting it to amplify it, or suggesting all sides of the story all together at the same time - and that’s music.
In this paper I would like to analyze my music for the scene I’ve chosen as an eye-opener for social cultural and inner-emotional issues.
Publication Date
7-1-2024
Campus
Valencia (Spain) Campus
Keywords
film scoring, orchestral extended techniques, contrast, anticlimax, war drama
Recommended Citation
Kedem, Noga. “We'll Die as Brothers - Film Music as a Cultural Eye Opener.” Master's thesis, Berklee College of Music, 2024. https://remix.berklee.edu/graduate-studies-scoring/260.