On this page, you can find the Culminating Experience (CE) Projects for all graduate students from the Berklee College of Music master’s program Scoring for Film, Television and Video Games (SFTV) from 2015 – present. Click on any title for more information and access to the full paper and other deliverables (if available).
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Crossing Bunny Bridge
Steven Stoffels
2021For my CE and final recording in London I have written an original score for an original art project. The project in this case is an animation film, made by a student from the HKU (Hogeschool voor de Kunsten Utrecht, The Netherlands). In close collaboration we have strived for a great animation short, combining the art of telling a story in sketches and graphic skills on one hand and music on the other. What where the exact characteristics of this project and what makes it special?
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IN EVENT OF MOON DISASTER
Aimee J. Alexander
2020In Event of Moon Disaster is an ungiven speech discovered in the Nixon archives 30 years after the historic moon landing. This was the speech he would have given had the mission failed. Had Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin not been able to return to Michael Collins orbiting the moon, they would have had to starve to death or commit suicide in space. William Safire, the speechwriter, had not intended to write this version, until a NASA liaison for the White House told him he needed to do it for the “widows-to-be”.
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The Spiral of Life
Ivana Ancic
2020The purpose of this paper is to provide a self-reflection and summary of the whole experience gained during a one year Master Program in Scoring for Film, TV, and Video Games (SFTV) at Berklee College of Music in Valencia. The Culminating Experience Master Thesis project The Spiral of Life focuses on the idea of understanding life, its source and cycles, as a reference point and example for the divine fingerprints of music creation and its beauty. There are many technical aspects to consider for music making nowadays, and composing, now more than ever, can be considered a craft as much as an art made through the act of unconscious channeling. This reflection paper focuses on the creative process, music production skills and techniques, qualities that a composer specifically trained for the purpose of scoring for visual media must have, and challenges they face on a daily basis. The paper contains of xxx chapters that thoroughly describe all phases of the creative, production and post production process, and explains how it all works together starting from scratch - an inspiration, a single motif, connecting musical ideas and building a climax while maintaining the overall structural arc, using technology as a tool to record, produce, edit, mix, and master the composition for visual media or narration. The outlook for success and psychological profile of a composer in media business also represent an important aspect and relevant point for discussion and analysis in the paper.
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Garden Between Walls
Thomas Bingham
2020For my Culminating Experience, I scored the ending sequence from a short film by the name of "Jardín entre paredes" (Spanish for 'Garden between Walls'). The film is directed by Anna Llargués, a student from the ESCAC that I had met through Berklee. In this paper, I go over the research that went into developing such a project, and analyse the score I wrote for it. Through various case studies of films, scores and original pieces from different genres, I determine the technical and artistic tools necessary for the creation and writing of the score. I mobilised these tools throughout the process. On the cinematographic front, I delve into the editing, photography and pacing, while analysing sheet music and recordings on the musical side. I then break down my compositional process by discussing orchestral techniques, musical language and overall sensibility to the scene. The final product blends feelings of nostalgia, triumph and promise to the boyish adventures portrayed in Anna Llargués' "Jardín entre paredes".
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White and Red Flowers
YunJung Choi
2020I tried to orchestrate with Korean traditional musical instrument Gayageum. Through this project, we can see how Korean traditional musical instruments blend beautifully with Western orchestras.
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Bosco Regina
Christopher Robert Gough
2020A short film by Glasgow School of Art student, Sean De Francisco, with music composed by Christopher Gough. 'Bosco Regina,' tells the story of a hunter who decides to take a more unconventional, yet beautiful approach to hunting.
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那时候很单纯的: A Sonic Mosaic of Simpler Times
Helen Hong
2020Growing up, my ideas of love were often in duel. Although I spent the majority of my upbringing in China, I consumed mostly Western media and culture, through which many role models of love quickly took root. American films, books, friends, and social environments together shaped my ideas of emotional expressiveness. From them, I observed majority Western romantic values of intensity, passion, drama. And for a while, this was cultivated in many of my own experiences as well. Recently, however, as I make space for myself to dig deeper into my own inner fulfillment, I have found myself leaning further and further into my parents’ version of love. From their more traditionally Chinese values of love and emotion, I’ve observed simplicity, harmony and trust— hues of blue, rather than red. This piece,《那时候很单纯的》 a sonic mosaic of simpler times, is one that, to me, feels timeless, personal, and makes me smile. My parents have been married for 31 years now, and I hope this piece will put a smile on their faces, too.
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SCORING A CHILDHOOD FAVORITE: The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy: Dream a Little Dream
Mark A. Hull
2020The contents of this paper are the culmination of all the knowledge, experiences and work acquired during the year of Master of Music in Scoring for Film, Television and Video Games. Using all that we had learned, we started by finding some media that we would like to score (short film, animation, video game, script, etc.), and the tempo and markers in the media, create a mock-up and several revisions of our score for the media, prepare the score and parts, prepare for recording in one of the most esteemed and respected studios in the world, and mixing/mastering the recording for premier. Having gone to undergraduate for composition, I felt comfortable in my composition, orchestration, and preparatory skills coming into the program. I knew that my biggest challenges would be reading scenes to extract the emotion out of them and creating realistic mock-ups. I had done a little work with mock-ups and scoring for media in my undergraduate, but never really dedicated much time to either of these things. I wanted my thesis project to really showcase my style and be unlike anything else I had done before. I also knew that it was going to be hard work, but it would be worth it. This year has certainly been a strange one with the coronavirus breakout, especially with the thesis project. I hope that someone looking at this reflection in the future might be inspired, guided, and/or calmed by seeing what it was like to prepare this project in the midst of a pandemic, when nothing is certain and everything is changing all the time.
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Evergreen Suite
William Gerhardt Isaacson
2020As a general description Evergreen is a celtic-inspired video game in development by Grentacular Studios. It represents so much more to me, however. Evergreen represents my entire journey through this master’s program, as well as the birth of my professional career. From the first draft I made for the main theme to the current Suite of themes to be recorded in London, one can hear an enormous amount of growth - all of which I have Berklee to thank for. The growth is palpable, so much so that when I listen back to the first draft I made in September, I barely recognize myself in it. My voice is still in that draft, albeit muffled and hidden. Over the course of the year I have learned to let that voice out and be heard in ways I never thought I was capable of. Evergreen also represents my overcoming a fear of failure. If you had told me a year ago that I would be scoring a full length video game with primarily orchestral elements, I would have a) had a panic attack, and b) not believed you. Admittedly, I accepted this job before I was entirely ready. When I was given the cue sheet of all I would have to do (just for the demo) my insecurities began flooding in. I have always struggled with this in my music. It’s never good enough, I can’t do this, I can’t do that, etc. However, in this master’s course the most important knowledge I have gained is learning that I can do this. I can do that. And after all is said and done, it is good enough. I have the entire faculty to thank for this growth, as every member of the teaching staff has instilled in me a different and unique kind of courage. Finally, Evergreen represents my future. Not only have I made a wonderful connection with the director of the game, it has also given me enough courage and credit to seek out new opportunities. In my application to Berklee my biggest desire was to get my foot in the door in the world of Video Games. Now the door is open before me, waiting to be walked through to the next chapter in my life.
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Channel Surfer
Sandy Jones
2020A three-minute video condensing a typical year in the world of board sports and the weather, climate, and environments they occupy. Includes skateboarding, snowboarding, and surfing. The accompanying music is a hybrid score using a traditional orchestra, a rock band, and modern electronic production to help tell the narrative that goes beyond the individual skater.
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Original Score Fonso: Bringing Contemporary Music into a 2D Animation
Ssu-Han (Hannah) Liu
2020The musical narrative in modern animation. In this project, I will be reflecting on my study experience at Berklee, and evaluating the progress I have made. In regards to the reading of narrative, it has changed my vision there are some and comparison from then and now. My experience working as a studio composer has changed my understanding of scoring a scene, and some of the decisions influence my writing. For this research, I will be looking into how I approach my music in order to compliment this modern aesthetic of animation. The challenge of this project is also keeping the consistency throughout, additionally, condensing the amount of material for score, and adapting my music to the new structure of narrative. There are also things related to the construction of this cue, for example, giving a corresponding musical emotion, right tone colour, instrumental tessitura, transposition, and ways of making the best use of an orchestra. I will demonstrate the importance of construction versus the abstraction of the artwork and edits, since this cue only showcased one third of the original content, building a firm and convincing structure is an important support for the animation. I am going to walk you through my process of reading and interpreting this 2D animation, and the decisions behind the scene to make this music convincing and effective to enhance the visuals.
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STAND UP (BLACK LIVES MATTER)
Lavender Looi Ai Hua
2020This project was inspired by the Black Lives matter movement. After multiple considerations and changes in my CE plans, I was finally sure of the project I wanted to work on. My friend, Michelle Raymond and I wrote and produced, I also mixed and mastered this song. We released it on all streaming platforms on the 20th of June 2020. It took almost 2 weeks to complete the project. I then proceeded to write and arrange parts for the orchestra to be recorded in Air Studios, London. I am proud of this project and I hope this brings hope to people and inspires change. TOGETHER WE STAND!
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That Night Has a Color
Francisco Lorenzo Alonso
2020There are no human words to express the pain and the sadness. To begin to understand the reasons why a life so young ends, one must do it through a divine glance. Whether that is love or God herself. I try to do it through music, with the hope to heal that emptiness that is left in the world. I hope that by swimming and submerging yourself fully in the pain, it helps loose the fear of it and therefore, in consequence, we can see the love and happiness again that we only but missed.
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DESERT SONG: a storyteller’s quest
Sanchit Malhotra
2020This paper provides a reflection on the process of completing the culminating experience project for Berklee College of Music’s Scoring for Film, Television, and Video Games Master’s program. The reflection first examines the author’s musical and cultural background and his process in deciding the project’s focus. It then provides a detailed musical and narrative analysis of the composition and how it relates to its subject matter. Topics such as thematic development, harmonic development, orchestration, music production, music mixing, and music preparation are covered. The paper concludes with a reflection on the project as a whole.
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New World on Scoring for Media, Save the Kid
Yu Sze Melody Ng
2020The music I composed is for an animation called Dap Pang Man, which is scaffolder in Cantonese. Using a full orchestra to create a heroic mood of the music. The animation is a short film about Hong Kong culture. I would like to bring Hong Kong traditional culture to my music.
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ESCAPE
Alexander Nikoleit
2020This project is the final composition of my year in the Master’s program “Scoring for Film/TV and Videogames” at the Berklee College of Music, Valencia Campus. I rescored a science-fiction animation short movie about a female character who is stranded on a foreign planet and is looking for a way to get back home. I faced a lot of challenges scoring this intense little short movie because it has a lot of different moods and I needed to be very precise on the cuts and the action in the picture. Besides that, I had to program a very convincing mockup because at the moment we are not able to record in London as this is usually the case for the culminating experience. Because of the unexpected happening of Covid-19 and the consequences of public life shutting down in almost every European country, we still don’t know when this session is going to happen. Having the possibility to record a three-minute piece in one of the best recording studios of the world is a big honor and I am really looking forward to this experience. Due to the Lockdown Berklee continued with a lot of interesting and additional online workshops which definitely helped us to overcome this unusual situation. At this point I really would like to thank the whole faculty (Lucio, Sergio, Alfons, Vincente and Pablo for their big effort and those extremely useful and inspiring workshops. I tried to use the time at home studying different scores from various animation movies to prepare myself for this final project. I especially tried to include all the things I learned during this past year at Berklee. I hope that this piece of music is the ideal representation of my abilities of scoring to picture and I hope that my personal voice as a composer is recognizable as well.
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Westworld: Scoring an action cue
Julia Owczarek
2020The Culminating Experience aims to provide a real-life experience for the Scoring for Film, Television and Video Games Program. This paper elaborates on the process of a creation of a score and a mockup. It describes choosing the type of score, customizing the sounds, creating a palette of timbres, mixing and mastering. It includes also an analysis of the score, reflection and conclusion about the whole process. Since the recording with the Air Studios orchestra in London is postponed due to the worldwide situation (COVID-19) the paper does not include a description of the recording day itself.
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Dennis
Carlos Pérez Marín
2020With this paper, I finish an intense year of learning and working in one of the best programs in the world that exists to study scoring for cinema, television and video games. Berklee College of music has given me the opportunity to meet and work with many of the greatest composers on the current scene. Thanks to the intensity of the course, the facilities used both on and off campus, and the excellent work of the faculty, I have learnt and mastered various skills I couldn't even imagine one year ago, before Berklee. As a culminating experience of the program, we have the wonderful opportunity to record our composition in one of the best recording studios in the world, which will allow all of us to meet again in London and conduct one of the best orchestras performing our work. In this paper, I will explain all of the steps that I have followed for the creation of the piece and the project. I will talk about my musical background, my year of experience at Berklee, and how both have helped me in order to create and fulfill this experience. Thanks to my perseverance in composing for an original short film, I met “Dennis”, and I am extremely happy to have been able to compose the music for this fantastic animated short film. This is undoubtedly the best way to end my year, with what has certainly been an experience at a personal, academic and professional level.
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Crossing the Threshold: The Emotional Symbology of Musical Signifiers
Steven Douglas Ross
2020The primary purpose of this project is to represent the Culminating Experience (CE) of studying Scoring for Film, Television, and Video Games (SFTV) at Berklee College of Music. After a year of personal and professional development, students are tasked with writing music for a 51-piece orchestra to be recorded at AIR Studios in London. For my project I chose to write and score a scene from an original narrative. This paper strives to reflect on the idea of ‘Crossing the Threshold,’ a part of an archetypal narrative structure. Additionally, this analysis documents the creative process of writing original music and story. I will describe my artistic development in a continued journey to express my vision of reality, time, and the transformative power of music. This project is a survey of the signs and symbols within the language of film music, and an experiment with the musical grammar and vocabulary that composers have developed for decades to translate music into emotion. Finally, this paper argues that small musical fragments can be assigned to signify specific emotional responses, and this CE is an effort to implement many of them.
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Helga's Sound
Finnur Sigurjón Sveinbjarnarson
2020My thesis paper revolves around my CE project, "HELGA'S SOUND", a film score of about 3 minutes, composed to a screenplay adaptation of a short dramatic sequence from one of the Icelandic Sagas, "Harðarsaga og Hólmverja" written in the early 14th. century. In it I start out by discussing the underlying challenges of scoring audiovisual narratives in general. Then I describe my own process in dealing with my own actual scoring project, discussing the process from the choosing of the material through various bits of research and preparations to the actual work of composing the music. Finally I address my own choices and their consequences as well as writing a few sentences about the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic.
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To Nurture, To Nature: Rescoring a Fashion Film
Claudia Torrente Solés
2020Final Recording Project: As part of the culminating experience (CE), all SFTV students have the opportunity to record at Air Studios in London. The goal of the trip is to record a piece of original music performed by a fifty-plus instrument orchestra at an industry-leading studio. Before this, I am going to create a mockup (that sounds as real as possible) and write the score and parts for the orchestra. The final step of this process is to edit and mix the tracks to then deliver the final piece. Since this is a very special situation, I am not going to be able to include the last phase in this document due to force majeure causes; I am going to focus on the previous steps.
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Microscopia: Listening to the Invisible
Lucie Treacher
2020Composition is often concerned with delving into intangible, unseen and internal worlds and watching and waiting for ideas to come into focus. This Reflection paper seeks to map my compositional journey from ‘micro’ to ‘macro’ during the creation of ‘Microscopia’- a piece which celebrates worlds that cannot be seen and yet affect us in minute ways. It explores the challenges I navigated in providing a sonic backdrop for footage of bacteria and mold by Genèvieve Anhoury in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. The paper is split into three parts, firstly examining the formation of ideas and inspirations behind the project. It then delves into looking at ‘de-composition’: breaking down the process of creating a three-minute orchestral piece and mock-up. Finally, it reflects more broadly on the struggles of composers during their composition process and simply surviving in the current challenging socio-economic climate.
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Bringing a Story to Life through Music
Alex Williams
2020The Culminating Experience Project encompasses a year’s worth of work, education and experience accumulated during the time a student enters and leaves his or her designated program at the Berklee College of Music, Valencia Campus. It is meant to reflect on a real-world experience, which differentiates this paper from other graduate, research-based projects. In the Scoring for Film, TV and Video Games (or SFTV) department at Berklee, this project would typically be referencing an SFTV student’s journey to their final recording project with a 50+ piece orchestra at AIR Studios in London, England. Unfortunately, COVID-19 has delayed the annual SFTV trip to AIR Studios indefinitely. Because of this, the following focuses solely on the writing process and the creation of a realistic mockup that best represents my piece and my accumulation of knowledge at the Berklee College of Music.
