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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The Making of Rangi and Papa
Benjamin Burrell
2018This project represents the culmination of a years worth of study, the end of the most intense and rewarding learning experiences of my life. This paper is an account of how I came to conceive, research and write my final piece for my Masters in Scoring for Film, TV and Video Games and a reflection on the recording session and the year as a whole. For this project I had to source a piece of media to write for, research orchestration and form in classical music and film scoring and prepare to deliver parts to the recording session as well as conduct the session. the result of this project is that I now have the skills and confidence to write for large orchestra, I can conduct the session and communicate in a professional manner with the musicians, I have experience of potential common mistakes made and I am now prepared to undertake such a project should it arise in the future.
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Earth In Oblivion: A Musical Journey To The Unexpected
Clementine Charuel
2018Earth In Oblivion is an introspective project willing to represent my personality, my goals and my doubts. During the writing process, I have faced issues and troubles but in the end it happened to be one of my best works so far. My piece is a summary of all I learned at Berklee Valencia, mixed with my childhood memories and hopes for the future. It has been a fight against standards in music but also a fight for the survival of our beloved planet Earth. As I am trying to find my own style and push away all kinds of voluntary inspiration, my struggle to make our planet a better place to stay is stimulating myself in finding a natural inspiration coming from the heart and not from the books. Classically trained, it has been hard for me to get out of the classical harmony and orchestration. But I noticed that I didn’t necessarily have to run away from it. The important thing is that all these rules stay as a starting point to my creativity.
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3M16: The Face of Extinction
Thiago Cossi
2018I am writing about this project with the intent of explaining to and sharing with others that which means much to me and is the great adventure of writing music for media. From the first musical idea, through to being in front of a 50- piece orchestra; recording the fully developed musical piece that will be part of the film; there is a lot more to Film Scoring than meets the eye. It’s an exquisite adventure from beginning to end! So, dive in with me, as I go through my personal individual steps of creating the music, sound effects and dialogue for my final project for the Scoring for Films, TV, & Video Games Master’s program at Berklee College of Music: 3m16 – The Face of Extinction.
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The Perfect Soundtrack for a Revolution: Toussaint, Leads the Fight!
Karlyne Félix
2018Toussaint Leads the Fight is a documentary Series that is being created by Karlyne Félix and animated by Kendal Brouet. The idea came when I started to look for ideas for my CE project. This project starting from THE IDEA to and ending at THE CREDITS is a experience that takes you through each episodes of my creative journey. My first season which is my CE paper is accompanied with a three-minutes orchestral piece orchestrated for an animation visual. This visual trailer is a pitch to market my idea for an animated historical fictional television series about cultural history geared for young school children.
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Countdown: The Creation of “Battle For The Atlas”
Christopher J. Findlaytor
2018The purpose of this project is to offer a small inside look at my composition process when it comes to scoring a short film, as well as my experience with the final recording session at AIR Studios and my thoughts on the end results. This project has forced me to look inside myself in a way I am not normally used to doing, and has been highly beneficial in revealing things I never fully realized about myself. I hope you enjoy taking a look back with me at my musical process, and hopefully learning something new as I have!
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The Birth of Krogulous: Following a composition from beginning to end
Viktor Ingi Guðmundsson
2018The author takes a close look at the process around his final composition project tackling everything from how to acquire video material to how he composed each individual element. He tells of the journey to AIR studios in London to record, his expectations, shortcomings, and victories, his post process, mixing and the general feeling of his final weeks at the Berklee college of Music Masters’ program: Scoring for Film, Television & Video Games. This paper is best read with a copy of the original score of the composition "Krogulous" which is in the appendix of the paper.
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HOLYHAN
Sharang Han
2018This paper aims to describe the process of the last project of the SFTV program, the London recording, which I called ‘Holyhan’. It is a project that portrays the process of film scoring: from the recording at London Air Studio to the post production, after selecting the image I wanted to score. I have included detailed stories in the process addressing the video selection, the musical decisions, the ideas composed and the inspiration, and I tried to analyze my music. Additionally, I explain in detail the recording at the London Air Studio and compare it to previous recording experiences as a composer and conductor.
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Peter Fights Harry: Rescoring Of The Movie Spider-Man 3
Yoonho Kim
2018This project is about the session we recorded in London as our final project. We wrote music for films, trailers, or cinematic for video games, or scripts of a scenario, and in case of mine, movie clip from Spider-Man 3. We were allowed to use almost the whole orchestra, including two percussive instruments. Maximum of the length was 3 minutes, but we were strongly encouraged to write more than 2 minutes, at least. The recording date was June 3rd and 4th, and the time we were given to prepare the whole project was about a month, starting from May.
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Above the Mountains - Composition for Full Orchestra
Fabian Kratzer
2018This project describes the compositional process, the recording and the postproduction of a recording session at AIR Studios London. I looked for an appropriate video for a long time and finally decided to use a landscape- time-lapse movie about Bavaria, a region in the south of Germany, produced by David Palmen and Merit Golka. I composed the music for it and decided to use a strong melody, which I introduced in the high strings and later continued through the whole orchestra. After that, I created the score in Sibelius and printed and taped the parts on my own. During the recording at AIR, I conducted the orchestra. Here I experienced first-hand the difficulties of headphones and the communication with the orchestra. There was also a video recording of the performance. After the session, selected musicians gave feedback and I learned, that some parts of my score were too small to read and that the conducting is confusing for the players, if the conductor does not follow the click track. I learnt a lot about a professional recording with so many players and realised, that a good preparation decides about success or failure.
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Spellsouls - Duel of Legends Cinematic
Ana Krstajic
2018This paper describes the preparation for composing, conducting and recording my final project for my Master’s in Scoring for Film, Television and Video Games at Berklee College of Music. This project was important for me because it represents all of what I learned during the course of the year. It shows my progress as a composer of film music, orchestrator and conductor. I came to Berklee with my main area of expertise being contemporary music so it was important to me to try my hand at a new genre and to see whether or not film music would be a got fit for me. To achieve my goal I examined scores, studied orchestration from the masters, I analyzed music from movies and practiced conducting both my own music and that from famous films. The culmination of which was the delivery of video with music written to picture and recorded at Air studios in London. At the conclusion of the project I had gained a huge amount of technical knowledge in the field of film scoring. I am proficient in writing, sequencing, recording and mixing my music and am now prepared for a career as a composer in the Film Industry.
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The Last Wish
Luka Lebanidze
2018In the paper, I will talk about the pre-and post-production process of my Berklee culmination experience piece “The Last Wish” recorded in Air Studios, London as a part of my culmination experience at Berklee Valencia. My piece is based on a script which I arranged using excerpts from the book “The Last Wish” by a polish writer Andrzej Sapkowski. “The Last Wish” is a part of Witcher series books which were used as a setting for one of the most successful AAA video games ever released “The Witcher” 1, 2 and 3. This music piece is the culmination of a whole year of study in film scoring, and a combination of many related fields of study such as music composition, orchestration, orchestral conducting, recording, applied synthesis, and mixing.
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The world of Amai: Extracting the lessons of the creative process
Josué Parrilla
2018This paper is a reflection upon the process of creating a piece of music for visual media. In a narration format, I take the reader through the steps of the process, from conception to production, while hopefully shedding some light into this sometimes obscure and, for many, mythical process, which is the art of writing for visual media. On a personal level, through this document I reflect on my own process and, in doing so, new details of the creative process in general are revealed to me which I didn’t realize before. Ultimately, it is my desire that through this manuscript the reader will acquire a deeper appreciation of the process of creating and producing a piece of music for visual media. The project in which I will focus is one that occurs in an educational context, as opposed to a professional one, which makes it a very particular case study and provides for a specific approach to its analysis. I emphasize an educational approach to my experience and focus on the learning outcomes of the project as a starting point for the undertaking of later professional projects.
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Gentle Warrior
Kuan Pou Pun
2018For the Culminating Experience of Master in Scoring for Film, Television and Video Games, I wrote a 3 minutes piece of orchestral music with original script, for a 51-piece orchestra, which was recorded in AIR Studio London, one of the best possible options for sound production around the globe. Since the student has the freedom to choose to work with any visual element, I chose to work with an original animation storyboard. I want to showcase my orchestral sound in a fantasizing way.
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The Eldritch Truth: Lovecraft’s Legacy
Ignacio José Ramírez Larrosa
2018The whole purpose of this reflective paper was to break down every single aspect of what I did in the culminating experience of the Scoring for Film, Television and Video Games Master’s program in Berklee Valencia campus. I took in account several advices I had from my directed studies teacher and supervisor Lucio Godoy, and quoted them in order to show how the preparation of the project was. I analyzed and reviewed in detail all the references, inspirations and influences I used to bring this project to life, focusing specifically in the works of American horror fiction writer Howard Phillips Lovecraft and the story and universe of Sony’s PS4 2015 video game Bloodborne. The preparation of this project was vast and extense, where I reflected and analyzed my progress, all throughout its creation, a lot. I centralized this document mostly in the process of settling down all my ideas and explaining my personal investigation through Lovecraft horror stories and the video game’s plot in order to write an original horror story within the Bloodborne universe and, as well, the creation of the London piece. Finalizing with the description of my own personal experience assisting to Lyndhurst AIR Studios in London and conducting in front of a 51 musicians orchestra, mixing the whole piece with the help of teacher Pablo Schuller, and doing the final delivery. This paper also contains lots of contemplation of my own strengths and weakness, from the best moments of the process of composition, to the very worst and frustrating experiences I had to overcome in order to finish the last project.
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Allurement: A Retrograde Brush from Music to Picture
Kelsey Joanne Rogers
2018The purpose and intent of this project is to provide an analytical discussion about the creation of a musical piece; from beginning to end. As so often, most believe that the compositional and music process is: one of intrigue and mystery in which only few talented people possess and can forge. However, this project serves to demystify the development and creation of music; as it will lead you through the following stages: initial concept, the writing of musical notation, recording the music and finally assimilating the final audio that will be distributed for use. Additionally, the initial leg begins with the music, and so it is a reversed look at the relationship between music and media. This project was designed to ensure fulfilment of the Degree of Master of Music in Scoring for Film, Television and Video Games at Berklee College of Music. The implications of this project are written for the assiduity of both musician and non-musician to provide a wholesome approach in which all can partake and enjoy!
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Trip to Alps
Sojin Ryu
2018The main focus of this project is to provide a story of myself as a composer, creating an orchestral piece for a visual media and providing the full analysis of the big recording project. From the very beginning where I had to search and choose a video, how I started to compose and the process of making and orchestrating the whole piece, the process of preparing for fifty-one-piece orchestra recording session, the London recording experience at the Air Studios, the post-production, and to the reflections I had after the whole project. This project is designed to ensure fulfilment of Degree of Master of Music in Scoring for Film, Television and Video Games at Berklee College of Music.
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Burying Yasmeen: The Making of the Score
David C. Stillman
2018The underlying purpose and intent of the project described below is to establish an open communication regarding the process creating a film music score for the film Burying Yasmeen, from the beginning to the end. The analytical and theoretical approach to the music described below is intended to aid in the process behind the creation of film music as well as encourage an in-depth discussion of how film music is designed to benefit and support a visual narrative. For the data collection, much of the compositional process was documented in a personal diary that has been kept up to date since January 2015, as well as personal emails between me and the director. Examples and descriptions of different themes and motifs are given below in clarity in order to understand different types of orchestration and composition when creating music for film. This project was designed to provide sufficient evidence to fulfill the Degree of Master of Music in Scoring for Film, Television, and Video Games at Berklee College of Music. It is my hope that the paper in its entirety will be of help, benefit, and enjoyment for musicians and non- musicians alike, as well as provide an in-depth look at the work involved on a film score for future students at Berklee College of Music.
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From Baton to Quill to Sibelius: Soul Redemption Journey of a Lost Conductor
Sheung Lawrence Tsui
2018Writing beautiful music is easy. Scoring is difficult. Narrativity. Every audible decision you make, has to multiply each frame from the picture. Where to sync. Where not to. Where to explode. Where to hide. To breathe together. To live and die together. So sophisticated. So sacred. Ten years ago, my composition teacher was so proud of his illiteracy in notation software. I despised MIDI emulations of real instruments. I thought art is only alive on stage but dead with computers. Nowadays, no writer cannot type. No composer does not use Sibelius or Finale. Samples become vital components to enrich the sound, to sublime the art. Studios record alive sound to computer drives and you can customize desired takes and insert vintage plugins to refine the “lives,” so that your grandchildren can feel your existence. I just get addicted to analog synth and can play with it all night. Unbelievable. The world changes. I changed too. This paper recorded my Culminating Experience London project from embryo to completion. It is not an assignment. It is my journey of “soul redemption.”
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The Birth of a Lake
Tania Valle
2018The purpose of this paper is to describe in a simple way the whole process, from beginning to end, of creating our final music piece. This includes discussions about the methods of finding a script, the composing process, recording preparation and post-production of the recording session at London AIR Studios. This thesis aims to demonstrate the development of the concept through all of the stages: initial concept, research, writing of the music, preparation needed, recording and mixing the final audio. This is the culmination experience of our Scoring for Film, Television and Video Game (SFTV) program on Berklee Valencia, and our chance to expose our talent and acquire knowledge on the last year.
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Experiences Begotten of a Lack Thereof
Michael J. Van Slyke
2018This Project serves two purposes: the first being a journal, providing a full account of my actions, artistic decisions and final results, with the second purpose as a self-critique and analysis of my performance throughout the course of the project. I opted to score music to a drone shoot of the Wind Rivers, Wyoming. However, the video needed to be edited to an appropriate length which by the nature of the act doubled somewhat as a spotting session. My first draft I ultimately scrapped; one of my greatest weaknesses is with the digital half of music and music production so I altered my project which was originally designed as an orchestral work to that of hybrid score. I needed to be able to orchestrate from MIDI faster, so I took the time to experiment with drafting software. For an extra challenge I wrote the score to demand special additions to my mix. My intention is that my work and assessment will provide insight and a guide to future composers who similarly have faced these challenges.
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In The Beginning
Belén Vives Velo de Antelo
2018The process of musical creation of my London recording project In the beginning. This thesis not only describes the different stages in the composition of a musical piece, such as creation of the main motifs, orchestration, edition or conducting, but also offers an approach to the subject of marrying music to visual media, making briefs reflections about topics as the close relationship between music and mathematics or the importance of developing your own voice as a composer.
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Nirvana
Gexuan Xie
2018This thesis described the process of the whole London recording session, the script writing, the composing process, recording preparation, post production and suggestions for future film music writing and recordings of the recording sessions in studios. I wrote a script for my London recording session, and scored music for it. In the thesis, I explained how I write a script, and what are some inspirations of my composition, and how I tried to score without pictures. Then I prepared Pro Tools session, score and parts and conducting for the recording session. After the recording, I mixed the session and realised what can be improved in my composition and how to arrange the orchestra will make it sound better. I hope this paper could help future students to get a clear idea of the process of London recording and be prepared for it.
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Nostalgia: From Visual Inspiration to Final Composition
Jing Zhang
2018This thesis described the methods of finding a video, the composing process, recording preparation, post-production and suggestions for future recordings of the recording session at London AIR Studios. I used a time-lapse video called “ERRONKARI - Pyrenean Paradise” from Vimeo and did a rescore. The original music was composed by Vanessa Garde. In the thesis, I explained how I tried to find a video and why I choose this video, and what are some inspirations of my composition. I came up with a flute melody as theme one and the piece was developed based on two main themes. Then I prepared Pro Tools session, score and parts and conducting for the recording session. After the recording, I mixed the recording with the help of experiences gained from a previous mixing project for the Pac-Man anniversary animated short. After the recording, I realized what can be improved in my composition to make the orchestra sounds better, and I proposed some suggestions for future recordings. I hope this thesis will help future students to get a clear idea of the process of final recording and be well prepared for it.