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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Updating the Future: Reimaging the Sound of Sci-Fi in The Matrix for 2020
Luke A. Williams
2020The objective of this project is to re-imagine the musical representation of The Matrix’s dark vision of the future, with acknowledgement of the 20 years of musical, cinematic and societal development that have taken place since it’s release. The project’s first component is an excerpt of the original screenplay, which was chosen in place of the motion picture so that the music could inform the images rather than being attributed to a vision of the future from 1999. The remaining part is an original score written to this excerpt, composed with the objective of creating a sonic world that reflects the powerful underlying themes of The Matrix, and generating a modern musical interpretation of the world of The Matrix, with the additional challenge of achieving this objective through exclusively orchestral textures.
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The Making of BBC Earth, The Hunt: Sardine Feeding Frenzy
Enhui Xia
2020This project represents my progress and achievement this year in Berklee Master in Scoring for Film, TV and Video Games. This paper records my process of research, choosing the project, composition and my personal experience. Each course I took in SFTV, whether it is composition for different genres, MIDI sequencing, conducting, orchestration or sound designing, have provided me strong support in completing this project. I’ve been through some difficulties working on this project, but good things are a long time in coming. In this special circumstance which COVID-19 swept across the world, college was closed and the recording in London Air Studio was delayed to an undetermined date, I am looking forward to the final recording of this Master program and pray for peace and health for mankind.
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Spring
Jue (Jade) Zhuang
2020This project represents the culminating experience of my one-year study at Berklee College of Music. Through this project, I will show my learning experience and how I learned to promote myself to communicate and cooperate with the directors. I will show the creation method of how I work on a video from a comprehensive perspective. I will analyze my composition and show my ways of thinking regarding harmony, orchestration, music production, conducting, etc.
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Rescoring a Blockbuster Avengers: Age of Ultron
Laura Blasco Llopis
2019This project shows the culmination of a year full of hard work and different experiences happened in our Masters in Scoring for Film, Television and Video Games. Going through all the processes that we have been taught during the year, we started from finding a video to compose for, preparing a tempo map and markers, doing different versions and preparing a proper Mock-Up, write a score, record in one of the most important studios in the whole world, based in London, and editing and mixing the cue to premiere it finally. I come from a classical background, and some of the parts of this process sound kind of easy to do. But it is true that before doing this degree, I always composed directly on a score, and doing it first on a DAW and then writing down the score was one of my main concerns. But knowing that the goal was going to be recording with top musicians at Air Studios, a famous recording stage where composers like Alan Menken or Danny Elfman recorded, I knew the hard work would be worth it. I only hope that this experience can help future students to understand better what the SFTV Master’s Degree means, and share with everyone what my journey to London meant.
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Sintel the Dragon and Our Journey
Marco Chiavetta
2019When I first bumped into the movie Sintel, I was astonished by the many analogies I was able to find with my life. That story really strokes me. In this paper, I am going to describe the whole process starting from the early stage. I will talk about how I found the video and how I organized the entire music production process. Information about the music composition, the fantastic experience we lived in Air Studio and the post-production work I did on the recording are all included in this presentation.
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Smash and Grab: Rescore
Liu Chung Fan
2019This CE paper focuses on my progress of scoring for an animated short film - starting with contacting the studio, composing for the short film, recording in London and ending with mixing and mastering. This project is not only about my progress, but also my inspiration and mindset while working on this music piece. My music background and the inspiration that I had over years are also discussed in this paper. The main reason for choosing an animated short film is because animation, as a genre, allows a composer to show his/her compositions skills. regarding the complexity and constantly changes on emotions.
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Disorder: Animation “Science Soldiers” Trailer
Tianqi He
2019Disorder is the final project I did this year for the London recording. In fact, the type of the music is not what I am fond of. Nor do I write this style in usual. But I believe it is end up being my best work so far, and I am proud of it, since it marks a starting point of my career life. I am trying to take the challenge of accepting what I have and writing something I am not familiar with, instead of looking for a style of music I am good at and compose. I had so much fun and was fully enlightened during the work. This reflective paper is about the whole process of the culminating experience project, starting from preparation before composition, steps of writing and experience of recording in London Air Studio to final production, including analysis of the score and difficulties I had experienced during the work. Then I will present a short reflection on my music, discussing about any self-evaluation I have in general and what I can do to improve.
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Spring: Self-Reflection Through Rescore
Jong Ho Choi
2019The purpose of this project is to compose a score to a picture to be recorded at Air Studio in London at the end of the academic year. This paper includes the process I went through from searching for a collaborating video to mixing and delivering the final mix, and a sincere reflection of myself as a composer and a human being. This project is to ascertain the fulfilment of Degree of Master of Music in Scoring for Film, Television and Video Games at Berklee College of Music.
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Rise: The making of the London Recording in AIR Studios
Chin Hsuan Liu
2019This project represents the culmination after a year's worth of study in Berklee College of Music. The main focus of this project is to provide a making of the cue for short film “Rise” and me as a film composer. I explained from the very beginning how I find and search for a video, how I prepared before composing and then the process of composing, orchestrating, the preparation of score and parts for orchestra recording session, the preparation of conducting for the cue, the London recording in the Air Studios, the post-production about mixing, and to the conclusion of the learning journey and this final project. This project is designed to ensure fulfillment of Degree of Master of Music in Scoring for Film, Television and Video Games at Berklee College of Music.
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The War Within: A Musical Introspective Approach of an Artist’s View of The War Within
Lefteris Ioannou
2019The War Within, represents a reflection of the way I choose to think and live my life, which led to the composition of this objective composition recorded in London, AIR studios. This is the second time that a project “reveals itself” to me as a sort of realization. I am on a conscious path of re-awakening myself from the illusion we call our life here on Earth, and all the belief systems of good/bad, right/wrong that come with this illusion. I believe that as a society we have grown to call normal what in truth is actually abnormal. Tradition is passed on from generation to generation without necessarily questioning its value and ground on which rules we abide to. We consider fear, judgement (meaning condemnation) competition, negation and separation, normal in our life. Although, deep inside our hearts there is a voice that wants us to break free of this way of living. Fear of the unknown and the attachment to feeling comfortable is extremely difficult for us to tackle and change. We base our lives on sayings such as “no pain, no gain” and within the subconscious the term “pain” is embedded. In fact, pain is considered something normal, while true joy of living, is considered something that only a few lucky people are able to experience in abundance. What if for example we said “no passion, no gain”? Our educational system, from a very young age does not teach us to find who we truly are, what are passion is, and to follow it with commitment. The system wants us to be moulded into what is considered normal, because normal feels safe and normal is accepted by the majority of people. We stray away from who and what we truly are, until the time comes in our life that we are “forced” to start searching for who and what we genuinely desire. All this and more is what The War Within is about.
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TWO DIFFERENT EYES
Juseung Ju Lee
2019This project represents the culmination of my one year of study at Berklee Valencia as well as my personal project ‘TWO DIFFERENT EYES.’ This paper is an account of how I started the project, how I struggled in the middle, and how i finished until the last recording in London, how I worked with my older brother as a both family and co-worker as well as my philosophy of life. This paper briefly discusses how my life was and How I have overcome my difficulties. This paper contains the script, some parts of scores, and DAW screenshots. This paper is more focused on how I developed my thematic materials, how the development process of documentary, my struggles as a composer for documentary as well as my struggles of transition between music. This paper contains the recording process of my voice, Budapest recording, and trailer for the documentary as well. As a result, Along with our success of trailer, I will finish my documentary until the beginning of July. I am strongly excited to finish this project and share it all around the world.
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Love Never Let You Down
Moa Kang
2019The purpose and intent of this project is not only to reflect on the things that I learned and achieved in Berklee College of Music, especially focusing on my London Recording Project, for my maturity in musical aspects as a composer , but also to suggest the better way to record in London Air Studio in the future. To do this, I will describe how I prepared the London recording specifically, how I overcome the difficulties in this process, and Musical Analysis related to each scene of the film. Finally, I will explain how all these processes affected my musical growth.
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Murderer With The Mask
Srikant Krishna
2019The 3-minute musical piece Murderer with the Mask is a very personal and intimate track, which reflects my musical personality in its truest sense, as of today. I have always been fascinated by Thriller and Horror movies and this track is a reflection of all those emotions, experiences and passion for such genre. The track is also a well-thought of and constructed score that incorporates methodical musical phrasing, experimental yet relatable motifs along with clichés that have been proven to amplify the desired emotion through decades of successful film scores. I am proud of my work on this score, since it incorporates analysis of dozens of scores, my Indian theoretical ideas of scales along with a professional film scoring approach. The pleasure of recording in one of the esteemed studios of Hollywood was the icing on the cake for this thesis. This piece has prepared me to take care of the complete end-end production of a music score for any media right from concept to final deliver.
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The Write of Spring
Oscar Lundberg
2019This thesis is based on the process of composing and recording a three minute piece of music for a short film. In my paper I outline the stages of my compositional process and describe how the music changed over the course of the project. I also reflect on the process of writing and recording the music, the challenges I faced as well as on the most to me noteworthy moments, positive and negative. This project has helped me develop my technical and artistic skills and has made me aware of ways to improve my compositional process on many different aspects. Through this project I have also increased my understanding of the creative decisions that go into composing music for film.
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Woman of War: Scoring to Captain Marvel
Julie McCarthy
2019Woman of War is a final project that sought to reflect my challenges, dreams, as well as establishing a sense of who I am as a composer. As an indecisive individual whom grew from two different cultures, (American and Chinese) I wanted to find a piece that truly identifies who I was. The project is a reflection of what I have learned from Berklee College of Music in mixture with my childhood dreams of being able to write for Superheroes in the near future. This thesis explains my entire process from inspiration, to theme, and finally to screen. In addition, I included an analysis on the similarities between my source of inspiration, how the music reflects through film, and an layered orchestration analysis.
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Cosmos Laundromat - First Cycle: A Reflective Thesis
Jon-Joseph Nepaul
2019This culminating experience paper reflects the process of identifying a congruent thesis film, studying and analyzing the film, scoring the music, preparing the score along with all the parts for the orchestra to play, practicing conducting the score appropriately for a recording session, recording the composition at a professional studio in London, and mixing the recording which, as a result, fashions a broadcast ready cue. The film that was chosen was “Cosmos Laundromat: First Cycle”. This animated film proved to be a challenging one that taught me many valuable lessons. As a result of my experience, I am able to fully compose and produce broadcast ready music for movies, television shows and video games.
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Underwater Landscape: From the Image to the Music
Diego Alejandro Osorio Ruiz
2019At the beginning, when I just realize about the final CE project recording, I started looking for a video that can really match the idea that I had in mind, I wanted to compose an amazing piece that would be able to translate all my orchestration, composition, and screen reading abilities that I have, as well as all the improvements I made the whole year in Berklee. With this in mind I told my tutor that I was planning to compose for three videos instead of one. All the composition process would take place in the Digital Work Station (DAW) Cubase in which I was still getting used to, instead of Logic or Digital Performer programs in which I have big experience working on, with this I wanted to force myself to learn a new process with this new tool. After composing for the three videos I was planning to select one of them and start creating the score and parts as well as cleaning some of the orchestration in my score editor Sibelius. This I just mention was my first plan and I started doing it with more than one month in advance.
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The Lament
Christopher J. Pohl
2019In the 2018-2019 school year at the Berklee College of Music Valencia class, I have been given the task to produce a project with the purpose of scoring to visual media. This includes composition, orchestration, music preparation, conducting, and mixing. The primary focus of this project is to go through all of the typical tasks of scoring for visual media and handling the preparation and execution for working with fifty-one piece orchestra at Air Studios in London. This paper represents all of the creative and technical decisions I have made in order to execute the entire process. Thus, representing my fulfillment of the curriculum in the Master’s Program for Scoring to Film, TV, and Video Games.
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Cadence of the Swarm: The Creative Process of Scoring to Picture
Cordane Richardson
2019This project highlights the creative process of scoring to picture by detailing the various stages of production. I believe that it is important for all persons involved in the creation of visual narratives to better understand the amount of work that is required to produce a quality underscore. For my culminating experience project, I followed the steps of the creative process and composed an original, three minute cue which was then recorded at AIR Studios’ Lyndhurst Hall. I will make a copy of the full score, audio recording, and video with synced audio of my original composition available for analysis in conjunction with this paper. This endeavor has been a successful one which has allowed me to learn a great deal about scoring to picture at the highest level. I hope that this project will provide valuable insight into the world of scoring for visual media and that aspiring composers and other visual media collaborators alike will better appreciate the level of skill and dedication required to be a media composer.
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A Diamond ́s Roots: A Journey of Introducing Canary Folklore to Film Music
Celia Rivero Santana
2019A Diamond ́s Roots is a very personal project, born from the merger of cinematic music and the folklore from Gran Canaria, the place of my birth . I composed the music for a 3 minutes video-spot that shows the island in a really different way than usual, like a fairytale. Through this paper, I would like to display the process of analyzing every little detail of the pictures, narration and sound design, to compose the music for it, as well as how I did the fusion between epic and fantasy genre combined with the island folklore. Furthermore, I also explained about my experience with the directors and producers of the short movie, explaining the problems that we had and how we resolved them. Finally, I showed the more technical part: from mockup to orchestration, how organize we must with all the preparation be before the recording at Air Studios in London (score, parts, conducting, etc.), during it (be always there before your recording time, to place correctly each part..) and after it (to organize all the material and mix it). I hope that this can help future students to be more prepared for this kind of recording sessions, as well as to know a little how to deal with directors and producers.
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Alma Negra: The resurgence of a history and culture erased
Raquel Sànchez
2019This project has helped me to make an investigation about some historical facts that have been erased in which we talk about the origin of flamenco, its influences and with this the birth of a new style, Afro-Flamenco. It has helped me to develop my skills to the front and management of a large project, which needed a lot of pre-production. It also has to be able to meet many people who have collaborated in this project and without those people it would not have been possible. To be able to develop my skills as a composer and orchestrator and find my own way and style, also know what I want to do in the future and know who I am. Finally to be able to have the opportunity to record with the orchestra of Air Studios in London and face to conduct the work in front of some wonderful musicians. a very enriching experience, which I will not forget.
