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 Truman Show: A Musical Analysis
Sabine Ndalamba
2016The paper will consist of a musical analysis of co-composers Burkhard Dallwitz and Phillip Glass’s score to the film The Truman Show. The first section will consist of a brief plot summary as well as a look at the overall relationship of the music to the narrative of the story. The other sections will cover a more detailed analysis of the musical themes, especially as they related to the main characters of the story. There final section will examine the unique artistic voice each composer brings to the film, both as individuals and in the synergy of their collaboration. The musical portion of the culminating experience will consisted of a composition to a student film that is currently in production.
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Rayman Origins: A Musical Melting Pot
Luke Peña
2016Video games often require a large variety of musical styles to match the content of the game, but blending them together is not always simple. This paper analyzes the score of Rayman Origins by Christophe Héral to find what techniques he used to bring cohesion to his eclectic music. Direct study of the music with a focus on instrumentation and orchestration was used as the basis of the analysis, with some outside research done to identify specific traits of various instruments and genres.
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The Master: How Krzysztof Penderecki’s Polymorphia Informs One of Jonny Greenwood’s Main Themes for the Film
Justin Snively
2016This essay will set out to analyze the main musical theme in the film “The Master.” My interest in this research is due equally to my admiration for Greenwood’s music and Paul Thomas Anderson’s films. I find that the squeamish subject matter portrayed in Anderson’s films is complemented well by the indeterminate, and sometimes chaotic orchestral music written by Greenwood. By focusing on the reoccurring theme in the film, Overtones, I will show how it is informed by Krzysztof Penderecki’s concert work, Polymorphia. While this analysis will go into theoretical detail with the time constraints provided, I find that it would be beneficial to complete a thorough analysis of the whole soundtrack and compare it with more of Penderecki’s work.
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Trash Planet and the Sounds of Dancing in Space: An analysis of Disney/PIXAR’s WALL•E as a modern-day silent film
Shane Stever
2016WALL•E has much to offer its audience. The movie explores many good moral themes, has stunning visuals, and impeccable music. Perhaps its most interesting quality is its lack of dialogue. In the entire movie, there are 862 spoken words. This is a small fraction of the amount of dialogue in other films. It is necessary then, that the film rely other auditory sources as well as visual communication to tell the story and relay its information. Films from the Silent Films era function in this same way, but completely relying on non-verbal communication, short of the speech cards that pop up at very important moments. This idea highly motivated me to study WALL•E and its use of music. My main focus in this paper will be on analyzing Thomas Newman’s music in WALL•E, and how the uses of music parallel those found in silent films.
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The Collaboration of James Newton Howard and Hans Zimmer
Niklaus Vogel
2016In terms of organisation and creativity; how did they share their work and how did this affect the score?
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Fabula Nova Crystallis: The Music of Final Fantasy XIII
Kevin Won
2016When analyzing music in video games, a few considerations must be made. Compared to film and television, story-based video games often have much more footage than there is music. As a result, directors have to get creative about how the music is created or implemented. With certain games inheriting these characteristics we associate from television and film, how does the role of the composer and how we storytell through our music fit in? In this paper, using Square Enix’s Final Fantasy XIII, the connection between the story and the music will be analyzed in-depth. As games have been growing as a artistic medium, my analysis will be based on how Final Fantasy XIII approaches the problem of staying coherent by utilizing motifs and strategic placement of music in a game.
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A Synthesis of Time: An Analysis of the Music of Assassin’s Creed
Taylor Ambrosio Wood
2016An analysis of the use of different musical stylistic time periods in the video game "Assain's Creed 2".
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The Organ as a Minimalism Resource: A Film Soundtrack & Score Analysis of Interstellar (2014)
Guido Arcella Diez
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Leaping Across Clichés and Thematic Boundaries: The Synthesis of an 'Anti-Score' in Bioshock Infinite
Antriksh Bali
2015While most games have a straightforward objective, Bioshock Infinite as a game has been known to skirt the delicate line between being story-oriented and being a video game where the player can choose what to do. This brings forward an interesting opportunity for music to provide a sense of narrative to the game, which helps in establishing the key role of the music across various different levels and locations in the video game. This thesis aims to explore the strong connection between the narrative elements of the characters in the storyline of the game with various themes and motifs found throughout the music score.
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The beauty of simplicity in a score: An analysis of Horner’s Legends of the Fall
María Belén Vivero
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Jonny Greenwood and the Modern Film Score
Julian DW Brink
2015A Critical Analysis of The Ways In Which The Score for "There Will Be Blood" Was A Groundbreaking Addition to The Literature of Film Music.
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Nightmare Before Christmas: Between Cinema, Musical & Rock Musical Elements in Danny Elfman ”The Nightmare Before Christmas”
Michele Busdraghi
2015Danny Elfman is known for his dark, quirky musical style. In the contemporary Hollywood world there are only few composers that can vaunt to posses this personal and unique style. The industrialization of Hollywood’s cinema has created a standardization in the production, including the music department, but Elfman is an exception in the main trend mainly because of his musical background. He is a self-taught musician that came from rock music, that managed to write several very original orchestral scores such as Beetlejuice, Edward Scissorhands, Batman and The Nightmare Before Christmas. How can a person that never studied notation, harmony and orchestration write so much complex and well written music for orchestra? Which are his musical roots, and his masters? Why is The Nightmare Before Christmas so unique and memorable?! In this paper I will answer to these questions focusing on the musical elements that Elfman developed during his career; these approach will bring us back to the beginning, trying to establish musical connections that explain how his style has developed. Some of these connections/relations are direct (for these I will make a graphical representation), others more subtle (non-direct).
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Music in an animated movie with almost no dialogue: Analysis of the soundtrack and score of Wall-E
Bernardo Castro
2015This paper aims to analyze the role of the music within the movie Wall-E, and especially to deconstruct what it is that makes the narrative move forward in a movie that has very little dialogue.
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The Time and Space: Score Analysis and reflections on WALL • E
Emanuele Contis
2015The first hour of Wall-E is a crazily inventive, deliriously engaging and almost wordless silent comedy of the sort that Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton used to make. In almost 100 minutes of movie there are about 80 minutes of music. My analysis focuses mainly on the styles used by Newman and his aesthetic approach to this amazing score.
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“SE7EN” A MUSICAL & PSYCHOLOGICAL ANALYSIS OF HOWARD SHORE’S ORIGINAL SCORE
Peter W. Eddins
2015In the soundtrack for the motion picture “Se7en,” Howard Shore uses simplicity to his advantage, implementing the number seven as a quantitative value into his compositions while still delivering an incredibly powerful and unique score. Whether it be the note length, phrase length, or other serializable musical values, Shore draws upon these aspects throughout the entirety of the film - following the build of intensity with orchestral and electronic elements. All of this aids in creating a thread of continuity that manages to pair the music with the story in a seamless way. To outline some of Shore’s writing and the psychological aspects I will demonstrate his motivic approach with the final product being analyses of sections as they each pertain either to characters or to the seven deadly sins.
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Lullabies and the Labyrinth: Music as Psychological Expression in Pan’s Labyrinth
Larrie Fisher
2015The purpose of this paper is to provide a thorough analysis of Javier Navarrete’s score for Pan’s Labyrinth, as well as a researched argument for the use of music as psychological expression in the film.
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Traditional Scoring Concepts From A Great Film Scoring Era
Casper Ivel
2015Film Soundtrack Analysis Of Leon the Professional (1994).
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ACCORDION, LOTS OF ACCORDION: MICHAEL GIACCHINO’S APPROACH TO SCORING ‘RATATOUILLE’
George Karpasitis
2015The goal of this paper is to identify, analyze and evaluate the compositional techniques used by composer Michael Giacchino in his score for the animated film ‘Ratatouille’ (2007). In the first part, an overview of the film is presented including plot and chapter list. The thesis then examines the music and how it relates to the characters and events in the film. The composer’s influences are identified. In conclusion, the thesis argues that while the influence of early cartoon composers such as Carl Stalling is undeniable, Giacchino takes it a step further by creating emotional arcs and not simply ‘mickey-mousing’ the on-screen action. This thesis hopes to offer an insight into the way of thinking of one of Hollywood’s finest composers.
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Atonement: A case of study
Ana Kasrashvili
2015Diversified ways of approaching instruments and variety of the use of the main motif (fullground) of “Briony’s theme” according to the scenes in “Atonement”.
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The Role of Finishing, Polishing the Film: The Grand Budapest Hotel
Jimin Kim
2015The current study is deliberate to be an analysis of the music and its narrative function for the movie.
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"Isabella" (2006): The approach for Peter Kam in applying Fado’s musical elements and the effectiveness in relating the context of the film
Ching Man Tse
2015This thesis examines Peter Kam’s approach in applying Fado’s musical elements to his film score for ‘Isabella’ (2006) and the effectiveness of his score in relation to the context of the film. It is a study to examine approach in composing music to relate the content and emotion on the film. Also, it provides references for scoring film music in Fado or Portuguese music styles.