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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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.
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MAIN STREET’S FILM SCORE: Trend fusion in search of a dissident cinema
Nerea Alberdi
2017This study has two main objectives. The first of these is intimately attached to the composer, Kosma, and lies in finding out the main features of his hungarian-french contribution to the typically casticist, folkloric and symphonist music of the Spanish 1950’s cinema, as well as locating and connecting his work to the context, establishing a comparative framework between Kosma’s work and his Spanish, American and European peers’s film scores, in order to set up parallels and differences between them, and study the first contribution of a "French"avant-garde composer to our cinema. For that purpose we will analyze the soundtrack of Main Street in depth, with the aim of identifying the most relevant features of the music itself and the relationship between music and picture. Previously, we will conduct a broad study on the context of the work: the culture situation, with special attention to cinema, during the first two decades of Francoism, and the different film music models that consolidated during the 1940s and 50s, which were mainly based on a dichotomy between the European authorial music, and the American industrialist one. The second objective of this work encompasses not only Kosma’s music, but also the movie’s diegetic preexisting music, selected probably by Bardem himself. It lies in discovering to what extent and by which procedures Main Street’s score contributes to the movie’s political detractor character and its realistic and testimonial purpose.
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In Search of Forgiveness: The Throne
Michael Wonyoung Choi
2017In this paper, I will analyze the compositions by Jun Seok Bang in the historical period drama movie The Throne (2015) because Bang brings together elements of Korean traditional music with western orchestration in strategic ways to strengthen the emotional narrative of the film for the contemporary Korean audiences and beyond. More specifically, I will analyze two songs that are central to portraying the key concept of the film: forgiveness. These two songs reflect the stages of forgiveness from anger to sadness. I will highlight how the composer achieved emotional effects through his musical choices in instrument use and orchestration.
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The Good the Bad and the Ugly: An Inside Look into one of Hollywood’s Greatest Scores
Jonathan Nathaniel Durham
2017How did "The Good the Bad and the Ugly" become what it is today?
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The sound of Thomas Newman: Planned or Accidental?
Iran Garcia
2017Analysis of Thomas Newman’s artistry, compositional approach and creative tendencies.
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Orchestral Emotions
Joaquín García
2017This paper will analyze the cue Test Drive from the movie How to Train your Dragon and it will demonstrate which elements the composer uses to represent the characters’ feelings. The study will examine which specific melodies and instruments are associated with each feeling. The proposal is to find the compositional technique that the composer employs to associate each emotion with a specific melody or instrument, and therefore be able to reproduce these techniques in future compositions.
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Dorian Mode: An Examination of Its Usage and Context In Film Music
Sean Goldman
2017It is the goal of the paper to identify the aspects of Dorian that allow for its frequent and effective use. Since the practice of music notation, the pitch set currently understood as Dorian has been used as a prominent scale with a wide range of usages. Ultimately, the underlying thesis indicates that the Dorian church mode’s large range of affective qualities and general versatility is the product of its underlying inherent neutrality.
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SCORING WITH SOUND: EVOKING THE DESOLATION OF THE AMERICAN FRONTIER IN THE HOMESMAN
Christopher Heckman
2017The shifting dynamic toward a more involved approach to film scoring is glaringly evident in Marco Beltrami’s work for the 2014 western drama, The Homesman. Beltrami’s involvement in the early stages of the project’s production and his propensity for adopting unorthodox, innovative approaches to sound work in symbiosis with the other aspects of the film to create a richer, fuller, and more meaningful piece of cinema. In the body of this paper, I will aim to analyze Marco Beltrami’s work on The Homesman to better understand the processes and logic he utilized to create this phenomenal score and the effect his increased involvement had on the overall narrative of the film.
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Minimalist compositions on maximum production: The interstellar score and its storytelling
Luis Ariel Juarez Guzman
2017On this paper, we will focus on this storytelling approach and how the production side of it gives more resources for effective storytelling. We will see how music was used in the film, the structure of the themes, the unconventional timbres of the score, the mix, and much more to see how all of the decisions are based on one premise: To help tell the story of the film.
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Narrative analysis and comparison of two scores by Jerry Goldsmith and Tangerine Dream for the movie LEGEND by Ridley Scott
Nikita Kamenskiy
2017There are a lot of movies for analysing, but I choose movie LEGEND by Ridley Scott. When you watching a movie sometimes you think: “I wish in this moment was another scene, or why director not showing more about this character?” Well, Ridley Scott gives a lot of opportunities to find out more and more about this movie because there was released several versions of it. I took two most popular versions that are European version (director’s cut) with Jerry Goldsmith score owned by 20 Century Fox and American Theatrical version with Tangerine Dream score owned by Universal. I will analyse how different music blends for the same picture and what feeling it brings for both versions. How small changes in picture making influence for the score, music approach and story line.
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Diversified ways of approaching distinct instrumentation and arrangements for The Witcher 3 and their predominant influence in the Video Game
Anish Emmanuel Kanti Mahanthi
2017Through detailed analysis, I will identify and compare various cue’s taken from all zones in the game with regard to use of slavic instrumentation and vocals, orchestration/arrangements, with melodic and harmonic structure. Furthermore, certain methods of implementation, use of diegetic score and song scoring will be touched upon in correlation to the analysis in order to identify how a sense of immersion is created in the video game.
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Themes of the Halo Trilogy: The application, significance and development of thematic material in Halo: Combat Evolved, Halo 2 and Halo 3
King Heng Leung
2017Is it worth it to investigate music from a video game? Unlike linear non- interactive music for visual media such as films and television, video game music is somewhat restrained by the essential interactivity, limiting its horizons of melody and harmony, probably leading some to criticize the simple and looped nature of video game music. One can argue that the Halo series/franchise has grown to massive popularity because of its unique combination of characters, plot, gameplay and art direction – one simply cannot resist being a super armored soldier shooting different aliens across the galaxy and on gigantic ring structures called Halo. But I strongly believe that Halo’s music also plays a huge part in its success; for the player conquers the galaxy and protects Earth with allies of orchestral rock and roll, choral and synth-y ambience etc... With this interest I would like to show the reader how themes are used in the Halo trilogy and how they help to connect the three episodes of the game and enhance various plot points for a game that tells a story a little more than shooting things.
