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 use of Japanese instruments in western style music
Yurie Minakata
2017Analysis of Kobo and the Two Strings (2016).
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MUSIC COGNITION: EMOTIONS AND PSYCHOLOGY IN PASCAL GAIGNE’S SOUNDTRACK FOR THE BASQUE FILM “LOREAK”
Paula Olaz Moratinos
2017“Loreak” (2015) a Basque film by J.M. Goenaga and J. Garaño tells a human story about relationships and hidden emotions. Pascal Gaigne developed universal concepts that help the visual aspect and immerses the viewer, especially (audio wise) in a deep self-journey to his/her own emotions, that is, emotions and concepts that every human has experienced: “Flowers, bodies, souls, thoughts, secrets, vibrations, breaths, silents, shadows, presences”. Would the listener be able to recognize the different concepts that Pascal Gaigne has developed without knowing them beforehand? If so, what are the reasons that make the listener identify these concepts? How does he succeed to transmit these emotions through the music? Is it the use of different textures, and if so, what tools are determinant to achieve that The purpose of this thesis is to carry out a research into music cognition and work on Pascal Gaigne’s music in order to support the idea of universal common patterns shared among humans, musically speaking. Moreover, the effectiveness of Pascal’s music in relation to the concepts raised in the movie will be analysed. Therefore, the psychological aspect of the music will be analysed, and special attention will be paid to the arousal of different emotions of this soundtrack.
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Musical mutiny: Potemkin as a film scoring experimental stage in 21st century
Mauricio Ribeiro de Vasconcelos
2017This thesis aims to make a comparative analysis between different music scores written for Battleship Potemkin. The film, directed in 1925 by Russian filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein, is considered a landmark in film history by a large part of historians and researchers. Many of the techniques used today in filmmaking are due to experiments and innovations translated by Eisenstein in this film and in others produced by him by the time.
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Everybody’s Gotta Learn Sometime
Ricky Schweitzer
2017Understanding the foundational bonds between music and memory in "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind."
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Slumdog Millionaire: A Score that Broke Boundaries
Samarth Srinivasan
2017In the Academy Award winning score for Slumdog Millionaire, A. R. Rahman combined electronic music, Indian classical music, orchestral music, and other styles into one unified score that takes these styles out of their context. Rahman also used a unique compositional process, which combined Bollywood and Hollywood styles of film scoring with a heavy empahsis on collaboration. In my thesis, I would like to explore how Rahman weaves these different ideas to create the score.
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Transitions Across Film Music History
Scott Stinson
2017This project will analyze the likenesses and idiosyncrasies of transitional and compositional devices utilized by film composers of various eras.
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ZOOTOPIA: How Does Music Make A Statement For Diversity In The Modern Society
Ho-Ling Tang
2017Diversity is a big topic in the movie Zootopia, in which music plays an tremendously important role in presenting the concept. This essay aims to identify and investigate the different musical styles that influence the score, how the various styles are put together, and how these influences are translated for the storytelling purpose in the film.
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Storytelling and the Hidden Force: An analysis of Superman: The Movie
Christian Tristan
2017Storytelling is an ancient art that inevitably impacts our lives everyday. From mundane conversations with one another, to the music we listen to, to the television series we watch, and the movies we see, storytelling permeates society’s atmosphere. Furthermore, storytelling is an entity that contains great potential to transform people’s lives. If the audience is effectively engaged, the storyteller wields the ability to frighten them, make them cry, laugh, sing, yearn, and hope. However, in modern day visual storytelling there is a hidden force that the storyteller must consider. Regardless if the storytelling is facilitated through a movie or television series, if the hidden force is not combined in synergy, storytelling can substantially lose efficacy. This hidden force is the emotional driving entity behind every legendary movie and it is known as the soundtrack. So how effective would an award-winning movie be without the soundtrack? In my analysis, I will be examining “Superman: The Movie” (1978), which was awarded a Special Achievement Academy Award for Visual Effects, nominated for an Academy Award in Best Sound, Best Film Editing, and Best Music, Original Score. Composed by John Williams, how does the soundtrack function together with the movie to forge a story that not only reached critical acclaim, but that also facilitated hope to many individuals?
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Color and Music : Association of Music and Color in The Grand Budapest Hotel
Lu Wang
2017When my first time to watch The Grand Budapest Hotel, the strong color comparison and unique narrative music texture tightly catch my attention. I’m curious about why this combination of color and music can make me so impressed. Then it generated my idea of this paper.
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An Enduring Legend: The Cultural Effect of Thematic and Interactive Music in The Legend of Zelda
Sahlia Wong
2017This paper will focus on the world of The Legend of Zelda in particular, one of the oldest and most celebrated video game franchises of all time, beloved by casual gamers and dedicated fans alike, sometimes to the level of cult following. The thematic and interactive music of Zelda plays a significant role in establishing its identity as a major game franchise with an influential cultural effect. To examine this phenomenon, let us explore several principal musical themes and their treatments throughout selected games, primarily: Ocarina of Time, Twilight Princess and Skyward Sword. These are three of the most recent and popular titles of the franchise. So far, they contain some of the most developed versions of the principal themes and are therefore among the most interesting, musically speaking. Furthermore, by examining aspects of game music such as timbre and colour, orchestration and instrumentation, meter and tempo, harmony and melody, tempo, texture, style, technique and implementation, we can see why these principal themes or leitmotifs are so effective in establishing identity and loosely track their shape end evolution throughout the previously mentioned titles.
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When The New Gun Resonates: Music Connections between The Good, the Bad and the Ugly and The Hateful Eight
Wai-Yi Wong
2017In this thesis, I am going to show the music connections between The Good, the Bad and the Ugly and The Hateful Eight. I will firstly talk about Morricone’s film scoring approach in Western Movies, in terms of composition techniques and instrumentation. Examples will be listed from previous western movies he has scored, i.e. A Fistful of Dollars and For A Few Dollars More as these two are closely related to The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. Then I will talk about how he used the same approach in writing music for these two movies, in the same list of category as in the discussion of Morricone’s film scoring approach in Western movies. All these will prove the new gun – The Hateful Eight resonates with the old gun – The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.
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The Sound of Psychological Thriller
Paolo Annunziato Minardi
2016In this paper I will be discussing the similarity between The Imitation Game and the 2001 classic A Beautiful Mind in terms of plot, character development and soundtrack. The Imitation Game is therefore a terrific film to analyze considering the fact that it could be studied in parallel with the aforementioned acclaimed classic from 2001 as a modern day take on the following topic: Does the score of the film The Imitation Game successfully portrays the internal struggles, thoughts, enlightenment and ingenious mind of Alan Turing?
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Conceptualizing music alongside characters: Analysis of Gabriel Yared’s scoring technique and his music for Le Hérisson
Susanne Aubert
2016An example of a composer who has always been a great inspiration to me is Gabriel Yared. I find his music to be very interesting because in my opinion it adapts so well to picture and characters and I think he is very good at capturing the essence of the movie with his music and making the audience become extremely involved in the story. As a composer Gabriel Yared has a very unusual way to go about it when he composes music for film and through this research paper the aim would be to gain a better understanding of how he works and what makes him special as a composer.
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Music Representation of the Science of Deduction
Joaquim Badia Arumi
2016This paper examines the musical representation of the Science of Deduction throughout the many cinematographic adaptions of Doyle’s novels of Sherlock Holmes during the last 50 years and how they relate to the novels. The aim of this thesis is to ascertain whether David Arnold and Michael Price’s musical characterisation of the Science of Deduction is the first example that represents in an all-rounded way the deductive reasoning process as described by Doyle in his novels and as perceived by the reader. While the overall quality of the OST in each example is never in question, personal opinions are given throughout when it comes to the characterisation of the detective’s deductions.
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Balancing Innovation and Reiteration
Johnathan Booy
2016Exploring Creative Liberty in The Peanuts Movie.
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Stand Fast, Stand Strong, Stand Together
Andrew Brady
2016Since the release of ME 1 in 2007, the Mass Effect universe has rapidly expanded: two sequels, three mobile platform spin-off games, five graphic novels, ten comic books, two film adaptations, as well as the parallel Andromeda series. As such, the Mass Effect mythos is immense and highly refined; for readers unfamiliar with the series, a general summary of the storyline of each game can be found in Appendix A. This analysis will try to streamline all necessary story-related information in as straightforward a manner as possible, but the use of some story-specific terminology, however, is unavoidable. Moving forward, all underlined terms will be defined in greater detail in the Glossary of Terms found in Appendix B. While referring to the index is not necessary for general comprehension, it will enhance understanding of the plot for those unfamiliar with Mass Effect.
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HYBRID ORCHESTRATION: The use of samples as integration to the acoustic recording in Maurizio Malagnini’s Music
Stefano Caiazzo
2016Since 1983, the world of MIDI has developed to a point to redifine the entire process of creating music. Through the years this has led the client (such as a film director) to expect high quality mock-ups that give a true representation of the final work, while before that the composer used to play at the piano a minimal idea of a larger scale work. Convincing a client that spending the money about to be invested on the movie was worthy was a matter of trust, while nowadays technology has given the opportunity to the composer to fully prove his abilities. Having said that, technology has led to the issue that while in the analog era was enough to write the score to achieve a complicated orchestral arrangement, now the composer has to also be able in sequence it. This led to an impoverishment of film music, that sees less and less the advent of new composers like John Williams. But sample libraries and the sequencing process should not be seen as an obstacle: with the right tools the composer can still be able to produce fantastic music with no excessive efforts. Also, samples are a fantastic weapon in the hand of the composer to deliver a good product saving time and allowing him to use the budget the way he prefers with no need of having to record every single instrument included in the composition. In this thesis I will talk about all this factors as seen from the perspective of an acclaimed composer in the UK such as Maurizio Malagnini, whom I had the priviledge of studying with for many years. Most of the content of this thesis comes from an interview I had with him on April 29th 2016 in his house in London.
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BEYOND THE WARDROBE
Ben Cherney
2016This paper analyzes Harry Gregson William's soundtrack for the Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe. Specifically it examines both the inclusion and use of non-standard instrumental color in the sonic palette of the soundtrack, and whether said inclusion helps to establish the world of Narnia as a physical, non-earth location. A two-fold analysis is presented, focusing first on the contextual placement of timbral elements, and second on the development and repeition of thematic material.
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A Beautiful Mind: Using music to describe the mental life of a genius
Veronika Davies
2016The aim of this paper is to analyze Horner’s soundtrack to A Beautiful Mind by particularly focusing on what effects it has on the audiences’ understanding of the film. Since the movie itself is rather complex and can be interpreted in many different ways, due to its various conscious and subconscious levels, this paper will look at how these levels are coded into the score and how the music enhances the experience of the viewer.
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A NEW APPROACH TO MELANCHOLY IN VIDEO GAMES
Alejandro Del Pozo Franco
2016Having won two academy awards for best original score in two consecutive years, two BAFTA awards, Grammys and several others, Gustavo Santaolalla has become one of the world’s most accomplished and renowned composers in the modern industry. In June 2013, Video Game Developer Naughty dog released a new game: titled The last of us, published by Sony. It received worldwide critical acclaim being the fifth highest rated Playstation 3 game on Metacritic, which also received the “Game of the year” award. Gustavo Santaolalla was chosen to be the composer and his musical approach along with the game has been considered to be one of the best video game scores ever made. This paper will analyze several techniques used, which instruments were considered, and also how he approaches his music to be mixed in several game situations, changing the mood according to what the player is experiencing, providing a new psychological and revolutionary effect. A new approach to melancholy in video games.
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Blurred Boundaries
Virginia de Vasconcelos Kilbertus
2016Navigating the Past, Present and Future of Jane Eyre.
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The Interaction Between Eastern and Western Musical Elements
Yi Dong
2016The purpose of this paper is to analyze how eastern and western musical elements interact with each other in the music from the 2008 American computer-animated action comedy martial arts film Kung Fu Panda, produced by DreamWorks Animation and distributed by Paramount Pictures. It was directed by John Stevenson and Mark Osborne. The music was written by the RCP (Hans Zimmer Remote Control Productions). The main composers are Hans Zimmer and John Powell, with additional music from Henry Jackman and James McKee Smith. The results of this analysis can be used to find out how music can serve as a universal language and apply to film scoring in a better way. The finding may be useful for not only film composers, but also for orchestrators and for people who want to get a better understanding about world music, especially eastern culture and music.
