Month: October 2015

Lol Hammond – Guest Lecture

In week 3 we had a guest lecture from Lol Hammond who works as a Music Supervisor at Vertigo Films, some of the films he is best recognised for are as follows:

Bronson

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‘It’s All Gone Pete Tong’

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‘London To Brighton’

 

 

 

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‘The Street Dance series, ‘The Football Factory’ and many more.

 

In his lecture he spoke a lot about his role as a music supervisor and important things to keep in mind when working in the industry, such as having a good strong working relationship with film editors and directors as they’re the people that he has to mostly deal directly with most.

He also gave his advice for trying to source and find music for film, adverts and such. He stated that when you have to source music you have to find who has the master copy, so this would be the original composer, and then negotiate a price with them for using the piece of music in the film.When he’s finding who owns the master copy of the music, he emails the three big labels as a first port of call, which are obviously ‘Sony Records’ ‘Warner Bro’s’ and ‘Universal’, or he’ll generally look at PRS licencing.

He spoke about how music budgets for films vary, the producer has to take into acount the entire budget for the film also it depends on the size of the film, how big its production value will be, who’s working on it will depend on how much the composer may ask for it. He said that the average pay for music in a film is between £1500 – £2000 per side, and music for adverts and the opening/ending credits are double due to this being the natural soundtrack to the film that people will recognise.

He also spoke about when negotiating with the composer, and how it can be difficult, he said that the bigger the artist is then generally they have more influence over how their music is used in the film, but overall apparently the it’s a half half negotiation between the Composer and the Producer of the film. This is another reason why a lot of film producers will try and have music sourced from composers that may not be as established, as not only is it cheaper but easier to work with but of course in a high budget film, sometimes you need a large piece of music to acompany it and match the film in a way. He spoke about when he wanted to buy the rights of a certain film he would need to speak to the publishing company and record label to make sure that they agree that the rights to the composition could be sold, and if so how much for.

He continued on to give us some advice for how to get into composing for film ect. He said to try and get into doing music and sound for short films and media pieces, going to film festivals and “Short Film Ciruits”, and from that build a showreel and portfolia of work that we can showcase and distribute.

He finished off his lecture on a light note of how at Vertigo Films they take on interns and gave us his email so that we may apply!

Overall I found this lecture very inspiring, outlining other roles in the industry that I wasn’t aware of and possible roles in the industry that I can get into! I have done work and composition for film and other forms of media before like annimation, so I think I’ve developed a wide view of what to do when it comes to working for media, what can be done and what goes with what. Also running a society through University, I’ve developed quite good negotiation and ‘people skills’. So I think that in hindsight, the role of music supervisor should be something that I should look into a bit more with depth.

Syrian Soundscapes – Further Research and Development

Looking at these two composures they take two very different forms into the representation of what interoperate as Syrian culture in modern day.

 

The first takes a more formalist approach using mostly synthesised material, the only natural element in the piece is the constant use of vocals from documentaries and news reports. In addition the synthesised works build an excellent atmosphere and emphasises tension and a sense of vulnerability. The build up to the climax in the soundscape I find very simplistic yet effective using a dissonant tone that modulates in rate and pitch.

https://soundcloud.com/casspoelstra/syrian-soundscape

 

 

The second one takes a very naturalist approach, it’s more of a composed piece of music than a soundscape that uses recreations of western culture musical styles and instruments like the singing, the strings and the general tonality to the sound piece. Different from the other soundscape this is more of a composed piece of music, but in turn gives it a lot more emotive value and structure. Each element of the piece works in partnership to build an ensemble of sound that almost engulfs the mind, leaving myself yet again feeling lost and senseless.

https://soundcloud.com/daniel-mcbride-2/syria

 

 

I’ve taken these two different approaches into my own idea’s and plan to take elements from each one, using the formalist approach to bring darker tones, atmospheric vibes and dissonance which will enhance this feeling of vulnerability that I want to achieve. Whilst also I want to take organic sounding instruments from a more naturalist style of soundscape to help give the piece it’s structure and push this feeling of empathy on to the audience, getting them to feel and picture themselves in the sense and environment of utter tyranny.

 

From what I can tell at the moment, I think I’m going to take more of a formalist approach to the piece, using naturalist undertones to really set the theme of the soundscape helping structure the piece so the audience knows it’s roots and story into middle eastern culture. The reason behind my thoughts for taking a more formalist approach is that if I want to make an abstract piece of art, I feel that naturalist works of sound art have all taken a similar approach in terms of composure, and the structure is vaguely similar, so I think I should think in an abstract sense formulating sounds and to coincide with the organic and naturalistic structure, use them to form a tangent and dither from the ‘norm’.

Bryan Rudd Guest Lecture

We we’re given a guest lecture by our module and course leader Bryan Rudd, he spoke to us about a radio drama he had produced for BBC Radio 7, it was a five part drama and he spoke about his roles, the problems he encountered throughout the project.

 

Bryan’s roles in the production of the documentary were; Producer, Co-Director, Editor, Technical Production and Music composition.

 

Bryan explained that there were a range of problems with the current project which he had come into and why he had been called in. One of which was the most drastic is he came into the project with 3 months remaining on the 12 month project and he described the project as a mess. Another of the problems was that the budget for the drama was not big enough and the voice actors had already been chosen. Bryan had to make crucial decisions on how he could pull back the project. One of his idea’s was to record in one of the original buildings within the story of which the drama takes place, but the council would not allow that without a sum of £1,500 to be paid. Of course because of the limited budget this was not possible. Instead he recorded it in a local pub where a drunk local was causing too much of a disturbance so Bryan paid him to move elsewhere as he chanted and sung.

 

Through this lecture I learnt that no matter what you do or which projects you work on, you’re bound to run into crucial problems no matter what through the industry and I need to be able to make quick and decisive decisions to over come these matters.

Sound and Visual Art in Representation of Modern Syrian Culture

Project Overview:

For the purposes of this project I plan to create a piece of sound art to co-inside with a visual stimulant which invigorates and replicates the lives and atmosphere of the migrants living in Syria. My aims are to use abstrat forms of sound that will work hand in hand with the piece of media it’s composed and arranged alongside, providing a new form of narrative to engage the audience with, using both elements to create an atmosphere around them of all the middle easterns concepts such as its exotic, mysterious and fascinating values such as the lifestyle, religion and it’s cultural heiritage. But it also aims to uncover and present the other more brutal side of what we generally assosiate with Syria such as the ongoing fear of it’s inhabitants and the warfare and loss that shrouds and is publisiesed so frequently over the media.

 

Aims and Objectives:

The soundscape should consecutively meld between both sides which hold and evoke completly different emotions, idea’s, concepts and views and as a whole be a very transformative piece. For example when the audience watch/listen they should be able to picture themselves in the richer more classically cultural historic city of Demascus, and then in an instant change the scene to the middle of Bagdad.

Going more deeply into the orientalist culture within Syria, I plan to take elements from the contrasting views and forms of culture and incorpirate them within my soundscape. On the more traditionalist side, I want to incopriate and present it’s post-historical value’s such as the religion and the well known erotic belly dancing which to this day still acuratly portrays Arab feminine culture. Whilst on the contrasting side of Syria’s modern assosiation I will look at the fear factor linked and involved with the terrorist orginisations Al-Qaeda and Isis, and audibly present and evoke within the audience the sense of singularity, helplessness and insignificance, from being faced with the unknown and what is out of our understanding.

In short, my aim is to provide a transformative soundscape alongside a visual piece that will capture the felt emotions and collectivly pass these emotions onto the audience to put them in the possition of the people of Syria, how they live, how they feel and evoke their drive to survive.

 

How I Plan To Do It:

I plan to interperate these emotions through various synths and virtual instruments within Logic Pro (my DAW of choice) such instruments include: Alchemy, EFM 1, Kontact, Reactor, Zebra2 and the EXS24 sampler. The reason I’m choosing these certain plug in’s is not for the fact that I may use them very frequently in my work constructing other soundscapes or productions, but is for the fact that they manipulate and craft sound with ease, and each provide a different form of synthesis and sampling that I will tie in together and use to provide the different elements of the soundscape. For example the EFM1 is a frequency modulation synthesiser which in short is defined by one waveform being modulated by another within audio range at a different rate making the waveform more complex and providing a dark and gritty timbre, (this is what I’ll use for my darker atmospherics) whilst Alchemy diverses onto both additive and granular synthesis, where I can build and layer sounds and samples on top of one another to craft rich and tonal textures to ‘fill out’ and provide the main body of the soundscape itself.

Through my project I will be looking at the use of other native plug ins, some of which that have been brought to my attention such as Soundiron’s ‘Voice Of Gaia’ which provide strong tonal accents and voices by Francesca Genco and also ‘Arabic Strings’ by Arabic World Plugins which consits of a vast range of strings and percussive instruments that will help me achieve and formulate the theme of the soundscape.

Another plan of mine is to sample audio from some of the material I have been researching for this project such as doccumentarys, news reports about the wars in Syria, such as vocal lines seeping in and out in the background not as a prominent feature but more as an undertone to force the audience to try and concentrate and focus in on each little element within the audio.

 

Further Research and Development:

Over the coming weeks I plan to experiment with designing sounds, I will keep up to date posts with what I create, craft and post them on here alongside a description of how I made it, how I plan to incorpirate it into the soundscape, what emotions it’s inteded to evoke, and how it will help structure the piece as well.

I will be attending Frequency Festival next week to look and listen to a presentation by ‘Ear Films’ they describe their work as “Live storytelling using 3D ambisonic sound, a cinematic score, a multitude of speakers, a load of blindfolds, and your incredible imagination.” I will anylise their models and work and try extract elements and idea’s from that to incorpirate in my own soundscape to help me better structure my piece.

I will be delving deeper into my research of Middle Eastern culture to try and identify values and focuses on their cultural heritage which I can use and manipulate to provide and exert a greater understanding through my work towards the audience.

I will look at the works of Edward Seid and his academic writtings on the subject of Orielentalism and take inspiration from his arguments and findings and use it to help better structure my work to show a greater understanding of mid eastern culture.

Learning Outcomes:

Throughout the duration of my project I plan to learn devlop my skills in.

– How to creativly produce an abstract work of art to co-inside with visual media

– How to modulate and manipulate sound and make it more transformative

– How to alternate between forms of signified forces and affective forces and if so how I can link the two together in both a visual          and audible context

– How to tap into and develop an affective storyboard within sound