MUSIC AND SOUND

MUSIC

The narrative for "Dissonance" relies quite heavily on music. It's the driving force behind the whole thing and it was very important to have a composer on board form early on in the process. I've been thinking about the kind of music I would like to use and how I would like to use it since the beginning of the project. I've always known the kind of music I wanted to use in this film is the kind of music that really impacts the film in a notable way. So not the kind that is well written to the point where it blends. I wanted it to be very noticable in it's contributions.

So before I start talking about Matt, my composer, I would like to spend some time talking about my thoughts before I got him on board. As I think it's important to the evolution to know where my thoughts as an individual were before I became a team.

I knew at the start of this that I wanted something that was going to make people upset a little. Not on a large scale but just something that would tug a heart string a bit so I figured something melancholy would work the best. I found some similar things to the kind of thing I was thinking, in terms of the emotional resonance of the music. And some as well with the music box tones and things in them.

REFERENCES

So I know most composers aren't in love with Hanz Zimmer but I kind of give this song a pass becasue it's not full of all the usual Zimmer aspects that drive composers nuts. The thing I like about it is how it starts very delicate and sweet but then increases in it's intensity to become something more powerful. That's exactly what I have in mind for the final sequence of Dissonance.

I grew up completely in love with this movie and to this day, this piece of music is my favourite every written for screen. There's something entirely magical about it, that I am desperate to capture in Dissonance. I get a sense of imense happiness from this song but it's undertones are less so. I love that and with any luck my composer (Matt) will be capable of capturing this feeling too.

Since December of last year I've been working with a composer from ECA's composition for screen program. We're really good friends now and we have a great working relationship as well. He's currently working on scoring just the whole film but with main emphesis on the beginning and end sequences. For the spaces in between he's just sort of soundscaping it so it doesn't feel too empty.

When we started talking about the music I had initially wanted very little in the way of it but as things developed and grew and I got to hear what Matt was actually doing, my ideas on what the film needed musically shifted and I wanted to hear more of it, so long as the sound design stayed true to the original core idea which was to create scientifically acurate sound design.

Matt was really good at taking the emotions I had asked him to convey and doing it differently to the way I had expected him too. I remember him telling me that the best composers added to the scene to make you feel something instead of just blending the music into what was happening. I really see this one of his beliefs in his works. It's one I'm glad he has becasue in a film about music, the music really does need to talk.

I amn't going to share the piece of music with you becasue that is giving far too much away but I do want to tell you that it is magnificent. I loved it, the first time I heard it a huge smile spread across my face and apparently my mum got a tad tearful. Fabulous results! I am really excited to share it with you! Matt has done a great job.

SOUND

Just to make things extra confusing for everyone, my sound design is a completely different guy called Matthew... yup. I know. But I haven't mixed them up yet!

Matthew is a sound design student on the masters course at Napier! He's specifically interested in working with animation and he has a really impressive portfolio. He's a really well versed collaborator and I always feel like he has his shit together. Like one of us has to right?

On top of that he's really fast and I'm always suprised by how quickly he can get things done!

So as I mentioned above Matthew and I are really excited by the idea of keeping the audio as realistic as possible. Which means no star wars envocative "pew pews" when guns get fired in space or rumbling when explosions go off becasue actually, you would not be able to hear tha stuff from space.

Matthew's approach to the sound design was really cool and works superbly well. He emailed me one day to let me know he was thinking about using real nasa noises to create the sound for Dissonance. I had a listen to them all and I was really keen to hear them all used in the scene I had sent him. When I got to hear it, I was really pleased. It sounded so real but so at home within the context. He's done a really cool job.

I'll update here later in the process becasue a lot of Matthew's work is still to come. I'm meeting him tomorrow in fact to talk some things over!

Till then!