Bus ride #3, and gaining experience...

Bus trip #3 in as many weeks.  Going to VA via DC to see my sister and her family.  We have tickets to see Willie Nelson tonight so that should be fun.  It'll be great to see the kids again too.

Been on my laptop since I got on this bus an hour and a half ago, remarkably productive despite only about 5 hours of broken sleep.  It'll catch up to me soon.  Since there's still most of the ride ahead of me I'll probably sleep once I finish this blog.

Thinking about gaining experience this morning and honing sensibility and how valuable that really is.  I can read only so much about the craft of film scoring but actually practicing these things I learn is really the only way to get good at it and develop the sensibility one needs to excel at it.  Think about how certain things sound good as music for its own sake, but when you put these things against a moving image it may not necessarily work.  The things that make the music work against the image are often subjective but also universal and then at the same time hard to pinpoint with mere words.

I've been thinking about a certain part of this film in particular, a sequence involving a fight, an escape and a secondary struggle and then submission.  My first take of music for this scene was very song-like, rhythmic and repetitive and had developed to a certain point in the melody where it needed to be, but had done so far too early.  These are the kinds of things one must consider.  Not just mood, instrumentation or tempo but levels of intensity, buildup and decay I am working with must match the action precisely.  I can't get there too soon or take too long to get there otherwise the music will seem separate and transmit superficiality.  That's exactly what was happening with this particular scene.  I had made it seem a tad superficial because the music, while I had nailed the mood and tempo needed for the scene, was apart from the scene and seemed to be doing its own thing.  

Incidentally, this kind of sensibility, being in tune with what works and what the director wants, is fairly crucial.  A lot of musicians can write a pretty melody or capture a mood but to be able to do so at the same intensity and rate as what's on screen takes a lot of care and patience.  A lot of patience.  The first take may never work perfectly.

That said, getting better at needing fewer takes is apparently the name of the game now and is what I am hopefully going to take away from this experience to apply to the next job.  No news on what that is yet but will keep you up to date.  For now, I sleep.