Curriculum

Film Scoring 1 Workshop

The thrust of this workshop is directed towards enabling both the filmmaking student as well as the film composer to come up with effective and creative concepts for their full-length feature film scores. In order for a score concept to have integrity, it must come from a thorough understanding of the screenplay (its narrative flow, theme, philosophy, genre, etc.), the director's intention, and how he goes about to achieve it. Without a thorough grasp of these things as basis, score concepts could end up either as failures or, at best, what one would term as flukes. For both the composer and the filmmaker's personal satisfaction as artists, it would be good to know that their scores are as equally prepared for, and executed with as much professional and artistic thought and deliberation as all the other arts it is made to collaborate with in the realm of full-length feature films.

We are populated with a lot of talented composers that can write in almost every genre there is, and more. But the definitive trait that makes a good film composer is his capacity to understand the film and his ability formulate a score concept based on this understanding. The student in this course is to expect that a great part is devoted into screenplay analysis, directorial executions, film score deconstruction and analysis; and, subsequently, the formation of their own score concepts.

The workshop will be conducted by film composer Nonong Buencamino.

COURSE OUT LINE

• Historical Introduction to Film Music
• Workflow of film score production
• The Director and the Film Composer
• The Music Supervisor
• The Musical Instruments
• Screenplay Analysis
• Conceptualizing a film score
• Functions of Film Music
• Creative Devices
• Film score analysis
• Scoring Lab/ Group work

A higher level in Film Scoring II Workshop (with Film Scoring I as basis) shall be offered in the second semester. This will deal with the more technical musical topics in film scoring such as effective arrangements and orchestrations for underscoring, composing with the extra-musical elements of the soundtrack, stylistics, timing, music mixing for underscoring materials, music levels in a composite final soundtrack mix, etc.. Completion of Film Scoring I is a pre-requisite.

• Age requirement: 18 years old up
• Limited slots, first-come-first-served