Lesson 11A Music For Corporate Video
Activity #1 - Mini Assignment
Before you start to actually compose music for a corporate video, choose four themes from the following categories:
1. T.V. theme song.
2. A drama or feature Film.
3. Two commercials.
4. Then fill in a Music Analysis Log for each, then compare the results.
This will help and guide you as to how specific types of music media are employed.
This is essential to achieving a specific musical objective. You can’t write a Metallica style piece if you are asked to compose music for Disney’s Nemo. The music must fit the mood or idea.
musicanalysislog.doc | |
File Size: | 25 kb |
File Type: | doc |
Continue With Lesson 15 What Is Corporate Video
Lesson 11A Music For Corporate Video
Activity #2 - Critical Analysis
1. Before you begin composing the actual music for a corporate video, you need to understand what the music sounds like. Download the music analysis log below and then go to: http://adbindustrialfilms.com/
2. Find corporate videos on the site that make use of a corporate sting, a corporate montage, a corporate customer testimonial and a second corporate montage.
3. Analyze the pieces and fill out a separate analysis form for each one.
music_analysis_check_sheet.doc | |
File Size: | 25 kb |
File Type: | doc |
Lesson 11A Music For Corporate Video
Activity #3 - Sales Video Project
The first project is a fairly standard industrial or a large West Coast engineering company. This is a sales video aimed principally at high-end corporate clients.
ITV-A leading corporate video company based in Culver City, is looking for a composer for a corporate video for a large engineering company, Davidovitch & Associates. Aimed at boardroom level customers, director Cyd Hunter is looking for a composer who can do pacey, uplifting, sophisticated music for a fairly traditional corporate video.
The Meeting: This is Cyd Hunter’s project and he will give the background. Approaching the job: He’s looking for four completely separate pieces of music. READ AND LISTEN VERY CAREFULLY WHAT YOU ARE BEING ASKED TO DO! If you come up with something that is creatively perfectly good but doesn’t meet their requirements, they will at best tell you to do it again or at worst fire you on the spot. In either event they are unlikely to work with you again.
Project Requirements:
1. Follow the details of each of the sections of music EXACTLY.
2. Use Garage Band and Reason in Rewire mode.
3. Use more than just stock loops. Try to create something original as well to compliment it. If everyone just used loops, they would each sound the same no matter who the composer is.
4. Compose an original melody to be used through out the pieces.
5. Incorporate your own digital audio track using the audio interface via a microphone input or guitar inputs.
6. Create and edit MIDI tracks.
7. Be sure to mix the levels so that everything being heard is evenly balanced.
8. Add effects depending on the instrumentation used. Make sure your composition has some depth to it aurally. Adding some effects to it can enhance this. Avoid having is sound dry.
9. Most importantly, make sure your pieces have a set form. Beginning, middle and an end.
10. As Cyd requested, he needs the music in 2 weeks.
11. Upload all four compositions and post to your portfolio.
The Project:
Section 1 Opening Sting (:06)
A sting is a short piece of music often, as in this case, associated with a logo. So what the viewer will see is all these letters flying onto the screen and twirling around coming together to form the logo after 4 seconds. There is then 2 seconds while a shaft of light whooshes across the logo. Remember that at 120 beats per minute, four seconds is two bars of 4/4 so the “big thump” he’s talking about falls on the first beat of bar four. He also wants some kind of whoosh as the letters come together. It is not at all unusual to be asked for “musical sound effects” like this.
Example of Corporate Video Sting
Montage (1:00)
This is where you make engineering exciting. Rhythmic, uplifting, fairly modern-the music must remind you or create the mood of success! It almost certainly has a drum track or drum loop. The first 40 seconds are without narration so your music can take center stage. IMPORTANT! For the last 20 seconds there will be narration so you need to imagine someone speaking over the music and make sure your score doesn’t get in the way too much.
Example of Corporate Video Montage
Section 3 Customers (1:00)
The main part of this video is various customers saying how wonderful they think the company is-testimonials. This is really a music bed which is a long piece of music that goes underneath what someone else is saying. We need to be able to hear the customers so what you write needs to be fairly low key but rousing. The customer likes the idea of something classical to give authority. If you are not classically inclined, then on this occasion try to come up with something which still fulfills Cyd’s requirements in a more contemporary style. Authoritative-rousing but not too imposing, not too repetitive but a piece that can be edited and repeated. We’ll look at writing in different styles later. Think of how you might be able to remix this music in a couple of different ways so they could edit it all together and make one much longer piece of music.
Example of Corporate Video Customer Testimonial
Section 4 Closing Montage (1:00)
This going to be similar yet different to the opening montage. It needs to build to a big finish after exactly one minute. Try and make it grow as it goes on so it reaches a climax. You should use some the same material from your first montage but employ some variation in this one.
Example of Corporate Video Closing Montage
Lesson 12 Intro To Film Music
Activity #1 - Listening Analysis
1. Listen to examples #1 - 4 below.
2. Using the elements we just discussed, download the analysis form below and answer the following:
What is your first impression of the music?
What type of movie is based on the music? War, Action, Horror, Comedy, etc.
What musical elements do you hear?
What is the mood of the music? Excitement, Sorrow Fear, Reflective, etc.
What in the music is telling you this?
Orchestration of the music? Mostly Brass, Percussion, Woodwinds, Strings, Ethnic, Synthesizers, Drum, Machines, etc.
intro_to_film_music_listening_analysis.doc | |
File Size: | 32 kb |
File Type: | doc |
Listening Example #1
Listening Example #2
Listening Example #3
Listening Example #4
Lesson 12 Intro To Film Music
Activity #2 - Adding and subtracting timecode:
Frames work in base 30 while minutes and seconds are in base 60 and the hours in base 24.
Add 8 frames to 10:02:05:23
You don’t get 10:02:05:31. Instead you get 10:02:06:01. It’s just the same as adding 8 seconds to 10:02:58:00 which would give you 10:03:06:00
Remember that normally 30 frames make 1 second unless working at different frame rate.
Work out beat numbers for the following hit points assuming you are working at
100 bpm. Then do it again assuming you are working at 30 fps and 132 bpm.
10:03:00:00 Music starts
10:03:04:00 Car drives off
10:03:34:08 Gun shot
10:04:02:16 Man Screams
10:04:21:21 Alien climbs out of pit
10:04:45:03 Alien eats small child
Lesson 12 Intro Film Music
Activity #3 - Score Analysis/Film Score Project Part 1
Using the Music Analysis Check Sheet, analyze three feature film scores.
music_analysis_check_sheet.doc | |
File Size: | 25 kb |
File Type: | doc |
Lesson 12 Intro To Film Music
Activity #4 - Final Project: Scoring To Picture
Final Project Assignment:
1. Go to Archive.org choose a film trailer in the public domain from the catalog
2. Download the mpeg4 format version of the film trailer.
3. Import the film trailer into your music sequencing program.
4. Choose an appropriate tempo and log your hit points on a separate sheet of paper or manuscript paper. Be sure to review the formula on syncing to picture.
5. Record a complete measure of your click track (acts as a metronome), quantize it into quarter notes and then cut and paste it through the rest of the sequence.
6. Use appropriate orchestration for the scene. You may combine electronic elements
with orchestral but your project can’t be all electronic/drum and instruments loops.
7. You’ll need to incorporate orchestral instruments such as strings, brass, woodwinds,
percussion and compose original motifs to develop throughout the scene.
8. Make sure you use adequate orchestration (multiple tracks/instruments) in order to
support the scene. You don’t want your score to sound thin and empty. It needs to have content.
9. Choose a scale (major or minor or your own) before you begin writing your motifs/melodies.
10. Be very careful with your hit points. The music needs to sound like it falls on the
right beat in the right place. Your hits need to be exact. If for some reason you can’t
Get your most important hits to fall in the right place, try another tempo.
11. Make sure you review your “Musical Elements Which Produce Tension” and “Musical
Elements Which Produce Relaxation” so that you are using the right compositional tools
in order to achieve the specific mood.
12. As usual, you will need to use appropriate effects, compression, reverb, etc.
13. Export and post your film score on your e-portfolio.