Scoring for ‘The Dropzone’

‘The Dropzone’ is a zombie ‘Film Noir’ short directed by Andrew Williams, a student at Ravensbourne. It will be premiered at the university’s annual degree show, Ravensbourne2012, from the 13th to the 14th of June 2012.
 

I began scoring for ‘The Dropzone’ by watching the short again, after my meeting with Andrew, the director, & having my own spotting session using markers in my DAW to highlight key points based upon the discussion I had with Andrew.

I then began to try out different musical ideas for the theme which I wanted to be piano based with quite a lot of reverb to sound more atmospheric. I decided on using lower octaves in the theme to make it more dark & moody & very soon had the skeleton idea of the theme. After developing the theme, ensuring that it evolved throughout the piece, as it repeats throughout the short, I sent my thematic ideas through to Andrew for feedback. Andrew was really happy with the theme variations I sent him & they are only modified ever so slightly from the version I initially sent him. Here’s a sneak leak of the theme:
 

After having established the main thematic cues I then went on to the more subtle cues. As could be expected Andrew decided not to use all the music cues but opted in a few scenes for sound, without music. His comments during the project were invaluable & although the score went under 3 or 4 revisions I saw this as a good thing as he was so clear on his vision for the soundtrack & through his feedback the score really benefited from the developments.

I really enjoyed working on ‘The Dropzone’, this project made me truly value good feedback & I hope to work with Andrew again in the near future.