reflections post music session

impressed with what the student composers came up with - feels like they really put some effort into this and took the assignment seriously.

very interesting to see how the visuals were interpreted - this was only about one minute out of an 11-minute piece, so, unless they had a look at the animatic, it was not possible to know the full story, and to thus determine the mood within a larger context.

judging from the comments I received from music professors Evan Solot and Rick Hall, the comp students, my object animation class sophomores, and others present, it quickly became obvious that the colors (bright pastels/watercolor) and characterizations (of the ogre in particular) tend to give off a fairy tale sort of feeling. the music ranged from playful, for children, to more feature-film-ish heartstring tugging.

all of the compositions seemed to fall within a certain range of each other, as described above, with no interpretation radically different from the others. jun hee's interpretation was playful, with some asian undertones in the intervals (I think there were some parallel 4ths or 5ths in there), and appropriate for a children's tale. Kyle's piece evoked a video game, with its often continuous eight notes reminiscent of a sidescroller character's march through an environment. Justin's and Reed's pieces both had moments where they seemed to gel nicely with the action, as did Jun Hee's again, with a particularly nice use of silence.

for me, the sections that seemed generally to work less well with the visuals occurred when long notes were held over moments that either seemed to require a pause or something less broadly emotive.

my goal for the piece calls for mournful, melancholic, dissonant, and austere music, to suit a lonely, alienated mood. The hope is to create a feeling of loneliness, and one that veers more towards independent film rather than mainstream film, ultimately. the fact that the composers came up with a much different interpretation tells me much about adjustments that need to be made if I hope to evoke this kind of response: saturating the daylight colors much more, adding dirt and vignetting to the image, etc. I also suspect, however, that had they known this, the music have been come out quite differently - they were given no clues as to my intentions, as the point was to see what the visuals evoked.

bravo to the composers and their instructors - many appreciations for their efforts!