Tomorrow, I'm flying to L.A. for the weekend. I'll be meeting with a producer and attending a two day seminar called "The Art and Craft of Orchestration for Film and Television." The class will be taught by Steven Scott Smalley, who has worked on films such as Batman, Mission: Impossible, and The Insider.
For those of you who may not know, orchestration is the process of arranging a piece of music to be played by an orchestra. Many people don't realize that a composer might have a whole team of people working with them to complete the work it takes to write and record the music for a film. Often, a composer will write what's called a sketch for a particular scene. The sketch might include the melody for a theme and some other details about harmony, instrumentation, etc. The orchestrator's job is to flesh that out and make it sound great when the actual orchestra comes into record.
The course is going to focus on creating the "Hollywood sound," balancing the orchestra, using each orchestral family in dramatic ways, and working with computer technology. One of the things I'm most excited about is that we will be given 370+ pages of scores and sketches to analyze and learn from. When a film is completed, the studio is the one who owns the physical scores (and the copyright on the music). Unfortunately, they don't like to release scores to the public. That makes this a unique opportunity to learn!
I'm also going to have the pleasure of hangin' with my friends at A-Town in Pasadena, which will be nice. I'll give a full report on Monday.
Sounds laike a great time- Enjoy!
Posted by: Chase | October 19, 2006 at 09:21 PM
Welcome back! How was the seminar and trip?
Posted by: Christian | October 23, 2006 at 11:53 PM
Great! I'll write about it soon.
Posted by: Bill | October 24, 2006 at 11:08 AM