Scoring the Film

So how did I go about scoring the film with music? Well I enlisted an old time friend by the name of Peter J. Gorritz who lives in LosAngeles California. Peter and I go way back, and we had talked about the score when I was in LA for a visit. The above photo is of me when I did my commentary to Peter for the music. I literally videotaped the film from the flatbed editor, and talked into a microphone as the film was being played on the editor. On one channel I had the films dialogue and on the other channel I had my voice telling Peter what I thought the music should be like, or when it should comes in and out. Basically it was for queuing music in and out of the film. As for the musical style Peter and I had talked about that over the phone and through emails. I recommended several films, and he recommended several composer's style, and in essence that's how the counteract evolved. As Peter scored the film he would send me two discs. One with the music synch to the picture as a MPEG file, and the other was the MP3 file of just the music which I would ultimately give to NFL films who would transfer it to magnetic track so I could edit it on the flatbed editor. Since I videotaped the footage from the flatbed editor the music was pretty much in synch with the cues I gave Peter on the tape. Of course the one thing that I would recommend is that you should get your composer onto the project sooner then I did. Preferable when the film is in pre-production. But being Peter and I had spoken earlier we managed to work very well together despite the distance & the circumstance. I should also tell you that during this time Peters father passed away, and the project was delayed for a bit, but after a while Peter picked up where he left off, and continued to supply me with some outstanding music. If anyone would like to get a hold of Peter he can be contacted at his bands site which is The Last Dance. I cannot recommend Peter highly enough. So that's how the score was done, and finished. I used some very low tech methods to do things, but they all worked out, and I believe that if one were shooting in the DV format the process would be easier, and cleaner, and one would not have to worry about synch. I paid Peter also, and he was very accommodating in his fee. Remember time is money.