Notes

2013

Sibelius Film Scoring

Katie Wardrobe
Midnight Music

Getting Started With Film Scoring Project #1: Box Clever

Aim Skills Steps Empty bars and Panorama View Add Video The Transport Panel (Playback) Playback Add Hit Points Rename Hit Points Add Hit Point Sta Create percussion parts Add some extras

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Project #2 Haunted House

Aim Skills Steps Empty Bars and Panorama View Add Video Hit Points All About Suspense Music Creating Suspenseful Music With Students: Some Ideas

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Project #3 Big Buck Bunny

Open Source Short Film Cue sheets Steps Matching music tempo with hit points

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Contact me

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Getting Started With Film Scoring

Project #1: Box Clever
Aim
Start simply: use untuned percussion to add musical sound eects to the short movie Box Clever (one of the videos provided with Sibelius).

Skills
Students will learn how to:

Synch visuals to sound Set up a new score with speci c instruments Add video to the score Use the video window Play, rewind, fast forward, stop and scrub through their score Add hit points Create a hit point sta Input notes Copy and paste Add dynamics

Steps
Start new blank score with the following instruments from the Orchestral unpitched percussion family:

Snare drum Triangle Bass drum Cymbals Large Gong

And from the Other unpitched percussion family:

Finger cymbals Tambourine Wind chimes

Other score attributes: Time signature of 4/4 Metronome mark of crotchet = 160 C major Add a title and your name as the composer Click Finish

Empty bars and Panorama View

Change to Panorama view by pressing Shift+P. Then create some empty bars 24 in total by using Ctrl +B or B to add bars at the end of your score.

Add Video
Add the Box Clever video by going to Play > Video > Video > Add Video (Sibelius 6: Play > Video and Time > Add video). Locate the video: it should be in your Example scores folder. If you cant see the Example scores folder, you may not have it installed. Youll need to nd your installer disc and copy the Example Scores folder on to your hard drive. Click Open and the video will appear in its own window in your score:

There is a series of buttons across the bottom of the video window:

The Add hit point button

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4 buttons to control the video screen size (half size, full size, double size and full screen) Volume slider (controls the volume of the video only not the score)

The Transport Panel (Playback)

If your transport panel (playback) is not already open, you can open it as follows:

Sibelius 6: go to Window > Playback Sibelius 7: go to View > Panels > Transport

You can use the buttons on the transport panel (the playback window) to start, stop, rewind and fast forward your score, however, its really useful to learn some of the playback shortcuts:

Playback
Its really useful to learn some of the playback shortcuts when doing lm scoring: Playback Shortcuts Start/Stop playback Move playback line back 0.2 seconds (hold to rewind) Move playback line forwards 0.2 seconds (hold to fast forward) Move playback line backward one frame Move playback line forwards one frame Play from selecGon Move playback line to the note currently selected Move playback line to start Spacebar [ ] ShiD+[ ShiD+] P Y Ctrl+[ or [

Add Hit Points

Hit points (also known as time markers) are used to mark speci c places in your score where action and events occur in the video. Hit points are locked to the video not to the score so if your score tempo changes, the hit point position will change too. Were going to add untuned percussion sounds into our score to create sound eects to match the action. First of all well start by marking each action point with a hit point. In the Box Clever video, action points include the bouncing of the red box, the big hammer splat and the tipping over of the red box after its been hit. Its useful to scrub through the video frame by frame so you can pinpoint the exact moment an event occurs. Use Shift+[ to do this and when you reach an action point, click on the Add Hit Point button on the video window.

A hit point will appear in your score and looks like the one to the right. It shows you the timecode at that position in the score, the position in bars, beats and hundredths and the name of the hit point. By default, Sibelius gives each hit point a generic name (ie. Hit Point 01). Next, well learn how to change the name for easy identi cation in the score.

Rename Hit Points

Open the hit points window by going to Play > Video, click on the lower half of the Hit Point button and then choose Edit Hit Points (Sibelius 6: Play > Video and Time > Hit Points). You can rename each hit point by clicking on the name and typing a new title.

You can also delete hit points in this window, or create new ones.

Add Hit Point Sta

Next, we want to add some percussive sounds at each hit point to audibly illustrate whats happening in the video. In order to do that we need to work out the exact rhythmic position of each hit point so we can replicate it in a percussion part. Although this sounds dicult, Sibelius makes it easy with one of its plug-ins. Go to Note Input > Plug-ins > Add Hit Point Sta (Sibelius 6: Plug-ins > Composing Tools > Add Hit Point Sta). This plug-in adds a sta at the top of the score which shows the rhythmic position of each hit point. The sta is silent - it wont make a sound during playback.

Create percussion parts

Now all thats left to do is to create percussive sounds that match the rhythmic position of each hit point. First youll need to decide which percussion instrument will represent each hit point. As an example, I used a tambourine sound for the red box bounces at the beginning of the video, but you may like to try something completely dierent.
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Then you can simply copy the hit point sta notes into any (all!) of the other staves in your score. It can be a good idea to change the noteheads on the hit point sta to normal noteheads before doing anything else: select the entire sta (double-click on it) and then use the shortcut Alt+Shift+0 (Opt+Shift +0). Next, you can copy the notes on the hit point sta on to any of the other staves in your score. Select the bar/s on the hit point sta and then Alt-click on to one of the other staves to copy the notes across. Playback your score frequently to hear the result.

Add some extras

Dynamics: select a note, type Ctrl+E or E (E stands for Expression text) and then type the dynamic in whilst holding down Ctrl or (this makes the dynamic appear in the correct font style) Trills (rolls), ritardandos or ralls can be found in the Lines menu (press L to access Lines) Articulation such as staccatos, tenutos and accents can be found on the Keypad

Project #2 Haunted House

Aim
Create a suspense score to accompany to the short movie Haunted House. We will also add some musical sound eects to highlight the lighting/thunder and synch visuals to sound.

Skills
By the end of this project, students will know how to:

Set up a new score with speci c instruments Add video to the score Use the video window Play, rewind, fast forward, stop and scrub through their score Add hit points Create a hit point sta Input notes Copy and paste Add dynamics Locate suitable musical snippets (loops) in the Ideas Hub (if applicable)

Steps
Create new score with the following:

Instruments: Cymbals, Tuba, Violin I, Violincello, Double Bass, Tenor Drum and Bass Drum
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Time signature of 4/4 Metronome mark of crotchet = 100 C major A title and your name as the composer

Empty Bars and Panorama View

Change to Panorama view by pressing Shift+P Create some empty bars 13 in total (Ctrl+B or B)

Add Video
Add the Box Clever video by going to Play > Video > Video > Add Video (Sibelius 6: Play > Video and Time > Add video). Locate the video and click Open.

Hit Points
Add hit points when you see the lightning ash. Hint: the rst one isnt until around 21 seconds into the video and there are around 3 in total. Go to Note Input > Plug-ins > Add Hit Point Sta (Sibelius 6: Plug-ins > Composing Tools > Add Hit Point Sta). Copy the rhythmic position of the hit points into the cymbal stave (or other instrument of your choosing).

All About Suspense Music

Discuss with students some of the compositional techniques commonly used to create suspense or tension:

Rhythms that get faster (the way your heartbeat speeds up when youre scared or under stress) Repetition (of almost anything) Non-chord tones Jagged articulations Dissonant harmony Dramatic devices Ascending lines
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Increased volume Extreme register of instruments Emphasis on passing tones (non-chord/scale tones) Wide intervals (especially ascending) Alternating directions Use of space rests/silence to create sense of anticipation

Creating Suspenseful Music With Students: Some Ideas

Depending on the age of your students and their musical experience, you can choose to approach this task in a number of ways. 1. Students add pre-made music to their score

Using the Sibeliuss Ideas Hub (or even the Worksheet Creator), students can search for musical snippets that will suit the style of lm theyre composing for. They could try a few dierent Ideas and discuss why some work and some dont. How do dierent types of music change the lm? More advanced students within the group may like to alter the pre-made Ideas by changing the instrumentation, key, extending the Idea or editing the Idea

2. Students compose with provided building blocks Show students how to compose a suspense soundtrack by rst providing them with compositional building blocks.

Create a drone in the low strings and tuba staves that goes up slowly in pitch. End on a very low note Create a heartbeat rhythm in the bass drum Create a tension-building rhythm in the tenor drum that gets faster Add a high-pitched, eerie violin part Add dynamics so that the music starts quietly and gets louder. End on a loud accented low note

3. Students compose their own music from scratch completely, or use a combination of the above techniques.

Project #3 Big Buck Bunny

Open Source Short Film
As an extension to Project #2, students can compose music to a short excerpt from the open source video Big Buck Bunny. Big Buck Bunny is a 10-minute animated movie that was released in 2008. Created by the Blender Institute (Amsterdam) it stars a very big bunny named Buck who decides to seek revenge on three little forest critters who spoil his day. Big Buck Bunny was released under a Creative Commons license meaning that it is free for everyone to watch it, download it, reuse it and learn from it, provided the creators of the movie are attributed.

Cue sheets
Really, the process for this project is the same as for the previous two projects, but this time you might like to have students map out their composition rst by using a cue sheet. A cue sheet - used by professional composers - is a list of the musical cues that will take place in a scene. It can be useful for students to watch their chosen excerpt a few times and write down the hit points in a list, with the timings. They can also make note of any musical ideas they may have - parts of the scene that might t well with happy music or sad music or dramatic music.

Steps

watch the movie (a few times!) and ll out your cue sheet set up a new score with a combination of percussive and melodic instruments (your choice) add in the hit points create the hit point sta compose original music to enhance the scene - light, happy string parts, low ominous drones, sudden chords and percussive sound eects

Matching music tempo with hit points

One extra feature thats useful to know about is the Fit Selection To Time plug-in. If you have composed a passage of music and you want to t it exactly between a couple of hit points, Sibelius can automatically stretch (or contract) the music by adjusting the tempo marking to make it t the video exactly. To do this:

Select the bar/s of music between two hit points Go to Note Input > Plugins > Fit selection to time (Sibelius 6: Plugins > Composing Tools > Fit selection to time) Choose to Set the end of the section to the Time of selected hit point at the bottom of the window. Select your end hit point from the drop-down menu and click OK
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Sibelius will add two tempo markings into your score: one at the beginning of the section (which will make the section t exactly to the length of the video) and then another at the end to return the score back to the original tempo. You can delete the second tempo marking if you want to retain the current speed.

Contact me
Contact me regarding

Face-to-face training for your school/network/event Online courses kaGe@midnightmusic.com.au 0412 403 704 www.midnightmusic.com.au www.facebook.com/midnightmusic www.twiTer.com/kaGesw1

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