Image by Caio Silva
Action, Horror, Thriller, Comedy, Drama and even animation films won't be immersive without music. As sounds as obvious as it is, a film score is a set of original music written specifically to accompany a film. This type of music is tailored specifically to meet the emotions of a film, whether to enhance suspense or to let the audience know that there is going to be a jump scare coming out.
While writing conventional music nowadays is easy thanks to the advancement of technology, film scoring is written on another level. There are main steps that should be considered in the making of a film score. Here's Film Scoring: A Crash Course. Watch this space.
Spotting
Film spotting is similar to any kind of spotting, like plane spotting. where you watch and aim for a specific object of interest. The cool explanation for the film spotting is a process of watching a film to determine how the music should interact with it.
Spotting is important because obviously, a composer should know how the film actually looks like. He/she will set up cue starts and stops, critical moments to focus to re-adapt them in musical manner.
Syncing
No, it's not that button on CDJs and DJ controllers. Syncing in film scoring is an actual act to create a harmony between sounds and visuals. one method requires mathematical wizardry with the help of SMPTE timecode for syncing purposes.
Writing
Now here's the fun part, the actual writing of the music! composers might use the OG way, using the best tool for writing in the world, pencil and paper, or use the modern digital audio workstation such as Logic, Ableton and Pro Tools. The difference here is that this process has been adapted to the steps mentioned above.
Recording
Once the score has been written, it's time to record the masterpiece. performers are gathered and perform what has been written by the composer.