Filmscoring

[Ron_Tomkins]

After a long talk about my future, I decided that I need to start considering all of my options to make a living out of music. One of the things that I had become really interested when I was younger (and then abandoned as I fell in love with Jazz) was filmscoring. I was all into Danny Elfman, Bernard Herrman, John Williams, Alan Silvestri, Howard Shore and all of the other guys. So I decided to revisit that world, since after all I did a lot of "research" back then so I'm not precisely new to that world. And I'm very much into movies.

So I happen to have Sibelius which has this feature for scoring videos. I'm beginning to get acquainted with it but I know that eventually I will need THE program for scoring film. That's why I wanted to know if anyone here knows what that is. In other words, what is the Photoshop for film scoring?. If possible something that, as Sibelius, is user friendly and doesn't require a year of internship in just getting to know how to operate the program.

[fuelair]

Not my field but I suggest you start here: http://brickfilms.com/wiki/index.php?title=How_to_write_a_film_score

I got it from Dogpile (http://www.dogpile.com ) entering film score software and hitting fetch.

[bokonon]

Not my field either, but I do have an amateur interest in the same thing (scoring my own shorts -- I give them a "10"!). Not really comfortable with the "writing sheet music in longhand" route, I'm using Cubase with Native Instruments and lots of samples collected from here and there.

I don't think there is a "Photoshop" for composers. Different people prefer different systems - Reason, Ableton, even Garageband. Most of them have 30-day trial versions, or longer trials crippled in some other fashion. You should probably try them out and see what feels most comfortable.

[Lisa Simpson]

My sister-in-law works composing music for movies and TV. According to her website, she uses software and hardware from this site (http://www.motu.com/).

[Ron_Tomkins]

My sister-in-law works composing music for movies and TV. According to her website, she uses software and hardware from this site (http://www.motu.com/).

Thank you. I will check that site.

Does she post here or any Film Composer's forum? I know there will be more questions to emerge in the future.

[four elevener]

Sony Creative Software has an app called Cinescore. Linky here: http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/cinescore
I can't attest to how good it is or what it can do exactly, but I have been using their Sound Forge, ACID Pro and Vegas for my music production & editing for over ten years (before they bought out Sonic Foundry). You might wanna also check out Adobe's site, as well as these other companies that specialize in audio production and editing:

Ableton: http://www.ableton.com/home

Cakewalk: http://www.cakewalk.com/

Native Instruments: http://www.native-instruments.com/

[kedo1981]

I use Sony Cinescore all the time and it’s great a program when you need a music bed in five minutes for a training video.
I wouldn’t call it scoring however.
Sony ACID is the best “Photoshop” for music I’ve tried and I get a lot of mileage out of it, you really do paint a sound file on a time line with a brush icon.
Adobe “soundbooth” is more for audio processing but has a music bed creation tool.

I’d go with Sony Acid Music (the cheaper consumer version) and a free download of ProTools (Robert Rodriguez does his own scores on it)

[Lisa Simpson]

Thank you. I will check that site.

Does she post here or any Film Composer's forum? I know there will be more questions to emerge in the future.

She does not post here. I'll see her Sunday for a bday party and I'll ask if she knows of any good forums.

[Beanbag]

Sony Cinescore is decent --IF-- you're willing to spring for a few extra theme packs. The standard themes it ships with are fine, but a little too bubble-gummy and cheesey. For cinematic use, I added The Big Picture and the Incredible Vistas theme packs, and have always managed to find something useful in them for the project I'm working on. It isn't the same as a custom-written score, but it's made the the difference between having a decent score and having none at all.

Beanbag

[kedo1981]

Yo Beany sup, I use the extra theme pack that Sony was offering when Cinescore first came out, it was offered for free but was a real battle to get them to send it, but it's pretty good.
I gots my eyes on some new themes.
I really like how it will auto adjust the score length when you launch from Vegas

[Beanbag]

I do Premiere Pro CS3. My usual work flow for using Cinescore is to export the section I'm scoring from Premiere as an AVI, launch Cinescore, and import the AVI into Cinescore. It doesn't even have to be a full-res AVI with all the colors corrected and the final effects tweaks, just as long as the length and "hit" points won't change. Generate and tweak the music to fit, export the score as a WAV file, and then marry everything back together in Premiere.

Since Vegas is from Sony, I'd expect they'd be able to take advantage of certain features. I do Premiere just because I'm familiar with it.

I bought a copy of Acid Music Studio, but other than installing it, I haven't done much with it, mainly 'cause I'm a visual guy and a musical illiterate. There aren't any decent tutorials for the plain version of Acid. If there were, maybe I'd use it more.

Beanbag

[kedo1981]

I'm using all of CS3 "BUT" Premiere, just don't like it much, oh well, Vegas is much like my brain works.