Well, today is a big day, I am laying down all the tracks to create the complete score for Silk Boy!

I have just completed four days (from Thursday to Sunday) of intense mixing with Mr.Wizard Brian Campbell over at Sharpe Sound. Brian did wonders mixing the orchestral score and made it sound fabulous!

I picked up part of the mixes today from Brian and spent the afternoon and evening doing some editing to get them ready for the OMF.

And now it is time to build the OMF of the score! It’s 9:30PM, Monday the 19th and I am finally reaching the end of the journey.

Finally! It’s been a long road with lots of ups and downs but I seem to be ending on a high note, so all is well.

Now I just hope the score sits well in the mix…

A theme can do many things in a movie.

In this animated film I had read the script and started planning the score as best I could, which meant deciding which character, places and events would have themes.

But, as always, having a script is one thing and the final film is another. I ended up needing fewer things than I had planned on.

My composition teacher would often tell me that a good composer does a lot with a little. It always made sense to me somehow, and I do understand why now: because then the elements all feel like they “belong” together for the listener.

In film scores, it’s the same idea, to make a coherent musical landscape that supports the drama, and there as well it is good to use limited musical material.

In Harry Potter, John Williams uses the Quidditch theme for the snake’s escape earlier in the film.

This was an eye-opener for me: even though a snake and Quidditch are not related story wise, the music worked in both instance, and the end result is the use of limited material, a more coherent score, and melodies that get repeated more and thus become more memorable.

So in Silk Boy, this meant that certain themes which I initially conceived as being for a single character (in Prokofiev-like fashion) became themes for relationships.

These relationships are between the protagonist, Silkboy, and some of the other characters; grandfather, Tammy and Anya.

What that meant is that I had fewer themes and that, interestingly, Silkboy doesn’t really have much of a theme, only a guitar riff that plays when he is first presented and that is it!

The bad guys in the film have themes for their character, especially Filthington, the main baddie, which has the most developed theme of all. And also the mushrooms, which represents all of them, although I thought of one specifically as I wrote it: Puffball, which is actually quite a funny character.

But I digress; the bottom line is themes in a movie should be kept to a minimum, and that a theme can be used to support story elements that they were not initially intended to support.

So the music was done and gradually being mixed and edited, but things have been dragging on in part because the film was not done and we had the time.

But that is no longer the case.

I am very excited to report that the sound effect and foley work is set to begin any day over at Sharpe Sound (on of the top post houses in town), which means music has to be done and delivered very soon.

I was asked by the director to bring the final animation video over to Sharpe Sound, which I did this morning. Got the tour of the place (which is fabulous) and spoke with Kirby (the post sound supervisor) about our schedule and requirements.

So this is the home stretch and almost done!

Alain