Film Scoring Resources

Notes 2013

Katie Wardrobe Midnight Music Film Scoring: Finding and Preparing Resources 3

Pinterest 3

Finding Movies 3

General 3

Competitions 4

Movie trailers 4

Sibelius videos 4

The Ultimate Copyright-free Video 4

Free sound eﬀects, loops and music 4

Sources of sound eﬀects and loops 4

Capture and Convert Videos 5

Capturing YouTube videos 5

Converting "le formats 5

Smartcopying 5

Creative Commons 5

Film Scoring websites 5

Lesson Plans & Research Materials 6

Composers 7 Film Scoring: Finding and Preparing Resources

I have begun collecng all of the following links on Pinterest. It’s a much beer way to share resources, so head on over there for a more visually-appealing way of viewing the following informaon! hp://pinterest.com/kaewardrobe/ﬁlm-scoring-resources/

Finding Movies

General

Archive.org hp://www.archive.org/index.php • Site with thousands of copyright-free ﬁlms • Within the site are “collecons” of videos (Prelinger archives, drive-in movie collecon) • Check out the fantasc Prelinger Archives: www.archive.org/details/prelinger. • Also contains NASA videos/footage. Try: www.archive.org/details/NasaSpaceLioﬀ

Openvideo.org hp://www.open-video.org/ • Excellent search engine • You can narrow your search to films of a specific duraon (less than one minute or 1-2 minutes) • You can also search for silent films

Big Buck Bunny hp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YE7VzlLtp-4 • Open source animated video

3 The Elephants Dream hp://www.elephantsdream.org/ • The Elephant’s Dream is an open source code movie. All music and video ﬁles are available for download

The Whitehouse hp://www.whitehouse.gov/ • Believe it or not, the Obama administraon has assigned a Creave Commons license to all material on the Whitehouse website. This means that you’re free to download pictures, video and text and use it for your own purposes as long as you aribute the source of the material

Competitions

Compeons are a useful source of ﬁlm footage. The organiser of the compeon usually makes short ﬁlms available for download from their website.

Try these: • Wallace and Grommit ﬁlm scoring compeion hp://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/teachers/ wallaceandgromit/ • Tropfest runs a Tropscore compeon hp://www.maxtv.com.au/tropscore/ • Turner Classic Movies: hp://www.turnerclassicmovies-yfcc.com/

Movie trailers hp://www.apple.com/trailers/ hp://www.jurassicpunk.com/ • Both sites contain trailers for current and past movies (although be warned that trailers may not stay on these sites forever. It’s advisable to download them to your hard drive) • For trailers with no music, try Cloverﬁeld & Ice Age 3 (the teaser trailer and trailer 1) hp://www.pdcomedy.com/ • This site includes old black and white trailers (try the Iron Claw trailer or the Superman trailer)

Sibelius videos

If you own Sibelius 4, 5 or 6 there are some short videos in the Example Scores folder (if you can’t see the Example Scores folder, you may need to download it from your Sibelius installer disc)

The Ultimate Copyright-free Video

Videos shot yourself or by your students! It makes a good cross-curricular acvity which will also make your principal happy.

Free sound eﬀects, loops and music

Sources of sound effects and loops www.freesound.org • website with free music and sound effects www.findsounds.com • website for downloading free sound effects hp://ccmixter.org/ 4 • CC Mixter website is a community music remixing site. A great collecon of music samples that you can legally download, re-use and remix

Capture and Convert Videos

Even though it’s against the Youtube terms and conditions to download Youtube videos, there are still many websites that provide you with resources to do so.

Capturing YouTube videos hp://www.youtube-ripper.net/ hp://www.catchyoutube.com/ hp://kickyoutube.com/ hp://keepvid.com

Converting "le formats If you need to convert a video into a speci"c "le format, you can use one of these online converters: hp://mediaconverter.org hp://www.zamzar.com/ hp://www.downloadhelper.net/ (Firefox plugin) hp://media-convert.com

Better still, you can download the free open source video converter software Handbrake: http://handbrake.fr/downloads.php

Smartcopying

Creative Commons

A nonproﬁt organisaon that encourages sharing and collaboraon of music, videos, text. Their byline is “share, remix, resue – legally” http://creativecommons.org/

Film Scoring websites

• www."lmsound.org - there’s a fantasc Film Music page which has links to a range of online arcles, resources and books: http://"lmsound.org/"lmmusic/

5 • www.scoringsessions.com - excellent collecon of photos from orchestral recording session. Also has videos about ﬁlm scoring. See the video about the making of the Killzone 2 video game soundtrack. • http://www.soundtrack.net/ • http://www."lmmusicmag.com/

Lesson Plans & Research Materials

Scary Mary: Mary Poppins reimagined! hp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2T5_0AGdFic

Same Scene 5 Ways - a short video I made to illustrate the eﬀect of diﬀerent styles of music on one scene hp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ktKcnDfWs2c

Youtube video showing eﬀect of diﬀerent styles of music on same clip from the Heroes TV series hp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B92Bd_a52fI

Back of the Mic: Behind the Scenes of a Radio Show hp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZ43UC5tIOY

James Humberstone’s ﬁlm scoring project with students from MLC School in Sydney hp://composerhome.wordpress.com/2011/12/18/stage-5-ﬁlm-project/

List of ﬁlm score and soundtrack awards year 2000-2008 hp://www.maxtv.com.au/tropscore/best_scores.php

Naonal Film and Sound Archive (Australia) educaon secon hp://www.nfsa.gov.au/educaon/

Screen Australia educaon secon hp://www.screenaustralia.gov.au/learning/

Brish Film Instute educaon secon hp://www.bﬁ.org.uk/learn.html

ABC A Place to Think hp://www.abc.net.au/aplacetothink/?#watch

Film Street – educaon site for young students hp://www.ﬁlmstreet.co.uk/default.aspa?ﬂash=

Detailed analysis of the themes in Howard Shore’s Lord of the Rings score: • Click on the quaver icons to hear recordings of each theme and variaon • hp://www.woodzie.org/lotr/index.html

The Star Wars wikipedia entry

6 • Includes details about the themes in each of the Star Wars movies (with notaon and MIDI ﬁles) • hp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wars_music#Principal_mofs

Torrington High School (THS) website • THS runs two music technology courses which include ﬁlm composion assignments • hp://www.thsmusic.net/Assignments.htm • hp://www.thsmusic.net/Assignments%20Tech%20II.htm

Melbourne High School: Music in Adversing unit (by Hildy Essex) • From the aMuse website; VELS sample units • hp://www.amuse.vic.edu.au/VELS/VELS.html

Interviews with John Williams: there are many on YouTube. Here are just three:

John Williams interview about the score for The Phantom Menace (part I): • hp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZdYﬂV5-a2c The Phantom Menace (part II) • hp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPacQ6_V6ZM&feature=related Star Wars Revenge of the Sith • hp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_KiI84LSIrw&feature=related

Ben Bur demonstrang how he created the sounds for the Wall.E movie hp://benburnterviews.blogspot.com/2009/02/ben-bur-demonstrates-how-he-made-wall.html

Composers

There’s lots of informaon about individual ﬁlm composers online. Try a search for the following:

• John Williams • Danny Elfman • Howard Shore • Bernard Hermann • Michael Kamen