I am pleased to announce that I have just finished work on the score of a new film called Shoot and Score.
This 30 minute film is about hopes and dreams of young people living on a North London council estate today. Leon, the main character of the film hopes to be a footballer, but his best friend, a drug dealer has other career ideas for him. When Leon thinks that his dream of becoming a professional footballer are shattered, he takes up an offer to become a dealer, which leads to the dramatic unravelling of his entire life.
I was asked to write the music by the film's writer, Darren Raymond (pictured right) who I had worked with on the Black Atlas project. The film is directed by controversial black director, Leon Herbert (pictured left). You can find out more about his career by clicking here. From what I understand, the films draws on Darren's real life experiences when he was growing up. Both Darren and Leon were adment that they wanted a classic sweeping Hollywood style soundtrack for the film. They had previously tried using hip hop RandB tracks (why won't blogger let me use an ampersand?) but this hadn't work. They wanted a film that could be shown in any country and people would still understand the themes, even if they didn't understand the slang!
My main approach with the film was to create quite a modern instrumental sound, but still maintaining some elements of the industrial, urban setting and the hip-hop culuture. To this end, I chose instruments with particularly percussive sounds including piano, marimba and harp. Leon is a big fan of strings, so I added a string quartet and some woodwind to give the score a more rounded feel. I also used some synthesised patches to add more of a modern and urban feel, without dating it too much. I did a bit of research on hip hop rhythms and used a track that Darren had produced himself as the basis for the main theme of the film.
With a 30 minute film, I was clear that there should be economy of melodic material and so I frame the entire score around 5 motifs symbolising disappointment, temptation, hope, comfort and dispair. These themes are all plainly stated throughout the film but in some cases I managed to weave them to create a conflict between the characters and between individual characters and their emotions.
The experience of writing for film has been a real eye opener. For a start, you have to be so, so, so precise in your synchronisation. In a 3 second section of the film, Leon (the character) scores 3 goals which I wanted to accompany with accented beats. It wasn't as easy as it sounds and to make sure that those beats were perfectly synchronised probably took the best part of an hour.
There were broader problems to overcome. For a start the source material was completely outside my experience - I wasn't born on a North London council estate, I'm not into football, I don't do drugs, I'm not black and I don't speak the "language". It took me a couple of viewings just to understand what was being said - even though the theme and story line of the film were very strong. I had to find a way of accessing this film as a composer and the route I took was through the relationships and the themes.
It was also very intimidating to start with a blank canvas. I sat watching the initial drafts of the film thinking "why do they need music? This is fine as it is!". Once I bit the bullet and actually started to write the music and now I look back at the finished project, I realise how much music has leant to the film. There were also some difficult challenges to overcome. I don't know how John Williams started out but it problem wasn't underscoring a blowjob.
The premiere will be announced soon and I will update on here and hope to post extracts of the film on my upcoming dotcom.
I am delighted to announce I will be playing in the band of The Witches of Eastwick at the prestigious Live Nation theatre, New Theatre in Oxford.
