Writing a great film score is about bringing to bear all the craft one has learned over the years while always remembering to serve the story. It’s also about being open to the feedback of a director at the various stages of the writing process. Film composers also generally come up with musical themes and motifs, which are essentially shorter chunks of themes that can be layered into the action like puzzle pieces as the story calls for them. My process for coming up with these themes and motifs is to identify which characters, places or ideas in the story warrant a theme or motif and begin to work the music until it is flexible enough to express the full range of emotions needed. 

When working on the score to Lil Balzac 2 I had to utilize all my best director communication skills while developing a brilliant score that could both support the story and stand on its own as exciting and engaging music. This required establishing a common emotional and psychological language for the main character of Balzac, as the whole story is essentially told through his perspective. My director had strong ideas of Balzac as a sort of hero character even though he is an utter loser and bringer of chaos. By understanding the underlying concept of the character I was able to craft a score that took seriously the emotional journey of Balzac amidst the absurdity of his circumstances. 

I help directors find the most direct language to use with me to get what they want from the score with as few edits as possible. Often they will use emotional language or language that gets at the flow of what they are trying to achieve without using music terms. As a composer, I love words and phrases like "can we ramp up the intensity here?" or "more movement," or "bolder," or "get out of the way of the dialogue," or "like a faint cry." These kinds of descriptors are wonderful jumping off points for me to get started.  Everyone experiences music differently so opening lines of communication about the music you want in your film will set you up for success when working with Smith Music Lab.