I was very anxious about this class. Improvisation is my nightmare.
I unfortunately lost all of my recordings as they did not load into my OneDrive. I was very keen on listening back and checking how I felt about them objectively. I will give an overview of the experience nevertheless.
Having no idea what the clip played was going to be, attempting to score it while viewing it for the first time was actually somewhat relieving. There were no expectations and no pressure, convinced nothing brilliant could come out of it.
For the first clip (Bladerunner), I used a Volca Keys synthesizer. I found this clip the most difficult out of the three. The long dramatic shots with no cues made it hard to pace the tension building. Particularly during the dialogue scene. My approach was using drone sounds during the city shots and percussion during the dialogue, as it leaves space and is easy to build up. The structure of the original soundtrack was somewhat similar. The most challenging part was not knowing how to switch from one sound to another quickly enough.
The second clip (You Were Never Really Here) I found more dynamic and easier to work with. It also did not include any dialogue (except for the phone call?) and had a cyclical arc and many environment changes that could inform the sound. I used an Korg Nu Tekt NTS-1 to create mostly atmospheric pads with different LFOs.
I did not attempt the Lady on Fire clip as I found it impossible to use electronic sounds to score the scene. May be due to the fact that I already knew the sound from the original clip.
All in all, this was one of my favourite classes this year. Getting to do something I was very anxious about and would’ve never attempted on my own with people sharing the struggle.