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Faces of Change
A man suffering from depression tries to hide it from his girlfriend
with devastating results.
Production
I was asked to write the music for the opening scene of the
Multistory Films
production, Faces of Change. This thought provoking and engaging production is beautifully
shot with stunning acting.
It is a dark journey into the tortured mind of a
young man desperate to maintain a mask over his unhappiness. Written by a victim
of depression, Faces of Change is a gripping and realistic glimpse into a man's
fractured life.
Producer: Ruaidhri O'Mahony
Director: Emma Biggins
Cast:
David Oakes
Jennifer Bath
Description
 Faces of Change mp3, 1 mins 25 secs,
2,009KB - for orchestra and piano. This dark short drama starts with a young
couple striding happily along a sunlit road until they arrive at his flat. They
kiss. As she goes to leave he pulls her back for another kiss. He stands
watching her walk away: his vitality, his happiness drain away - an aching void
now where delight was only moments before.
Faces of Change opening scene wmv, 2 mins
22 secs, 4.069MB - this is the video trailer for the opening scene with the
above music.
Composition
There is no dialog in the opening scene - not even
ambient sound .
Music starts whilst video is still black (minor chords), shot of sun light
through leaves fades in (bell tree and modulate to relative major here and
introduce the jumping piano ready for the next cut), then a slow fade to long
shot of the couple walking (cymbal cresc on the transition). All you can see at
this shot is that it is a sunny day in a pleasant residential area and that
there is a couple walking towards us in the distance.
This next cut I think is key - it is where I actually started. It is a side-on
tracking shot of the couple striding along, in the sunshine, hand in hand and
clearly in love. This shot lasts quite a while and it is really descriptive.
This is where I composed from:
I set the tempo to be that of their strides, the texture comes from the shear
energy and joy with which the characters are walking along together. You can see
them talking to each other - soon we get another closer shot seeing the couple
from the front and you can really see beautiful totally enjoyable dialog between
them.
As a result I tried to pick a bubbling and happy texture that included
chattering joy as well as striding with purpose - in lieu of ambient sounds, we
cannot hear the dialog, just sense the joy of it.
As we cut to the close up of the front shot, I add depth to the texture but
putting the leaping violins up an octave and add a lower octave of double bass
to the already established cello bass line.
I couldn't afford to vary the texture much, but I kept adding new little
elements and threw in a few modulations to try and stop the listener from
getting too bored by the end of the scene.
The next sync point was the first kiss. I felt stillness in the texture could
add emphasis. But it is a strange kiss - short but very passionate, it had the
timing of a goodbye kiss, but intensity of what would normally be a much longer
kiss.
At this point I experimented with a contrasting long line. I tried to find a
romantic line that could go against the bubbling energy of the texture, and that
could come to the front during the kisses.
So I started the long horn line the moment we see the couple in the distance, to
indicate some kind of romantic involvement before we deduce it visually. I
sweated for some time over where the horn line should be in the mix - I
eventually settled for low in the mix, so it makes a bigger contrast at the kiss
- rising up over the top of the day-to-day bubbling, just for a moment, then
back to day-to-day excitement.
The texture following the first kiss has a double time element in the lifting
repeated notes violin notes, depicting things being more exciting than before.
The second kiss still has a lift, but the day-to-day excitement texture doesn't
stop this time, allowing me a bigger contrast for the stillness of the horn
"drain away" passage. |
