Diploma in Digital Film

DDF 102 - Music for Film

102 Music for Film

Once upon a time you needed to be a musician to make music. Now the software has made music creation much easier. If you are not a trained musician this paper will give you the fundamentals of computer music making with particular relevance to film, and if you already have musical skill this paper will show you how to apply your skills to film composing.

What's different about making music for films?

For a start, film music needs to be very precise durations, but more importantly, the music is there to serve (and drive, comment on) the video. So the music needs to be quite subtle. Some of the best scores you don't even notice – but you'd miss them if they were gone.

What are the Assessments?

You'll be supplied with a variety of video clips and cue sheets that you'll make the music for, and send in for feedback by email. The films you'll be making music for range from gritty dramas, animations, horror films and romantic scenes.

What Gear do I need?

A computer with basic video editing software ) iMovie is OK)

Some means of making music – Soundtrack and GarageBand are recommended, but if you have, and are more familiar with ProTools,  Logic, Acid  (or anything else) that's fine too.

Here are a couple of sample pages from the course documents. These are just pages at random, but they’ll give you an idea of the course content.

102-7 page2.pdf

102-12 page1.pdf