RMM General Meeting Minutes – November 2013

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RMM General Meeting Minutes November 21, 2013 (November 2013 Meeting)
 
Start Time: 6:34PM
Total in Attendance: 33
Location: RCTV
Agenda:
 
Introductions:

  • Made individually around the room

 
Upcoming Events:
RMM M2M 2013

  • Thursday, January 23, 2014 – Sunday, January 26, 2013
  • www.rochestermoviemakers.org/events/m2m
  • Passed out flyers and encouraged people to help post them around Rochester
  • Announced Nora Brown, Dan Casper, and Mitch Goldman as judges for this year

RMM Writers Workshop

  • Next meeting is Tuesday, November 26, 2013 at 6:00PM at Pita Pit, 311 Alexander Street
  • Bring outlines, short scripts, or first ten pages of feature for reading and discussion
  • All skill levels welcome

Rochester Film Lab

RMM General Meeting

  • DATE CHANGE to Thursday, January 2, 2014 because of Christmas
    • White Elephant Party – bring worst holiday gift, re-wrapped, to get chance to open a new gift

RCTV/Rochester Documentary Group Panel Discussion

  • Topic of panel discussion: shooting documentaries/films outside of the country
    • Linda Maroney, Carvin Eison, and Nancy Gerstner will be on panel
    • Friday, November 22, 2013 at 4:30pm at RCTV
    • Free and open to the public

 
Upcoming Projects:
Crystle Slavy – Documentary

  • Making a short documentary about her tattoo artist friend who recently suffered from a stroke
  • Needs mostly sound and lighting help
    • Mics and mixers for sound
    • Fill light for interviews for lighting
  • Shooting mid-December 2013 to mid-January 2014
    • At Steadfast Tattoo
    • Shooting may only take an hour, finished product will be 5 to 10 minutes long
  • Contact crystle AT crystleslavy DOT com for more information

Mike McCourt – Instructional Videos (www.roccera.com)

  • Needs instructional videos made for his company, regarding ceramics manufacturing
  • Needs full production of these professional videos
  • Contact mamcourt AT att DOT net for more information

Curt Markham – Stop-Motion Film Re-Make

  • Remaking old stop-motion film produced on Super 8
  • Needs VO and SFX actors to re-record dialogue
  • Contact curt AT pixelmander DOT com for more information

Networking: 6:50PM – 7:10PM
 
Speaker:
John Centrone – Music and Sound in Film
Background

  • 2004 – founded Bethany Ridge Studios
  • Produces and composes original music – 12 short films, 2 documentaries, and five feature films in 5 years

“Music won’t make a bad film good, but it will make a good film great”
What music does in a film

  • Lends “emotion” to a film
    • Is the most artificial aspect of a film because we don’t have soundtracks to our lives
  • Enacts physiological responses in the viewer
    • Ex. Quickening pulse, increase in respiration, increase in blood pressure, etc.

There are automatic responses the audience has to different musical codes

  • Ex. Major scale = happy; minor scale = sad, scary, or unpleasant
  • Played different examples of different types of music that bring out different emotional responses
    • Ex. Biblical music, doom, flashbacks, passing time
  • John has a list of different emotions linked with different musical conventions he can use to create/enhance those emotions through music

To make a soundtrack for a film, John first establishes emotional cues in the film

  • Before making any music
  • Needs to fist establish a reason for music to exist

We cannot multi-task, and film takes advantage of this

  • So, we cannot listen to the music and notice the film at the same time
  • Music, therefore, is the background and it is used to lull us deeper into the film emotionally
    • All done subconsciously

Music serves three purposes

  • Physical function
    • Establishes setting/location, time, culture, underlying action, etc.
  • Psychological function
    • Creation of mood, rounding off the film, suggesting unspoken thoughts
    • Insight into makeup of character or philosophical point
    • Setting up for a surprise, or telegraphing (telling us something is about to come up)
  • Technical function
    • Building continuity from scene-to-scene (bridging through a fade to black) or overall continuity

Sources of Music for Film

  • Songs – for pop songs or songs by specific artists – need synchronization license
    • Could cost $5,000 to $300,000 for limited use
    • But brings all emotion associated with song into the film
    • Songs by unknown artists still need sync license, but can lost less or free
  • Library Music – fine to use, but is probably better to create original music
    • Can purchase right-to-use license for music in a library, and can do so royalty-free
      • It can be good, but it doesn’t always “fit like a glove”, like original music
  • A song may be in the public domain, but the recording is probably not
    • Need to re-record it to avoid royalties
    • Current copyright is life of recording artist + 90 years after death

Played scene from Bury My Heart With Tonawanda to demonstrate composition technique and show bridging between scenes

  • John likes to score films so that it seems like the film was cut to the music, instead of the other way around

Scenarios of Scoring

  • Hollywood Method – Composed-to-Picture Scenario #1
    • Full complement of musicians and technicians to score a film
      • Includes full orchestra
      • Can consume 3% to 5% of total film budget
        • Example: $45,000,000 film should have a film budget from $1,350,000 to $2,250,000
        • 60-piece L.A. film orchestra musicians make $253.00 per musician for fifteen minutes of recording time (=3 hours of working time)
          • Totals $15,800 for fifteen minutes of recording time
  • Rochester Method – Composed-to-Picture Scenario #2
    • Composer does everything – write, mix, dub, orchestrate, etc.
      • Is able to do it because of sampling software, which has gotten much better over the last ten years
      • Can also add just a couple of real musicians to the mix to greatly enhance the overall sound of the samples

Played clip from Step 9 (at 14:00 minute mark) and described his composition process
 
End of Meeting: 8:20PM
 
Click below for the minutes in DOCX format:
RMM General Meeting Minutes – November 2013