Dance video soundtrack #
Mar 12, 10:00 PM
I was approached in February to write a soundtrack for a short dance film by Fiona Millward, a dancer, and Jo Fairfax, an artist. They had been funded to make the film for the Dancin’ Oxford Festival in March 2008. It was their first film, and they were spending every waking hour creating animations from the blue screen dance footage. The whole project had a lead time of only a few weeks.
Improvising a piano score
The film itself consisted broadly of three sections – the first quite static with improvised voice and a spinning cage, the second featuring three dancers moving across the stage/screen and the last with two dancers and a hectic animation. There were a couple of pieces of guide music over the second and third sections.
With only half a day to create the first draft of the score to a rough edit of the film I launched straight in, and improvised half a dozen piano tracks over the whole thing. Two or three ideas jumped out. I created a tempo map that matched both the energy and the structure of the three sections, and from there it was a simple process to re-record the good ideas to the new tempi, and experiment with some instrumental textures.
We had agreed that the score would be piano-based, with maybe some cello, other strings and percussion, and this combination worked well to create a dreamy, old-fashioned sound. I created a ‘rehearsal piano’ sound with some EQ and compression, and used plenty of reverb on the strings to minimise their digital edges.
A successful premiere
Fiona and Jo were thrilled with the result and after a rethink of the ending and some tweaks to match the final edit, the film was ready to premiere at the Oxford Playhouse on March 8th, 2008.
The balance between the freedom to creatively interpret the visuals, and the boundaries and limitations imposed by the structure and character of the film was spot on, and I’m now looking for more film work.
Check out the finished product.
