Setting the Mood with Music
Thaddeus' Thank you card by Louise Wong
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First, the composer and directors discussed what was the tone they wanted for each particular segment, describing the first part as "mysterious and atmospheric" the second as "energetic and comedic" and the final segment as "inspirational."
The credits song started conceptualized as a small jazz piece, but after seeing how it didn't fit with the rest of the sound, the sound changed to a melancholic tune. The composer then used FL Studio to begin planning a small melody for each segment, running it by the team for approval.
Once the melody for each segment was approved, we added the chords and changed the rhythms to fit the segments better and the timing of the scene. Once that was set, different mixing tools were used within FL Studio to give it the soft, echoey tones for the slower segments and less echo for the energetic segment.
A bit more sound mixing was then done to push the song into sounding as pleasing to the ears as possible, while not super-seeding the visuals and voice of the project.
Luis' Note:
Working on this particular score was quite interesting. I am very used to working with Orchestral Rock, something you'd find in a JRPG, so this was an interesting experience. An exercise in ambiance and limitation of instruments, focusing more on the emotions. My wonderful directors sent me sample music to get an idea of what they'd like. While these were useful, I had to do an effort capture the feeling my directors wanted, with out coping the sound of the sample songs.
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To Do this, I listened to each track once, watched the animation over and over to figure out the feel of each style change. The Feelings of "Mysterious" to "Comedy" to "Inspirational" were my main core, and once I had those ideas in mind, I focused on capturing those 3 specific feelings. The melodies came from what these feelings got out of me, and thus once I got the keys I wanted to convey these feelings, I got to work.
The Credits theme was originally a Jazz piece since I wanted to experiment and have fun. But since the sound didn't match, I followed my directors advice to slow down and make the mood match the rest of the animation, and I'd like to think I did a good job with that.
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Ian's Note:
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When we first started to talk about the music for the film, I actually considered composing it myself to get some use out of my Music Composition class last semester. But I then realized that would be close to impossible with the workload that I received so we decided to hire a composer instead.
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The music used in the earlier drafts of the main theme of the film were inspired by "Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence" by Ryuichi Sakamoto and "Gnossienne No.1" by Erik Satie. These were the songs that I sent to our composer Luis Guerrero and specifically told him to have the first half sound like "Gnossiene No.1" and have end like the first few notes of "Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence."
Eventually we decided to take some inspiration from the track "Date" by RADWIMPS from "Your Name" for the comedic aspects of the film.
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And then we have slowed down jazz arrangement for the credits.
Not confusing at all.
Louise's Note:
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As someone with zero experience in composing music, I had no idea on how to approach instructing our composer, Luis. Music and sound is very important in any form of visual entertainment, we really had to nail this or the whole film could potentially fail at conveying its story to the audience.
The best thing I could do in explaining what kind of music we were going for is by giving Luis some example songs that capture the emotion and feel we were going for.
These sample songs included works by Claude Debussy, Erik Satie, Joe Hasaishi, and RADWIMPS. What all the sample songs had in common was their use of piano as the central instrument.
The piano is very powerful and versatile; thus, I knew the piano would have to be our main focus.
Overall, Luis did an amazing job. He delivered such quality work in such a short time. He was definitely the perfect composer for our team as he kept communicating with us and showing us his works in progress.
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