All tagged film composer

The Creative Spaces of Film Composers and Mix Engineers

The Creative Spaces of Film Composers and Mix Engineers

Michael W. Bell
Music Production, Talking Music, Music Composition, Talking Technology

I'm basically in love with Spitfire Audio's samples, the textures and colours they have captured over the years have been essential in reaching my audiences and telling the right stories effectively within my film scores. It was during my usual online scout for new samples for my next projects when I stumbled across a series of videos they had published known as Creative Cribs, and I wanted to share it with you guys.

Given their outreach with film composers all over the globe, they (Spitfire Audio) have been able to get an inside look at many composers studios and give us a pretty comprehensive tour. I have embedded my three favorites below and hope you guys will take the time to check them out as well as taking a look at the vast collection Spitfire have posted...

Francis: A Look Back In Time At My Very First Film Score

Francis: A Look Back In Time At My Very First Film Score

Michael W. Bell
Music Production, Video Blogs, , Talking Technology

How much should you give away? How much do you expose yourself? Should you open yourself up for criticism? Should you hide your art away?

Music, and any art come to think of it, is an incredibly personal thing. There is a reason people won’t show you that paining they have been working on for the past two months, why that poem just never seems finished, and why film composers can be late on their deadlines ;).

It’s all about exposure! It’s fairly human to talk your way around things, get yourself out of sticky situations, and let’s be fair, talk utter bullshit at times; but when you play a piece of music to someone, or unveil you latest painting, suddenly you are naked, open to criticism and in many cases, at your most vulnerable as both an artist and as a person.

I’ve listened to loads of music from various fellow composers  and what I find interesting (although never comment), is just how much that specific piece, written at that specific time is actually saying about the person, it’s very personal…

Hans Zimmer Revealed

Hans Zimmer Revealed

Michael W. Bell
Music Performance, Talking Music, Gigs/Concerts

I had heard Zimmer comment in an interview around the time of Chris Nolan’s Inception in 2010 that he had been contemplating taking some time off from movie scoring to take his music around the world with a bunch of his friends and an orchestra.

I had been intrigued by this but after another seeing one move after another being added to his IMDb page, including another Pirates of the Caribbean, Sherlock 2, The Dark Knight Rises, Man of Steel, 12 Years A Slave and Rush to name a few, it seemed this was going to be unlikely.

This is not to say that I wanted to stop hearing Zimmer’s scores in new movies, far from it, I just wanted to see some of his scores performed live and knew I would be interested to study the stage placement and arrangement of the band, not to mention it would simply be an amazing event should it ever actually take place. 

Then I noticed that with the exception of Interstellar (Nolan’s upcoming 2014 feature, and one I’m really looking forward to), his schedule looked fairly light in comparison to the previous years. This was followed by one boring weekday afternoon sitting at my day job bored out of my mind and daydreaming about film as usual, I received an email from one of the many live event websites of which I am partied and they happened to be advertising an event called Hans Zimmer Revealed. I instantly looked into it and excitedly bought the best and most expensive seats I could afford at the time, the gig was finally actually going to happen…