A source of film score composing exercises

[fiziwig]

I just had a goofy idea. I'm a big fan of film score music, and as a beginning amateur composer I'd like to try my hand at scoring a film. Of course tackling a full length film score would be biting off way more than I can chew, but it occurred to me that YouTube is chocked full of short films, comedic, dramatic, suspenseful, whatever you want. Scoring a 3 to 5 minute YouTube film might be a fun way to get some practice at synchronizing music to action. Just as an example, I picked, at random, part 7 of the 12-part season one finale of Lonelygirl15 (episode 262), a long-running YouTube dramatic serial.

YouTube - Lonelygirl15 Season Finale 7 of 12 -- 2...

I haven't started working on it yet, I just wondered if anyone else had thought of using YouTube as a source of practice exercises for film scoring. There are a bazillion videos to choose from.

on edit: HMMMMM it embedded the YouTube video. I only meant to give the URL. Anybody know how to do a YouTube URL without embedding the video?

--gary

[chckn8r]

Hey fiziwig,

Great suggestion as a source for tons of videos, however, I'm wondering how you're getting the video to sync with your music. YouTube encodes the video as a flash movie thereby making it difficult for folks to download and get a frame-accurate sync with their DAW. You could probably try contacting the directors to see if they'd send you a file of their work...

If you'd like to jump into trying out scoring a short film, there are a couple of good resources to canvas - Mandy.COM has casting call notices from professionals and amateurs alike - great for hooking up with student or other amateur directors who may be looking for some free music to add to their film. There's also CraigsList, although the postings there usually specifically state not to "cold call" posters for services other than the job posted. There may be local film/video casting bulletin boards in your city to "haunt" and check out.

I do film/TV scoring for a living, so please do let me know if you have any questions. I'd be more than happy to help.

D

[fiziwig]

For synching to video you can always download the raw videos. There are any number of web_based YouTube rippers available that do not require installing any software.

E.G.

http://www.dubayou.com/mytube.php OR: http://ripvideo.net/

As for doing a "real" movie, well I'm just an old retired fart doing this strictly as a hobby, so I seriously doubt I'll ever make the big leagues. Thanks for the suggestions, though. Once I learn what I'm doing I might give it some thought.

--gary
listen to my newbie efforts at http://www.fiziwig.com/