For the spring semester of 1999, I was given the opportunity to instruct a Film Scoring class at Humboldt State University but had no budget for equipment and supplies. The Department of Music made the following items available to me for the class and lab purposes:

Interestingly, the problem of having a limited amount of equipment actually led to a digital approach for film scoring, using techniques that are becoming standard in the film industry. The goal of this paper is to offer a basic approach for digital film scoring that does not require a large amount of expensive equipment. Topics to be discussed will include music sequencing programs that run QuickTime Movies while recording music, QuickTime Player Pro, QuickTime Musical Instruments, scoring techniques (e.g., overlays, soft hits, hard hits, mathematical equations for calculating hit points), textbooks, and creating stand alone QuickTime versions of film with music.

In the area of textbooks for film scoring, two are available that work very well in a classroom situation. On The Track, by Fred Carlin and Rayburn Wright, is by far the most complete text available on film scoring. This text offers many musical scores from well-known movies and television programs combined with a step-by-step approach to the film scoring industry. The second text is titled, Advanced Techniques for Film Scoring by Earle Hagen. This text looks at available software for calculating cues as well as how to work out the mathematics with a calculator.

Special software and hardware is necessary for converting video into a QuickTime movie. Media 100 offers both the hardware (a video card) and software necessary for this process.*1 The conversion process requires the video to be sampled into the Media 100 program through a video card so the user can then digitize the film choosing a digital format (QuickTime, Sorensen, DV Stream, etc.) and frame rate. For the film scoring class, I chose to digitize a segment from the silent movie "Metropolis." However, this process can be done on video with dialog and sound effects just as easily. The equipment required for digitizing video is expensive but many campuses today have media labs available to faculty and students that will offer this capability.

There are many sequencing programs available that will play QuickTime movies while digitally recording music. Some of the programs that include this feature are Vision DSP,*2 Performer 6.03,*3 and Cubasis VST & AV.*4 For this paper, Performer 6.03 will be used to demonstrate how to create a multi-track MIDI file while playing a QuickTime Movie.

After opening Performer, select Movie from the Windows menu. Next, watch the movie to determine an appropriate tempo and to "spot" for possible hit points contained within the scene. There are two types of hit points in film scoring: 1) a "dead hit" where the music needs to be synchronized within 2 frames of the film or 2) a "soft hit" where the music is synchronized within 1/3 of a second of the film. Normally the director and the composer determine these hit points. Once hit points have been selected, a tempo needs to be chosen and then the exact point of the "hit" within the tempo needs to be determined. The process for calculating a hit point is given below:

This method is called the calculator approach and can be very tedious and time consuming to use if there are numerous hit points. Another way to determine a hit point in Performer is to use the transport controls to move to the frame where the hit point occurs. Performer will specify at what beat and measure the hit point is occurring. When teaching about hit points, it is best for students to learn both techniques so they have the ability to find hit points using a calculator or with a sequencing program.

When composing music for a stand-alone QuickTime Movie it is necessary to use General MIDI Instruments so the music can be realized with the correct instrumentation when attached as a midi file to the movie. This can be done in Performer simply by selecting QuickTime Musical Instruments from the Output menu located in the Control Panel as shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1. Accessing QuickTime built in musical instruments.

Figure 2. Accessing General MIDI presets in Performer.

Once patches have been determined, it is imperative to imbed the patch changes into the file itself by using the Insert tool located in the Tracks Window, as shown in Figure 3.

Figure 3. Inserting a patch change in Performer 6.03

When composing the music for the scene, step- or real-time entry (or a combination of both) may be used. The movie will move forward as you enter notes so you can view exactly what is showing at any given beat of any measure. Once the music is composed and the patches are imbedded into the file, the sequence then needs to be saved as a MIDI file and attached to the QuickTime Movie. Then the midi file version of the sequence should be opened with QuickTime Player. Copy the midi file in QuickTime by Shift-clicking on the transport button and dragging it from the beginning to the end of the file. This will select all of the information contained in the MIDI file. Then choose Copy from the Edit menu. Now open the QuickTime Movie that the music was composed for and push Command-Option-Shift-V to paste the MIDI file into the movie. Once the MIDI file is attached you can mix the volumes of the dialogue and music tracks to create a good balance between the two. This can be done with the editing tools available in QuickTime Player Pro as shown in Figure 4.

Figure 4. Mixing the volumes in QuickTime.

Once the MIDI file is attached to the movie, it is ready to be played. After viewing the movie, save it as a self-contained movie so it can be used as an independent file.

The process for digitally scoring music to film requires skills in critical thinking, musical composition, mathematics, and computers. Digital film scoring offers students a chance to fine-tune their skills in the areas mentioned above as well as develop their ability at creative problem-solving. In addition, a course of this scope will have a good chance of drawing students from other disciplines, which is part of the strategic plan at many universities today.