Case Study: Before We Graduate
The brief:
Create a score for a 5 episode mini series that reflects the joy, chaos, and utter turmoil of the two lead characters Alex and May as they crash through a number of hilarious situations finding themselves along the way.
Each episode was between 5-11minutes and needed core themes to recur throughout each episode. As each episode is short and punchy we needed the music to reflect the fast paced narrative and keep cohesion throughout each moment.
The budget:
This series was achieved on zero budget with a minute amount going to sourcing props. It is amazing what can be done on no upfront budget when a crew can rally together with a director that is understanding of limitations and listens to their team for creative work arounds!
The approach:
With the budget having an impact on what we can and couldn’t achieve with this project we didn’t say no. We saw that dir. Chloe Smith was serious in the project and had a mapped out plan of requirements, a realistic pitch deck to work towards and a clear plan for release and distribution. This made us consider the likely success of the project and the willingness of the director to make things happen.
In cases like this where we can’t invest huge amounts of time and fund large-scale recording sessions we had to be creative and work in house in those odd free moments of time between other projects. Chloe has been incredibly understanding of this, allowing a huge amount of creative freedom and patience, and because of this we still have a good quality score that is punchy and consistent throughout the series.
The approach to the music was a simple one, we have short themes all based around the pilot episode's requirements capturing each moment of relaxation, chaotic action, humorous realisation, tension, and momentum builders. We knew these narrative themes were going to repeat in each episode so we moved away from direct scoring and James created cues to edit for all episodes. This creates instant cohesion and continuity as well as helping to reinforce the overarching structure of each episode.
Spending a little time thinking about the approach to this series saved a huge amount of time directly scoring each moment in turn without impacting the final result.
All instruments heard on this series are VST instruments that have been programmed and humanised within the DAW sequence to create life-like performance.
Although it won’t come close to real life recordings, it is amazing what can be written in the box when constraints are so tight.
