Robin Hoffmann
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Hero - Short Film Score - Walkthrough Pt.21 - M6 (Part 6)
🕑 Added 2021-06-24 08:17:43 +0000 UTCIn this last part, we will have a look at the final theme statement in the End Credits as well as discussing what I would do differently now 4 years after I originally wrote that score.
As usual, recording, score sheet and Midi File attached at the bottom of the post.
https://soundcloud.com/robin-hoffmann/hero-m6-bar-74-end/s-dSdX8TlnKC2
The idea of this section was to end the cue and movie with an emotional statement of the theme after the high energy Western passage from before. I wanted to revisit the actual driving force of that movie which was the love between the two brothers and give the score a tender finale.
This harmonisation of the theme is actually the original version which I adapted during writing the score for the sweepy climactic statement of the theme in the movie that happened befiore the end credits.
I remember that the approach that I took here was very much driven by linear writing. I had (obviously) the top line and bass and started to fill out the middle parts with melodic ideas that I came up with. For instance that little motif in the violas in 79 was purely a melodic decision. The interesting thing is that it creates a heavy clash for a brief moment between the melody that uses a D natural as the maj7 of that chord while the harmony and that little viola motif uses a Db as the minor 7th in that chord at the same time. Strictly speaking that shouldn't be allowed and if you pay attention to that moment you hear that minor 9th clash. Yet, I wasnt't bothered at all by it and I felt that it created a nice rub that I found quite attractive. I think the reasons why this "clash" is relatively mild on our ear is that there is quite a bit of distance between these two voices, they are both melodically very plausible and the top line feels more like a cambiata rather than an actual melodic motion. It is still a quite fascinating occurance of a theoretically illegal clash.
As you can see, the chords tend to be quite rich with a lot of extensions (especially ninths) so in spite of the relatively simple melody and chord progression, it becomes quite sophisticated sounding. I remember that the C9 chord (a "majorized" II of a ii-V-I) took some time in the recording as some players wanted to play a minor third in that chord (which is relatively expectable but I felt that this major version had a richer sound in that context) so we needed to address this issue directly in order to get all players on line with that major third. I also remember I spent quite some time with this passage to incorporate all the sidelines that I heard in my head for this passage but at the same time make the vertical structure plausible. Personally for me, in such passages this is always the most challenging part and always feels like a chess game. The balance between what melodic motion I want and which notes I want an inner line to reach and at the same time making sure that the voicing in the vertical structure is properly balanced and contains all the essential notes to display the chord properly can be really challenging. Most often, the consequence is that one voice needs to serve the harmonic "leftovers" and ends up being melodically not super exciting but with a bit of work it is usually possible to make all voices melodically attractive and still get a proper representation of the harmony.
I personally feel that with this passage I managed quite well to make all voices melodically relatively attractive. I don't remember exactly how much time I spent on that theme statement but I remember it was quite a bit and definitely more than on some of the full orchestral tutti passages.
With the final few bars, I really wanted to create a super satisfying resolution and a "powerful and heroic" final chord. One thing that I personally find super fascinating are soft tutti chords (as this one). If they are voiced nicely and played accordingly, they can create (at least with me) an incredible emotional response. To me it always feels like a "sleeping lion", especially when voiced quite low (and ignoring Low Interval Limits that don't play a big role in soft dynamics). So this final Bb major chord has a lot of chord material in low registers which create this warm yet powerful chord sound that I personally think underlines the emotional idea of heroism. By the way, the first time I consciously noticed such a chord was the final chord of the Main Theme from Band of Brothers by Michael Kamen which already fascinated me as a teenage boy (even before I was allowed to watch the series).
In order to make this last chord as satisfying as possible I needed to create some tension before that which I did with this quite spicy Cbmaj7/Bb which in its basic form is a relatively common way to delay the I but with the remaining Bb in the bass it becomes quite dissonant and yet with that high register cello line somehow bittersweet which I really liked in this context and the freeing up of the bass register in these two bars gave the final chord even more gravity to end this cue and score with the final chord.
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It was quite interesting going though that score in such detail again almost 4 years after I wrote it and it was also interesting to see how vivid I remembered some of the musical decisions I took in that process. Overall I'm still quite pleased with how this score turned out and considering the budget limitations that we had with this movie and the score it is great to see that the result still holds up today. The title track of that score got quite a bit of "rotation" on the streaming platforms after I released it there. Also, the movie and score won a few festivals and opened some doors for the filmmakers which hopefully should lead to a new project soon.
But of course, there are also a few things in the score that I would change or do differently nowadays. Two of these are down to the work process that I had back then when I was working in Sibelius. The first one is that back then I had the habit of writing the score in Sibelius in Page mode and not in Panorama mode so I missed a few awkward leaps in some instruments over page turns which I would have noticed if I worked in panaroma mode as I do nowadays.
The other one is the problematic implementation of video files (to this date) in Sibelius which is never really exactly in sync, sometimes skips a few frames etc, especially at the beginning of a cue. As I mentioned already in the parts about M2, I'm not super happy with the starting point of that cue and it is actually only a matter of a few frames. I should have laid out a proper start point for that cue rather than just "estimating" that it starts in the right ballpark with the issues in Sibelius. So this project taught me a lot how important sometimes a few frames at the beginning of a cue can be.
In musical terms there are a few spots here and there where I think that nowadays I would voice them a little differently or do a different musical gesture there but there are no moments where I think that they are complete disasters.
One big issue that I was already aware of when I wrote it was the budget constraint. I really wish there would have been more budget for more session time/more takes and a different studio as I feel the recording lacks quite a bit in specific places but also in general sound. It is not "horrible" but could be much better in my opinion but considering we soldiered through this score in 1:45 hours of recording time, it is quite remarkable how this turned out.
One of the things that I remember fondly is how some of the musicians approached me after the session and mentioned how much they liked the score which is something that I rarely experienced in Prague before.
So after all, I still cherish this movie as one of my most favorite projects I have ever done. I mentioned already several times how much the filmmakers appreciate the role of the music and working with people like that really makes the composer's life a lot of fun and this was definitely one of the most fun scoring projects I ever had.
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