COMPOSING FOR FILM

COMPOSING FOR FILM is an extremely effective way of introducing students to composing music, with the structural and expressive elements of composition being determined through the visual image.

Members of Harmonie Band work with groups of students to produce a score for a short silent film. Students discover ways of creating appropriate music for the images through practical improvisation and experimentation. Scores are usually notated in simple graphic form and performed by the students to accompany the film at the end of the project.

An effective way of focussing a large-scale project is for students to prepare a score for public performance in a silent film double bill, with the students performing their own score in the first half prior to Harmonie Band’s presentation in the second half.

The project might be modelled on the success of a previous education project, which took place with children from a Solihull school at Midlands Art Centre (MAC) as part of Harmonie Band’s January 2004 tour of Buster Keaton’s “The General”. Two members of Harmonie Band worked with a group of 17 children over 2 days to create and perform their own music for some of the ‘days’ in Keaton’s “One Week” (20’). The children produced music for the opening (Monday and Tuesday), and for Friday. Harmonie Band played Paul Robinson’s score for the other days of the week, with the children joining in for Sunday’s closing music. The children were seated with Harmonie Band on stage for a public performance, which preceded Harmonie Band’s presentation of “The General” (77’).

Formats for projects are flexible, ranging from a three-hour workshop to a three-day project, employing between 1 to 6 members of the band according to requirements.

The value of working with professional musicians of this calibre inspired pupils of all abilities to excel