Music, Arts & Entertainment
Music for Film
Lesson time 01:05:31 min
Oingo Boingo founder Danny Elfman, the artist who created the music for The Nightmare Before Christmas, Good Will Hunting, and more than 100 other films, teaches you his unconventional, uncensored creative process and techniques for making music that follows a movie’s lead, from mood to melody.
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Topics include: Growing Up at the Movies Timing Is Everything The Spotting Process Temp Music Budgets Big and Small: Making It Work The Importance of Cinema Storytelling Through Music Searching for the Theme Instrumental Choices Digital vs. Live Recording Making Your Own Sounds Insecurity Instincts Picking and Choosing Jobs Ego: The Elephant in the Room Context Is Everything Originality Play to Your Strengths
Teaches Music for Film
Oscar-nominated composer Danny Elfman teaches you his eclectic creative process and his approach to elevating a story with sound.
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To students that are tuning in to this master class. Welcome to my studio. If you're a student of film music, I'm talking to you to try to show you how do you get through a project? How do you approach a project? How do you deal with it when you have it? How do you work towards things? How do you know when you have a good idea or a bad idea? And I'm going to tell you from my perspective how I do these things. As a composer, I have a lot of gear. We're going to talk about instrumentation. We're going to talk about orchestration. We're going to talk about melody. We're going to talk about what makes a classical film score and what makes a minimalist contemporary film score and why they both work. I call this music out of chaos, and it's for a reason. I plan nothing. There is no right way. There is no wrong way to approach a composition. All you have is different point of views. I want to let you know what my observations are and mostly what my experiences have been. I'm Danny Elfman and this is my master class. I never had a mentor. And the reason why I'm talking to you all now is to share my experiences so that you might find yourself in a similar situation and go, okay, He didn't have the answer and he felt really insecure. So the fact that I feel insecure about this may not be the end of the world. I don't think any of the really good composers composers are arrogant fucks. There's no doubt about that. But the fact is the arrogance is generally hiding great insecurity that we all carry. I don't think it's different between a composer and an actor that way. Sometimes the more bravado they have about themselves, it's covering a deep insecurity. I'm constantly insecure about what I'm doing. I never know if it's right. Of course, I wish I had a mentor, somebody that I can go to that I respected and go. Just tell me what you think of this and that they can give me some solid advice, but I just never had that in my life. So I had to learn to trust my instincts. And what I'm telling you right now is that it's okay to feel unsure of yourself and it's okay to feel insecure I think this is the life of a composer, and I think it's the life of an artist in general, and it's okay to feel that way. Having said all that, my doubt, do I ever express that to the director or a producer? No way. Never. Never. There's what you feel and what you project and what you project is confident. I got this. I own it. I got it. Don't worry. You're good. When I started watching the movies, I'm guessing I was around five or six because I remember the first movie that scared the crap out of me and kind of started a bit of a lifelong obsession. Was a movie starring Peter Lawrie called The Beast with Five Fingers. The Beast with Five Fingers was a horror movie from actually the forties or fifties. But this Peter Laurie character became a lifelong obsession with me and oddly, the hand that was pursuing him because that's what it was about. It was the hand of a pianist that he was ...
About the Instructor
From The Simpsons theme to the soundtracks of Tim Burton’s Pee-wee’s Big Adventure and The Nightmare Before Christmas, Danny Elfman’s compositions are original, memorable, and exuberantly weird. Now the Oingo Boingo founder and four-time Oscar nominee shares his unconventional (and uncensored) creative process. Step into Danny’s studio and learn his techniques for evoking emotion and elevating a story through music.
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Danny Elfman
Oscar-nominated composer Danny Elfman teaches you his eclectic creative process and his approach to elevating a story with sound.
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