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Music for Film
Missing Persons
Missing Persons
2024
Written and Directed by Jack Kison
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This Thriller short film follows Hannah, trying to get to the bottom of her wife's disappearance, and picking up the piece of her own life.
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My primary goal in designing sound and composing music for this project, was to ground the soundtrack in Hannah's psyche and emotional journey. I was inspired by the psychology in Gavin De Becker's Non-Fiction book The Gift of Fear, and used it as a blueprint for designing and cerebral soundscape.
Click here to view the full short film
Anguish
Though not a strictly thematic score, Hannah and April have instruments associated with them. Hannah's is a piano and April's is a Female Voice Soloist. As the music follows the emotional journey of Hannah, the sound of it is also filtered through her emotions. When she is in anguish or stressed, the music is darker, more abstract and distorted. Her piano motif is constantly present in this sample, but is processed and mangled in numerous ways. April's vocal motif is also heard in nearly every piece of music in Missing Persons, but is used in a way that's barely recognizable as a human voice, representing her absence, and Hannah's uncertainty about her fate.
Mystery
Clarity
The mysterious elements in this film are represented by a Glass Marimba, processed with a rhythmic echo. This illustrates a character's attention on the unknown. A buzzsaw synth is also introduced here, being used as a sonic texture that suggests danger.
When Hannah begins to take steps toward picking up the pieces of her home and mental health, the music shifts from abstract ambient electronic textures to more acoustic ones, using music to illustrate a mental clarity.
The composition becomes less menacing and more poignant and sentimental as she accepts that her greatest love is likely gone forever. Also of note here is the introduction of a musical texture that serves as a motif for Hannah and April's life and love together; two acoustic guitars playing melodically around one another.
Danger
The moment of greatest tension occurs near the end of this film when April's murderer, invades Hannah's home to claim her hand in marriage, without her consent. He prepares a dinner for her and reacts violently when she carefully tries to get him to leave.
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The music here is action based and has a focus on unpitched percussion. Most of the instrumentation here is associated with Lawrence, since he's an oncoming assaultive force. Therefore, most of the percussion and even the tonal elements are derived from sampled recordings of Kitchen items, including silverware, cupboards, pots, pans, wine glasses, etc. The danger buzzsaw is more present and violent here than ever. The music starts small on throbbing metallic textures, before becoming a full-throttled percussion arrangement to underscore the immediacy of Lawrence's attack.
Resolve and Closure
After defeating Lawrence and finally solving the mystery of April's disappearance, Hannah decides to sell their house, leave town, move on and start her life anew, but not before visiting April's grave to say a final goodbye.
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This piece is composed to express an irrecoverable ache, but a resolve to persevere and grow despite it. April's voice texture is still abstract, but is a bit airier. more ambient and peaceful. The arrangement that grows from it is more acoustic than ever, expressing full clarity in Hannah's heart and mind. The acoustic guitar motif briefly returns once more as Hannah says goodbye without words and disappears as she walks away towards a new life.
Full soundtrack available for purchase and streaming on Bandcamp
Play With Me
Play With Me
Film Directed by Joanna Strange
& Produced by Laura Wynne
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For this commission, I was given the direction of producing music that aligned with "creepy horror but slightly indie. I interpreted that direction by making a score more ambient than orchestral. Sounds were sourced from a combination of Logic Pro's analog and modeling synthesizers as well as the sample library. Despite the impressionistic design of the music, samples of orchestral instruments were used, but abstracted to the point of being unrecognizable with the use of reverb and distortion. This created sounds that felt organic, but otherworldly, supporting the supernatural horror elements of the story.
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Produced Digitally by Tyler Quinn, 2017
Full soundtrack available for purchase and streaming on Bandcamp
The Twins
The Twins
Also Sound Designer for this project
Written and Directed by Tim Geib
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This animated series pilot is centered around the mystery of two Twins, separated at birth, working for governments of separate countries, that are both assigned to fight the threat of an emerging terrorist cell.
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The director commissioned the accompanying music to be a character based thematic score, that also fit into the cerebral, electronically produced scores that define contemporaries of this genre of television. The writing of this show is procedural and intense, but is also quite playful, and I composed the music to reflect that.
Click here to view the full episode
The central component of this score is the theme that defines the biological and emotional connection of the titular twins, Vera and Jessica. Both sisters individual themes are played on guitar, but very differently.
Jessica, the American Twin, has her theme played in a bright, conventional way, either strummed or picked. This supports her sunny disposition. Vera, the Russian raised Twin, has her guitar theme played unconventionally with an EBow. This creates a distorted, legato drone that supports her cold and volatile nature.
The melodic theme that unites the two of them is vulnerable, suspenseful and emotional, suggesting the forces of their governments that exploit their bond for their own agendas and the uncertainty they feel about each other.
For the central antagonist, Inala, her theme is performed on a sample of a Monochord. A monochord is an experimental instrument that dates back to several ancient countries, but it's origin is dubious. This thematically supports the mystery surrounding Inala's character, but the instrument's brittle, unstable quality also supports Inala's dangerous nature.
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Her foot Soldiers, the Blank Slate, are a terrorist cell that have no nationality of Origin. They are united instead under an ideal. They have military training, so their thematic instrument is a timpani that plays a quiet, shadowy pulse that builds in velocity as they carry out their attacks.
This non-thematic piece is used to support the arrival of the Twins, and their allies, onto the scene of an intense hostage negotiation. It is electronic, percussive and supports the bearocratic procedure that surrounds them. It is intense, but also somewhat lighthearted, as is the story overall.
The percussion sounds are sourced from original recordings that give this piece a somewhat industrial tone. They include single hits against ventilation ducts, the body of a washing machine and copper pipes. The looping of these recordings are programmed to have varying velocities, which give the performances a loose, jazzy quality that also has a human feel to it.
College Projects
Bruce Almighty
Performed by the Keweenaw Symphony Orchestra
Conducted by Joel Neves
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This composition served as my final project for my music composition class at Michigan Tech. I was tasked with choosing from a set of clips from studio movies and composing for a full orchestra. After working on several disturbing, horror based compositions, I chose to change things up a bit with Bruce Almighty, a comedy. I chose to compose a piece that would emphasize Bruce's euphoria and pigheadedness over his newly acquired divine powers. To do so I composed primarily a bombastic, jazzy score. I also designed a couple of cues to compliment the actions of the thugs.
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Recorded and mixed by Noah Budd, 2017
A Panicky Picnic
MIDI
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In my music composition class at Michigan Tech, I was assigned to compose music for any video I wanted. I researched disturbing silent films, and came across Segundo de Chomón's surreal nightmare vision. With further research, I discovered that when I looked up "A Panicky Picnic" on youtube, there were little to no uploads that included music, and the few that included solo piano and sounded very monochromatic, bland and didn't compliment the visuals. The visuals are what struck me the most about the film. In addition to the impressive (for 1909) special effects, there were a lot of funny, over the top movements from the actors. I thought this film deserved better than the scores I had heard for it, thus I chose to compose one that was very cue based towards the visuals. I also composed to accentuate the differences between the idyllic and nightmarish events depicted in the film.
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Programmed by Tyler Quinn, 2017
Arctic Luminescence
Performers:
Devin Deal - Viola
Erin Mackenzie - Cello
Andrew Summers - Piano
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In my music composition class at Michigan Tech, I was assigned to compose music for this time lapse video of the Northern Lights over a snowy landscape. The viola primarily plays the lead, and the rapidly played melody is composed to accentuate the serpentine movements of the lights. The cello is used as the bass because the high frequencies produced when the bow makes contact with the strings produces a rather cold sounding temperature. The piano is mostly used to flesh out the arrangement and keep the piece interesting.
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Recorded and mixed by Mark Amber, 2017
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