Production Blog: Choosing the Music feat. A Special Surprise

    Hello, it is so good to see you again! I am so excited to kick off my planning series of blogs for this project! Starting off strong, I would like to talk about the musical aspect of my upcoming film. Music is a vital part of the film for my group, especially my partner Ashley, who is very musically talented. In fact, she proposed writing a score for the film herself, including the instruments that she has access to like guitar and piano, focused around a central clock-ticking noise that was presented by the group as an idea. If this becomes too much for her, or the group decides not to go this route, my groupmate Jordyn suggested browsing royalty-free music and sound effects which could be layered to create a similar effect. Jordyn also suggested that the group could create Foley sound like the videos the teachers have shown in class, in order to amplify the scene in which the main character's partner is killed, to make it sound more gruesome, but actually have the scene be as safe as possible.

    My group was also hoping to include a special piece at the end of the film. I first suggested that the group should only browse royalty-free music, to avoid the hassle of having to reach out to a production company and not only experience the suspense, but the heartbreak of not having the song rights granted once the group finally came to a unanimous conclusion. After a while of browsing, the group could not agree on any song. I found that many of the songs my groupmates chose did not fit a certain tone that I unconsciously desired for this type of film, or that sort of fit in well with the plot. After tedious searching, Jordyn suggested that the group should branch out to copyrighted music, but emphasized the focus on smaller artists and less mainstream or well-known songs, in order to avoid the heartbreak of being ignored by a larger production company. After searching for a much shorter amount of time, Jordyn sent a song to the group message called "metamorphosis" by the musical group known as Jayomi. Immediately upon hearing the song, I knew it matched the tone in my head that I had mentioned earlier. I told her that I really liked this song for the film, and Ashley agreed. I was ecstatic that the group finally agreed on the song, and it worked beautifully as this band is not necessarily mainstream and the song itself has less than 54,000 streams. Since Jordyn had experience reaching out to companies from her project last year in AS Level Media Studies, she offered to reach out to the band. After composing and approving the message with the group, it was sent. No less than fifteen minutes later, the band responded, and I was so relieved. The group plans to use this song only towards the very end of the film and therefore only requested access for "at most, the first 60 seconds" of the song.

    I am so happy to have the music portion of the film completed for now, and am so completely excited that the access to "metamorphosis" was granted for the film!

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