One of the principle challenges of learning to write for soundtrack is not having video with which to work. There’s no shortage of video online, naturally. But the problem is finding content which is cleared for copyright but also interesting enough visually to provide the right fodder for themes. I’m definitely not a video editor, so I don’t really want to buy a bunch of single-shot videos and stitch them together. Besides which if the video itself is not telling a story, the theme I write over top can only be just so great.
However I recently discovered what appears to be a very old project from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill called the Open Video Project. This website is dedicated to providing a large collection of public access video, most of which has been provided by government agencies such as NASA and the Department of Interior.
Well, that’s perfect! So I’ve been digging into the archives to find fun videos to compose over. Right now, I’m working with an early twentieth century silent film called By Right of Sword, based on a novel of the same name by English literist Arthur Marchemont. Over the course of it’s two and a half minutes, a surprising amount of exposition takes place, as described by Open Video.
But absent the knowledge of the novel, the viewer is left with a scene titled By Right of Sword, but which is mostly taken up by anything other than an actual sword fight. There’s a lot of taking cloaks off, stretching, testing swords, bending..
I found it rather hilarious that the scene just keeps going and going without an actual sword fight, it begins to feel like a Monty Python bit, constantly stretching out the setup and never delivering the punchline. In the book, there is apparently an attempt to stop the duel before it starts. In the video, that same event just feels like a setup, with the sudden interruption of what you thought would be the main attraction.
Beyond the silliness of the action, the video has the distinct sense of being somehow Eastern European. The book does take place in Russia, but as the Open Video summary points out, the uniforms sort of strain convention by blending distinctly French military uniforms with distinctly Russian hats. I decided to play with these “foreign” concepts by utilizing the Phrygian Dominant scale to construct the song.
Being a novice composer and not an Yignwe Malmsteen clone, I haven’t done a whole lot with modal music in the past. But of course, as exotic as modes may seem, all that really matters is the chords and melodies you’re able to create or not with a given set of notes. A wise person once pointed out to me that the only reason to use a mode is for the notes that are unexpected: what we’re after are the notes that don’t fit into a conventional scale.
In that sense, Phrygian Dominant has a half step between the root and second, an augmented 2nd between the second and third notes of the scale. It’s pure melodic gold, especially when the rest of the scale feels like minor or even blues. It’s strange that the ear can hear a stable root that sits between a whole step below and half step above. But it does and the results are pretty awesome.
As I continue to develop this song, I’m trying to figure out how to add “hits” which accentuate the action where the action does not strictly fit the rhythm of the music. The flourishes as the men take their cloaks off or test their swords, for example, need to be highlit.
I’ve also created a Studio One template for creating scores. So far, the only really crucial ingredient in that template is that it’s setup not to stretch audio clips when changing tempos. This is a critical feature which prevents warping any dialog (not relevant for a silent film, natch) when the mood of the music changes.
I’ve also created a couple of really helpful keyboard shortcuts. The first, which is simply “v”, toggles the video player window open and closed. It’s a bit vexing having to constantly open and close it otherwise, and you really can’t have it open on a laptop and still operate the DAW. The second, “Shift + v”, toggles the video track, which can be a bit of a waste of space until you actually want it.
Of course, nothing’s finished until it’s finished. But I’m hoping to maybe finish this one off this week and have something to present. That’s probably ambitious, but ambition is a good thing.