Hero - Short Film Score - Walkthrough Pt.3 - M1 (Part 1)

In the following parts of this series I'm gonna walk you through the scoring of the short film and its individual cues, trying to explain my reasoning of musical as well as scenic choices.

The first cue "M1 - Shoot Him!" opens the movie and lasts for about two minutes.

Here's a version of that scene without music and a visual TC for better orientation:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CGX-aUMquBA

The intent of the scene was explained by the directors to create a moment for the audience where they are almost at the point of turning it off with ridiculously exaggerated characters and absurd dialogues. Of course the reason for this clears up right after the scene change but for a first time viewer that scene was supposed to feel completely ridiculous. The music was supposed to take it dead serious, much in the way how the kids in their fantasy feel like they are serious villains and heros.

Here's the notes that I made on that cue during the spotting session:

• 00:01:00 Buildup
• 00:11:22 Hit
• 00:26:00 Evil Guy Theme
• 00:27:22 Out
• After that Pulsating
• 00:41:03 back to tension
• 00:49:15  reaction, very serious
• 00:53:00 reaction music
• 00:56:16 annoyed
• 01:02:00  action buildup
• 01:04:00 action
• 01:07:00 tone down
• 01:11:05 reaction
• 01:16:19 same again
• 01:24:07 shots
• 01:25:17 dead serious (brothers theme?)
• 01:28:11 building to a fever pitch
• 01:34:09 build up shortly before, emphasize jump
• 01:34:23 emphasize, more important
• 01:35:09 final sound
• 01:46:00 build up again – evil guy motif
• 01:48:16 hit, go for it
• 01:59:21 drop suddenly

As you can see, there is an incredible density of things that the music was supposed to do, sometimes requiring to do several things within just one second. The biggest challenge here of course was to follow as many as possible of those as well as retaining a musical integrity that doesn't feel like chasing hit points.

The first step I do when approaching a scene is trying to find the right tempo. If a scene is well edited it will often imply an inherent tempo and usually also maintain this tempo over a longer time span, so if you feel you need to constantly switch the tempo in a cue to match the sequence it is either not that well edited or you haven't found the internal tempo yet. With this sequence I felt a tempo of around 130bpm was the butter zone where I felt the pulse was supporting the pacing. The general rule with action sequences is to rather be slightly over than under tempo as this will push the excitement. If you are too slow, it might feel like the music drags which is definitely not what you want with an action sequence.

The score sheet and recording of this cue are attached at the bottom of the post.

Bars 1-7

There was no temp track on this cue except for the first few seconds of the logo up to the first shot of the gun that had this cue at around 0:40 as temp track: 

https://youtu.be/eDM-prGT_HU?list=PLXFULEhS9WmMvyIemvmRkujnsGyxIpFOc&t=40 

I came up with a little motif that became a central element of the build-up sequence opf this  cue:

This motif opens the cue and keeps reappearing like a pulse. Towards  the end of the buildup and the appearance of the gun, I increase the frequency of the appearance making it into a continuous stream of triplets.

https://soundcloud.com/robin-hoffmann/hero-m1-b1-7/s-epX5lA9J2ct

The harmony throughout this entire section is a Gm triad over an F# bass which creates quite a bit of rub and an "ominous" quality. This harmony is provided in the low horns/trombones and moving upwards through several inversions being joined by the trumpets close to the climax. So the buildup in these instruments happens registrally (by climhing upwards) and dynamically (by raising the dynamic degree).

The two adjacent minor seconds E#/F# and F#/G in the triplet motif make it difficult to define a scale for this as two consecutive minor seconds usually don't appear in diatonic scales. As there is a sustaining F# in  Basses, Contrabassoon and Bass Clarinet, looking at this motif from the perspective of an F# tonality, and in connection with the Gm, one could say that it might be the F# altered scale (seventh mode of melodic minor) with an added leading tone of E# or just treat that E# as a cambiata in a straight forward F# altered scale.

In bar 5 a timpani rolll and a slowly upwards moving glissando in the violins enter leading towards the highest possible note on the violins on the climax.

Bars 8-15

https://soundcloud.com/robin-hoffmann/hero-m1-b8-15/s-X0RER7JrkBs

The following part leads up to the first appearance of the "Evil Guy" so the next essential hit point is his turn to the camera which needed to be accented in the most cliché way possible in order to portray this painfully clichéd character. I wanted to create some tension in the section leadng towards it as well as already establishing the evil motif (as the evil character is already speaking) so I chose a nervous tremolo on an open fifth in the violins and a solo horn line. There was a conscious choice to not make this section any bigger in order to save as much as possible for the "dun dun duuuun" moment of the turnaround.

This happens in bar 14 with the "fanfare" played by the horns (supported by one Trumpet to add a bit more brassiness)

The violins play a triplet figure that is smilar to the opening motif of the cue outlining a sort of diminshed half-whole scale on G however again with the leading tone (in this case F#). The Woodwinds play a run of the similar scale . Through this scale choice the rather tame Gm chord that forms the beginning of the "evil motif" gets some harmonic spice and "evilness". In the score sheet you might notice that depending on section I chose different accidentals for the notation in order to create the most easily readable version for the individual players. Bar 15 shifts the harmony to a Gmaj7(#5)/B.