Yow, over a week went by quickly since the last entry.  I’ve been hard at work on the sound track for America’s Next Felon (ANF).

The truth be told, sound track work is always very stressful to me, at least some of the phases in the process.  It’s always nerve wracking before the 1st meeting with the director to show my first sketches.  And it stays stressful after that, as inevitably I hit the right tone on some cues and not on other cues.  There’s always a nagging voice in my head going “what if I can’t get it right? what if I can’t hit it after 20 more tries?”

But I always do hit it on the mark sooner or later.   The 1st phase is always like choosing the color palette for a painting.  There are millions of colors to choose from so the choices are rather overwhelming.

The next phase is more fun, though it can be stressful in a not-so-bad way.  Once the palette is put together, I usually experience a great increase in my productivity — I can just nail cue after cue without struggling.  It’s because most of the themes and motifs are written at this point, I know the range of instruments/sounds that work for the project, and it’s now just the matter of pulling in the right pieces, arranging them to fit a particular spot.

A film doesn’t usually have myriads of moods and pacings.  They all have a limited range — a thriller will be suspenceful, a comedy will be light-hearted most of the time.  So once all the material is prepared, fitting them into all the places aren’t as hard.

To illustrate, get this: ANF is a spoof on reality TV and there are 6 “episodes” within.  I spent the first 6 days composing the first episode.  Then in the next 4 days, I scored one episode each.  See?

I hit the stride on this project, and now I’m having fun.  This is the reason why I love making music for films.