Film Scoring Project
With a selection of my recent collaborations with various filmmakers, I am sharing my personal approach to scoring films. Working with filmmakers as a composer involves managing different creative challenges. This involves finding a balance between serving the visual elements, maintaining the rhythm, and contributing to the overall narrative while still expressing one's own style. Although challenging, the collaborative process offered me a chance to work closely with artists and gain new insights.
When beginning a project, I first discuss the filmmaker's vision for the overall narrative and emotional tone of each scene. From there, I focus on finding the appropriate sound to match the scene. Each scene has a distinct "DNA," which consists of multiple layers that respond to both the visual and narrative elements. My compositional process involves finding a matching sound DNA and too animate through techniques like repetition, variation, imitation, and abstraction.
Cowfish (2023) - Shafagh Shokri
Director's note:
Shafagh Shokri
Director
Do you see or do you hear?!
"Ye that have ears, hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches."
Revelations of John the Apostle
Human life is experienced through the five senses, with sight and hearing often considered the primary senses for knowledge and consciousness. Yet throughout history, different and even contradictory narratives have emerged about the functions of seeing and hearing, leading to ongoing debates among thinkers.
In this cultural struggle, at times visual and auditory systems have joined forces to create a unique combination, while at other times different sounds have led to new auditory interpretations, bridging the gap between seeing and hearing. As a result, it may one day be possible to see with our ears and hear with our eyes. In the words of the 14th-Century Persian poet Hafez, we may even "hear the scent" of the beloved.
Excerpt:
Listen on sound cloud:
Achilles (2023) - Farhad Delaram
Synopsis:
Farhad Delaram
Director
In Farhad Delaram’s feature debut, two fugitives in contemporary Iran encounter citizens across the country, all wounded by the same corrupt government and all united in their willingness to help the pair survive.
Nicknamed Achilles, Farid (Mirsaeed Molavian), a former filmmaker, now works nights as an orthotist in Iran’s capital. There, he meets a sedated patient, handcuffed to her bed: Hedieh (Behdokht Valian), a political prisoner who has been institutionalized for years. Now, with the help of Achilles, she will again experience freedom — which, as those who have lived without it know, is regained at a cost. The duo’s only option is to flee.
Writer-director Farhad Delaram developed this film as the bloody crackdown on protesters began in his home country, and he drew on his lived experience, having spent weeks in a small cell surrounded only by concrete. His feature debut is a testament to the magnitude of collective cracks that — when amassed — can tear down walls.
Excerpt:
Listen on sound cloud:
