I like to help students with their film projects. Here is one such film, produced by Davide Dolfini, titled “Interrogation Day”. In this film, a detective interrogates a crime suspect.
I volunteered to score this film, before seeing it. The film has a nice atmosphere, with good, mood-setting lighting. Also, the audio was recorded very competently, as there is no background noise.
Initially I scored the film in a jazz trio style; piano, bass, and percussion. The piano is Modartt’s NY Steinway D “Jazz” Pianoteq virtual instrument. After listening to it, Davide asked me to make the score a bit more dramatic. So, I added a trumpet with a Harmon “stem out” mute from Aaron Venture’s Infinite Brass virtual instrument library. I also made the percussion somewhat more, well, “percussive”. I did this by adding a dose of parallel compression to the percussion track. In parallel compression, the audio stream is side-chained and strongly compressed in parallel. In addition, the parallel stream has an EQ boost in the low and high frequencies, and then added back to the original stream.
At some points in the film I had the music stop abruptly. The intent is to make the following dialog stand out in starkness, emphasizing the dramatic moment. The final result is this short story with a nicely dramatic music score. I hope that the drama added to the film heightens the emotions felt by the viewer.
