Happiness (animated short) - Music & Score

Wonderful!!!!!

Your music fits the film perfectly. I played trombone all my life, but I have to congratulate you on your decision not to use brass. The lack of brass seemed to make the music lighter and a better fit with the scurry and quickness of the rats. I am very impressed.

 

Nice job. What a great short animated film to score to. Very dark and meaningful.

Your score to me was good but odd. Specifically it was your tempo that was odd to me. Now I don't necessarily mean it in a bad way... it was just odd.

*edit*

I want to clarify. I felt the tempo was odd on the first listen. The second listen I understood, you hit all the necessary hitpoints you were going for. But I'm a firm believer on first impressions. So I just wanted to give you my honest feedback; that the first time listen/watch I felt the tempo was odd.

 

Hi Federico,

Man I really wish I can pinpoint why I thought that the first time, but the more I watch it the more I understand your choices and development, and the more I like it lol. I guess my gut reaction is it's the way you started. The first 45 seconds felt odd to me. I imagine when I first watched it, since I wasn't sure what this film was about yet; that your tempo or syncopation choices wasn't giving me a clear sense of the tempo. Then the drama shifted as the title of the film came in, and you began your story/development. All the tempo changes work fine afterwards, but I guess it was just the beginning that made it feel odd. Of course though the second or third time watching I can clearly pick out your tempo, but the first time I believe I just wasn't expecting it, and trying to follow it since I was more focused on what was happening in the film. Does that make somewhat of any sense?

I feel embarrassed I can't help you more on this lol. I wish I could give you more feedback but I'm not sure how I would've even scored this film besides orchestral of course. I think if I had to make a quick decision I would've scored it faster since it is quite frantic and busy with all the rats. I believe you chose a pretty quick tempo roughly 140bpm, but your rhythm is slower/longer? I might be biased but I imagined something like this when I was watching it.

I really do think you did a good job and you described the emotions of particular moments very well. Particularly, the title card I'mma have to transcribe what you did as I enjoyed the way you described what we should be feeling there lol. Kudos man.

Apologies again for not being so helpful. Take my feedback with a grain a salt since it must not be a strong opinion if I can't explain why I felt it lol. And like I said, I enjoyed what you wrote.

 

Hey Federico,

Nice work, I really enjoyed it! I liked your use of strings and woodwinds and the mockup sounds great.

My first impressions involved the beginning and the end.

In the beginning, I immediately understood what you were going for, but I thought you could go even further with the idea. I was expecting it to get even more frantic as it went into the subway - more countermelodies, maybe different instruments playing the same melodies but starting on different beats, basically no instrument would be playing the same thing - it would add even more to the frantic feeling of the scene

At the end, I felt the music was a bit too happy, like it needed a bit of dissonance or unresolved feeling - I mean the rat ends up stuck in a trap typing away on a keyboard, that's pretty messed up!

Thanks for sharing, looking forward to hearing more from you!

 

Hello everybody,

first post here, too

Federico:
Really enjoyed your work. I took part in that competition, too and really excited to listen to other guys music.

It is very interesting, how the "change" of music could change the feeling or mood of the movie.

Beside some coincidences (anyone who would NOT use a falling scale, when the mouse (rat?) falls down? )
it's very nice to "hear" a different point of view.

Which libraries did you use?

Btw, my approach: