For this assignment I tackled my favorite scene in all of film, an extraordinarily expressive scene that allows for a great deal of sonic creativity. I wanted to maintain the rhythm of the music and transitions in accord with Chaplin's score while altering the instruments used to create a score that could potentially be recognizable as the music for the scene while still being unique in its variety of instruments and textures.
One of the great challenges of this assignment was not necessarily finding sounds to match Chaplin's expressivity, but to match the tempo that he creates dramatically. For a three-minute scene, the ending of "City Lights" is filled with highs and lows and relative grey areas that require even closer examination as this grey area (:56-2:06) acts as the bride between what one might call the first and third acts in the scene. The challenge that could be fitted under the same umbrella was that of altering the sounds while attempting to mirror Chaplin's pacing; I feel that Chaplin's score is perfect, so as I could not match that, I tried to put a unique spin on it. I believe this variation is most evident in the pivotal bridge section, which is much more modern, and the following, penultimate passage (2:05-2:42), which is a bit weightier and even sounds a bit blown out in a pleasingly attention-grabbing manner, leading into the celebratory orchestral finale.
I was initially pleased with my draft of this assignment, but after screening it in class I realized that it required numerous changes. The flute that I had used for the opening 16 seconds of the draft, sounded too Eastern and many agreed that that was fairly distracting. The piano that acted as the :56-2:06 bridge in the draft sounded to melodramatic and, in my opinion, like the casual piano playing at the average high-end department store. I instead turned to slower and more melodic strings which I feel are less manipulative and heavy-handed and act as a soft and simple but still emotional bridge between Chaplin's recognition of the Blind Girl and her recognition of him. There were problems with the pacing near the end, as the more somber penultimate passage bled too closely into the final, more upbeat moments, mistakenly covering the line, "Yes, I can see now." Therefore, I spliced the final track multiple times which allowed me to contract the penultimate passage and lead into the celebratory orchestral track a bit earlier. Smoothening the transitions was my second biggest goal, and I feel that this final version is considerably cleaner.
I thoroughly enjoyed crafting a score for a scene, and can already tell how I have improved since the start of the semester. For my first project I attempted to score a scene from "The Night of the Hunter," though it was far too clunky and I wanted to revise it so that it essentially should never be compared to the scene I had chosen. I felt much more confident entering this project and am much more content with the results.
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