Film Scoring
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George S. Clinton, Chair
DEPARTMENT : Film Scoring"The most significant thing a film composer brings to the table is the ability to emotionally connect with a film and express that through music. If you’re not able to do that, you’re not going to be very good, no matter how much training you’ve had. This is why it’s so important for composers to trust their instincts. That’s one of the main things I’ve learned—I do best when I don’t get in my own way and over-analyze things. There is a magical thing that happens that is almost like alchemy when music and image link up in a way neither you nor the director could have predicted. Those are the moments I live for."
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Alison Plante, Assistant Chair
DEPARTMENT : Film Scoring"Knowing how to collaborate is so important. Music for media—whether it's games, interactive media, film, or television—doesn't stand alone; it works with the other elements and that means that you're working with other people. We promote collaboration in a lot of classes in our department and in extracurricular activities, and we're continuing to broaden the possibilities for collaboration in the curriculum."
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Ben Houge, Assistant Professor
DEPARTMENT : Film Scoring"Even if some of my students don't go into careers in video games, I think these are important concepts. How to structure nonlinear media, the applications for that go beyond video games. We're having digitally mediated interactive experiences all around us every day. Going through the subway turnstile, there's audio feedback; increasingly, we're seeing interactive kiosks in advertising contexts or shopping venues, museum installations, things like that."
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Jon Klein, Associate Professor
DEPARTMENT : Film Scoring"In teaching the technology, I try to do projects that I know will be the fastest way to get material across to the students. I want them to learn the essence of something so that they can work with it right away. I also try to develop task-oriented tutorials on what students need to know to get something done, then hopefully they can go on from there. I point the way for students to keep learning on their own."
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Dario Eskenazi, Assistant Professor
DEPARTMENT : Film Scoring- B.M., Berklee College of Music
- Pianist
- Leader of the Dario Eskenazi Quartet
- Performances with Paquito D'Rivera, Dave Samuels, Mongo Santamaria, Andy Narell, Tito Puente, Leny Andrade, and Rosa Passos
- Recipient of a Grammy (with the Caribbean Jazz Project) and three Latin Grammys (with Paquito D'Rivera)
- Recordings with Hiram Bullock, Romero Lubambo, and Diane Schuur
- Composer for films including The Last New Yorker and Que Parezca Un Accidente, plus additional music and orchestration for several European films
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Claudio Ragazzi, Associate Professor
DEPARTMENT : Film Scoring"I believe in the complete musician. I think in order to make it in the real world you have to have a specialty like film scoring, orchestration, or production, but you also need to know how to play your instrument, you need to read. Twenty-something years ago I was graduating from Berklee. Then I went to play music, then I went to record, then I went to film scoring for almost twenty years, and now I come full circle back to Berklee as a teacher. So I think if you really want to make it as a professional musician, you try to be, as much as you can, a complete musician, someone who can perform, write, orchestrate, arrange, produce, do film scoring, do theater, do ballet, do other forms."
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Joe Smith, Professor
DEPARTMENT : Film Scoring"A film scorer needs a diverse musical vocabulary to be able to write different musical harmonies for different kinds of projects. You're obviously not, for example, going to write the same kind of score for Mrs. Doubtfire as you would for Silence of the Lambs—both of which Howard Shore did."
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Ruth Mendelson, Assistant Professor
DEPARTMENT : Film Scoring"One of the greatest reasons for having talent is to be of service to others, so I want my students to trust their intuition and imagination to come up with ways to make a living within that. Part of creative conviction is to understand: Who are you really? What are you doing on this earth? These are very big questions, but with the privilege of being an artist comes the responsibility to address them. Otherwise, how do you grow into yourself?"
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Richard Davis, Professor
DEPARTMENT : Film Scoring"I try to emphasize the idea that we're constantly making a series of decisions, and that the goal is to satisfy a dramatic intention. In an orchestration class, I can't teach kids what notes to write. I can't stand over them and say, 'Write this note and this note,' or 'You must use this combination of instruments here.' But I can show them how to identify styles, genres, or gestures they're making through the music that the audience will relate to. I can show them how to make decisions about what instruments, what combinations, to use to achieve a certain effect. It's decision-making and overall concept that I tend to emphasize."
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Michael Sweet, Associate Professor
DEPARTMENT : Film Scoring"Video game audio is a multidisciplinary field; it's so varied and massive in scope, with about six disciplines combined into one. On one hand, you have to be the John Williams: you have to write the music. But on the other hand, for it to work with the video game, there's also the logic of how all that music is going to work together in the game and how that stuff interacts. For composers, you have to wrap your head around some new concepts that you don't encounter as a linear film composer. Those things include branching and looping, and being able to transition from one place to another very quickly. In a game, you have to plan for all the variances of how a player might actually be interacting with the game."
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