I have just finished writing musical sketches for the Hungarian animation festival Kaff. It was a really hard task, because the structure of the short film was unusual. As you can see in the example below, the film begins with a calm scene where a goat is chewing and everything seems ok. Then suddenly a light comes out of the sky and the goat is sucked up, later we can see that a camera-shaped spaceship is doing it. As an agent or servant the “eye” examines the animal and afterwards there begins a transformation scene, which leads through a number of phases of well known Hungarian cartoon figures and finally it ends up in a totally renewed goat, who is fancy, stylish and assumably ready for a cutting edge animation festival.
I was told that the music and sound design should be fresh, unusual, distinctive with a pinch of weirdness. My starting point was to implement a cartoon like musical arrangement and turning it into something else. So I chose a chamber orchestra for accompaniment and for the soloists a flute and a clarinet.
After watching the film several times (actually more than 50 times) I could identify the main turning points in it:
calm part: till 5:15
sucking up: till 12:00
transformation mild: till 16:10
transformation hard: till 18:00
the new goat: till 19:00
ending: till 25:00
I decided to have peaceful orchestral music for the first half of the film, than for the transformational scene I blended it with a cacophony type montage of sound design and musical textures, and finally at the end a comeback of the leitmotiv exposed at the beginning but in a more concise manner and in a modern form.
Soon I realised that I could enhance the surreal, absurd quality of the film if I placed a traditional church organ to underline the sucking light part, so in that way it would become more dramatic and it would also anticipate a tragedy.
For the “eye” figure I intentionally chose an r2d2 like sound, and combined it with some mechanic clicking and rattling, which had been created with a foley trick using a sharp metal on a wheel.
At the end as a contrast I came up with the idea of using rather aggressive instrumentation with deep tuned guitars and heavy hiphop style drum samples.
After a couple of trials I was sure that I could make a strong contrast using smooth romantic orchestration with a harp, soft violins etc., and I contrasted it with a much rougher, louder part.
Then I realised that the mild - intensive - mild2 structure also worked, as you can see in the 3rd version (from 00:54 in the youtube video).
So I wrote another variant but this time I ended up using a faster one of the beginning motives.
At this point my client said that all my first 4 ideas are too mild for conveying a rather experimental message of the festival, so I was asked to write more experimental pieces as well. That is why I chose a mouth trumpet in combination with an atonal symphony orchestra as a basis.
You can see it here from 4:00
My next idea was to create a rhythmic structure consisting of unrelated or unusual combinations of instruments and sound textures. So my 5th sketch made use of the diversity of tones. In addition to that I composed a sound design, which was created by using elements from old cartoon sound effects. I combined and mixed them in a strange way.
In my 7th sketch I turned back to a more traditional orchestration by using a string quartet. The idea was to blend the strings with metallic spacey high tones above 5 khz so that the result is a constantly ascending sound scape throughout the whole piece.
The 8th idea came from the previous one, I just replaced the instrumentation to a more jazzy one and as a sample I tried to recall Bill Frisell’s guitar music style. At the beginning I wrote a quite lush music contrasting it with a more staccato like one at the end.
Finally my last draft was inspired by my client who wanted me to create a electronic, artificially style as well. That is why I used the legendary CS-80 Synth and tweaked some really interesting ambient space tones, and sounds with it. I also placed detuned music boxes and quiet chimes into the textures and also made use of a singing bowed saw as well. The result is a rubber like, flexible, dreamy piece with a more traditional synth pop - EDM mix at the end.
Here is the final music the festival had chosen.
Conclusion
Yes, you do not have to write so many version, unless you enjoy the process and you want to experiment with different combinations sounds etc.
Your music and the sound design will effect the message and the character of the film, so its advisable to talk about the director beforehand. Does he or she want for example goat to be a hero, a relaxed junkie? Is this film about positive values, about weirdness, about subculture?
If you want to create a sound texture that stands out from the crowd than you have to make strange combinations, unique orchestration, unique sound design with your own samples, with your own foley and sfx recordings.
Bear in mind that the structure of the ad is crucial and with music and sounds you can emphasize this structure You can highlight main points or you can even blend or connect distinct cuts.