Hero - Short Film Score - Walkthrough Pt.4 - M1 (Part 2)

Welcome to the next part of this series. Without further ado, let's dive right into where we left off last time. As always, the recording and score sheet of the cue is attached at the bottom of this post, the entire film with music can be watched above and here is the scene we're talking about without music and with TC to give some orientation.

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CGX-aUMquBA 

Here are the spotting notes for the section that we're looking at in this part.

• 00:26:00 Evil Guy Theme
• 00:27:22 Out
• After that Pulsating
• 00:41:03 back to tension
• 00:49:15  reaction, very serious
• 00:53:00 reaction music
• 00:56:16 annoyed
• 01:02:00  action buildup

Bars 16-22

https://soundcloud.com/robin-hoffmann/hero-m1-bar16-22/s-Q95hqGM8QFX

This passage actually had a slight rewrite after the first version. In the scene we have the evil guys gathering and  pointing their guns at the protagonist. In the first draft I had a sustaining quality of the music with a more "film noire" approach, however after the feedback round the filmmakers asked for more of a build-up towards the next sequence. It was a rather simple rewrite as the harmonic backdrop didn't change and instead of a sustaining quality I replaced it with that ascending string line plus the crescendoing brass chords.

The "pulsing" quality that were decided on during the spotting was achieved by using the triplet motif that I established in the opening of the cue. Also, harmonically there is the same configuration of a minor triad with a bass note a semitone under the root note (in this case Abm/G) which in the progression of the buildup becomes a G+ chord. The brass basically just work their way up by moving from inversion to inversion upwards with the trumpets joining in a bit later.

I mentioned this several times already but a word on the brass chord in 21 and its dynamic shape. I could have just continued with the crescendo towards the end of the buildup but generally it is way more musical to dynamically shape long notes as done here, with a fp hit and another crescendo. If you pay close attention you might also notice that during the session we moved the crescendo of that chord to start later to grow again than written. This has the advantage of leaving space for the other instruments rather than burying them under the wall of brass and the crescendo becomes more effective if it happens over a shorter time span.  

Bars 23-35

https://soundcloud.com/robin-hoffmann/hero-m1-bar23-35/s-lxkE9Mz7emx

This passage functions as build-up towards the action sequence. The downbeat of 23 lands more or less on the close-up of the Evil Guy's eyes. The idea here was that the music interacts with the two lines that are being said by the antagonist, creating a plateau of tension with inserting the "Evil Fanfare" in between his two lines. 

The tension plateau is being created by high tremolo violins and an effect by the Violas/Celli. They touch one string with one finger moving it quickly up and down the fingerboard while bowing which creates a glissando between the natural harmonics of that string. I really like that effect as it has a hollow and eerie quality to it but is very soft even when executed on big string sections.

The musical reaction of playing the evil fanfare after he says "Shoot him!" has that wonderful campy quality to it that fit that scene very well.

The music was supposed to react extremely serious after "In the dick" and I placed that hit with the movement of the red dots as that felt most appropriate. It is executed by a loud low ff on Eb.

The next hit point is the shot at the henchman which I timed not with the shot itself but the reaction of the ensemble. As the moment of gun noise doesn't quite reveal at that spot what was happening, placing that hit point slightly later made more sense than placing it on the shot (as well as avoiding to compete with the sound effect).

Bar 30 establishes a small 16th note motif in the violas that I felt had a certain nervousness and created a nice segway into the rhythmical action that was about to follow. The brief for the following few seconds said "annoyed music" which was supposed to portray the sentiment by the protagonist when realizing that his "sidekick" killed the first henchman. Of course that brief moment would not allowed to switch the music entirely but I felt that succession of augmented chords in the woodwinds dominated by Oboes in bars 31 and 32 had a certain quality to them that implied annoyance.

The next few bars lead towards the "escalation" of the conflict and ramp into the action sequence. The 16th motif from the Violas first get reinforced by the Celli and then become a continuous stream of 16ths that enter into the action sequence starting in bar 36.

Bar 34 falls on the antagonists "Shoot them both in the dick!" and of course gets the evil fanfare once again.

The scale used in bar 35 in the upwards moving strings is the 5th mode of harmonic minor (HM5) on A which consciously conflicts agains the Eaug chord that is sustaining in the brass creating a high degree of tension towards the next downbeat. Close to the downbeat (not written in the reduction above) the woodwinds and harp enter with a D locrian scale towads the next downbeat which transitions this passage to the next tonality which is some sort of D creating a rather obvious V-I with the root note of A that was sustaining in the bars before. Again, I use a fp< dynamic on the longer brass notes to give that string movement a slight chance of cutting through and making the crescendo more effective.