The Music Process of Sergio Torres
I don’t remember having an imaginary friend as a kid, but I do remember always day dreaming and living in a fantasy world. In my imagination, I was able to fight battles against monsters and aliens, fly all over the world and the universe, and travel to the most incredible places. The only problem was that this day dreaming usually happened when I was at school.
Cecily has awakened these old memories and, the more I think about the music concepts for this story, the more that kid comes alive.
Director Jennifer Potts and I worked together on her last short film, “Charlie & Poppy”. Looking back, I think it was a great experience getting to know each other and definitely helped us prepare to embark on this bigger project.
As a Film Composer, I have to understand Jennifer's entire vision including the tones, moods, and themes that she wants to deliver. After reading through the screenplay, Jennifer and I share ideas of the overall feelings and rhythms of the story. From there, I write some musical themes in which I capture these concepts. This allows Jennifer to get a taste of the potential orchestration, colors, and ideas. Once we agree on an overall musical concept, I will submerge myself in the composition of a character’s theme or a particular mood. Once I have the picture I will rearrange the music according to the scene’s mood or theme. Finally, once Jennifer and her team approve the music, we will go to a studio and record live and with the instrumentation that we agreed to use. This stage is very fun because we will hear the complete score coming alive and I get to conduct, which is one of my favorite roles of the whole process.
It is great to work with Jennifer, not only because she is very organized and clear about expressing her ideas, but because she allows me to be part of the creative process from the early stages of the project. She really trusts her team and it’s an honor to be a part of her project.
