“Scripted” Score Release – Available Now!
My 22-minute score for “Scripted” is now available on all platforms! In this post I wanted to detail some more of the background to the score and the info surrounding its creation. Like the film itself, the score for John Knight’s ‘Scripted’ is larger-than-life; it’s energetic and urgent, at times magical and epic, but most importantly, both uncertain and hopeful. Thank you to those of you who have already listened! And if you haven’t heard it yet, you can stream it on your preferred listening platform through the following links:
Before working on Scripted together, John Knight and I worked on two other projects earlier in 2021. We knew each other in passing since I was the President of the Film Music Guild (a club dedicated to film scoring) while I was studying at Biola University, and after hearing some of my work in a different student film he reached out to me about scoring his short Better Off. We followed up that collaboration with another project a few months later, Ignition Switch. Keep in mind, I was living in Alaska at the time and he was still down in Los Angeles for school, so everything was done remotely.
In Spring of 2021, John successfully pitched Scripted as the Fall 2021 Biola film; the Biola film is the culmination of their Cinema and Media Arts program, which has to be pitched for to get produced, and is a class ultimately collaborated on by most of the current film students. Since Scripted was selected, they were awarded some funding from the school and fund-raised for the rest, which ultimately gave the film a budget of about $12k. It was around this time – well before official pre-production – that John brought me on as composer for the film, and I began looking at the script and talking about the direction of the story with him.
(Still of John Knight, Director, in a pitch video for Scripted)
John sent me some tracks to use as sonic inspiration for the score and we talked more about the film, the tone, and the narrative themes in it. As pre-production on the film shifted into production, I wrote two main tracks as ‘suites’ that consolidated the main themes I’d written for the film and captured the overall tone for the score. One of these tracks essentially appears in its original form on the score: the very last track, “Don’t Wait for Tomorrow (Legacy)”.
Following the creation of those initial tracks, I stepped back from being involved on the film until they finished shooting; by the end of November, 2021, they had wrapped and had a full rough draft of the film for me to start scoring to. John and I reconvened to have a spotting session where we went through the entire film, looked at the temp they used (which did include some of the initial material I had written), and then I got to work actually scoring Scripted.
(Screencap of the score project file for Scripted)
The initial cut of the film was about 30 minutes long; I scored that film in its entirety, which was about 23 minutes of music. All of the scoring happened during a 4 week period, which was an incredibly hectic time for me as I had a day job working about 45 hours a week and was also doing courses for my Master’s in Business Administration during that same time. My scoring schedule was very busy with frequent overnights and around a dozen Zoom meetings with John. The film was being worked on nearly around the clock because of people’s school or work schedules.
Like with my last big score, Rubaru, Chloe Rogers mixed the score for Scripted. Once tracks were approved by John as finals, I sent the materials off to Chloe to mix and then they went into the film. That 30-minute version of Scripted was completed and screened that semester as the finished Biola film.
(Still of Donald Clark Jr. in Scripted)
Then we fast-forward about 4 months to April of this year (2022). The film went through some drastic edits to be honed into a much cleaner film, one more suitable for film festivals. The film went from 30 minutes to just under 20 minutes, which means many scenes were cut, shortened, changed, or even had their place in the film completely moved around. Every piece of music needed changes, ranging from small conforms, to significant edits or entire rewrites.
It was a pretty quick turn around, with this process taking place over about two weeks, from mid-April until the beginning of May. When the edits were all approved and mixed, they were again placed in the film; it is this version of the film that’s been submitted to festivals.
As I began prepping for a score release, most of the material was pretty straightforward – I was just putting things together that appeared in that new version of the film. Some things were edited together, trimmed, or split into multiple tracks to make more sense as a stand-alone listening experience, but it’s effectively released as it appeared in the film. However, just putting all the tracks from the film in still left four ‘deleted’ tracks that I actually really liked and wanted to release. Those tracks were added to the score release with the annotation of ‘Legacy’.
(Still of Tyler Richmeier in Scripted)
“Benchmark Montage (Legacy)” was an entire rewrite. That scene moved places in the film and took on an entirely new meaning, so the piece of music that appears in the film (“Benchmark Montage”) is entirely different from the Legacy version that appeared in the original 30-minute cut.
“My Thoughts Are Good (Legacy)” was in a deleted scene from the 30-minute version that included an extended computer lab scene, which is why the latter half of the track fits in so well with the “Computer Lab” and “Fixing the Glitch” tracks.
“A Sticky Takedown (Legacy)” appeared in an entirely delete scene, but I still liked the musical material and wanted to release it on the album.
And finally, “Don’t Wait for Tomorrow (Legacy)” appears during the pinnacle scene in the film, playing alongside the emotional resolution of the story. The Legacy version is almost exactly the same as the original sketch I did before the film was shot; that track had been put in as temp score and I cleaned it up a bit to use it in the original version of the film. Now that the film was being honed in and perfected, the direction for the scene changed and a rewrite was required, which is why two contrasting versions of the score for that scene exists.
(Still from Scripted end credits)
The 20-minute edit of Scripted has been submitted to festivals and has, so far, been a 2022 LA Shorts Official Selection, a Hollyshorts Monthly Screening Official Selection, and was a 2022 Student Academy Awards Semifinalist. At some point the film will be released online and you’ll be able to hear the score in the context of the film itself. Until then, you’ll have to ‘settle’ for the stand-alone score release. As it is now, I think it’s a solid listening experience if you sit down and enjoy to the score from start to finish, so I would encourage you to explore the score in that form.
I appreciate you taking the time to read more about the creation of the score for Scripted, and hope you’ve enjoyed listening to the score so far – I’d love to hear what you’ve thought of it!
Until the next time!