Pedro,


Man, there are many great things happening in this score!! I really like some of the different colors you are using. Particularly the scene when the boy sees the jack-in-the-box after the Stilt walkers leave. Beautiful.

I do have one picky critique though:
There are some musical ques that don't quite match up with the visual ones. For example: When you see the stilt walkers face off with each other- then face off with the boy. Musically the ideas are great- but they do not happen with the motion of the walkers...which takes away from the effect. If you could time it to happen exactly when they change. This is playing in Quicktime, so I can not give you a time, sorry. Sync that up better- and then the score is supporting what is happening on screen while it happens..instead of being pre-emptive.

The piz strings after the walker swats at the balloon is perfect!!! I've scored film before, and understand how much of a challenge it can be. So I respect the great job you've done here!!!

Overall, the main theme conveys the joyfulness of being a child and the music does a great job of supporting the visuals. Fix that one section and then, in my mind, you'll have a perfect score! Good job and thanks for sharing!!!

I do not have a MSN account, but do have AIM or Yahoo IM. My screen name is nsmadsen.

Will be happy to discuss things with you then!

That was a very enjoyable short. Overall, the music was a great match for it and really brought out the emotions. A couple of things that could be different:

The transition at ~:52 felt very abrupt. I think keeping some part of the previous texture going longer; that is, letting the guitar, the percussion, or the lead continue for another 5 or 10 seconds to give a smoother transition.

Just after 1:00 I especially liked the musical anticipation of the arrival of the stilt walkers. I think later in the piece there were other places where you could have been more daring with the timing (having your cues begin before or after the visuals) rather than being constantly in sync - the times when the music anticipated the visuals where my favorite parts.

I wasn't entirely convinved by the synth arpeggiation in the later sequences; it felt out of place in the somewhat melodramatic orchestral texture (which worked very well); the brass swells and that particular synth felt particularly out of place next to each other.

The one specific musical moment I thought didn't work perfectly was when the stiltwalkers droppped the jack-in-the-box; I think the idea was good, but the transition from the previous mood of the music didn't work.

As Nathan mentioned, I thought the moment when the boy goes up to the jack-in-the-box was fantastic. Also, I really liked the guitar coming back in 10 seconds before the fade-out in the final scene; it gave the scene just the right amount of momentum to pull the viewer into the credits without ruining the peacefulness of the end.

In general, if I were watching it for enjoyment, rather than listening critically to the music, most of these things wouldn't bother me, and the music as a whole would work great for the piece.

The one thing that I thought really DIDN'T work, at all, was the overall feel of the sound design. The sound design felt VERY small; there was no ambiental noise and all the sfx and foley was mixed VERY low relative to the music. This was compounded by the music: the music was brash, loud, and dramatic, and the sound design was very much the opposite. I think the preferred solution would have been to have more complete sfx mixed louder, but if that wasn't an option, I think the music should have been more mellow to match the feel of the sound design.


Overall, though, very nice, and the music fit the visuals well and was enjoyable.

I dug this a lot Pedro. I didn't try to analyze it musically or technically and just soaked it in and enjoyed this a whole lot. The sound design was in fact a little weak, all the more reason to place the music more upfront. If more time and effort were to be taken with the foley and sfx, maybe you'd want to tone down the volume on the soundtrack or at least apply some ducking, but as it is the music needs to tell the story in parallel with the visuals and that's exactly what you've done! Awesome work!

Tony