Create Magazine Article

[left photo] David Hoffner composes to video for the upcoming biography film "Billy Graham, God's Ambassador:"
All initial sketches and mock-ups are completed with keyboard samples and synthesizers to allow flexibility as
the film changes form and is edited and re-edited. [middle photo] After the film's basic structure and edits have
been fairly well established, sampled parts are replaced with live musicians. Here, session ace Mark Casstevens
overdubs a classical guitar part for a scene about Billy Graham meeting his wife, Ruth. [right photo] The last step
in the music production is mixing. Here, recording engineer Rocky Schnaars and Hoffner work on a final music
mix. Music mixes are delivered to the film's dubbing session as WAV files on a firewire hard drive. All of the film's
audio elements (music, dialogue, narration, sound effects) are then combined in the final film mix in 5.1
Surround. The film's director, composer, and editor are usually present for this final mix, along with the film's
mix engineer, usually a different engineer than the one who mixed the music.

"Music is always the last step in the process," says David Hoffner, a musician and composer who has
parlayed his expertise into post-scoring for everything from "National Geographic" TV Specials to
documentary films. "By the time the visuals get to me, the project is edited, and the director may
have temp music in place, which gives me an idea of the kind of music he had in mind."

"Music serves as a subtext to the show or film and it's your job as a composer to tell the viewer what
they should be feeling. The trick is to make sure you know what the director wants people to feel.
Many times they know the feeling but they can't tell you that they want a string section in a minor
key," he explained.

"There was a particular nature scene that (musician/performer) John McEuen and I scored for
'National Geographic' where a northern lynx was chasing a snowshoe hare through the snow,"
explained Hoffner. "It had to have tension, but they were running through snow, which makes no
sound, plus the scene was in slow motion. We were down to the final mix and we were desperately
trying to make the producer happy. At 2 a.m., we finally came up with some strange fluffy percussive
sounds on the synthesizer and mixed them with heavily-processed phrases from (native American
artist) Bill Miller's flute. It gave a feeling of impending doom for the poor rabbit, yet we also had a soft
collage of sounds with rhythm and excitement."

After the spotting session, (where the director and composer decide where the film needs music, and
what emotional purpose it will serve), he finds the tempo for the music. "Editors edit in a rhythm, and
people tend to talk to a beat. I'll watch the scene with the metronome clicking until I find a tempo that
feels right." Hoffner says a composer must be careful to get out of the way of the dialogue. "Most
composers treat the dialogue as a lead singer, so you keep that music pretty simple. There are other
places where there is no dialogue and you have freedom to stretch out, but you still need to find that
magic emotional sound that the show needs."

One of the hardest things for a composer to deal with are the constant changes being made in the
visuals.

"You jump through hoops to make the music match and they send you new visuals where they've cut
two seconds here and added half a second there. So you re-write to make it fit and they send it to you
again and they've changed it back!" Hoffner said. He added that once he fit the music into the "final
lockdown version", he asked the editor to keep a log of her changes. That let him know exactly how
much time she added or took out and made it easier for him to adjust the music accordingly.

At one point Hoffner had to write preludes to music already written. "As the show goes into different
sections they start with a quote that comes up on the screen. Some had music, others didn't."

"When the executive producer saw it he said, "The quotes that don't have music just lay there; put
music behind them." So, I wrote introductions to the pieces already written," he added.

"Billy Graham, God's Ambassador" is set to air on PBS in early Spring, 2006.

From: "Making Music with Visuals in Nashville" by Vernell Hackett - "Create" magazine - Winter, 2005