SHR6E032F~002 HAL23085580 Portfolio and Video Evidence

1. Project Overview

For my collaborative project, I chose to write music for film. More specifically, I ended up working on 2 different documentary-style films. One of them is an animation and the other a live-action spoken-word piece. They’re both thematically tackling global issues, which I’ll expand more on when I talk separately about the two projects. These films both allowed me to work with opposing styles of music and compositional techniques while still being within the category of documentary, allowing me to separate both projects while working on them.

Original Idea:

Until around March 2026, I had been working on the music for a short film/documentary about the skating community. It was a street photography/videography project I was working on with a videographer named Louis Marek from Cambridge. The music was nearing completion, but as the deadline approached, I still hadn’t received any footage from Louis, so I wasn’t sure how the music would work with both our visions (which had never been connected until that point). I decided not to work with him in the end, for this purely as I wasn’t getting anything from him for the music (due to a lack of strong communication from the start from both of us).

Original Project Music Demo

Kazakh Unrest (See appendix 8 for the storyboard):

Synopsis:

‘Kazakh Unrest’ is a short documentary about the conflict and subsequent rebellion that happened in Kazakhstan in early January 2022 (AKA “Bloody January”). The rebellion started due to the increase in fuel prices, which spread into riots and violent clashes between protestors and security forces. At times, Kassym-Jomart Tokayev issued a shoot-to-kill order, which resulted in the deaths of 238 people (Ranucci, 2024). The film uses a lot of long, wide shots that show large landscapes to really capture the environment and shows the suffering that the people and land are facing due to these protests.

Personnel involved:

Jessika Kapur – A third-year animation student at Leeds Arts University. She is from Kazakhstan, and so this project was deeply personal to her. Directed, wrote, and drew the animation for the whole project.

Dan Hall – A third-year music production student at Leeds Conservatoire. Although primarily a studio engineer, he loves writing for picture and writing scores for short films. Primary influences include C418, Hans Zimmer, and Ludwig Göransson.

American England:

A short live-action documentary that has a heavy focus on spoken word. The film shows a sweeping montage of the English countryside, framed as an American western. The film explores the distortion of American idealism through the lens of western iconography: both a love letter and critique of the country. The spoken word (told in a first-person perspective) played over the imagery is almost poetic in its delivery and writing as it details memories, conflicts, and ways that America and England have shaped his life.

Personnel involved:

Sam Rooke – A third-year film student from Leeds Arts University. From Lincolnshire, Sam tends to work in the documentary world and tends to tackle more global issues as opposed to a more person-focused documentary. He directed, wrote the script, and was the main person in bringing in the others who helped bring this project to life.

Other important people:

Tom Grice – The narrator

Zach Harris – Sound Designer

2. Panopto Video – Final Product (10-12 Minutes)

Kazakh Unrest – Film

American England – Film

3. Chronological Monthly Diary

Due to my projects drastically changing towards the end of the timeline, I will show the full timeline, including my previous project as well.

September 2025:

As this was the start of the academic year, this month was spent primarily brainstorming ideas for who/what I wanted to work on for this project. I started speaking to Louis about working on a short film together and got him secured to work with me on the project.

October 2025:

I then started to plan out what I wanted to write and listened to lots of music to gain inspiration for the sound of the film and check this with Louis as well (see Appendix 10 for the playlist link). Louis then added me to a Discord server that had all the information, mood boards, demo footage, and edit ideas that he had come up with. Towards the end of the month, I started to demo out the music for the film.

Bearings short discord server

Skating short film playlist

November 2025:

This month, Louis and I started to nail down what we wanted the visual style/cinematography to look like. We talked more about where and who we wanted to film, and Louis started to reach out to the people. He managed to get in contact with an Olympic skateboarder who agreed to do some filming on the terms that he would get the footage to use for his own socials/promotion. He was based in Cambridge, which was good for Louis and me, as that is where we are both from.

December 2025:

After Louis did the shoot with the skateboarder, he sent the footage over to him, and then we never got contacted back by the skateboarder. We waited for a little while to see if there was any chance of a response. But we ended up realising that he wasn’t interested in working with us again. Thankfully, Louis had networked with others whilst he filmed the other skateboarder, and he reached out to them to work.

January 2026:

Due to the skateboarder not returning to us, we decided to shift the focus from skateboarding to street photography and videography. Louis is a very experienced street photographer with lots of it already, so we felt this was good to work on together. Louis then came to Leeds to do some gig photography, so we decided to include that in the project as well. I started to finalise the demos that I had made in the previous semester.

February 2026:

This month was the first month that there was a lack of progress made on the previous project, and I started to have my doubts that we would continue working on it together. I started to think of other people to work with as potential extra projects in case I needed them.

March 2026:

I started to change my focus on the project and shifted it to doing other ideas that I had presented to me. I went to the Leeds Arts mixer event and thankfully met a few people who were interested in working with me, all with a large array of different projects to work on. The one project that went through was Kazakh Unrest. Jessika and I instantly had a meeting to discuss the project and the timeframe ideas that we both had. I started writing the music for the short, and she sent me over the animatic to compose to as well (appendix 4 and 5).

Music I showed Jessika

April 2026:

Although I had this one project confirmed, I still needed a project that had a longer run-time, as Kazakh Unrest is only about 2 minutes long. I spoke to a guy named Sam Rooke, whom I had met in theatre societies at Leeds University. I asked if he had any projects that I could work on for this assignment. He sent me over American England, which was 8 minutes, and that managed to add up to the total run time that I needed for the assignment. I had to finish this project off very quickly, as I got this project at the start of April, and the hand-in date was the 29^th of April. Towards the end of the month, I mixed and mastered both bits of music and got them ready for submission.

4. Evidence of Planning/Process

To start both projects off, I created playlists on spotify to listen to and get inspired by references that I had given myself or the directors had given me. This helped me to narrow down on a sound that I wanted to chase for each film, which would save me time when it got to the composing stage. I would share these inspirational ideas with the directors to gauge their opinion on the inspiration and see if it matches their vision for the sound of the film. Thankfully, they each liked the vision that I had. After coming up with the initial inspiration, I met the directors each time, and we spoke about the direction of the film overall and the premise behind it to help me better understand. Due to the short time frame I had for both films, it became hard for me to properly plan what I wanted to do on each of them. I mostly had to settle on the first main idea that came to my head when I started working. This worked to an extent, but it gave me less time to refine the ideas over time, which in hindsight would’ve been good to have had. For Kazakh Unrest, Jessika added me to the Miro board that she had made (See appendix 6). Miro is a mood board and idea-dumping document service, so we were easily able to share ideas that way.

Miro Board – Kazakh Unrest

Emails with Jessika – Kazakh Unrest

Compositional process:

To help me get into a compositional headspace, I started by watching videos by the composers who influenced me on each project. A video that always inspires me is a 2024 Variety video about Ludwig Göransson composing the cue ‘Can You Hear the Music’ for ‘Oppenheimer’ (Variety, 2024). This video really helps break down his process and inspires the sound design and compositional ideas in both projects.

Kazakh Unrest writing process:

This film was much more melody-focused than American England, but to start it, I wanted to create a good textural and harmonic basis to write over it. I wanted to use small melodies as I felt I could fit more musical ideas in that way, without just relying on creating variations of existing melodies. To me, as well, longer melodies fit much more with classic film, whereas modern film tends to use shorter melodic ideas and use them as a large basis for most of the composition. I also wanted to create clear sections in the music to help separate the emotional build and response that the film gives. Like a lot of my writing, the melody is supported by large string textures that help give the music some weight and body behind it all.

American England writing process:

Like Kazakh Unrest, I started by creating lots of ambient textures, but then steered away from making the music dense with melody. Due to the importance of the dialogue in the film, I felt that making the music super melodic would distract the listener from what’s going on. So I focused on keeping the harmonic and textural material of the music consistent throughout, with changes in it being used for effect and creating new sections in the music. The focus behind this piece, however, was the production design behind it. The piece was constructed heavily using synthesis and with little to no ‘real’ instruments being used in it. Doing this helped show that I am capable of writing in both forms as well, and gave me different challenges when composing for either film. For this film I watched lots of interviews with C418 to get an idea of how and why he did certain things when composing (especially for Minecraft).

5. Reference Material/Inspiration

I wanted to vary the sound palette for both films that I worked on. So, I ended up taking quite a vast array of inspiration when writing for both films. I felt as if it was important to do them in separate styles, as it allowed me to expand my knowledge more musically and production-wise. It also helped me work between them in such a short time frame, as they were both so different, I didn’t end up getting stuck for ideas on either of them as much as I would if they were both orchestral and electronic.

Kazakh Unrest inspiration (See Appendix 3):

For Kazakh Unrest, Jessika and I both wanted a more orchestral sound to it all. So, I used very classical instrument pairings and used very little synthesis in the music to give it the sound she wanted. The reference that she really liked was a piece that I had previously written and showed her during the mixer event at Leeds Arts. So, I tried to base the instrumentation especially around that. She liked it for its very dark vibe and atmosphere that it has (as that is what she wanted for her film). The inspiration I took, though, was a lot of modern cinematic music, such as ‘Fission’ from Oppenheimer, written by Ludwig Göransson. I really liked the sombre sound it had and tried to replicate that in my music by using a blend of instrumentation from that and the reference that I had shown to Jessika.

American England (See Appendix 1 and 9):

For American England, Sam wanted an electronic-based score for the film. Whether that was a hybrid (electronic score featuring classical instrumentation) or purely electronic, he didn’t mind. This left me with a good amount of freedom when writing the music. I primarily took inspiration from the composer C418 (famous for composing the Minecraft soundtrack) and ambient music. I typically don’t score with electronic music, so this film pushed me creatively to make an interesting and engaging piece of music. I only had a few personal references (tracks I’d made before), which I listened back to for some inspiration. C418 was the main inspiration throughout, through the way he creates space and atmosphere. I wanted to make the music almost seem like it wasn’t there (to not take away from the dialogue).

6. Use of Technology

When writing for these films, I wrote the whole thing straight into Logic and didn’t bother scoring any of it in notation format. Kazakh Unrest is mainly an orchestral piece, so there isn’t much technology to mention. Other than a few mixing techniques I did to try and make VST strings and other instruments sound more real. I layered different reverbs on top of each other to try and hide the ‘fake attack’ that VST strings have, as well as using EQ to remove the digital-sounding upper mid-range around 3.5k-4khz. This resulted in a string sound that is much more accurate to the real instrument while still being accessible and done within a DAW. However, American England has a larger use of production technology as the music is primarily based around technology and synthesis. I will briefly explain some of the techniques here and go into more detail in the video attached.

Production Techniques Video

7. Evaluation

When looking back over the past 8 months, I can create many different evaluations depending on which project I choose to focus more on. If I were to focus on the planned work with Louis, then I can say that it was a failure that came with lessons to improve on for the future. But then, looking at the work I did with Jessika and Sam on both these other projects, I found that I can still produce and provide these filmmakers with good, commercial, and modern-sounding music that works for their projects within a tight time frame. In retrospect, I think from the start of working on a project, I need to have a much stronger form and habit of communication with the people I am working with, so we can make sure that from day one we are on the same page with how each other works and set our own personal deadlines from that. I’ve also found that I enjoy working with documentaries, as it allows for a lot of creative freedom as a composer.

8. Bibliography

Burns, Todd. “Interview: Minecraft’s Soundtrack Composer C418.” Daily.redbullmusicacademy.com, 21 Aug. 2015, daily.redbullmusicacademy.com/2015/08/c418-interview.

DevGamm. “Daniel Rosenfeld (C418) – Creating the Music for Minecraft and Designing Sound by Playing Games.” Www.youtube.com, 27 May 2015, www.youtube.com/watch?v=eyzKuKAFOHU.

Fantano, Anthony. “10 Years of the Minecraft Soundtrack | C418 INTERVIEW.” Www.youtube.com, 8 Jan. 2021, www.youtube.com/watch?v=4mn47MqhbFY.

Ranucci, Danielle. “Bloody January Remembered.” Human Rights Foundation, 12 Nov. 2024, hrf.org/latest/bloody-january-remembered/.

Variety. “How “Oppenheimer” Composer Ludwig Göransson Created “Can You Hear the Music?” | behind the Song.” Www.youtube.com, 19 Feb. 2024, www.youtube.com/watch?v=fWvX4M1dXss.