The Centre for Screen Music Studies started in January 1998. Its main task is to develop research and pedagogy in music for film, TV and to some extent multimedia. The Centre is involved not only in providing some of the teaching support for the MMus in Composition for Screen but also in producing research in the form of articles or conference papers, producing teaching materials and workshops outside the college, like teaching film students. Some of our sessions are shared with filmmakers from Goldsmiths' and the Royal College of Art, and although the RCA closed its postgraduate film and TV course the RCM still has collaborations with the animation course.

Filmwaves: Is it a course oriented to non-commercial productions?
Centre for Screen Music Studies: Because the schools are dealing with short film forms and because those students may not have spent three years studying film - they may have come from painting and sculpture - they tend to remain speculative about what they are doing, they are not so constrained by the demands of conventional filmmaking. I am sure a large majority have their eyes on a commercially succesfull and therefore conventional career. But the students collaborating with our project are still thinking about the relationship of all the elements which make up a film. There is a tendency for the work to be a little experimental. And, of course, animators have always tended to take a more personal and artistic view of they are doing, it tends to be one person doing it all. So, the collaboration with animators is not preparation for mainstream film scoring but it is a wonderful way for our students to become aware of how to deal with another artist, and another artist's vision of the story, and that they are there to help and not to make a concert with pictures. Equally we try to make the filmmakers appreciate that the sooner they become involved with a composer or the sooner they start thinking about music the more likely the artist will use music in a dramatically useful way.

The philosophy of the course has always been, firstly, to introduce all the students to the vocational craft skills they need to survive in a difficult world that doesn't appreciate music. Secondly, to develop your ideas about film and the role of music and sound design to the point where you can have some influence on the way that films are made. I know that this sounds a bit arrogant. The musicians are the last persons you bring in, you treat them badly, you underpay them and you expect them to perform miracles with badly cut sequences. But I think there are filmmakers who understand how music works, enjoy working with musicians from early on and know what music is going to do. And music may well fulfil a role that would be less effectively done through acting or photography or set design, because music has this wonderful ability to get into the unconscious of the audience, to push them one way or the other, to give them some insight into the feelings of characters.

FW: What are the aims of the Centre for Screen Music?
CSMS: Our research is different from what you find in film theory departments. We are not interested in how one finds new methods for analysing the final product without any consideration of the process that has gone into that, because ultimately we are interested in research feeding back into practice.

Why do composers come to this course?...
How should you approach film music?...
Music also gives a sense of direction...
How do you deal with clichés?...
What about the use of leitmotifs à la Max Steiner...
How do you use music creatively?...
How do we take this music of the past in a contemporary way?...
How do you see a project like the School of Sound?...
Let's go back to dialogue. How do you make dialogue work with music?...
In a way the composer couldn't really compose or orchestrate before hearing the dialogue...
Michel Chion is very critical of multilayered soundtracks and advocates a process of subtraction...
How do you tackle this problem?...
Is Surround Sound going to make a difference in the way we design sound?...
Ennio Morricone said that composing for film entails not to have the time to develop a theme. How do composers deal with this?...