Berklee College of Music

Sintel the Dragon and Our Journey
Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Degree of
Master of Music in Scoring for Films, Television and Video Games

Supervisor: Alfons Conde

By Marco Chiavetta

Scoring for Film; Tv and ideo-games
Valencia Campus
July 2019

Table of Contents
ABSTRACT ............................................................................................................................................................... I
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT ............................................................................................................................................ II
1.HOW TO CHOOSE YOUR DRAGON ....................................................................................................................... 1
1.1. THE BEGINNING ........................................................................................................................................... 1
1.2. THE FAILURES AND THE WINNING OF MY PROJECT RESEARCH ........................................................................................ 2
1.3. HOW I FOUND SINTEL........................................................................................................................................ 3
1.4. SINTEL: WHAT IS IT ABOUT? ................................................................................................................................ 4
1.5. WHY THAT PART OF THE MOVIE? .......................................................................................................................... 4
2. THE COMPOSITION PROCESS.............................................................................................................................. 6
2.1. THE MOVIE MOMENTS AND THE EARLY MUSICAL APPROACH ........................................................................................ 6
2.2. THE FIRST DRAFT .............................................................................................................................................. 9
2.3. THE ORCHESTRATION ........................................................................................................................................ 9
2.4. THE SCORE PREPARATION ................................................................................................................................ 12
2.5. THE RECORDING SESSION AND THE CONDUCTING .................................................................................................... 13
3. THE POST PRODUCTION ................................................................................................................................... 15
3.1. EDITING ....................................................................................................................................................... 15
3.2. MIX ............................................................................................................................................................ 16
3.3. THE MASTER BUS........................................................................................................................................... 19
3.4. POST PRODUCTION CONCLUSIONS ...................................................................................................................... 20
4. CONCLUSIONS .................................................................................................................................................. 21

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Abstract

When I first bumped into the movie Sintel, I was astonished by the many analogies I was able to
find with my life. That story really strokes me. In this paper, I am going to describe the whole
process starting from the early stage. I will talk about how I found the video and how I organized
the entire music production process. Information about the music composition, the fantastic
experience we lived in Air Studio and the post-production work I did on the recording are all
included in this presentation.
Keywords: film scoring, compositional processes, orchestration, post-production, reflective
paper.

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Acknowledgement
I sacrificed everything in my life to become a musician, everyone around me had to adapt to my
unlimited passion. My entire music path is dedicated to those people who never let me go, to my
parents the most supportive persons I have ever met in my life, and to my girlfriend Virginia, an
amazing artist and wonderful soul whose talent inspires me every day.
Thank you to my uncle Bruno and my aunt Asmara. It is only because of them that I was able to
attend Berklee. I also want to mention my grandmothers Maria and Ada and the entire rest of my
beautiful family with specific attention to my nephew, Keyla.
A special thank is reserved for all the wonderful people and friends I met in Berklee during this
year. A special mention to Clara Rescala; Hildur Maral; Simon Tomas; Joe Pietro Abela; Tomas
Santibanez; Miguel de la Rosa; Ricky Liu; Christopher Pohl; Ju Lee; John ho Choi; Dana
Fakhoury; Celestine Manno; Megan Ghaudet; Michael Gelberg; Saria Tourbah; Kayla Zuskin;
Lisa Yihwan Lim; Victor Josse; Luca Bordonaro; David Lo Cascio; Sarah Basciano; David
Perez MacCollum, Matt Capone and his girlfriend Jennifer and Robby Glade with his girlfriend
Melissa and the wonderful cat Marshmallow. Being your friend has been the most rewarding
experience of the year. I hope our path will cross again someday.
To my supportive friends Luca di Pancrazio; Lorenzo di Gennaro and Ryan Biscoglia. My life
would be extremely worse without you around.
Thank you very much to all my professors, I hope I will be able to express all my gratitude
through my career, in the meantime please be aware that you made me a better musician and a
better person.

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1.How to choose your Dragon
1.1. The Beginning
The most important part of my final project lies within the entire journey which led me to choose
that video. I believe that the second semester at Berklee can be considered the most crucial part
of my master experience. I am not only speaking about the learning path within the program
itself but, mainly about the decision process which brought me to choose the short movie Sintel
over other proposals.
As part of the second semester at Berklee, SFTV students have two recording sessions with the
Budapest orchestra. These two sessions are miles-stones into the master path, we all worked hard
to do the best job out of our abilities.
In both situations, I ended up working on contemporary and aleatoric compositions associated
with horror and thriller scenes. These kinds of orchestral palettes, for some reason, are
straightforward to approach to me, till the point that I felt almost relaxed while writing music.
For our last Budapest session, in April, I flew to Budapest with a few of my peers to attend our
recording session live and to conduct our compositions. There I had the chance to appreciate the
fantastic writing of my colleagues. Not only the ones who were there with me but also the ones
who were remotely recording from Valencia. I admire most of them for the amazing musicality
and artistic personality. On that occasion, I thought that I needed to force myself out of my
comfort zone. I felt I needed to write a beautiful melodic composition inspired by the great
melodist composers of our time. I wanted to have a melodic piece in my portfolio, and there
were no better chances to achieve it than working on it for my London recording session.

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1.2. The failures and the winning of my project research
When the second semester started, it was clear in my mind that my C.E. video would have been
an original project. I definitely wanted an original video to score, to get credits, and to start my
post-Berklee career with a first proper project. Back in January, I started persuading my ancient
idea of composing for a videogame gameplay. I sent dozens of emails all around the globe
looking for developers interested in collaborations. Out of all the emails I sent, I received just
one kind but still negative answer and nothing more.
Meanwhile, I had started my research for online resources, forums, or social media channel
where to talk and approach filmmakers, producers or game developers. I started advertising and
explaining what I was looking for through those channels. The proposal was obviously intriguing
and, from that process, I received a lot of good feedbacks and projects.
Even though I noticed along the way that small budget productions cannot fit the massive size
and power of the kind of orchestral instrumentation we were working on. A lot of directors were
more interested in more intimate instrumentations or electronic productions and songs. I found a
few people who were eager to try this experience, most of them proposed me short movies
totally inadequate to the task I was supposed to work to.
The hardest part was to send back email to directors and producers kindly explaining them that,
unfortunately, despite the high quality of some of the productions, I considered their movies not
appropriate for the kind of instrumentation. I have to confess it was painful sometimes, due to the
excellent quality of some of the products. I had to force myself being sincere with them to be
professional and to achieve a good result for this recording project.

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It was thanks to my honesty that some of these people decided to trust me and my work. I am
happy to say that I had a great turn back from that situation and, right now, I am working on
three short movies including a student project, an animation movie and a documentary directed
by the Los Angele based director Kenneth Woodall.

1.3. How I found Sintel
Sintel is an animated short movie made with an open source software named Blender
(www.blender.org). The Blender team developed different short animation movies, they are all
available for download on their website (https://www.blender.org/about/projects/). All of the
short films are creative common licenses. This means that everyone can download these products
and modify the contents. It is impressive that thanks to the creative common licenses, people
have the right to share the revised version of the movies.
The first time I heard about this company and the resources that they make available for artists,
was during one of our orchestration class. Straight after discovering it, I started watching the
various animation movies, and I was really touched by Sintel. Within that short movies I found a
lot of important analogies with my life, with the things I care for and with essential lessons I
have learned along my path. I was moved by the way this team created a storyline which invites t
you to think about the unexpected turns and the consequences that your actions may cause, no
matter if love, loyalty, and other wonderful feelings are the fuel of your motivation.
It took me a while from the day I discovered Sintel until the moment I actively started working
on it, however, since day one, I already knew that movie was a valuable choice. My interest in
the video led me to start watching it and thinking about which part of the short to score. By the
time I realized that Sintel was what I wanted to bring as my C.E. project, I already knew the

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video by heart, and I already made different cuts in Premiere Pro. Picking the right chunk was
the last thing remaining to do.

1.4. Sintel: what is it about?
Sintel take its name from the main character of this CGI movie released in 2010. Sintel is a
homeless girl, one day, while looking for some food she finds an injured dragon calf. She takes
nurse him, feeds him, and names him Scales. For the first time in her life, she has a friend to look
after and someone who loves her.
Once scale fully recover from the injury, he starts to learn how to hunt and to fly. It is during his
first fly that an adult dragon captures him and brings him away from Sintel. Determined to take
her friend back, she starts a long and dangerous journey leading to the land of dragons.
She finally reaches the cave where Scales is and, in the attempting of getting him back, she
engages a fight with an adult dragon ending up killing him. Straight after the fatal strike against
the dragon Sintel notice the scar on the wing of the animal. In that specific moment, Sintel
discovered that, overcome from the wish of taking Scales back with her, she totally lasts the
perception of the time. For the first time, she appears to be older and with different scars on her
skins. The long journey she had been through radically changed everything around and about her
and led her to kill her best friend.

1.5. Why that part of the movie?
Scoring a single part of a short movie can be really challenging. Usually, the difficulty lies in
writing something that can stand next to other compositions. No matter if the rest of the music is
licensed or composed from a colleague, the project should be consistent and so should be the

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music writing style. Even though this is the most common challenge, the nature of this project
radically changed the problems behind it. Due to the limitation of the three minutes of music to
write, my main concern was how to condense the entire meaning of the short movie within the
extract I had to choose and score. This obviously affected my decision over the scene, but, it had
even stronger influence on the way I planned the music structure and how I chose the orchestral
color and style.
After many attempts, I decided to score the central part of the short. Starting from the moment
when Scales starts flying up to the point when she reaches the border with the land of the
dragons. I found in this short extract everything I needed. I have fast mood changes and a long
sequence shot where I was able to write for the full orchestra.
This choice will lead us to the second part of my paper.

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2. The Composition Process
2.1. The movie moments and the early musical approach
As specified at the end of the previous chapter the focus of my composition is the central part of
the movie when our main character, Sintel, lost her friend and begins her journey to get him
back. This part of the short can be subdivided into four main blocks:
1. Scales learn how to fly: In this first part of the scene, Scales is flying for the first time in
the movie. It is a essential scene, it represents the strong feelings connecting the two
characters. It also indicates to the audience that, at that point, Scales wholly recovered
from the wounds. Sintel is excited for him, and when Scales starts chasing the birds, she
follows him running up to a stairway till the highest part of the city.
2. The dragon captures Scales: Here is when we have the strongest mood change. While
Scales is flying the big dragon appears and captures him under the eyes of a powerless
Sintel who cannot do anything to help her friend.
3. Sintel starts here journey: Straight after Scale got captured by the dragon Sintel goes
through contrasting feelings. She is first astonished and sad but straight after she decides
to get Scales back. She now starts her journey to the land of the dragons.
4. Back to the beginning: The part of the short movie I am scoring is a flashback in the
story. At the beginning of the film, we see Sintel fighting a guardian over a mountain.
That specific location is where Sintel journey ends. Even if it is easy to understand, while
watching the movie the connection between the two scenes is not immediate.

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For each of these moments, I tried to create a specific mood with different themes and variations
connecting them in the gentlest way possible. I needed to find some inspiration for the movie, so,
I started listening some specific kind of music. I have to say that two are the compositions which
helped me a lot with the writing process:
1. How to train your dragon – Training Out There 1
2. In the steppes of central Asia2
The association with the movie “How to train your dragon” was almost immediate. Even if the
stories are different, I cannot deny all the analogies between this colossal and Sintel. My main
fear was to get too close to that soundtrack. Fortunately, I was able to avoid it even taking
inspiration from a couple of specific parts of the cue “Training Out There”.
Focusing on the more classical repertoire, I got inspiration from the symphonic poem written by
Aleksandr Porfir'evič Borodin. In the steppes of central Asia has been my first critical approach
to the romantic orchestral compositions. I bumped into it on YouTube years ago, and from there,
I started researching about orchestral pieces and studying composition. Till I started with my
final project here at Berklee, for years, I had not listened to that masterpiece. It was while
analyzing the sequence shot of the movie that I started to sing “In the steppes of central Asia”
straight away.
I honestly think that in the end, my composition does not have a strong Borodin flavor, however
every time I felt stocked in the writing process of my piece, I took a break and listened to that
music. Definitely, the sections of my music more influenced by Borodin are the more intimate

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John Powell; OST 2010
Borodin; Symphonic Poem 1880

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one in terms of mood and the smaller one in terms of instrumentation. A good example may be
the musical transition happening over the desert scene, starting at minute 1.24.
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SFTV C.E. - The Journey

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The page inspired to Borodin

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2.2. The first draft
I started composing the music using only the piano. I needed to find a melody for the first part of
the scene when Sintel is following Scales up to the stairways. This scene should express
happiness and proudness. Sintel, for the first time, sees her best friend being able to fly.
This part to me was really challenging. When I composed my first draft, I sketched the melodic
theme and I was pleased about it. It took me a short time to realize that I got used so much to the
original music, that I literally copied it. Even if the overall arrangement was really different, the
thematic material was too similar. I had to trash all the first scene and compose it again. I was
really scared that this happened to the other parts as well. However, the remaining portion of the
draft was working smoothly and was not copied from anywhere. Before to start composing the
opening of the scene again, I needed to take a break from it. I got so used to the theme I wrote
that it was tough to put it away. I also had no time to waste as the deadline was approaching.
Because of that, I decided to start orchestrating everything I had up to that point, in order later to
get inspired by the composition itself to write the first scene.

2.3. The Orchestration
Orchestrate my cue was not an easy task for me. My first problem was to find an efficient way to
use the full orchestra alternating the powerful usage of “tutti” with the intimate and emotional
nature of smaller sessions. About intimate compositions, along the process, I realized that,
although I have an in-depth knowledge of the usage of strings, I haven’t used brass that much in
my compositions, especially as an independent session in dynamics like piano or pianissimo.
Because of this lack of brass usage, my arrangement approach to this section suffered from
uncertainty and, funny to say, gave me some anxiety.
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I realized that, despite the great orchestration classes we had during the year, I needed a realistic
musical perception of the sound of this section. I did not trust my imagination, the sample
libraries I was using were really based on powerful brass sound more than on delicate ones. The
only solution was to invest some money and buy good quality libraries. I opted for CineBrass
Pro and Spitfire Studio Brass. It was not a cheap approach to the problem, but, the combination
of these two libraries, together with the usage of others I already owned, helped me to identify
better where and how to use this section, what kind of articulation and dynamic and to perceive a
more focused and realistic sound of the session. Basically, the usage of those libraries helped me
to calibrate and integrate my knowledge and translate it into arrangement, score, and parts.
Orchestration-wise brass were not the only difficulty I found on my way. Another important
lesson I have learned from this experience is that translating a piano draft into an orchestral
arrangement may be really complicated. The main reason is that composing on the piano usually
results in music mainly based on piano’s techniques. Often, something that works really well on
piano may not work as well when played from an orchestra. To quote our professor Alfons
Conde: “there is no sustain pedal in the orchestra”. This experience helped me understand how to
translate music from piano to orchestra accurately. I found inspiration in other composers scores,
in listening to music and reading orchestrations notes and books.
From the orchestration class, I really tried to internalize the “Engine”3 technique. It basically
consists of having a constant movement going on in one or more session of the orchestra.
Sometimes this movement can be so subtle that the audience may not really listen to it; however,

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Engine is the name professor A.Conde use to express the concept of creating a constant motion in the music
arrangement.

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it always makes the music flowing creating variety and better connecting high-intensity musical
climax with more relaxed parts of the composition.
Connecting different moments of a cue is the next important topic I want to talk about. In a
composition like my “The Journey”, wherein less than three minutes the listener is guided
through different climaxes and subtle musical moments, the connections between the different
parts have should request as much attention from the composer as the thematic material. This is
because bad connections between chunks of the composition can be distractive and overall really
annoying. Since I finished my piano sketch, I knew I needed natural and pleasant transitions.
What I found really useful in this process is the usage of percussions. Percussion, especially
membranophones4 and cymbals, are usually associated with groove and rhythms or with
orchestral strikes, nevertheless they can help composer in way more situations. We can use them
for effects, or simply to make some passage smoother and more elegant. Apart from effects, I
used percussion to reinforce the low end of the orchestra, to create wild crescendos followed by
impactful strikes and sometimes to makes my transitions smoother. For this porpoise cymbals
rolls, for instance, are really helpful if used properly. Expression techniques like “crescendo poco
decrescendo” work really well when used in those situations.
I also took advantage of the extended use of timpani. One of the applications of these
instruments in my score is reinforcing the upright bass section. To achieve that I used them in
piano just to add definition to the low strings. I often use timpani layered with the bass drum to
add a note to the low-end rumbles that bass drum provides to the arrangement.

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Membranophones are musical instruments producing sound through a vibrating stretched membrane. In this
category snares; timpani and bass drums are included. However, we have to consider that Bass Drum and snares are
parts of the wood family of the membranophones while timpani are parts of the metals.

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Small Example of Strings orchestration

2.4. The Score Preparation
This part of the pre-production process is entirely new to me. I always transcript music on scores,
however, I have ever been trained to write music directly on paper or notation software. Since I
started Berklee, I have been feed with thousands of new information and techniques. In this
brand-new set of skills, it is included how to transform a midi mock-up into a score, using the
MIDI protocol or XLM within Sibelius. This technique learned thanks to the guide of professor
Vicente Ortiz Gimeno, speeds up my workflow exponentially. It also allowed me to divide the
writing and composition process from the score preparation and to be more relaxed and focused
on the writing knowing that everything will be translated into parts and scores quickly later in the
process.
I used this method for almost all the recording sessions this year. It was not easy to figure out
how to produce well-looking scores and parts using Sibelius as I needed to transition from

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Finale. In the end, I managed to reach an excellent level on the usage of this notation software
and, now I know how to approach the score and parts preparation rapidly.
Unfortunately for me, this revealed to be a double-edged sword, and I experienced the
consequences on the podium in Air Studio. As I am not an excellent score reader, some mistakes
may happen in my scores. Such a big orchestral transcription can easily hide minor problems that
I may not be able to detect even after detailed proofreading. This happen with accidentals in
London, I had a few accidental missing.
I don’t feel bad about it, this experience reminded me of one of my stronger weaknesses. I know
I have to work on score reading, also I have to find a way to make the score preparation process
more accessible and detailed oriented.
Overall, I found useful to work on the preparation and printing of the parts. I don’t know if I will
never use these specific skills as a professional but, it was such a great experience to understand
the standard of the score preparation and how, even small details, can affect the performance in
the studio environment. Right now, I feel I gained one of the hidden skills of the Scoring
industry, those kinds of skills that may appear not that useful but that can make a big difference
when working with a specific budget, restricted time and under pressure.

2.5. The recording session and the conducting
Air Studio has been the most extraordinary experience of my entire existence as a musician.
Everything there is at the top of the industry standards. I really enjoyed and loved the experience.
Unfortunately, some details make this experience not as enjoyable as I wanted to be.

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Specifically, the headphones listening was not super detailed. Especially the woodwind section
was out of focus and not really legible. After the first take, I got nervous because I thought it was
an arrangement problem. Fortunately, it was not and listening to the recording was really
reassuring.
This experience taught me the importance of the listening when you are on the podium
conducting a session. As I want to go on practicing conducting, I am composing a small twenty
second loop using common elements in film music. This loop will serve as a soundcheck track to
adjust my listening in my future recording sessions. Through learning this small loop by heart, I
will be able to balance the Decca Three with specific spot microphones in the headphones to
compensate for any kind of listening problem.

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3. The Post Production
3.1. Editing
The editing process was really smooth and easy to do. Editing in Pro Tools is a daily task for me.
I am used to the technique of comping and I normally spend some time working on it to achieve
the best result out of the material I have available. The big difference I noticed with this
recording session, compared with my everyday post-production life, was that this time I only had
a few full takes, four to be specific. The small number of playlists in my Pro Tools session
initially scared me. My first thought was that I would have never been able to find the
appropriate performance for each passage within only four takes. Despite my concerns, the
quality of the players, together with the fantastic quality of the studio, allowed me to focus
specifically on performance details. I ended up choosing the parts according to the intension of
the performance. There was no need to be worried about mistakes, simply because they never
happened twice, and generally there were just a few. Often the sparse mistakes were quite
musical, sometimes they even add a pleasant human flavor to the recording.
Even the process of creating crossfades between the performances I choose revealed to be an
easy task at the end. The main reason is that my comping is based on long chunks of
performances, this means that I only had to create a small number of crossfade regions. I took
advantage of the structure of my composition, which continuously alternates between highintensity moments and more relaxed ones. Crossfading during the reverb tail after an orchestral
hit or right before the beginning of a new session is a really smooth process and if well done it is
almost unperceivable.

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3.2. Mix
Mixing my track was harder than I expected. I honestly thought it would have been easier. I had
to face a bunch of problems in order to achieve the best result for my final mix.
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Microphones

The Pro Tools session that Air Studio provided us is vast. Approaching such a significant
number of microphones to me is always hard. I like timber details and I am really picky about
them. Initially, I tried to maintain a significant number of microphones in the session. My idea
was trying to automate them to control the loudness and use them to reinforce the Decca three.
However, I realized that I had to make a choice based on the needs of the composition.
I finally ended up selecting specific microphones useful to compensate for the lacking elements
in Decca three. The overall balance was outstanding and efficient, I found it helpful to reinforce
the woodwind session through the usage of the spot microphones. I also used strings spots to
make the session sound bigger in specific points. Upright bass and tuba close microphones
provide to my session a deeper low-ends part of the spectrum.
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Equalizers

Cleaning the frequencies is a must in the mixing process. It is the first step to take when starting
with a mix. My challenge here was to find a perfect balance between cleaning the frequencies
without killing the quality of the recording. It was really challenging, especially in the middle
register, where frequencies usually create resonances.

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When I started equalizing the tracks, I expected to work mainly with high pass filters and some
minor bell cuts. It did not end up like that. I first used the HPF5 to clean the low ends in all the
mics than, starting from the Room microphones6 sound, I tried to fix the frequency crashes
happening between those microphones and the spot mic I was using.
I found powerful resonances in the frequency range between 200Hz and 400Hz as well as
between 1Khz and 2Khz. Cleaning that part of the spectrum may result in a lack of body in the
composition’s sound. I tried to be as gentle as possible, making extensive usage of dynamic Eq7
in order not to cut frequencies when not necessary and gently shape them when a louder
resonance incomed.
Middle-High frequencies revealed to be the hardest part of the spectrum for this project. In this
range, something peculiar happened. The overall power of this part of the spectrum was below
the needs of the music but, even if there were no frequencies peaks, a really rough and scratchy
sound appeared every time I tried to boost the frequencies between 5Khz and 10Khz. This sound
was really unpleasant to listen to and hard to process. The only solution was to raise the mid-high
range and apply a dynamic equalizer to cut those frequencies when needed. I reviewed all the
spots equalizers try to slightly clean that range and to apply a slightly more aggressive dynamic
Eq process in those tracks as well. This process, together with the usage of compressions made
the magic.

5

High Pass Filters
Decca three; Wides and Gallery ambient microphones
7
Eq is the abbreviation of Equalizer
6

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Compressors

For this project, I tried to approach compression differently. In the first part of the mixing
process, I found the usage of a multiband compressor really useful. I attempted to use different
compression to find the right solution. I first started with iZotope plug-ins but they were not
helping me achieve the goal. While looking for an alternative plugin to use, I remembered one of
the mix classes where our professor Pablo Schuller showed us the usage of a multiband
compressor developed from the company mcDSP8. Luckily, We have that plug-in suite available
in the studios. I opened the SPC404 over the various tracks and started to set it up. The result
was outstanding. This compressor is transparent enough to allow me to use it without a
substantial compensation for the gain reduction. This results in a stronger attenuation of
problematic frequencies meanwhile compacting the composition into a smoother and more
enjoyable sound.
After this first dynamic processing, I needed something that could work over the entire
frequency spectrum. I needed a more compact sound, something that could unify the whole
frequencies spectrum balancing it and helping elements on the background to cut through the
mix. To achieve this goal, I choose an analog compressor emulation from Softube, the TubeTech CL 1B. This emulation of a class A tube compressor hardware donates to the mix the
nuance of the analog process. The CL 1B doesn’t only help with the overall tone of the mix, it
also does its job at the top. When I applied it to specific target tracks and set it up for gentle
compression, with a gain reduction level moving between 0db and a maximum of -3db, I

8

mcDSP is a plug-ins development company famous in the industry for its top quality software.

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immediately perceived the difference. A lot of my background instruments now were way more
defined and focused. Also, the stereo field got wider, helping certain instruments to stick out.
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Other

Once I finished my Equalizer and Compressor processing, I took a full day break to clean my
ears before to listen back to the mix and polish it before to move to the master bus process. When
I went back to the studio, I noticed that the strings attack, especially on spiccato articulation, was
weak and lacked punch. I started applying a tiny bit of tape distortion on the spot microphones.
Initially, I put it in insert; however, it resulted into a too aggressive distortion, so I opted for
parallel processing.

3.3. The Master Bus
The master bus is an essential part of my mix process. I am always starting the mix from there
and finishing the mixing process working on it. As for other projects, I started my mix inserting
an equalizer, a compressor, and a limiter on my master bus. I made some minor processing on
those plug-ins based on the Decca three sound.
This first approach helped me in mixing with an appropriate volume and with a better
understanding of what will have been the final result, however, as natural to imagine, this first
processing, became soon obsolete and needed to be done again from scratch.
In my final version, my master bus works through parallel processing. In my Mix Bus track, I
have an equalizer to clean the frequencies and again a CL-1B compressor. I duplicated this track
and on the twin channel, I changed the compressor with a more aggressive FAT compressor. I set
up this compressor to be close to squashing the sound. Then I balanced the two Busses and sent

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them into a final AUX track where I first added a tiny bit of reverb then cleaned some
frequencies with an equalized and apply a tape emulator and a limiter.

3.4. Post Production Conclusions
The advantage of recording in an environment like Air Studio is that you get an excellent
performance together with the best sound from all the elements involved in the recording
process. Musicians provide a great tone, microphones are the top quality in the world, the mixing
board and the preamplifiers give to your recording the shape of the classics. Everything from
humans to cables is there to provide you with the best recording experience.
But how all of this affects the post-production process and even more the final result of your
work?
What I can say is that along this year, I was able to realize the difference between a professional
programmed orchestra and a real recording session involving humans. Since my first experience
in the AKSS9 with the woodwind quartet, I was able to interiorize the difference. Players
perfectly know their instruments, they know how to change every little detail by heart. Whatever
you want to achieve with your music is faster and easier with real players. When this turns to an
environment like London, everything finds its own place in the realm of excellence.
The result is a session easier to approach from the mix point of view. Editing is more natural,
clean and mix is more accessible, smoother and more enjoyable. Also, the final result is
thousands of times better than the best mock-up I have ever produced. The overall process is
faster and guarantees you the best result over the shorter amount of time spent in the process.

9

Anna Katerina Scoring Stage – Studio facility at Berklee Valencia Campus

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4. Conclusions
For the entire year, my only goal was becoming a better composer, a professional with the
necessary skills not only to face the industry but to face the art of writing music for pictures. I
discovered my weakness, my strength and whatever stands in the middle. It was like learning
who I am as a composer and what I wanted to become. This last work represents what I want to
integrate in my writing, it is the beginning of my new path, the one which will lead me to hybrid
who I am right now with the beautiful world of melodies and orchestral colors.
I can’t remember the exact words that our program director Lucio Godoi told us back in
September, but I can definitely remember the meaning:
“London will be your milestone, right now it may seem to be months away, but this year will run
fast, and in a blink of an eye you will be conducting your composition in Air Studio”
I realized right now, writing the last few words of my C.E. that this year has gone. My class is
about to graduate. Even London, which represented the future, now is part of the past. I have
been through many difficulties and hard moments along this path. However, I have never felt
more honored to be part of something like I do every time I think about the amazing group of
people I met here.
I enjoyed the experience here at Berklee as few other things in my own life.
Thank you very much for allowing me to be part of this.

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