Hero - Short Film Score - Walkthrough Pt.2 - Concept and Thematic Material

As mentioned in the last part, the general idea of the score was pretty clear from the beginning. We were aiming for a traditional orchestral score. Of course, one reason for this was that the imaginary scenes the kids lived through were all hommages to movies and genres from past decades. 
As an exception to this one might see the car chase sequence which had a "Fast and Furious" feeling to it, however as all the other sequences clearly all referenced movies that had a traditional score, the majority would set the tone for the minority which as a consequence meant that the chase sequence would get a similar musical approach to have a unified and homogenous musical concept.
This traditional approach also came with the concept of a strong main theme that would overarc the entire movie. The directors and I had a few discussions about what the main theme would need to transport. 
It was particularly clear that the final sequence would more or less be the thematic resolution to the movie, however we had a bit of discussion how we get there. It was clear to us that this moment in the movie needed to be a sort of love theme that would express the love between the two brothers, however it was clear that we couldn't construct the score all the way through on a theme that had a sentimental and tender quality to it as this resolution and the development to that moment needed to be kept for this final moment. Yet we wanted the theme to be present in the score before so it needed to be transformed into a fitting version for the final scene in any case.
So there were basically two ways how to approach that:
1. Use an adventurous theme that would portray the adventures of the brothers and transform it when needed into a tender version of itself
2. Use a tender "love theme" that would become a more heroic version of itself in the final sequence
We actually tried both. In fact the theme for my recently released piece GAZING AT THE NIGHT SKY was the first approach for a theme that would rather be on the adventurous side which could be transformed into a tender version towards the end.
However we all agreed that this wouldn't be the right theme for that movie. One essential reason was the question what this movie was actually about and what the central element of the score should be. It was about the relationship and unconditional love between two brothers. This was what it all came down to in the end so it was clear that THIS was what the music needed to tell. Not the adventure of the brothers, not the relationship with the other kids but the relationship between these two brothers.
The other reason that ruled out the first thematic approach was from a purely musical standpoint that it would be very tricky to transform this melodic idea into a version that would support the grand scale sweepy quality of the sunset western shot towards the end.
So the next thematic approach I did was the theme that ended up in the movie. The idea was to write a quite simple melody that could also be a lullaby or a children's song. I ended up with this simple eight bar theme:

https://soundcloud.com/robin-hoffmann/hero-main-theme-original/s-D7bwUqLTiTt
I decided to go for a 3/4 meter as this generally feels more soothing and at least to me more like a lullaby. What you see here is the original harmonization that in this form never made it into the actual movie but only into the very last few seconds of the end credits roll. The original chord progression was a in semitones descending bass line, which is also called a "lament bass" which traditionally creates an implication of sorrow and pain. However I felt with this more "major" version of this progression it lost most of its pain and rather felt bittersweet to me which I felt was quite fitting considering the relationship of these brothers and the situations we see in the movie.
I'm using the first five notes as a head motif throughout this score which helps me to hint the theme without needing to play it out entirely in order to be recognized.
The actual version that made it in its entire length into the movie is this reharmonisation:

https://soundcloud.com/robin-hoffmann/hero-main-theme-film-version/s-4a5bnpvD3gR
This is the version that plays at the end with the sunset shot. The clear hommage to literally every western movie ever made this transformation necessary as the bittersweetness of the original version was not fitting here. It needed a grand scale, more epic and heroic approach.
I felt particularly the first four bars and their chords created for me this association of wide American landscapes. Particularly the Bb chord with the #11 takes a pivotal role here as being quite unexpected yet pleasantly surprising. If you want to give that a name, you could call it a modal interchange from the mixolydian scale (something that I will explain in another post soon), or it could also be considered being the Subdominant of the Subdominant. In any case, it is a quite commonly used filmic device to employ the chord of the flat 7th degree of the scale into a progression.
By the way, this example shows just a small glimpse of the power of harmony. I am completely convinced that you can transform practically any melody into almost any emotional state just with proper reharmonisation. And while it might be even debatable in this case whether the first 4 bars are an actual reharmonisation of the original (bar 2 G/B becomes Em - two very related chords; bar 3 remains the same chord (in some iterations I used a Gm6/Bb - yet very similar); bar 4 transforms from a F/A to a straight F), the change that happens through the simple change of a stepwise descending bass to a more cadential bass has a tremendous influence on the emotional perception of the theme.
Another strategy that I like to use with melodic writing is to give the melody a proper contour, in this case an arc:

The notes that outline the melodic gesture by falling on heavy beats create an arc that can be easily (subconsciously) followed by our brain and keeps providing new melodic information (by introducing new pitches) coupled with the raising quality that creates a sweepy feeling (compare E.T. Main Theme) and yet finds its way back home to its starting pitch.
While this is easy to be said, structuring a theme that way is pretty hard work as you need to keep a constant focus on the entire structure and not just this one bar that you're working on.
Another property to make a theme memorable is to keep it within a reasonable range. This theme spans a minor tenth which is about a comfortable singing range for almost everybody (maybe not in this particular key).
I'll go more into detail about transformation strategies for this theme when we get to the individual passages in that score.
There was also a small side motif in this score which I would call the "Evil Fanfare" which always occurs when the adult antagonist gets a prominent screen entrance:

https://soundcloud.com/robin-hoffmann/hero-evil-fanfare/s-QAc9F6aMnG6
It was desirable to make this an as striking as possible "Evil Fanfare", as the character that it portrays is so drasticaly exaggerated in the minds of the children (with all evil guy traits imaginable) that we all felt like it needed a super on-your-nose "DUN DUN DUUUUN" fanfare for him.
The necessity for this arose actually from the very first scene where the audience doesn't know where this is going to. The filmmakers expressed that they wanted the audience in this scene to almost go "What is this B movie bullshit?" before it resolves to why it is so overexaggerated. So in order to support this, we wanted the music to be just as on your nose as well.
There is a general problem with themes in short films which is the short time in which you need to establish a theme and make it familiar enough to be recognized later on to be a usueable storytelling device. As we needed the main theme to be a central element, I used literally every chance before its big statement at the end to introduce it so it would have that familiarity that it needed at the end to transport the feeling of the younger brother. With a longer movie it might not be necessary to jump on every chance just to get the theme into the subconsciousness of the audience but in this case where there was about 7 minutes of music in total before the big statement of the main theme, I needed to be a bit more "in your face" with this.