VCU Animation and Media Scoring Students Connect for Collaborative Projects

This week, my Dramatic Scoring class, part of the Media Scoring program in the VCUarts Department of Music, welcomed animation students from the Department of Communication Arts, led by Professor Ying-Fang Shen. The visit was part of an ongoing effort to create more opportunities for collaboration across VCUarts, connecting students from different disciplines through the kind of creative partnerships they will encounter in the professional world.

The goal was to connect animation students developing original projects with Media Scoring students who will have the opportunity to compose music for those projects later this semester.

During our conversation, we discussed how composers and filmmakers work together, how music can become part of the storytelling process, and why it is valuable to begin that relationship before the music actually needs to be written.

The animation students are currently developing their stories, characters, storyboards, and animatics. Around the middle of the semester, they will begin sharing timed animatics and project materials with the Media Scoring students. This gives the composers an opportunity to learn about each project, talk with the filmmakers about their creative intentions, and begin developing musical ideas before moving into the scoring process.

For the Media Scoring students, this is also an opportunity to work with something that is difficult to fully recreate through a traditional classroom assignment: a real creative collaborator.

Writing music to picture is only part of being a film composer. Composers also need to learn how to listen to a director, interpret creative feedback, communicate musical ideas, revise their work, and understand what the filmmaker is trying to accomplish dramatically.

One of the things I emphasized during our meeting was that the relationships students build in college can extend far beyond a single class or project. A composer and filmmaker who meet while they are students may continue working together on future films, animations, games, and other projects as their careers develop.

That is one of the reasons I am excited to continue building connections between Media Scoring and other areas at VCUarts. The classroom is an important place to develop technical and creative skills, but opportunities like this allow students to begin experiencing the collaborative process that is at the center of professional media production.

I’m looking forward to seeing what our students create together this semester.