Film Composing Studies in Southern Israel – Challenges And Goals

In the last decade, a unique instructional experiment has been taking place inside Sapir`s Academic College film school: a special department was formed, dedicated solely to the instruction of music & sound for the cinema. While other institutions may offer courses in the field of music for films – this is the only place in Israel (and one of very few around the world) that teaches the subject inside an actual film school. This gives the students an opportunity to work on actual soundtracks of real films, and while doing so to come to artistic terms with real directors, editors and producers – all their fellow students.

The resulting outcome – hundreds of final projects, from short animation (documentary & fiction), TV sitcoms and documentaries, to comedies and dramas – all composed by the department`s students – produce a vast body of evidence and conclusion regarding the instruction of film composing.

In the offered symposium we will hear 3 firsthand accounts, given by the current head of the department and his 2 predecessors, of this unique experiment.

Film composing share many parallel aspects with pure composing, but in addition require a set of skills that are unique and very specific.

Ishai Adar will talk about the technical aspects of becoming a film composer in a rapidly changing world of sound creation and the constant emerging of new media.

Marcelo Pilewsky will talk about musical versatility – and the need of the modern film composer to master a vast range of tools in order to be able to meet the needs of movies in diverse styles.

Jonathan Bar Giora will speak about ways to meet the need of film composers to take into account in their creative process "non musical" elements such as the director, the plot and all the other sounds of the film (dialogue, ambience etc).

We plan to end the three short lectures (about 20 minutes each) with a mutual Q&A and a few excerpts from selected student`s works.