The Musician

This post poses a much greater risk of revealing my identity than any posted previously on my blog. I'm aware of that. But the story has to be told.

Since 2003, Microsoft has run an annual international competition known as the Imagine Cup. It was initially a software design competition, but has expanded each year such that there are now nine events. A friend of mine heard about their short film competition and decided that he wanted to enter. He's been making movies for years now and does some pretty impressive work.

My friend the "Sea Colonel" (a blatantly false name, I assure you) approached me a few months ago and asked me to write the music for his entry. The Imagine Cup competition rules prohibit the use of copyrighted material without express written permission, which includes all that wonderful music by John Williams, Hans Zimmer, Alan Menken, Howard Shore, etc. If the competitors want to have a soundtrack to their movie, they have to create it themselves. He came up with a few themes and had some ideas for how to use them, but it was up to me to turn those few ideas into a full piano score.

The first round of the competition involved the creation of a storyboard, laying out in quasi-comic-book style the story our team's idea. Of the 365 teams that signed up for the competition, the top thirty storyboards were selected to progress to round two. Our team came out in 12th place worldwide. Round two involves the actual creation of the movie, and as the filming progressed, I began working on the music. A lot of my work couldn't be done until I knew how long each scene would be, so I ended up cramming much of the work into the last two weeks. It's amazing how long it can take to write and transcribe music; one 45-second segment took me two hours from start to finish.

Writing the music was fun. Creating music that matches the mood, story, and timing of the video is a challenge I'd not yet experienced. I felt confident about the music I had written, and was only more so when we arranged for a well-known composer (a relation of the Sea Colonel's) to orchestrate my piano score. The plan was to get a local high school orchestra to record it for us, adding that epic feel to our story. Imagine my excitement when the BYU String Orchestra agreed to perform and record for us. The recording took place about a week ago, and our film has been submitted online. We feel very confident that we'll be selected to progress to the final round.

That, of course, is the coolest part of all. You see, the top six teams get an all-expenses-paid week-long trip to Seoul, South Korea. Wouldn't that be amazing? And yeah, there are some decent cash prizes for the winners, but... South Korea! I might get to go to South Korea just because I wrote some music!

I am so excited.