Filmmaking truly is a team sport! The process requires the combined efforts of both creative and technical people if it’s to work. One of the key creative inputs is the music, which means that most directors and producers will work with a composer in the process of making their films. The right music can elevate a story and capture the audience’s attention by evoking deep-seated emotions. 

In this 90-minute workshop, music composer Navid Lancaster will guide participants through the process of composing a film score and the relationship between composer and director. He will delve into the importance of serving the story and the director’s vision to translate the intended meaning into music.

logistics

date: Saturday 24 September, 2022
time: 12.30pm–2.00pm 
location: NALIS (Seminar Room 2)
rsvp: pre-registration required. Sign up here!
tickets: TT$150. Tickets are available here.
facilitator: Navíd Lancaster

about Navíd Lancaster

Navíd Lancaster is a musician, film composer, sound designer and the owner of LANCAST, an independent company that composes the emotions for multiple award-winning films, video games, mobile apps and animation. He is also the music composer and sound designer for the ongoing Knight Series and other content created by multiple award-winning Stack designer, Anthony Phills. He, Anthony Phills and a team, created the Immersive Learning, Augmented Reality (AR) app, “Unbreakable: Documenting Black History in Augmented Reality” that won the Silver Medal at the 2020 International Design Awards and won the bronze medal at the inaugural 2022 Anthem Awards.

Fri 24 Sept, 1.00pm-3.00pm (est)
location: online via Zoom
tickets: free of charge; early registration required
presented in partnership with the US Embassy, Port of Spain

Filmmakers tend to spend most of their time focusing on “film as a visual medium” but it’s just as important to remember that a powerful score can help to inspire the emotions that the creator wants their audience to experience. Incorporating this layer of storytelling into a film ultimately results in a more impactful outcome. In this open forum, audience members will have the opportunity to ask questions of veteran composer, Miriam Cutler. This is intended to be an introductory, general overview of the process of creating meaningful stories through music.

---

miriam cutler

Three-time Emmy-nominated composer Miriam Cutler is passionate about documentaries. Her career has encompassed work for HBO, CNN, PBS, Sundance, Emmy and Oscar-nominated films such as “Flannery”, “Dilemma of Desire”, “Not Carol”, “RBG”, “Love Gilda”, “The Hunting Ground”, “American Promise”, “Lost in La Mancha”, “Ghosts of Abu Ghraib” and many others films. 

Cutler is a lab advisor for the Sundance Documentary Composer Lab, and a doc juror for Sundance, AFI, Spirit and the IDA Awards. She is a consultant who has led workshops for CNN, the International Documentary Association, Concordia and Global Media Makers. Cutler has presented workshops in Iceland, Vienna, Spain, Tbilisi/Georgia, Malaysia, Germany and at various universities, including USC, UCLA, Chapman College and Loyola Marymount. She is part of the Motion Picture Academy documentary branch and an executive committee member. She has served on the boards of the Society of Composers and Lyricists and is the co-founder of the Alliance for Women Film Composers.

“Without John Williams, bikes don’t really fly, nor do brooms in Quidditch matches, nor do men in red capes… There is no Force, dinosaurs do not walk the Earth, we do not wonder, we do not weep, we do not believe.”

Director Steven Spielberg describes his long time collaborator, composer John Williams

Music is one of those intangible things that can transform how audiences interpret and experience a film. In this way, film score composers are like conductors, directing the way that audiences feel and extracting emotion. Join us for our next ttff talk, when we’ll be sitting down for an intimate and wide-ranging discussion on creativity, inspiration, and finding the right note, with composer Dominique Le Gendre.

When: 1pm AST, 21 April 2021
Where: Facebook Live @ttfilmfestival

Dominique Le Gendre composed and produced music for all 38 Shakespeare plays for the audio collection, The Complete Arkangel Shakespeare. Her musical trajectory spans performance, musical direction, teaching, curation, producing music events and compositions for theatre, dance, art installations, film, television and radio drama for BBC Radio. She is a former Associate Artist of the Royal Opera House, her chamber music and operas have been commissioned and performed by numerous ensembles including the Royal Opera House Soloists, Philharmonia Orchestra, Manning Camerata, Tête-a-tête Opera, Ibis Ensemble, Metamorphosis Dance and Natalia Dopwell. Her musical-theatre work, Jab Molassie with libretto by Bassist Caitlyn Kamminga was produced by Calabash Foundation for the Arts, premiering at the Little Carib Theatre. ​Dominique trained as a classical guitarist in Paris with Ramon de Herrera while composing music for experimental films and assisting Haitian filmmaker Elsie Haas on her documentary La Ronde des Vaudou. She is the artistic director of the UK arts charity StrongBack Productions.

ttff talks is geared towards inspiring and motivating film and television practitioners in Trinidad and Tobago and the Caribbean, by creating a forum for in-depth and wide-ranging one-on-one conversations about the art and creativity, business, joys and challenges of working in the film and television industry.