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Hello everyone, With the last Composers Challenge using an action clip from the award winning game 'Mass Effect 2', I thought that the next Composers Challenge should take us into another realm. The Artist is an Oscar winning silent film which follows the life of an actor in the silent film era. Ludovic Bource wrote an Oscar winning score for the movie. The 3 minute scene is from the dramatic climax of the movie where the actor is down in the dumps because, faced with the ultimate choice in life and his love interest is desperately trying to find him: I thought that this clip would be a good choice because we have not had drama as yet and drama is an important genre to master. You could take any approach to this, don't feel like there is only way to do this; you could make it sound like a musical score from that time period or you could make it more modern sounding (since the emotion is timeless). What is different about this challenge is that there will be professions from the film music industry reviewing the entries in addition to the contestants own: 1) William Stromberg - Composer best known for Trinty & Beyond and Starship Troopers 2 and Master of Re-recordings. 2) Alain Mayrand - Composer best known for The Legend of Silk Boy and Orchestrator/Conductor of Elysium. 3) Vladimir Nikolov - Orchestrator who worked on The Artist. Also a couple International Film Music Critics Association members will also be commenting on the entries. The deadline for this challenge is November 12th. Either the composers can: a) upload their own entries to YouTube (but unlisted) and send me the link so I can make a playlist. b) send me the music file (through a file sharing website), tell me where the music goes, and I can do it myself. The music file should be MP3 or equivalent. It is important that the entries be anonymous. The identity of the composer videos will be announced after the voting has finished. In regards to the voting, the composers, or anyone else who wants, will submit their votes/rankings by rating each entry out of 10. The votes will be averaged out of 10 and the top three will be announced. Everyone will receive reviews on their efforts (either from other composers, members of the community or myself included). The composers of the challenge are requested to give a short review of the other works. If anyone who finishes outside of the top three wants to know how they did, then contact me. If anyone not participating in the challenge wants to be a reviewer, you are more than welcome to. The prize for winning the Composers Challenge would be either one of the following (depending on the winner's preference): a) A CD paid for by me shipped to the winner's address b) A cash equivalent (up to $25-30 Canadian (exchange rates pending). If you have any questions, concerns or comments, please contact me at composerschallenge at hotmail dot com. Best of luck to everyone and have fun! Kevin PS: I forgot to mention that anyone who directly plagiarizes from The Artist score (even if the music was not used in the movie) will be disqualified. Use your own voice, not someone else's.

It`s back, after 2 successful years of many events, has returned again with exciting new possibilities for 2013. For those unfamiliar with the initiative, a few words may do you some good. The Composers Challenge is an initiative designed to help emulate the experience of a film composer for participants. Through a long process, the composer is given a clip and asked to score it. His/her music is then passed along a panel of adjudicators made up of prominent film music critics in the community, along with other professionals in the industry (we've been known to have composers and renowned musicologists on board). The work is then reviewed and feedback is offered. The piece is finally put up to vote to determine final scores with the public and set a victor to the competition. It’s a process in which every composer learns and an experience from which all participants have something to take out of. For this challenge, we decided to once again try something new. Fans of film music are often known to find themselves both excited and disappointed when it comes to sequels and prequels in an established film music franchise. This is largely due to their issues with thematic continuity. Everyone has a certain expectation when it comes to handling past musical themes in big sagas like Star Wars or The Lord of the Rings. Among the more controversial entities of film music is none other than the Harry Potter franchise, which has often been criticized for the nearly complete abandonment of Williams’ memorable pre-established themes for the first 3 films. This challenge gives the opportunity to give fans (or non-fans) the chance to show how they would have handled the franchise if it was in their hands. This challenge is designed to test participants’ ability to interweave already established themes with original ones of their own, while maintaining consistency with the context. Here is the original scene: That should give you a sense of what you’re scoring, but it is not actually the clip you will be composing your music to. This is the entry clip: The clip has removed the audio save for brief moments where sound effects are allowed to shine (particularly the battle scene at the end) and has been edited to save time. Some may note the length of the clip, but as daunting as it may seem, there are many benefits to such as a scene. As a composer, the kind of narrative arc this complex scene shows allows one to develop and integrate a variety of themes (both old and new) while maintaining stylistic diversity. It’s certainly a challenge, but one that holds great potential! Due to the nature of the clip, there will be extensive amount of time to score it (almost two months). Tentative Deadline: Friday April 26, 2013 Joining us on the adjudicators’ panel is the venerable Craig Richard Lysy from the IFMCA and Movie Music UK, Edmund Meinerts from Tracksounds and Mikko Ojala (aka Incanus) from JWFan. Over the course of the next few weeks, they will be sharing what they expect from the entries to help guide you on scoring the clip. We’ll start now, with a few words from Craig: On another note, we will also have a guest as per tradition of our Hear From the Pros feature. But more on that will be revealed later in the challenge. Just a brief review of what to do to get onboard this great ride. INSTRUCTIONS: 1) Email me at kkalaisan@hotmail.com to let me know you’re interested in participating in the challenge. 2) Score the clip and email me the piece (approximately 8 min) by the deadline. The score must incorporate at least 1 new theme and 1 previously established theme in the franchise (it doesn’t have to be a John Williams theme, it can come from any of the films). 3) Wait patiently for more news. Check email or this site for updates on a regular basis. I hope to see many familiar names and many new candidates to return for what will be a very exciting chapter to the Composers Challenge initiative. For any questions or inquiries, please feel free to send an email to kkalaisan@hotmail.com. This can all be found at the site: http://composerschallenge.com/vii/

Alright, I'm really new to these forums. But in my short time here I have noticed a lot of people who compose music on these forums. Over at the Filmtracks Scoreboard, I've been hosting a composers challenge for quite a while now. A new one is starting up right now, and I was wondering if anyone was interested. Here are the instructions for this challenge: http://composerschal...com/challenge5/ Regular updates will be posted on the Filmtracks Scoreboard and on the blog. I know I'm new and all, but if anyone was the least bit interested in having a great composing experience, you could give the challenge a try Hoping to hear some of your work! - KK