How to start practicing film scoring/composition?

[Jofi_ 44]

I want to practice film composition/scoring, just to improve my skills and hopefully get a better chance at college admissions/a job one day.

 

I'm trying to think of some ways to practice without having an actual movie commission or anything like that. 

 

I've thought of re-scoring existing movie scenes but the majority of movies i can think of/search up I already know the music to, so its very hard to get that influence out of my head.

 

 

So what are some ways to practice film scoring specifically? I believe my composition on its own is fine, I would just like to apply it to the slightly more restrictive setting of a movie.

[Dave 224]

I think rescoring is the best way to practice film scoring. I look out for stuff where the original score is vastly different from what I want to do so the influence gets minimized. I try to see it as a temp track.

 

Due to my personal distaste for drony atmospheric scores I tend to chose TV Shows that have those kind of scores so I can make an Orchestral score whithout getting too inspired by the original music.

[karelm 3,013]

It's easy to track down excerpts from films without score.  If that doesn't work, then mute the audio on a clip.  Composers have to do that too when they need to get rid of temp sound or temp score.  Also just practice on good production - making it sound production ready.  The days of it sounding like a miserable computer mockup for demo purposes are gone.  Be cautious to musically work around dialog.