Meet Toby Bresnahan, a composer based in United States and a member of the StudentFilmmakers Filmmakers Network. See Toby’s Network profile to connect.
“Don’t ever stop writing. Even if you don’t currently have a soundtrack gig, contact a local film club or collaborate online with aspiring film makers. Write in a genre that you typically don’t write or aspire to write to spark creativity. Keep writing and networking. Be patient, if you have a passion, the gigs will come.”~TB
StudentFilmmakers Magazine: Could you share with us a music composing technique?
Toby Bresnahan: My favorite technique is to sit down with an acoustic guitar, yellow legal pad, number 2 pencil and raw footage. Whether it’s an epic full-length feature film or a comedy short, sketching out ideas on acoustic guitar is most productive for me. This is probably because my main instrument is guitar. I have a full guitar to midi rig so a lot of the final parts are actually played via guitar.
SFM: Did you ever experience Murphy’s Law working in the studio?
Toby Bresnahan: The first thing that comes to mind when referring to Murphy’s Law with regard to composing for film is the safety of the data itself. We’re typically dealing with massive Gigabytes of audio and video data. Hard drives fail and Murphy’s Law dictates that failure will inevitably occur when you are 99.9% finished with the project. Luckily, I’ve only had minor hardware failures and these were early on in a project. Solution? Back up often.
SFM: You composed and performed the soundtrack for the independent feature film, “Subject Zero.” How did you come across this project?
Toby Bresnahan: I became involved with Glass Cage Productions, the company that produced “Subject Zero,” through Networking. In this case it was the Social Networking site, Facebook. I always try to stay on top of what is happening in the industry through most of the Social Networking, Film and Composer sites, including StudentFilmmakers.com. Glass Cage caught my eye because they are relatively local to me. We started a dialog about a new film they were producing and they turned out to be a very professional, great bunch of enthusiastic young film makers. They sent me a script, and I immediately knew I wanted to work with them.
SFM: Could you describe your composing process for “Subject Zero?”
Toby Bresnahan: Like any film project, I start with reading and absorbing the script to get a basic understanding of the feel and tempo. I then try to arrange a meeting with the producer to really get a feel for any specifics they have in mind and I take a lot of notes. I then dive in with whatever is provided. In this case, it was Trailer stems. I then get into the technical aspect of loading it up into the DAW, setting a tempo, determining the instruments that I want to use to best convey the feel. This may be acoustic instruments which are recorded with microphones or electric instruments such as electric guitar or bass which may either be direct recorded or mic’d or a combination of both. Or, it may all be Virtual Instruments. For “Subject Zero,” I used strong rhythms with Stylus RMX and layered electric guitars along with Camel Audio Alchemy for pads.
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