Movie Music

Archive for the ‘Music And Film’ Category

Amongst the squash courts and practice nets at Horntye Sports Centre in Hastings is the Decoda Music Gym, an area designed for experimenting and playing with music and movement. For the physically able there’s an interactive bouncy castle, dancing-boards that trigger music, or the opportunity to dance with your shadow on a large screen. For the less able, or less energetic, there are Soundbeams, vibro-acoustic seats and cushions, bubbles, and switches to operate film.

The Gym is overseen by popular local blues musicians Tom Smurthwaite and John Ballard. Its clients range from people with profound disabilities to conventionally able but playful or curious adults and youngsters – but this isn’t a mere leisure activity. When administrator Sue Heath invited me to attend one of their regular Friday sessions, I was in for a morning of surprises and learning.

Sue says: "Years ago, as a Relate counsellor, I was surprised to find that mentioning a client was a musician would trigger smiles all round. The label ‘musician’, I discovered, was taken as shorthand for totally unable to communicate except through his/her music. The film The Commitments bears this out – a band delivering Irish soul music on stage and beating nine bells out of each other in the dressing room."

So why is it that a pair of typical pub-musicians have made such a hit as facilitators at Decoda, working with people with profound and multiple disabilities? How did they come to feel at home with people who find it so very difficult to communicate? And why have they have gone to such lengths over the years to bridge the gaps in those people’s lives?

John with his band Night Shift, and Tom (playing under the name of Junior Thompson) are regulars on the circuit of blues-loving pubs around Hastings and make occasional appearances in Europe. They’re both life-long blues musicians; singer songwriters with a strong local reputation. Playing in pubs has given them the confidence to walk into any situation and know that they can turn it around. A lack of initial response from an audience doesn’t worry them. In short, they can bypass the rituals of polite, social behaviour without embarrassment and without making judgemental responses.

Tom says: "In an open situation, [such as a pub] you’re not just playing to people who know you. There are people walking in and out all the time. If people stay, that affects you. Equally if people leave that affects you. Sometimes you’re not entertaining in respect of people looking at you, but rather you’re creating an ambience."

John felt this was particularly important and something young bands don’t necessarily recognise – the need to be sensitive to the feel of the venue, rather than demanding attention and immediate positive feedback.

The Decoda project started with the aim of taking good musicians of all genres into day centres and residential homes. It was an inclusion issue – why shouldn’t people with learning disabilities enjoy live music in the same way as anyone else? But not everyone was included – the people in wheelchairs, on the edge of a group, couldn’t participate in playing the percussion instruments, they simply had something done for them – bells strapped on their wrists, their hand held around a tambourine.

Gradually the attention shifted to those with the least chance of joining in, with the least experience of having an effect on their surroundings. How to enable them to be more involved? When Tom and John were asked to run a regular workshop consisting solely of people with profound disabilities this question became a real issue. None of the things they had been doing with other groups worked with them. It might keep them, and their staff, amused for a couple of hours but Tom and John wanted to be more than entertainers.

They decided to start from where the people were, to explore how their unconventional gestures could be used to express themselves through music. One of the results of their experiments was their installation of The Soundbeam – a ‘keyboard in the air’ which turns movement into sound.

Using the Soundbeam meant that a young woman who had no movement other than her eyelids was able to compose music, or a man who constantly jerked his head learned to control this to create the sounds he wanted and then, spectacularly, to sit completely still for twenty minutes. People were now making something happen who had maybe never experienced this before.

Communication requires the ability to make choices and to convey them to others. Tom speaks of a "wordless communication that develops amongst musicians, working together to produce the end-sound, recognising their part in the whole and playing the most compatible part."

So for all their reputation for being social misfits off-stage, pub performers know of more ways to communicate than they are often given credit for. "Playing in a pub," says Tom, "you learn to observe how things are going between yourself and the band plus between the band and the audience. The same is true when working with people with PMLD (profound and multiple learning disabilities); noticing how they become engaged, how they react, and noticing in enough detail to see when they doing something they’ve never done before."

Such moments can be the key to great progress. B is a young woman who has been a regular visitor to the Music Gym since it started. She has no speech, is visually impaired and confined a lot of the time to a wheelchair. She is also blessed with two support staff who saw immediately the potential of the Music Gym. With their help she tried out the castle, pushed the huge ball, played the Soundbeam and walked, supported, with a metal frame – Tom and John noted that the sports hall allowed a lot more space for this than a house would. On the last day of the pilot project she walked without staff support for the first time in her life. She now enjoys the shadow-dancing as the contrasting images allow her to see her support staff making shapes on the screen.

But what of the people who couldn’t be enticed to use the Soundbeam? What of someone with so-called ‘challenging behaviour’ whose energy could erupt in a disruptive manner?

Sometimes in a pub people feel they have a right to tell you what to play. Tom recalls a man asking for a number while he was actually singing – without halting he managed to let him know that that wasn’t the right time AND he wouldn’t be playing that. In a rowdy environment it can be vital to turn around stubborn or unrealistic demands quickly without getting into a conflict situation. Tom enjoys ‘grabbing’ people with something they weren’t expecting, something beyond what they think they want. He brings the same attitude to his work with Decoda clients. He’s always on the look out for ways to extend people’s boundaries, to enable them to experience something new and unexpected.

So the Decoda team turned their attention to clients whose behaviours had previously been seen as wholly negative – something to stop, or get control of. What if someone who liked to punch were given a punch-bag fitted with sensors so that each time he punched it he produced a sound? What if there were a room full of similar devices? Plus space to move around and freedom to choose what to do?

This was the thinking behind the Music Gym. It took another two years to access the funding which would make it a reality, albeit for just one morning a week. The pilot scheme started in October 2005, funded by the local Learning Disabilities Development Fund and run in partnership with MCCH (a regional care-providing organisation).

Part of the funding was for an independent evaluation which found that 97% of questionnaires completed stated that their client had benefited overall from their participation in the Music Gym. 88% stated that the client had developed over time and 72% of clients had tried things new to them. In addition 55% of participants demonstrated sustai
ned learning. These latter points are often not seen as potential achievements for people with such complex needs. It was observed that where staff believed in their clients’ capacity to make their own choices and in their potential to develop, they were actively encouraged and clearly benefited. In addition to the activities, clients benefited from the opportunity to participate in the wider community, and from the space that the sports hall provided.

The Music Gym is now an ongoing weekly facility for people with profound disabilities, some of whom travel over 20 miles for the experience. In the huge sports hall they can be as energetic, creative, or simply relaxed as they like as they find their way around the fascinating array of technology, but what stuck in my mind after my morning with the Decoda team was the power of music under the direction of these gifted facilitators.

I watched John charging around with a young man in a wheel-chair, activating a patchwork of sound-emitting mats and boards. There was no pattern to it that I could see and I had no way of interpreting the signals John was clearly getting from the young man – but when they returned to us, and John said to his partner in the chair; "That was great – shall we do it again?" Even I could see the eager ‘yes’ in the eyes that answered him.

The Music Gym

The Music

Kay Green is an English teacher and editor of Earlyworks Press

History, development and growth of CCM over time

CCM, Colorado Creative Music, is music recording studio, founded in 1995 by Darren Curtis Skanson, primarily established as vanity label for producing, promoting and selling his own records, and consequently developed into microlabel with 4 product lines and 11 different albums. In 2000, the company sold 30,000 of Darren Curtis Skanson CDs and received net profit of $4,292.00. The company aims at expanding its customer base, acquire more popularity, and develop the company from microlabel to the independent one.

Vision/objectives

The business vision of Colorado Creative Music consists of three components – Core Value, Core Purpose and Visionary Goals (Thompson, Strickland, 2003).

Core values of CCM are quality, creativity, and excellent customer service. The core purpose of this organization is to make more people listen to classical and light acoustic music and admire it. As for the visionary goals, the strategic dilemma of the business arises. Thus, one of the visionary goal is to make the music produced, played and recorded by CCM musicians, heard by larger audience. The other visionary goal that doesn’t completely go in line with the first one is to win the large custom market for the company’s products and services. The collision here is in the primary value and target of the business: in the first case the attention is attached to the product, music, while the second one is focused on the development of the organization. This dilemma is the subject of strategic choice of the organization, which will be outlined and discussed later.

At the present moment, the main objectives of the company are: positioning the business against its rivals, development of distribution channels, development of the products and enhancement of the product line, anticipating changes in demand and adjusting the firm’s strategy to respond to them.

Operating environment

The firm operates on American market which is characterized by political and economical stability, technical advancements in producing and distribution processes, large number of potential customers, broad demand and intense competition.

Business model

Business model is the mechanism for the company to generate the revenues and profits. It includes strategy and implementation thereof and should answer such questions as how the firm selects its customers, how it differentiates its products from those or rivals, how it creates utility for the customers, how it acquires and preserves them, promotion and distribution strategies, how it allocates its resources and derives profit. As for promotion and distribution techniques for Colorado Creative Music, the particular attention is attached to Internet aspect of the distribution and its capabilities.

Internet is not only alternative way to traditional methods of music distribution, but also a great opportunity for artists and music-recording companies to expose these products to broad public. The advantages of such means are low cost of entrance and enormous size of potential customers market. Traditional chain of music distribution includes such components as writer/performer, publisher, musical instruments company, live performances, venue equipment and services, recording, studio equipment and services, recorded performances such as night clubs, bars, business music, broadcast, film and music videos, and retail. These are traditional stages through which the song or other musical product must pass to get to the final customer. Internet makes this chain of distribution shorter and simpler, and therefore internet-based promotion, advertisement and distribution can be considered a new business model to base the business on. Further information on virtual distribution will be discussed in relevant section.

CCM business model includes following components:

Value Proposition: satisfaction of customers’ needs in quality classic music;

Market Segment: white females (predominantly) and males of 40-60 age range. The market segment needs to be further expanded.

Value Chain Structure: structure of the firm to be described below

Revenue generation: through sales, direct sales in particular; revenue generation roots need to be expanded.

Position in the value network: enters the most specialized industry segment. A large number of competitors from all 4 segments of the industry; business may be complemented through alliance with larger recording company.

Competitive strategy: company’s strategy primarily focused on differentiation rather than cost leadership strategy, through internet distribution allows making the products of CCM cheaper than those of competitors.

Market segmentation, targeting, positioning

The music recording industry has 4 clearly identifiable segments: major recording studios, independent labels, micro-labels and vanity labels. Major companies have large quantities of artists under contracts, reaching the number of 100, specialize on multiple types of music – rock, country, jazz, classical, traditional and other, and have formal and reliable national and international channels of distribution. Independent labels have 10-100 artists under contract, focus on recording of one or two major music styles and have either national or most often regional distribution channels.

Micro-labels have less then 10 artists under contract and are tightly focused on definite style of music. They are characterized by small staff and manager performing as the leading artist of the studio. Micro-labels have rarely formal distribution system and heavily rely on direct sales to fans and wholesale to clubs and specialty retailers.

Vanity labels segment is the fourth, the last and the most specialized segment of the music recording industry. They are founded by independent artists for recording and selling their products (Darren& Winn, 2003). At present, CCM is the micro-label that strives to convert into independent label. Therefore, CCM currently occupies rather narrow market niche of classic and traditional acoustic music admirers within the age of 40-60, predominantly white, middle class females throughout the territory of the United States, though the major part of the customers is focused in Colorado region. This is the result of market targeting, when the studio developed the measure of segment attractiveness – loyal customers and fans of performers; music, and selected appropriate target segment.

Today, the company wishes to change the segment it operates into. To expand the company’s market segment it should develop product differentiation aimed at selling various products with different characteristics to different market segments. So far such differentiation is not developed.

On the basis thereof, the positioning approach now applied by the firm is differentiation positioning, which lies in filling less competitive, smaller market niche in which the firm locates its brand and attracts its customers.

Products

At present, the company disposes of 4 product lines and 11 different records. The brand names of the Company are: Darren Curtis Skanson, Acoustictherapy, Andrew Thomas Harling and Music for Candles. The style of the music offered is the same throughout all the brands: light classical guitar.

Distribution channels

The distribution channels of CCM are predominantly direct sales. These include sales in the gig, shopping mall distribution and in the back end (which includes CD order through 800 number, website sales, mail order). In 2000 CCM sold 30,000 Darren Curtis Skanson CDs, predominantly through direct sales. Though, traditional chains of distribution are more effective and they include major distributors, one-stop distributors, independent record stores and major chain record stores. Developing traditional distribution methods is one of CCM’s primary tasks.

Financial positions

CCM is a micro-label, the third of the f
our segments in music recording industry. Therefore, in contrast to the premier recording studios as Columbia, Sony Music, EMI and BMG, which possess enormous financial actives, financial position of CCM is rather modest. In 2000, the company reached total income number of $216,614.05 and net income of $4,292.00, which, though, was 4 times less than net income in 1998 (amounting to 20,626.70) and nearly the same as in 1997 and 1999.

Major strategic issues

Major strategic issues of the company are formulated by the manager of the company, Darren Skanson, in the Case Study for Colorado Creative Music (Darren & Winn, 2003) and include the following: – create a profitable music recording label with expanded range of artists and performers; – position Darren Curtis Skanson label to compete with major artists who have contracts to Sony Classical. For this, acquiring traditional distribution methods is necessary; – create new product line similar to Acoustcitherpay which would be saleable and provide funds for the previous two goals.

The strategic tasks and ways of their implementation are not uniform and completely complementary. Thus, the first aim of growing the company contradicts the easiest and most possible way of accomplishing the second goal – promote the music by selling CCM’s product lines to recording studio larger then CCM, independent of major label with access to traditional outlets. Thus, the company has to define its prerogative – develop the recording label or promote the music by means other than within CCM capabilities

An annual event in Santa Monica, the American Film Market is a film industry event of networking activity, production and distribution deals, running till November 11, where The AFM transforms The Loews Santa Monica Beach Hotel and the Le Merigot Beach Hotel into a center for activity with 23 screens on the Santa Monica Promenade and the surrounding community put into play for festival activity. Held within the time period of the American Film Market, the city of Santa Monica also hosts the Santa Monica International Film Festival, through November 7, a competition independent film festival that showcases the work of independent feature, documentary and short films filmmakers from around the world. Waterford Film Festival in Greyfriars Waterford, will showcase a wide range of films from feature films, documentaries, animation, short films, experimental and student work. Academy Award nominee Feature Documentary ‘No End In Sight’, directed by Charles Ferguson, will have its Irish premier at the Festival. Distribution strategist Peter Broderick and journalist and author Scott Kirsner join forces to present a crash course on the new rules of marketing and distribution, especially tailored to the needs of independent filmmakers and artists, at a workshop in Los Angeles, November 7. BMI’s 57th Annual Country Awards honors the songwriters and publishers of the top BMI country songs from the past year. At the ceremony, BMI will honor Kris Kristofferson as a BMI Icon in Nashville, November 10. The 43rd Annual CMA Awards takes place at the Sommet Center in Nashville, airing live on the ABC Television Network. The CMA Awards represent the pinnacle of achievement for Country Music artists, musicians, producers, publishers, songwriters, video directors and industry executives.

Hosted by the Nielsen Company and Dow Jones, and guided by the combined editorial teams of The Wall Street Journal, Private Equity Analyst, Barron’s, Billboard, The Hollywood Reporter, Adweek, Brandweek, Mediaweek and Editor & Publisher, the Media and Money conference, coming up on November 12 & 13, reveals new strategies for profitability through dynamic panel discussions and high profile keynote interviews. GameSoundCon features two concentrated days of seminars and panel sessions by the industry’s experts on the unique creative and technical challenges of creating audio for games, November 13-14, in San Francisco. The October 16 Video Production for Real People workshop, will go through a typical video production kit (complete with lights), cover camera basics, visualizing your idea (pre-production), shot selection, and ways to shoot so that you won’t have to “fix it in post.” Nokia Mobifest Toronto Symposium and Awards is an independent leaning, made for mobile film festival, started by Nokia to distribute mobile films under revenue sharing agreements, and to take a role as well to produce and commission made-for-mobile films. BMI is a sponsor of The Copyright Alliance’s Third Annual EXPO taking place on in Washington, DC. This November 17 event will showcase new products and economic benefits of America’s copyright industries that provides a platform for artists, trade associations and companies to exhibit creative work and discuss the future of copyright and its impact on local economies.

Folded into the established Streaming Media West, the new Online Video Platform Summit is a two-day event designed to help organizations of all types — not just those for whom video is their core business — debuting in San Jose, November 17-19. An online expo, produced by Sony, seeks to educate its participants through firsthand online interaction, on new and existing HD solutions based on your budget, through an Interactive Exhibit Hall, product demos, presentations, how-to videos, real-world success stories, group chats, networking, happening November 19, as a web only event at: pro.sony.com/bbsccms/ext/vtsnewecohd/index.shtml?

XID=E:VTS09_register:vtsnewecohdpage. CTN Animation Expo, November 20-22 in Burbank, is hosted by Creative Talent Network® to provide highly focused conference programming, workshops, recruiting, presentations and networking opportunities designed to connect animation artists, studio executives and industry leaders both locally and internationally. The Music In Media Interactive Conference, happening in Hollywood, November 20-22, is designed to inform, educate, entertain and create opportunities for conference attendees, and is specifically focused on conveying what (and who) you need to know to get your music in film, TV, video games, movie trailers, commercials and other forms of contemporary media. Imaginaria Film Festival, in Conversano, November 25-29, is attempting a new experience and new connection between international and independent cinema of a digital nature, through innovativeness fused through technology and creativity in an array of works including, feature film, short film, film and digital, music video, web video and video art installations.

The above events are only a sample of what is fully listed. Complete details are on the “Media, Entertainment and Performing Arts Industry News and Events” page. Video and podcast versions of this news summary are also available at popular video sites around the Web like MySpace, YouTube, Daily Motion, as well as on The Actor’s Checklist podcast blog. Follow the posting of the news summary on Twitter at: twitter.com/actorschecklist. This month on the video news summary you will again see a dynamic array of artists in performance of film, music and documentary. These videos are now available on the Free Home Video Showcase which now serves as an archive for all past video presentations but without the audio news narration. The Actor’s Checklist is proud announce the return of the photo gallery to upload  head shots or other suitable pictures of your choice, create profiles, and use your pictures or others found on the gallery as ecards which you can email to friends and associates.