In this interview excerpt, composer Kenny Seymour explains his evolving process for scoring film and theatre. He describes how he adapts his workflow depending on the project's stage—using dailies when available, or a temp score when the director is attached to existing music. He emphasizes the need to align with the director’s vision while competing with established composers like Holst and Stravinsky. Seymour’s typical approach begins with reading the script or watching dailies, followed by periods of reflection (e.g., taking walks) to generate melodic ideas, then iteratively testing and refining them through trial and error. The conversation then shifts to the fundamental differences between composing for film versus live theatre, highlighting distinct artistic and practical considerations for each medium.
Blank piece of paper, piano, MIDI keyboard, whatever it might be. How do you get started?
My process has changed over the years. Initially, it's just I would, depending on if the film is actually finished or not, like I just finished a film Talking with the Taxman About Poetry by Lamont Pierre, and that was different because I had dailies. You know, they would send me little snippets of each, you know, cut they would get, and I'd start to get a landscape in and a language for what I wanted to do. That's different than getting a temp score when the director is kind of married to it and you have to convince them that what you're doing is better, you know. And 9 times out of 10, you're competing with, like, you know, Holst or, like, Stravinsky. So you have to make that shift and kind of help best bring about the director's vision so that he feels comfortable. But as far as my process, I start reading the script, or I start watching some of the dailies and just seeing if something happens. Sometimes I'll take a walk and I'll just listen, and, you know, and then I'll get a melody and I'll say, okay, this works. And I'll try it again and say, no, this doesn't work. And I know it's kind of trial and error. You just go back, and then sometimes certain scenes just happen. They just click and you go, I want that, you know.
And you just touched on it, you do film, you do theater. What are, as a musician, as an artist, what's different about the two mediums?
Theater is live and you have to take into account for certain things that are done live, uh, the ability of the musicians to play the music you're writing and the singers to sing it 8 shows a week consistently without blowing out their voices. I mean, aside from proper vocal technique and playing technique, but those are things you have to take into consideration as opposed to doing some really high French horn riffs for a big action score that's going to be recorded. And, you know, they get to play it once or twice and then it's recorded and it's there. It doesn't have to be performed every single night. That's one of the situations that come about. The other one is the collaborative effort between all the different departments, between dance, between lighting, between, you know, the director and everything. It's just, it's a big group effort, and when you see it all come together, it's, it's phenomenal. Same thing in film, but it's just on a different— it's you and the director and, you know, the music supervisor and a few other people, you know, some of the executive producers. But for the most part, I think that's the main difference, is the live aspect of it being performed.
