Rescoring A Scene

The Process - Part I

Like many things, sometimes the toughest part is knowing where to start.

Often times, my inspiration for rescoring a scene will come from one of two places. Sometimes there might be a scene I've watched that I think I might want to rescore. Or sometimes there might be a piece of music I've listened to that I might want to use in a rescore.

Either way, they both create a spark that gets me closer to my end goal. In this case, the music came first.

The music in this scene strikes a sense of innocence, but also works as a stark contrast to the overall beats in the story; a premonition for what the main character, Ellie, will soon go through. If you've never played or heard of The Last of Us franchise, the story of The Last of Us Part II (2020) is quite bleak and dire. It reflects over Ellie’s loss of loved ones and it deals with themes of revenge and forgiveness. This scene, a flashback, goes back in time to when things were simpler - when the only thing Ellie had to worry about was if a girl liked her back.

Personally, I think it’s easier to draw from what worked in the scene above, to help infuence our goals in finding a scene to rescore that can match the music well. This is why I linked the scene the music was in and not just the music by itself.

To give us some direction, I gathered up some main points from this scene that need to be in the scene we eventually rescore. They are listed as follows (in order from most to least important):

• The scene needs to portray innocence in any way.
• The scene needs to be a simpler or more easygoing time for the main character(s).
• The music needs to contrast the overall tone of the story.

Another point I’d like to add is a sense of premonition to the scene, but that relies on the context of the scene itself. The music will only take us halfway there.

Now that we’ve narrowed down a series of points to look for, we need to find a scene that ideally fits all of these criteria. This is where the process becomes a little bit muddy. There’s no right or wrong way to find a scene like this. For me, it looks like endless scrolling through my Letterboxd until it jogs my memory of a scene I might be able to use. Fortunately, Kill Bill: Vol. 2 (2004) crossed my mind.

The song name in The Last of Us Part II scene above is called “Ecstasy.” Kill Bill: Vol. 2 is the exact opposite of that. It’s a story about a bride that enacts revenge on her husband and child’s murders. And it contains killing, lots of killing. Killing with swords, guns, knives, maces, you name it.

I think we’ve found our contrast.

There’s a crucial moment in Kill Bill: Vol. 2 where The Bride confronts the main antagonist, the man in the title of the film, Bill. Enriched with rage, she turns a corner and aims her gun where she thinks Bill is, but she is instead met with the eyes of her daughter. The Bride’s daughter, B.B., is alive and well.

B.B. is our innocence.

A scene not long after this one shows The Bride laying in bed with B.B., just watching TV, while Bill waits downstairs in the living room. The Bride knows what she has to do to Bill, and as B.B. falls asleep, she heads downstairs to confront him. Not before tucking B.B. in, kissing her on the head, and leaving her necklace on a picture frame.

Now we have our simpler or more easygoing time for The Bride…
and an underlying sense of premonition (in regard to her confrontation with Bill).

We’ve hit all four points… This is our scene.

You might not always get so lucky, but fortunately for us this scene is a very similar length to the original The Last of Us Part II scene. This means two things:

1. There's not much room for worry in terms of if our music will be long enough for the duration of this scene.
2. Because of this, there's not much leeway in terms of editing/arranging the music to our liking.

However, in regards to point two, we know that the music in The Last of Us Part II scene got cut short due the events towards the end of the scene, so we can infer that the music continues on longer after that. This means we'll probably have some room to edit/rearrange the music to our liking after all.

Now, we travel to the editing bay.

The first step in this process is to extract the dialogue from the scene and remove the soundtrack underneath. The main components of this can get a little complicated and can vary in methods, but the main gist of it is simple: replace the old music with the new.

You have to develop a heirarchy of sound types when making a rescore. If your goal is to mimic the original version of the scene as much as possible (like we are,) then you have to preserve the sound heirarchy when implementing the new music in the scene. 99% of the time this means that dialogue should be the most important sound whilst everything else is below that. If your goal is to shift the perception of the scene to how you see fit, then the sound heirarchy can be however you like.

When deciding the placement of the new music in a scene, consider the emotional beats in the scene and how they are placed in comparison to the scene that originally contained the music. The beat where Ellie and Dina kissed can be matched with The Bride's attentiveness to B.B. The beat where Seth rudely interupts Ellie and Dina's moment can be matched with The Bride's first motions towards Bill. These beats don't have to align up exactly or in the same order or invoke the same emotions or even at all, but in most cases you'll find that having a scene that does fits much better than one that doesn't.

In my practice, I like to focus on at least one beat that matches between the two scenes, and match the point in the song to where the music was in the scene that first contained the music. For me, this beat was The Bride's confrontation with Bill. I wanted to try and match that sense of premonition I felt in The Last of Us Part II scene.

The version of the song, “Ecstasy,” that was used in The Last of Us Part II is the instrumental version of the song. I only realized after rescoring the entire scene, that the vocal version might work a little bit better. I had to redo all the work I had done on the previous audio track, but it paid off in the end as I was much more satisfied with the result.

The highlighted line on the audio waveform, points out the audio level of the music. It’s the volume. Volume is one of the most important aspects of rescoring a scene like this and it is crucial to get things right. If the volume is too high, you’ll drown out the dialogue and the music will become the main focus. If the volume is too low, then any tension or emotion the music built starts to fade.

As you can see, in the majority of the scene, the volume stays constant at a moderate level. Without even watching the scene, you can tell that little to no dialogue is spoken here. Later on, it drops down, this is where we hear our first words. I tend to decrease/increase the volume by 6dB as that feels most natural to me. For smaller changes in volume, I’ll tend to change the volume by multiples of 6, like 2dB or 3dB.

The slight volume increase towards the end and then decrease is when the tension is highest between the two characters, The Bride and Bill. The volume of the music is variable. Music should not stay constant. It should morph and change just as the chracters do the same, because the music you choose, as we've seen, affects the story too.

THE RESULT

When watching the final rescored version of the scene, keep in mind our four points from earlier:

• Does the music contrast with the overall tone of the story?
• Does the scene portray innocence in any way?
• Is this a simpler or more easygoing time for The Bride?
• Is there an underlying sense of premonition?

And consider how changes in volume affect the scene.

Now that we’ve officially rescored a scene, I should note that the four points we found earlier are not for every rescore. These points are specific only to this scene. It is important to know what aspects you are aiming for in a given rescore and where your inspiration for rescoring a scene comes from. Drawing from The Last of Us Part II scene was easy, because we knew what to look for. In Part II, I will be covering a rescore, inspired by a scene rather than music. The process is slightly different for each.

The Process - Part II

Like in Part I, my inspiration for rescoring a scene comes from two places.

1. There might be a scene I've watched that I think I might want to rescore.
2. There might be a piece of music I've listened to that I might want to use in a rescore.

This time the scene came first.

The core steps for crafting a rescore remain the same: Draw from what worked above, and create main points to look for. However this time, it will be more of drawing from what worked in the music, and less of the actions/content of the scene. We will also order our main points differently. Our main points last time:

• innocence
• a simpler or more easygoing time
• contrast
• an underlying sense of premonition

We ordered these from most important to least important. As you can see, the more important points relate more to the nature of the content of the scene, while the less important points relate more to the tone of the music (or the effect the music can have).

When our goal is to find a piece of music, this ordering should flip. Our more important aspects should focus on the tone of the music and the effects they invoke. Whereas the less important points should relate to the content of the scene.

With that being said, lets create our main points by analyzing the Ad Astra (2019) scene:

• The music is overwhelmingly positive.
• The music has a feeling of wonder and inspiration.
• From the plot of the movie, the music also conveys pushing through past doubts and embracing the people in your life.

Once again, there’s no right or wrong way to find a piece of music for this. You could try to browse for scenes that have similar content or beats like we did in Part I, but there's no gaurantee that the scene you find contains music, and getting the music is the goal. This is why I feel like it is slightly easier to create a rescore starting with how we did in Part I than in Part II.

I listen to a lot of music, particularly from soundtracks. For this rescore a piece of music from A Quiet Place (2018) came to mind.

The music here is powerful, but most importantly it is overwhelmingly positive.

It contains feelings of wonder and inspiration.

In the film, the characters push through past doubts and embrace the people in their lives.

And there we have it, our four points once again.

The process of editing this is no different from Part I. My one beat I wanted to focus on in the Ad Astra scene is when the military personnel holds out his hand for Roy after he lands. I wanted to match that sense of wonder and inspiration I got from the original scene.

The Result

Take note again of our points:

• Is the music overwhelmingly positive?
• Does the music contain a feeling of wonder and inspiration?
• Does the music, convey themes of pushing through past doubts and embracing the people in your life?

Congratulations! Now you know what to look out for and how to rescore a scene in whatever way possible. With time and continuous practice, you'll soon find the "main points" will come naturally to you without a second thought. Happy rescoring!