Program Overview

Program Overview

The university program in question focuses on the careers of musical and sound composition for images. By the end of the formation, the student will have invested in the fairly broad field of the relationship between music and images, whether they are fixed or animated, linear or interactive, broadcast by wireless or wired means, or projected locally in the context of an installation or even a show.

Program Objectives

The student will acquire the necessary technical and scientific knowledge to master computer tools, as well as a cinematographic culture. They will be capable of:

• Composing a musical work from a scenario or an already realized work
• Using and modifying an existing musical work to adapt it to audiovisual constraints
• Experimenting with various styles of musical creation for images, applied to different media
• Dialoguing with an author, screenwriter, designer, director, editor, mixer, etc.

Knowledge and Skills

The student will possess the following knowledge and skills:

• Ability to set up a sound recording device quickly and autonomously
• Ability to implement a multicamera shooting device
• Mastery of the functioning and use of a workstation with significant resources in a complex environment, including the possibility of performing a surround or 5.1 mix
• Ability to implement an analog control system, including console, effects, multitrack and biptrack tape recorder (analog or digital)
• Ability to understand the intentions of an author or director and to retranscribe them in terms of musical and sound proposals
• Ability to establish a list of equipment to respond to different situations
• Ability to communicate (dialogue, phone, email) in a workgroup and to develop a concerted approach

Evaluated Competencies

The evaluated competencies include:

• General knowledge: history of the arts, analysis of fixed images (composition), cinematographic, audiovisual, and interactive media culture, audio and radio culture, experimental works, image and sound editing language, and practice
• Specific knowledge: fundamentals of acoustics, file formats and compression standards, audio signal theories, audio-digitization, MIDI, and the sound production chain for images (workflow)
• Knowledge of computer-aided music (MAO) tools (Cubase, Acid) and their exploitation
• Basic knowledge of tools dedicated to interactive arts (Max MSP, Pure Data)
• Specific skills:
  • Following and analyzing a score
  • Conceiving an orchestration
  • Realizing compositions and responding to a specific request
  • Improvising instrumentally and/or vocally for images
  • Leading a group of musicians during rehearsal and/or recording sessions or performances
  • Integrating noises and ambiences into a musical work, and knowing how to compose with these elements
  • Conducting a film analysis (in particular, knowing how to make an "energetic-rhythmic" reading of narrative events and a "discursive" reading of documentary events)