Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/832212
35 Q2 2017 / CINEMONTAGE CONTINUED ON PAGE 87 you can get bogged down with trying out a million things when you could've spent more focused time trying out just a handful of ideas. I think, on the upside, now that we work with stems and separate elements instead of cutting stereo or 5.1 masters, we can make cues bleed into each other and sometimes use elements from one cue inside of another. Sometimes by accident and sometimes by trying, we create new pieces that even the composer hadn't thought of. I think that's really cool, because you end up with a lot of serendipity and organic workflow. I was doing this on a documentary called Newtown (2016), which emotionally was a very difficult project to work on. Fil Eisler was the principal composer. He called about 20 of his friends and asked them to contribute music for free, and they did. Then he asked me to put it all together. We used a voice or an instrument from one composer and combined it with the backdrop from another composer. Having that organic process happening in the background with the music, where they'd submit a track in stems that wasn't scored to picture, would've been impossible to do without the technology that we have today. CM: Does the work you're doing for video games feel any different? Does it have a whole other process and mentality? MS: The obvious way that video games are different is that they're not linear and we have to anticipate a different turn of events. Oftentimes, it's so complex that we end up writing a beginning piece, a few middle pieces Beatriz at Dinner. Roadside Attractions