Fast and Furious: Crossroads
- Submitting institution
-
The University of Chichester
- Unit of assessment
- 33 - Music, Drama, Dance, Performing Arts, Film and Screen Studies
- Output identifier
- 843
- Type
- J - Composition
- Month
- August
- Year
- 2020
- URL
-
-
- Supplementary information
-
-
- Request cross-referral to
- -
- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
-
0
- Research group(s)
-
-
- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- Fast and Furious Crossroads is a character-driven narrative video game based on the tenth highest-grossing film franchise in the history of cinema. The game company’s creative brief required that my score to Fast and Furious Crossroads should adapt dynamically to player action, accompany the player’s progress through every ‘objective’ of each ‘mission’ in the game, and deliver a convincing ‘cinematic’ musical experience that would be immediately familiar to fans of the films. The franchise’s musical style and identity can be characterised by its bombastic and dramatic form, dense hybrid orchestration, and its frequent use of jarring juxtapositions of tempi and meter to accompany the on-screen action.
Two research questions arose from this brief: how to reflect the style of the linear music of the franchise in a non-linear interactive game format; and how to make that music adapt and respond quickly enough to player action in real time to create the illusion of an affective ‘cinematic’ experience. My approach to the first question was to compose extended musical loop systems in various meters and tempi for each mission objective, and as players successfully met these objectives, the next loop system would then be triggered. However, in order to make these loop systems function and reflect the style of the film scores, we had to develop and program our own music ‘engine’ which would trigger loops dynamically and rapidly, synchronized very closely with the player’s progress.
The score comprises 2 hours of looped music for interactive gameplay and 1 hour of conventional linear music for the ‘cutscenes’ (narratively driven non-interactive animations that convey plot and character development). The score was performed by the London Metropolitan Orchestra.
- Author contribution statement
- -
- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
- -