Hollywood Film Scoring at Berklee: Orchestral Recording Techniques

Berklee students collaborate on composing, performing, and recording to picture in an innovative three-pronged course that mirrors the process of creating a Hollywood-style film score from the first written note to the final mastered piece. Students approach the collaboration from three directions—as engineers and producers (course: Orchestral Recording Techniques), as composers, conductors, or score readers (course: Advanced Orchestration), and as performers (course: Studio Scoring Orchestra). In this unique learning opportunity, students in Berklee’s Film Scoring, Music Production and Engineering (MP&E), and Ensemble departments learn not only their piece of the film scoring puzzle, but how their role intersects with all others in order to deliver the desired result, a simulation of the Hollywood process made possible by Berklee’s state-of-the-art Shames Family Scoring Stage studio, which, like some other Berklee facilities, was designed by the renowned Walters Storyk Design Group. Credit