Native New Yorker: How did I approach composing the music for a silent film?

A scene from Native New Yorker (2005)

When I compose music for any film, I try to make an organic connection to what I see and hear on screen. I listen for music that may already be in the film or, perhaps performed by one of the characters using a particular instrument. I then develop my melodic, harmonic, and rhythmic material as well as instrumentation based on this pre-existing music.

 
Because Native New Yorker is a “silent film”, the emphasis was on creating a link between my score and the visuals. Unlike my other film scores, there was no actual “indigenous” music heard on screen that could inform my themes. So, I took another approach based on the many musicians seen in the film yet not heard.

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Native New Yorker won many awards including Best Documentary Short at The Tribeca Film Festival and appeared at over 25 film festivals. The Tribeca Film Institute now distributes Native New Yorker

September 16, 2012 The Moondance International Film Festival at The Tribeca Cinemas gives Native New Yorker a reprise screening. It won Best Documentary Short at Moondance in 2005.

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Native New Yorker: How did I get involved with this project?

Native New Yorker (2005) A film by Steve Bilich. Music by William Susman

I went to a shorts screening at Sundance in 2002. They screened a portion of what was to become “Native New Yorker”. For a few minutes, we watched, stunned, a close-up of Coyote while over his shoulder images of the Twin Towers burned in the background accompanied by music from Mozart’s Requiem. It was very startling and moving as well as somewhat surreal because we were watching these images through the lens of a silent film era camera. It was an extraordinary moment I think for everyone who saw those images that day given 9/11 had happened only a few months prior.

I approached Steve after the screening and suggested that if he expanded the film it would benefit from an original score that would add “commentary and context”. We stayed in touch over several years. He completed the film in 2005 and I scored it in about two weeks. He liked my approach and went with it.

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Native New Yorker won many awards including Best Documentary Short at The Tribeca Film Festival and appeared at over 25 film festivals. The Tribeca Film Institute now distributes Native New Yorker

September 16, 2012 The Moondance International Film Festival at The Tribeca Cinemas gives Native New Yorker a reprise screening. It won Best Documentary Short at Moondance in 2005.