ManlyMovie Talks To Sid De La Cruz

I have worked with Timothy Woodward Jr, who is the director of 4Got10, on previous films. When he mentioned that he was working on this this film and asked me if I wanted to work on it, I immediately said yes. With a cast like Dolph Lundgren, Danny Trejo, and Vivica Fox, it’s hard to say no.

One of the differences between videogames and movies is that, in video games, music tends to be layered. For instance, lets say you are playing a game where you are walking the landscape. You might hear a 1-3 min. piece of music that loops. Then, lets say, you are near an enemy. So 2nd layer of music comes in and plays simultaneously with the 1st layer. The 2nd layer of music would be tense. Letting the player know, there is an enemy near by.  Then lets say, you engage in combat with the enemy. A 3rd layer of music comes in and you hear tension/battle music.

Another difference is, some videogames use audio engines such as FMod and Wwise to allow the music be more dynamic. For example, if you are playing a fighting game, you would have the music playing in the background. Now, lets say you win the fight, you will hear winning music but if you lose the fight you will hear losing music. So these audio engines allow to trigger music depending on the outcome of the fight. When dealing with audio engines, a lot of times, a composer works closely with a programmer who will typically operate the audio engines and the composer usually sticks to the music.

Now, composing for a documentary, would be similar to a movie. For the most part, documentaries have a lot of dialog. The music has to complement the visuals, yet not get in the way of the dialogue.

That is a good question. I believe it all depends on several things such as, the scene, genre, emotions that I want to convey and things like that.. Sometime, less is more. Sometimes a single instrument can be very powerful and effective in a scene. Then there are scenes such as, full blown out action sequences, where having an orchestra would be far more effective.

Unfortunately, I did not get a chance to hang out with them. While 4Got10 was being filmed, I was busy working on another film. Hopefully, if I get another opportunity to work on a film with a cool cast, I will try my best to visit the set at least once.

When I won the BMI Jerry Goldsmith Film Scoring Scholarship, I was actually at the gym. I never take my phone to the gym, just my iPod. So when I got out of the gym,  I noticed that I had a voicemail message. When I heard that I had won the BMI Jerry Goldsmith Film Scoring Scholarship, I didn’t believe it. At first I thought it was a message to let me know that they picked another winner. After I replayed the message and heard that I won the scholarship, I  was very happy and speechless. I had never won anything. It felt really nice to win.