Crossing Over Workshop with Roly Porter

On November 25th, RE:VIVE with support by Buma Music in Motion, presents its second Crossing Over Workshop with composer and producer, Roly Porter. The Crossing Over series features producers and composers from the experimental and electronic music worlds who have “crossed over” into the realm of composing for film, TV and video games. This Workshop is open to any musician interested in learning the ins and outs both professionally and creatively in relation to composing for media. 

Register for the Workshop.

Workshop place: Sound & Vision, 1 Media Parkboulevard, Hilversum 1217WE (Next to Hilversum Media Park NS station)

Workshop date: November 25th

Workshop time: 14:00 – 18:00

In the roughly 20 years that Roly Porter has been releasing music (first as Vex’d with Jamie Teasedale and later under his own name) he’s been able to define two genres. Vex’d released what’s considered the best dubstep album of all time, 2005’s Degenerate. Mixmag called it the 38th most influential dance music album of all time and surely its influence is heard far and wide today, nearly 20 years later. After that Roly along with the likes of EmptySet and Paul Jebanasam mastered the “cinematic” sound. With the rise and fall of post-rock matched with the ferocious bass of dubstep and noise plus a sense of grace and delicacy, over 5 albums, numerous remixes and acclaimed live shows with visual artist MFO, Roly Porter’s cemented his sound for the foreseeable future. 

It’s no surprise that Porter moved onto film and video game music. A vehement lover of sci-fi, space and science, Roly’s first album Aftertime (2011)is an homage and narrative of its own inspired by Frank Herbert’s Dune. On the back of his first film score in 2012 Roly spoke with The Quietus saying about film scoring“ It’s something I’ve always wanted to do and I really hope to do it again, and obviously there’s not going to be a huge number of films that are suitable for the soundworld that I was doing. Why I didn’t get to do Prometheus I don’t know. “

But his particular sound has landed him on several scores. In Fear (2013), The Beach House (2019), Non Western (2020) and he did the music for the 2020 video game Paper Beast. He also composed trailer music for a string of massive Hollywood productions. 

During this workshop, Porter will share his experiences crossing over into the world of composing for moving image from a professional and artistic perspective. He’ll give demonstrations and walk-throughs of different clips and scenes and dive deeper into his renowned sound design process. After that, participants will be given a clip from the Sound & Vision archive and challenged to compose for that small fragment. We’ll follow that up with a show and tell and reflections session. 

For composer and producers in the Netherlands interested in getting involved in the composing world be sure to check out Buma Music in Motion for all their workshops, meet-ups, challenges and matchmaking session. Find out more here.

Image credit: James Ginzburg