Typical Day
Cella Lloyd Songsmith starts his day by rolling out of bed at 11am. He's exhausted.
Cella fell asleep five hours earlier, as the sun was coming up, but this extended catnap will do for now. There's work to be done.
After downing a vat of very strong coffee while thumbing through an issue of Film Score Monthly, Cella stumbles across the hall to his cluttered, dimly-lit home studio. The place lights up like fireworks when Cella turns on his keyboard, synthesizer, and two powerful computers. He calls his office "The Bridge," a nickname that would do Jerry Goldsmith proud.
Cella hates to admit it, but he's getting nervous. He only has two weeks to finish up the score for this project, a modestly budgeted horror film called Shmoop or Consequences, and there's still a ton of work to do. However, the gravity of the situation hit him last night. Having already taken the money to complete the score and having spent it all on new equipment for the studio and a sushi dinner at Urasawa, he's got no choice but to get down to business.
But first he must check his email. The film's director is constantly reminding Cella about changes in key scenes that he'll have to re-score. There's also something about hurrying up and giving him parts of the finished score to listen to, but Cella quickly hits "delete" when he sees anything like that. He doesn't like to be pressured. He's an artist, not a worker on an assembly line in a factory.
Cella writes the director back, assuring him that things are going fine. He even suggests the director unwind with a meal at Urasawa—it's magical.
The next email is from his agent, reminding Cella not to screw this up and to make sure he gives the director what he wants. The agent reminds Cella that the sooner he finishes this movie, the sooner he can start scoring his next project, a period piece with a Steampunk vibe that's set in the late 1800s.
This gives Cella an idea and he tears through the books in his vast office library, searching for a particular image in a very specific book on Steampunk imagery. Inspiration comes from weird places. Aside from looking at images in books and photos, he also has a computer that is packed with literally thousands of songs from every genre, style, and decade. This enables him to replay cuts and licks from songs he remembers, which he then weaves into the wall of sound he creates for his film scores.
Now back to the horror film, he queues up the next scene that needs music. It's a love scene, one of the only tender moments in the film between the leads.
This part of the film is set in an old hospital ward, where a psycho who has escaped from a nearby mental institute is about to burst in and ruin the loving moment by driving a hatchet through the man's head.
For some reason, Cella is reminded of an old blues tune by Bessie Smith "Gimme a Pigfoot," and pulls it up on his computer. He plays around with the track, layering in other musical instruments from his synthesizer, as well as a few licks from live instrument recordings. He then adds a punk beat, which creates an exciting new sound to underscore the romantic, yet menacing tension that is going on in the scene.
He's lost in his work for hours. He is glued to the monitor that plays the film while he composes the score. As he works, a program on his computer records every note and creates a printed copy of the entire score.
At around 6pm, he calls in to have pizza delivered, and only gets up from his chair to pay the bill and scarf down the pepperoni and pineapple pie.
At 9pm he takes a break, watching an old DVD double feature of Carnival of Souls and The Innocents while jogging intermittently on his treadmill.
He gets back to work around 1am and works straight through until 5am, just before sunrise. Finally satisfied, he drifts up to bed and collapses. He immediately falls asleep, but it won't be long until he has to get up to do it all over again.