by Dan Porter and Adam Wilson.
Two senior Music Technology students, Adam Wilson and Dan Porter, participated in an immersive learning seminar sponsored by the Virginia Ball Center for Creative Inquiry (VBC). Lead by Kecia McBride, Ball State associate professor in English, seventeen Ball State students produced a documentary investigating Title IX through the history, community impact and program success of girls volleyball at Burris Academy. Adam and Dan were responsible for composing, recording, editing, mixing, and mastering the film music and providing technical assistance for on-location sound.

The seminar began with researching the topics of the film; volleyball, gender equity, and Title IX. This consisted of daily class meetings where they would discuss what they knew and what they needed to research further.

After weeks of pre-production, the group was split into teams and each team was assigned their primary roles within the seminar. Adam and Dan's duties at this time included field recording and boom-operation. They primarily acted as audio consultants to the video crews.

Early on in the project, Adam and Dan spent time sketching out motivic ideas for the film score. Even before the start of film shooting, they had a general idea of how they wanted to compose the score. Dan said, "We felt that it would have been a grave mistake to wait to compose until we had seen the complete film. Such a delay would have made it nearly impossible to complete the score before our deadline. We composed many themes in the hopes that once the film started to come together, we would have at least something that might fit it. We tossed out a lot of ideas, but in the end this strategy proved successful. We were able to incorporate and then develop several of our themes into the final movie. We believe that we were able to do this because we were present for pre-production. That is, since we were working on the film from its inception, we had a good understanding of its tone and style. This allowed us to compose before we had actually seen any footage."

During the last couple weeks of the semester, the production got hectic. The film wasn't finished and Adam and Dan were forced to begin recording their compositions without having seen the film in its assembled form. This caused days and nights of stress and uncertainty. They finally received a finished and time-locked version of the film at midnight the night before its premiere. To edit their recordings and record what was still needed, they had to split the movie into two manageable pieces. They finished two hours before the premiere after being awake for a complete 48 hours. "Film scoring is not for the faint of heart," reflects Dan.

Adam comments, "What made this process especially demanding was not just the composition, it was the fact that we had to perform the music, record it, mix it, edit it, and master it."

Listen to soundbites of the original score.

After the premiere, Adam and Dan spent another week frantically polishing the audio post-production. This consisted of combining the dialogue and location sound with their music into an appropriate and intelligible mix.

Dan concludes, "Basically, it was a lot of work in a short amount of time, but it was worth it because we came out with a full film score for a 45 minute movie. It's great experience for the resume."