London Songwriters Week 2009

BASCA EVENT FOR LONDON SONGWRITERS WEEK

Date: Wednesday, 20th May 2009
Time: 10.30am-12.30pm
Venue: Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA), Cinema 1, 12 Carlton House Terrace, London SW1Y 5AH
How to get there: www.ica.org.uk
Nearest Tube Stations: Charing Cross (Northern and Bakerloo lines) or Piccadilly Circus (Bakerloo and Piccadilly lines).

Maximum Number of attendees: 180

COMPOSING FOR GAMES AND ADVERTISING

Presented by Basca
www.basca.org.uk

Chair: Mark Fishlock, composer, Director of BASCA and Chair of the BASCA Media Executive Committee

Panel: Jonathan Goldstein, Richard Jacques, Marc Sylvan, Kenny Young

This seminar will be split into two sessions: the first discussing advertising music with Jonathan Goldstein from 10.30-11.30 and the second session will concentrate on games music from 11.30-12.30.

Topics covered in the Advertising will include how to get into composing for advertising, methods of composition and successful pitching, problems encountered in retaining publishing through certain business models, library music, pressure put on composers by advertisers to provide music for less but with no reward to the composer and the importance of demo fees in an era of digital production.

Topics covered in the Games section will include how to get into composing for games, methods of working, industry practices, copyright buyouts, revenue, sound design, games music popularity and growth to become bigger in revenue than the film industry and the rapid development from the first games using pitiful bleeps and basic sounds to the use now in some cases of full orchestras for games music scores.

Jonathan Goldstein

www.jgmusic.com
(D&AD and IVCA winner and Ivor Novello and BAFTA-nominated composer, Chairman of PCAM; The Society for Producers and Composers of Applied Music). Jonathan Goldstein has produced music for adverts for companies including Argos, British Gas, Cadbury, Knorr, Head & Shoulders, Huggies, Nescafe, Nokia, RSPCA, Shredded Wheat, VISA, amongst many others.

Richard Jacques

www.richardjacques.com
(games composer: Singstar, SEGA Touring Car, Youre in the Movies, Headhunter, BASCA Media Executive Committee and Songtank Board). Richard is internationally recognised as one of the A-list composers in the video games industry, described by PLAY Magazine (US) as One of the truly distinctive composers in the industry today. Richard has won Best Original Music Awards from GameSpot and GameSpy, the Game Audio Network Guild Recognition Award.

Marc Sylvan

www.marcsylvanmusic.co.uk
Marc Sylvan is a successful media composer and award-winning sound designer, whose television work can regularly be heard across the major UK channels as well as on video games, films, station idents and commercials around the world. Recent credits include the prime-time Saturday night BBC1 shows, The Kids Are All Right, National Lottery: Come & Have a Go and the hit ITV1 show Golden Balls. He has scored adverts for Games such as SEGA Rally Revo and Saleen S7 Supercar and provided sound design for SEGA's triple-A video game release The Club (PS3/XBOX 360). Marc sits on the Media Executive Committee at BASCA.

Kenneth Young

www.littlebigplanet.com
Audio Designer Kenneth Young and a colleague from Media Molecule, the company behind the incredibly successful PS3 game, Little Big Planet will also be joining the panel for the Games composition section.

Before joining Media Molecule Kenny was employed as a sound designer at Sony Computer Entertainment Europe's London Studio where he worked on over a dozen titles including 24: The Game, EyeToy: Kinetic, Fired Up, Gangs of London, The Getaway: Black Monday and Heavenly Sword. Prior to this he studied music technology as an undergraduate and went on to gain an MA, with distinction, in sound design.

Kenny is an active member of the game audio community, sits on the GDC Audio Advisory Board, and has spoken at the Develop Conference, GDC, GDC Europe, GameCity, the University of Edinburgh, Leeds College of Music and Confetti Institute of Creative Technologies. In October 2005, Kenny set up www.gamesound.org as a resource for those wishing to learn more about sound for games.