So the Spitfire Audio Westworld scoring competition went well... there's a riot going on in the YouTube comments ;-)

[WatchTheGuitar]

Oh boy, so Spitfire announced a high profile competition where they were going to give everyone the chance to add their own music to a 4 minute video taken from a real episode of the HBO series Westworld with sound and FX and the winner would win a copy of 'everything' that Spitfire Audio puts out, about a £12K prize IIRC.

They announced the winner tonight on YouTube. They had 11,000 entries.
The winning entry contains a lot of 8-bit chiptune (and personally I kind of liked it) and is a guy who has a lot of big name credits including working with JJ Abrams who just happens to an Exec Producer on Westworld.

This has not gone down well with a lot of the other 10,999 people who entered.

Apparently Spitfire's Instagram about it has disabled comments and people have been saying that Spitfire are deleting comments from the YouTube page too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qsi7wP024J4

[sqigls]

youtube is a shitfight at the best of times, but that really is crap.

[fairlyclose]

social relations are everything

[after watching a few scenes I am even more certain social relations are everything lol]

really agree with the "this must be a joke" comments. I would be furious if I had wasted time composing something with serious expectations of having a chance. I loved Westworld and can sincerely say I would not have watched the show if that had been the soundtrack. The competition now comes across as a cynical marketing exercise from people with complete contempt for the hopes and labour of others.

[Greenstorm33]

According to the winner on VI Control the "works with JJ Abrams" thing is irrelevant. He says he basically has a credit doing audio-related grunt-work on a movie Abrams scored and didn't actually have any contact with him. Personally I think this more likely a case of whoever actually judged the thing being bored to tears and possibly a little insane after listening to thousands of renditions of "generic action cue 63" over the same video clip.

[jancivil]

Don't know, not that interested in the particulars, just noticed 'everything is social relations', which is just very true.
I feel like 90% of everything was completely codified as such in high school.

Film music...
the exemplar is that one who does work with Abrams, Michael Giacchino. Stare at the Wiki on this guy for a minute and you get a good picture of the whole scene. He did Fringe, but there are two very dichotomous styles there, and I suspect strongly MG's protege did the good shit. Enormous diff between the usual hackery and this other thing. IMHO, lol.
/peace out

[fairlyclose]

Personally I think this more likely a case of whoever actually judged the thing being bored to tears and possibly a little insane after listening to thousands of renditions of "generic action cue 63" over the same video clip.

true- just look over at VI-Control the last years and everything has been about being "epic"
But to me the music in the video really is awful and not at all supportive of the content. If that's the best that's sad

[WatchTheGuitar]

Just remembered there's another kink to this - one of the rules was that you weren't to amend the clip in any way other than to add your music and the winning entry had made changes to some of the existing sound, adding effects etc.
FWIW to some extent I think a plague on both their houses - they should probably have created two awards, one for people with and one for without existing feature credits (e.g. credit on a movie that made at least £1m at the box office) and a lot of the complainers are just butthurt over the winning entry not being worthy enough when I bet more than half of them are identikit tension strings, risers and timpani wank.

[Gamma-UT]

The only realistic way to deal with that many entries is to crowdsource shortlisting and then just have the directors judge the shortlist. This was bound to end in tears.

TBH, when I saw the references to chiptunes, I thought "you could make this work". Westworld. Robots. Chiptunes! Maybe if it's subtle...

And then I watched the clip. F'n hilarious. They transformed the scene into a Family Guy cutaway.

[Dirtgrain]

And then I watched the clip. F'n hilarious. They transformed the scene into a Family Guy cutaway.

Agreed. It's comical, and it does not fit at all.

[WatchTheGuitar]

And then I watched the clip. F'n hilarious. They transformed the scene into a Family Guy cutaway.

Agreed. It's comical, and it does not fit at all.

I'm not 100% sure what it's supposed to have fit tbh. I think a lot of people assumed it meant something like "craft a soundtrack to this scene so it could fit seamlessly into Westworld and improve upon the music (Ride of the Valkyries etc) used in the original". Yes, it's using Westworld footage, but does it necessarily follow how it had to be used?
AFAIK it doesn't say that and actually if you remove the need for it to be viewed as a piece of the whole and instead more a short film then the music choice makes a lot more sense, as one guy's imaginary chiptune influenced soundtrack to his own drug trip.

[Gamma-UT]

I think the reason it won is that it changes the scene dramatically. I can easily see why a director might think that's why it should win, as it does demonstrate the power of music in film-making.

Equally, it's easy to see why people are annoyed about it because they will have assumed that the music was meant to fit the series as broadcast rather than an interpretation of it.

For Spitfire, which caters much more to the latter, it's a bit of a disaster.

EDIT: Just noticed this in a post on VI-Control from last month:

I'm really surprised there still isn't any more talk about the challenge at the heart of the scene. SPOILERS FOR WEST WORLD:
In that part of the episode Caleb is tripping on a drug called Genre that causes him to experience the world through a series of different genres. So scoring this as a typical sci-fi action or chase scene may be missing the point. At least I'm guessing that's why they chose this scene specifically.

That makes more sense. I wonder if anyone did a Carry-On style treatment.

[VariKusBrainZ]

And then I watched the clip. F'n hilarious. They transformed the scene into a Family Guy cutaway.

Totally agree, my YT comment was 'This is hilarious, literally'.

I found my self guffawing throughout the clip, the music really added comedy to the scene, I presume, in an unintended tongue in check manner.

An excellent example of the importance of music in film and drama for setting a scene without words or pictures.

[beginzone]

true art

[GaryG]

I found my self guffawing throughout the clip, the music really added comedy to the scene, I presume, in an unintended tongue in check manner.

I think speeding up the video and adding Yakkity Sax would serve just as well, that's just bizarre.

[Dirtgrain]

To specify, the chiptune sounds did not fit the style of the rest of the music, and it did not fit by adding something comical in the scene that was not intended to be comical (maybe it's just my associations with that sound that make me laugh, though). I imagine some came up with good disorienting music/sounds for that moment when the character is losing it a bit.

At the "point and shoot" part and just before the "It missed" part, again just seemed a bad fit.