As you may or may not know, Spitfire Audio hosted a scoring competition. The goal was to compose music for the (freely provided) videoclip of the HBO’s Westworld sci-fi blockbuster series.
The jury was composed of Jonathan Nolan, Lisa Joy and Executive Producer J.J. Abrams (show’s creators), Ramin Djawadi (the composer for Westworld) and Spitfire Audio team.

It all ended in profound bitterness and a lot of hate when the runner-ups and the winner - David Kudell - was announced. You can read the comments under the winners announcement video:

There was criticism about the jury not taking the time to explain the decision, others questioning the fact Kudell already worked with J.J. Abrams.. and then some more. Musicradar article:

https://www.musicradar.com/news/spi...wouldnt-want-to-work-with-a-single-one-of-you

On the other side some composers (yes, even HZ) came to defend the winner.

I think this was deeper than the usual butthurtism.. that's why I would really like to hear your opinion.

 

Quite bizarre decision, really didn't suit the action - just jamming Mario sfx in randomly over something nondescript. "original"? Even the runner-up stuff had much more interesting takes. I expect the judges just got bored / never listened to the total workload (30 days of music?) It prolly ended up self-selecting; just the few names they'd heard of / worked with. Means it was guaranteed to be awarded to one of their mates.

 

Last edited: Jul 2, 2020

The winner's entry is quite possibly the worst music I could imagine for that scene. Maybe this was Aphex Twin in disguise taking the piss or something

 

Wow, that's a surprise indeed! Original? Yes. But can you take it serious? I'm not sure tbh. I don't think this would ever made it in the original scene because it just doesn't capture the feel of it. Too catchy due to the chiptune and game sounds. But maybe that was the whole point. Doing something completely different. I'm gonna think this over when playing on my SNES

 

Is Kudell Zimmer's unrecognized son?

Screw it, I don't understand a thing.

 

Daniel James did a review & gave his professional opinion... Based on my assumptions, I’ll bet 99.99% of composers who knew about the competition are deeply offended & upset. Its absolute trite. The chiptune crap is unbelievable. There was nothing remotely close to justify the use of it. Its not Scott Pilgrim.... I’m very biased though. I HATE Christian Henson - looks like he smells of canned sardines and has horrible breath.... Fuck Spitfire.

 

Not original by any far stretch. Combining half baked generalizations of 2 different genres doesnt make the piece original. All it does it make it bad

 

I think when it dawned on them (Spitfire) what position and how deep they were in there were likely many emergency meetings of "how the hell are we going to get out of this as soon as we can?".

It was a bit of a clusterf***, really. I couldn't care less about the choice of winner - competition runners are free to choose what they want, but people had legitimate concerns when their entries hadn't even been listened to once. And, the choice of winner was really a little bit insulting to the many people who had worked hard to produce tv-ready professional music, which was ostensibly the point, possibly with some hope of attracting work from it too, when something that was a novelty and would never be professionally considered under other circumstances was ultimately picked (presumably because they were bored silly listening to the same old stuff over and over) - especially when those people are exactly Spitfire's customers.

Spitfire didn't really do themselves many favours with that whole thing, and I expect they'll be looking to get past it and forget it as soon as they can. They certainly won't be running something like that again, I'm sure...

 

The winning prize sounded a bit shite too... so maybe it all evened itself out in the end

 

Well, that's your opinion. I find the chosen musical ideas vs that particular scene very original. Good or bad, he's the only one who came up with it.

 

I think the result was interesting. Think of a jury seeing extremely trivial approaches, among a sound spectrum that varies between 80s Silvestri-actual Zimmer (and their clones). Suddenly, something comes up with humor and a completely different palette of sounds. It gained prominence for not being trivial and for the humor (there was a conceptual thought, through associating game music with game action: game music, sound domain, promotes a cognitive mapping that allows the understanding of on-screen action, visual domain, in terms of game action). I think Chion would call this as "added value" (music that adds another layer of reader to the scene, without denying the present content - in terms of matching valence, energy and activity) So, what was presented, in terms of film scoring for TV series and, mainly in the midst of trivial approaches, generated prominence.

That Kudell guy took a chance, but he got on really well!

 

Last edited: Jul 3, 2020

Almost nothing could make that scene decent. The cars and the action looks so slow, no matter what music was on top. And the acting, bulging eyes. It's hard to watch or take serious, super dramatic Inception music on that just makes it worse. Overwhelming music on top of an underwhelming scene.

At least the winners track made it fun to sit through.

 

That scene sucks!

 

so, the scoring world has changed .. just because of that 8bit music ..
man, i gotta start makin' chiptune now!

 

Fukkit. I'm going to uninstall all of my Spitfire plugins and, from now on, use a Speak & Spell to make rap tracks.

 

Bro because nobody took it as a joke. You cant say with a straight face boinking the sun roof with a gun while Super Mario Bros brick hit SFX play in sync is something that would be used for that show.... They fucked ALL of the hard working composers who took it seriously.

 

That's not biased. He DOES smell like canned sardines.

 

Look bitch, don't steal my toolz.

 

LMAO so the winner already worked in hollywood for 20 years and with JJ. This is just hollywood (the panel) licking and elevating its own ass! First they needed to do an IMAGINE cover for coronavirus patients, then they said THEYLL TAKE RESPONSIBILITY in another video for racism, this winner isnt surprising! They love themselves and also 12 year old children! Great job shitfire! Im glad I pirated your shit, its too bad your new engine is hard to crack, I wanted 8 bit ALBION X!

 

The winner's entry seemed like a big "FUCK YOU!" to the whole thing.
From what I heard in this video they all sucked.
[edit: OK well i guess it was humorous. So, instead of giving them the finger, he laughed it off & I suppose I should, too.)

 

Last edited: Jul 3, 2020