Writing the original score for a production of “She Kills Monsters” wasn’t easy. In fact, the conditions were much like what these College of Charleston students will encounter when they graduate and are scoring music for movies, TV, or theatre productions.

RELATED: Behind the Scenes of “She Kills Monsters.”

Below are six ways these senior composition majors are ready for Hollywood.


1.    They can work under pressure.

In just a week and a half, music composition students wrote, organized, recorded, mixed, and mastered 29 cues.

“The fact of the matter is, you’ll always be working towards deadlines in the real-world of composition, and this helped to prepare us for that,” says senior Chelsea Loew.


2.    They expect the unexpected.

“I wasn’t planning to play any instruments during the recording process, but I ended up playing the tam tam, timpani, vibraphone, and piano,” says senior Cal Fahey. “I learned that you can never be too detailed in your planning and composing, and that you must always be prepared to help out in any way possible. You must be flexible and able to work with others easily. “


3.    They love a good fight (scene).

What’s a play without several Dungeons & Dragons scenes?

“I scored the entrances of all the strange creatures in the play. It really helped that I played D&D in junior high!” says senior Samuel Cooper.

“In scoring a battle scene, it was challenging to know how free to be, how the actual scene was going to play out, and when to make parts more intense,” explains sophomore Zachery Litchfield.


4.    They understand it’s all about the actors.

“It was different to write for a performance where the music isn’t the center of attention,” explains senior Adréanna Prussia. “We had to understand how to compose around the actors’ dialogue so the music did not take over.”


5.    They’re familiar with the tools.

“We were given specific time-spans for our cues, and had to write music accordingly. Plus during the recording session, we used a ‘click-trac’ when midi files were to be added to the live music. Both techniques are prevalent in film score,” Loew explains.


6. They’re ready for anything.

“Scoring the play really stretched my musical vocabulary from pop music to more theatric elements. While classical music can be very sophisticated in its composition, pop music can be just as challenging to create in other aspects, you really have to be able to understand different sound textures to maneuver successfully through any type of music.” explains Conner R. Broderick.

RELATED: Learn more about the College’s music theory/composition program.