Rob Sciortino (center) and eight student composers performed “Nosferatu” on Oct. 25 at Camden County College.
The Cherry Hill School of Rock combined a screening of the silent-film horror classic “Nosferatu” on Oct. 25 with a score composed and performed by eight students from the school’s township and Deptford locations.
While F. W. Murnau’s 1922 film had no sound, the students coordinated their music with the movie as it played on a screen at Camden County College. All of the music was instrumental and utilized guitar, bass, keyboard and drums.
While School of Rock music director Rob Sciortino and general manager Trisha Simon have long had the idea of composing a score for “Nosferatu,” it took finding the right students to make it a reality.
“So you kind of need, like, a perfect storm of really super creative, organized kids,” Simon explained, “because you don’t realize how much like home-worky stuff goes into writing a score for a film.”
The students involved in the “Nosferatu” project had to be skilled musicians with an understanding and command of their instruments who also had to write non-lyrical music.
To bring the show to life in the Halloween season, students from the school’s summer season were called on and met twice for two-hour rehearsals to prepare for the October screening. Meanwhile, last year’s film remake of “Nosferatu” made it relevant again.
“Step one was to break the film into acts,” Simon noted. ” … They (students) sort of collectively decided which parts of the film they wanted to do, so all of them were assigned specific portions of the film for which to write their own score.”
The student composers watched the film together and timed each scene to make sure the music and the unfording movie were simultaneous.
“It was a lot of learning how to cue music with time stamps, along with the score and marking things like that,” Sciortino poined out. “It was just a lot of work for the students, just week after week progressing.” .
The eight students performed for every section of the film.
“It was one of the first times they were going to write things for other people to perform,” Sciortino said. “It was a big practice in musical communication, in a way that I think is a little different than the way rock and roll musicians usually communicate with each other.”
