CIA Moms
A pilot for a new animated series about a diverse group of secretly badass moms who are in fact a part of an even secret-er, elite sect of the CIA.
The Story
CIA Moms needed a theme that instantly captures attention and tells a story.
CIA Moms is an original TV show about moms who are secretly in the CIA. The music we composed blended elements of James Bond themes, big band horns, hard rock and punk. We wanted to capture the bad-assery of the moms while creating subtle cues to remind the listener of familiar contemporary themes.
Specs: "Spy" "Bombastic" "Punk" "Horns"
Instrumentation
First things first, we set off on finding the perfect palette for the instrumentation. A segment in the pilot included main character Helen fighting off a crowd of Ninja bad guys.
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Epic.
We went with a Hard rock/Punk feel to create a driving and exciting movement and included a horn arrangement to cue a new-but-familiar melody for the spy theme.
Guitar
Trumpet, Trombone, Sax
Drums
Composition
One of the challenges of scoring visual media (especially with an action sequence) is syncing moments in the music with moments in the visuals. In order to accomplish this we went with a fast tempo and used musical sound effects to call attention to the action on screen.
To tell the story, we also composed a piece of source music, which is music that is occurring within the story of the film (as in the characters hear the music)
This music plays out of Helen's radio as she is folding laundry and starts to glitch when the ninjas appear.
Arrangement and Recording
After the theme was composed, and the fight scene music was synced to the pilot, we set up a recording for a horn section, because we don't mess around.
At The Muse Performance Space - Just say 'no' to MIDI!
The Final Mix
At the end of the day, having real instruments makes this piece of music stand out the way it should. We added some mallets, organ, and mixed it all together to leave us with a bombastic intro to an exciting pilot.
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Check out the final mix below, and some behind the scenes shots from recording.