Composer Bunch On Scoring 'Silent Enemy'

See Also: 'Silent Enemy' Episode Guide

New Enterprise composer Velton Ray Bunch recently talked about how he had to make significant changes to his score for 'Silent Enemy' in order to fit in with the requirements of the series.

"To my experience the changes were extensive," Bunch told Film Score Monthly (via TrekWeb). "I don't think I've ever been through a session where there have been quite so many changes and I was actually quite distraught about it, but after talking to Dennis [McCarthy] I found out that that's really the norm for the show."

The composer acknowledged that his initial work did require alteration to fit the episode. "I frankly over wrote a little bit and especially in the battle scenes I think I wrote more action- oriented music than they're used to, and that was the main thing I had to clean out and make a little less aggressive," he said. "They really liked the tension in some four- or five-minute cues that had some sort of lurking tension, and they really loved those and I didn't have to change those too much, but the battle scenes I had to fix."

How was working on Enterprise different from other shows? "You have to think so fast on your feet. You just don't have the endless days that you have on a feature film to fix things so I've fortunately become pretty good at that," Bunch said.

"Dennis McCarthy has called some of the scores sonic wallpaper, and I think that I have seen the light and I understand what he means more now. [...] I wrote the battle scenes much more cinematically and much more dramatic and those things got smoothed out and levelled out so it does create a wallpaper effect in a sense."

Bunch previously worked with Scott Bakula (Jonathan Archer) on Quantum Leap, where he recieved an Emmy nomination for his score for the episode 'Lee Harvey Oswald, Part One.' He also worked with Bakula on last year's TV movie 'What Girls Learn.' Bunch's music can also be heard in Nash Bridges and The Pretender.

The full interview with Velton Ray Bunch is available in Film Score Monthly Vol. 7, No. 1. Alternatively, extracts are online here at TrekWeb.

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