Copyright Statement - ResearchSpace@Auckland

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full of excitement I sat in the student restaurant all day and worked. This went
on for some days.
Tuesday, I decided on what kind of music I’d write. Wednesday, I wrote eight
minutes’ worth. Thursday, I wrote the music for the crucial scene and another
little piece. Friday, I started to find the going rather tough … I wrote the
organ improvisation, my first piece for organ and in Bach style. I’m pleased
with it, but it took an awful lot of work.
Saturday I wrote only the “Hokianga Glide” sequence which lasts two and ahalf
minutes. Sunday, I finally finished and began copying out the score. 19
Film scenes require precisely timed musical “stings” at key moments. As Maconie
recalled, “I did compose a number of ‘stings’, as the score reveals, but I was not
happy with them, not being able to visualise the film, and only one I recall was
eventually used. Of course in the absence of visuals I had to paint in fairly broad
strokes.” 20 In undertaking his task he developed a structure which he followed for
each scene.
1. A timing schedule with attention to climaxes, foreground and background, i.e.
where music is dominant, where it is the lead (i.e. no dialogue), and where it
is secondary (below dialogue).
2. A tempo was chosen and a structure then worked out in terms of chronological
time scale e.g. for d=80 there would be 40 beats every ½ minute.
3. The music builds to the important moments and dies away afterwards, or cuts
back as the case may be.
4. The lead-in and fade out of each scene is composed to be edited to fit. 21
He was, in a sense, re-discovering for himself the basic rules of film music.
(Runaway was a steep learning curve for all concerned.) In addition to the technical
problems, he was under a terrible time pressure to complete the music in time for it to
reach New Zealand, to be rehearsed, performed and recorded. He began copying out