Young Composers Challenge

I've been thinking a lot about whether to/how to tie into my documentary about young composers... stories, histories, information, connections with... famous composers who started young. I've been thinking about that little history lesson about General Sherman that McElwee does at the start of "Sherman's March." I wonder if I could begin this film with a clever little history lesson on Bach, Beethoven, Mendelson and Clara Schumann... child prodigies of their day.

So, I went to the glorious UCF library and checked out several books on the lives of the composers. Fascinating stories here... like the jealousy between JS and CS Bach. CS was older, and jealous of his little brother's talent, so he hid music from him. JS found it and snuck it out at night and copied it. When CS found out, he snatched it away from his little brother. Clara was a piano prodigy whom her piano-teaching father totally exploited for his own gain. He drug her all around Europe to make money for the family. She married Robert Schumann, who was her father's piano pupil, but later reportedly had an affair with Brahms.

To do this sort of thing I think I would need narration, and I would need to find some visuals. I've got a book on how composers have been portrayed by Hollywood in movies, but I don't know if I could afford to clear the copyrights. I was thinking about having Stella Sung and Chris Wilkins read these stories as voiceovers.

Also, Tim has come up with an idea for an animated open: In front of a red curtain, a music staff floats into frame like a magic carpet. Caricatures of the 5 teens are riding on the carpet, each playing their instruments. The magic carpet floats around, then leaves the frame and musical notes from the carpet "hang" on the carpet and become the title. The red curtain opens and the five teen caricatures are standing on the stage, taking a bow. Or... the musical notes could float onto a page on one side of a book and each teen's photograph could appear one at a time on the opposite page of the book.

Then, after the "history lesson" and "animated open" I'll begin the film with the workshop. I'm getting psyched about working on this again.