Jeff Kryka has forwarded his comments on the 2008 ASCAP film and television scoring workshop mentioned in the September 11th blog. Here is what he has to say:

“I was admitted into the 20th Anniversary of ASCAP’s prestigious Film
and Television Scoring Workshop with Richard Bellis. There were around
300 international applicants for this workshop, but only 12 finalists
including me. The workshop is a free, month-long series of lectures
and field trips that are conducted mainly out of ASCAP’s LA office (in
the DGA building in Hollywood) and covers all aspects of the film
scoring business. Each participant was given a 3-minute clip from a
recent film (mine was the finale from Hidalgo) which we were to write
an original score for. The workshop culminated in a scoring session at
20th Century Fox’s Newman Scoring Stage with the 60-piece Hollywood
Studio Symphony who recorded our 3-minute cues, which we conducted
ourselves.

We also made trips to Todd-AO, John Debney’s studio, and Remote
Control (Hans Zimmer’s studio, meeting him as well as James Newton
Howard… both hot off the recent success of The Dark Knight)

After the workshop was over I was informed by Mike Todd, the head of
ASCAP’s Film and Television Scoring, that I was the recipient of two
scholarships offered by the ASCAP workshop:

1) THE ASCAP FOUNDATION DAVID ROSE SCHOLARSHIP
This scholarship was established with a gift from The Rose Family
Trust to honor television and film-scoring great David Rose. David
Rose’s best-known works include the instrumental standards, “Holiday
for Strings” and “The Stripper,” music for Bonanza, Little House on
the Prairie and decades of work with radio and television star Red
Skelton. The scholarship will be awarded annually to a qualified
college-level student working toward a career in scoring for film
and/or television who is participating in ASCAP’s Film & Television
Scoring Workshop.

2) THE RMA L.A. GRANT
Each workshop participant is evaluated by the RMA L.A. orchestra on
the evening of the recording session. The RMA awards a grant towards a
recording demo for the participant with the highest average score on
the following criteria: podium procedure, composition, and general
musicality.

I have posted my cue from Hidalgo on my website (www.jeffkryka.com) it
can be listened to here: http://www.jeffkryka.com/Composer/Listen.html”

Photo courtesy of April Rocha