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N.L. composer featured in tourism ads wins big at American film festival

You've likely heard Adam Foran's music without knowing the artist behind it.

His music features in the award-winning Newfoundland and Labrador tourism television advertisements. But now, Foran's music is winning awards all by itself.

The Cape Broyle composer recently won the award for the best short original score at the Horrorigins Film Festival in Atlanta, Ga. for his work in New Woman, a horror film set in Harbour Grace.

"It's the first time that one of my film's scores have won on it's own," Foran said.

"It's a big deal to me."

Soundtracks of the 80s

He said he's written melodies and compositions for television and film scores for the last 15 years.

"I've just always liked it. I was born in the 80s and there was a lot of good kids movies that had awesome music," Foran told CBC Radio's Weekend AM.

"When you're a kid and you see Star Wars it's just mind blowing. And, the music does such a good job in carrying that story."

A graduate of Memorial University's School of Music, Foran said his parents were his support in keeping him interested in practicing the piano in the early going.

Heather Barrett/CBC
Heather Barrett/CBC

Since then, Foran has gone on to learn the intricacies of the violin, viola and cello to help round out his skills while he's composing original scores.

"It's just onward and upward. Just trying to get more films, and films with a kind of bigger scope and story that they're trying to tell, and obviously bigger budgets then so that we can have more musicians come in and play on it," Foran said about his future in the business.

"It doesn't have to be a huge orchestra, but my goal is to just to make cool art with people that I like working with and then it's always great going out to the film festivals and sitting back and watching it and seeing how the audience reacts."

Where to begin

In most cases, Foran becomes one of the final stops in putting together a complete film. He said he's generally brought in near the end of the production to begin scoring.

However, through years of developing working relationships in the industry, Foran said sometimes he'll simply be handed a script and some musical examples of what the production team is looking for to get a head start before a single frame is filmed.

He said he draws inspiration from the film industry's top composers such as Thomas Newman, Hans Zimmer, John Williams, Jonny Greenwood and Mark Korven.

"If the music is doing what it's supposed to do, then it should be carrying you along with the story, and of course, you're just paying attention to the dialogue and the music is kind of washing over you," he said.

Foran said he has already begun listening to other scores such as the Hans Zimmer score for Blue Planet II in preparation for an ocean documentary he's slated to compose next year.

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