Nov 8, 2022
Following a two-year delay caused by the international pandemic, Maffe and his classmates of the 2020 Screen Scoring class finished off their USC tenure with a full day of recording Hollywood's finest musicians performing their capstone projects.
Maffe's piece is a complete rescoring of a swashbuckling sword fight from the 2001 movie, The Mummy Returns, starring Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz. The scene opens with a sustained chord from the film's original composer, Alan Silvestri, and is then taken over in a flash by Maffe's appropriately bright and heroic underscore.
With 20 different pieces of music to capture in a single day of recording, the pressure was on, and each composer had only 14 minutes on the conductor's podium to accomplish their goal, a daunting prospect but a perfect reflection of the high stakes, low time situations that film composers are faced with on a daily basis.
Maffe conducted three takes of the musical cue and the orchestra shined, proving their mastery of their instruments and fully realizing the potential of the challenging music to the delight of the composer.
In a recent Facebook post, Maffe commented: "This is the kind of project that makes me want to return to the scoring stage as soon as possible! I'm so excited to be a part of this industry!"
This composition is dedicated to Alan and Sandra Silvestri for their continued support of Sterling Maffe's musical career.