Can you tell us a little about your artistic practice and what brought you to VIFF’s Composer Filmmaker Accelerator Program?
I’m Connor Cook. I’m a composer, instrumentalist, and musician based out of Los Angeles, California. I mostly work in film music, but I also have my artistic practice where I make music on my own. A lot of my work is based in connectivity, finding cross points between things and how things are related, discovering ways we’re all more alike, rather than ways we’re different, and I do a lot of work with nostalgia and memories.
I work better as an artist when I’m not in a vacuum. The VIFF CFA program was very useful for me to get amazing feedback from everyone involved. We had people from all over the world, so there was a really nice, diverse range of people doing different things. One of the coolest parts was watching three composers score the same scene. I feel like I learned something from everybody’s different experimentations — that was mind opening.
What kind of connections did you make through the CFA?
I’m a person who gets a lot out of being in community with other people, and I see the people I met through the CFA program being lifelong friends. We’ve been staying in touch, and it was just a really profound, meaningful experience for all of us, not just the composers, but the filmmakers too.
I speak with my filmmaker almost every day on Facebook. It’s nice to stay in touch, and I stay in touch with the teachers too, Tony [Amp Curator, Senior Vice President of Television Music at Sony] and Miriam [CFA Program Curator, composer] and Michelle [Scoring Session Producer] and Damon [Recording Engineer and Scoring Mixer], and it’s nice just to know that they’re out there.
What impact did the program have for you?
Choosing to be a film composer is a really tough career. There are not enough programs nurturing composers. Programs like this are invaluable to experiment and play where you can test out your ideas and maybe go for something you wouldn’t do for a paid gig, because we have the freedom to experiment. I think my best work comes when it has an element of play.
I’m really grateful for the CFA program because I was allowed to play. I was just thinking this morning about my experience with VIFF and how I was only working on one cue for like, five weeks. I think the cue turned out great because I had so much time and energy dedicated to it. And I was thinking, How good would my music be if I actually had time to work on it and play with it and experiment in the way I like to experiment? It’s very rare that you have five weeks to work on one cue for a movie, so I felt like I was able to really hone in on something that I actually liked.
Any last thoughts you wanted to let people know about the CFA?
It was a very rough year for myself and many other artists in LA because of the actor and writer strikes last year. We are still all recovering. The CFA was, I think, probably the most joyful week I had the entire year. I don’t want to play it down at all. It was incredible. I wish I could go back in time and do it a second time. It was perfect. And Rob and Tony did an amazing job with curation. I honestly thought it was one of the most fun film festivals I’ve been to, and I’ve been to a lot because I love going to film festivals.
Thank you so much to Connor for taking the time to talk with us!
You can see Connor’s work at https://www.connorgcookmusic.com/, follow them at connorgcookmusic on Instagram, or check them out on Spotify!
If you are interested in working with Connor, you can reach out to [email protected].