“Where words fail, music speaks”
I think of music as storytelling. When I compose music, it’s because I need to share something with my audience. I need to share with them a story. To introduce them to the story’s characters and their emotions. To take them to the places these characters go and to the ways they act and interact with one another. In other words, I need to invite my audience to be part of this story.
When I compose music for a film, I take my storytelling one step further and create a dialogue, an honest conversation between my music and the moving image. I listen to the story that the movie tells me and then, through my music I agree, talk back, shout, whisper, nod, or stay motionless and silent. My music creates a storytelling relationship with the movie and that relationship helps the story to be told in a whole new way. In this new way, music enters the world of the audience and invites them into the world of the story. It invites them to become a part of the film.
My storytelling approach is called “Perform the Story”. It is a journey into reinventing the way we look at music and I have been using it in my film work since 2003.
Selected examples of my Perform the Story storytelling approach can be found in my work with Orestis Dikaios, with Konstantinos Papathanasiou and with the Museum of Entrepreneurship.
“Every time I collaborate with Aris I am impressed with his unique method. The most important aspect in this method is the competence in working with storyboards and mood boards like a visual artist does. I consider Aris’s approach particularly relevant to film productions as he can work side by side with any visual artist of the production team, bringing into life the vision of the director.”
Orestis Dikaios – Director
“I met Aris in 2011 while filming my short documentary Asperger Syndrome: Myths & Reality. Aris immediately grasped the topic’s sensitive nature and composed a brilliant score by looking into society through the eyes of young men and women who happen to experience the world in a unique manner. Music is Aris’s way of expression, his chosen means of storytelling and I look forward to working with him again.”
Konstantinos Papathanasiou – Director
