What’s So Funny About Romcoms?

WITH

Composers

SIDDHARTHA KHOSLA

CINDY O’CONNOR

JONGNIC “JB” BONTEMPS

MARK SMYTHE

MODERATED BY CATHERINE JOY (Composer)

YouTube Live Stream

MONDAY, AUGUST 29

5:00-6:30pm PT / 7:00-8:30pm CT / 8:00-9:30pm ET

The misadventures, the unexpected love interest, the eccentric best friend, the near breakup, the dramatic irony, the grand gesture, the scene in the rain, the epic first kiss, and the happily ever afters…the challenges and adventures that exist when scoring a Romantic Comedy. This seminar will be diving deep into the RomCom world and exploring the variety of approaches and techniques to avoiding clichés, conquering subtleties, and expressing a romantic and funny story in just the right way. 

Siddhartha Khosla is a six-time Emmy-nominated film and television composer, singer/songwriter, and producer of the critically acclaimed band, Goldspot. Khosla received three Emmy nominations this year; two for his work on Hulu’s critically acclaimed series, Only Murders In The Building, in the Outstanding Original Main Title Music and Outstanding Music Composition For a Series categories, and one for Outstanding Original Music and Lyrics for his original song “The Forever Now” (shared with Dawes’ Taylor Goldsmith) from NBC’s Emmy-winning drama series, This Is Us. He has 3 previous nominations for his work on This Is Us – Outstanding Music Composition For a Series in both 2019 and 2021, and Outstanding Original Music and Lyrics, for his original song “Memorized” in 2020. Khosla has the distinction of being the first South Asian person to be nominated in the Primetime Emmy score and song categories. His original songs “Memorized”, “Invisible Ink” and “We Can Always Come Back To This” each earned Guild of Music Supervisors Award nominations for Best Song/Recording For Television. Khosla’s upcoming projects include the Netflix comedy Your Place Or Mine directed by Aline Brosh McKenna, starring Reese Witherspoon and Ashton Kutcher; Hulu’s limited series Welcome to Chippendales; and the second season of the Disney+’s series The Mysterious Benedict Society.

Khosla’s television and film credits include Aron Gaudet and Gita Pullapilly’s comedy film Queenpins; Amazon’s dramedy film I Want You Back, directed by Jason Orley; the critically acclaimed Hulu limited series, Looking for Alaska; Marvel’s Runaways on Hulu; Netflix’s hip-hop drama feature Beats; the award-winning indie drama feature, The Sounding, from director Catherine Eaton, which won 17 awards including Festival Grand Prizes from several festivals including Woodstock, Bend, Istanbul, Napa, and Cinequest; and the comedy feature film, Fat Camp.

Cindy O’Connor is an accomplished composer and performer for film, television, and theater. She combines her love of musical theater, orchestral music, pop/rock, and electronic textures to create unique musical worlds for each project and was a 2018 Emmy nominee for Outstanding Music Composition for a Series (Once Upon A Time). Cindy spent seven seasons collaborating with Mark Isham and Michael Simon scoring the hit ABC series Once Upon a Time. Other TV credits include Once Upon a Time in Wonderland,  the Starz series Crash, and the NBC series The Black Donnellys. Her recent scoring projects include the Hallmark rom-coms Rip In Time, South Beach Love, and Christmas Sail; the dark comedy Deany Bean is Dead (Amazon Prime); and the psychological thriller Red River Road, due to be released in October. Cindy began her career as a musical theater composer with All That He Was (book and lyrics by Larry Todd Cousineau), winner of the Musical Theater Award in the Kennedy Center/ACTF Festival and published by Concord Theatricals. Her other musical theater works include La Llorona/The Crying Woman (Off-Broadway), 40 Is The New 15 (NoHo Arts Center), Flies! The Musical (Pride Arts Center, Chicago), and Forgiving The Franklins (The Bourbon Room, book and lyrics by Jay Floyd).

As a performer, Cindy spent four years touring as a keyboard player and singer with rock superstar Pat Benatar, and she has performed as a singer and choir director with a  cappella genius Petra Haden for concerts at the Ford, the Getty, and David Byrne’s  Meltdown Festival in London. She is grateful every day for the chance to collaborate with talented artists to tell stories that touch people’s hearts and explore the wonders of the human spirit.

Jongnic “JB” Bontemps is a uniquely modern film composer, harmonizing a classical education with his rich tech background. His most recent romantic comedy, the Netflix film Wedding Season was released on August 4. As a maestro of Silicon Valley he wrote everything from The CW sci-fi series 4400, the Netflix docuseries We Are: The Brooklyn Saints, Dance Dreams: Hot Chocolate Nutcracker, the Netflix and Shondaland-produced documentary about the Debbie Allen Dance Company’s award-winning production of The Nutcracker, and the Netflix documentary Murder to Mercy: The Cyntoia Brown Story. He was recently nominated for a Critics’ Choice Award for his work in the 2021 Sundance documentary selection My Name Is Pauli Murray directed by Julie Cohen and Betsey West. He is known for his hip-hop-infused score for the Tribeca-favorite documentary United Skates, to rousing additional music for the acclaimed film Creed II directed by Steven Caple Jr. He became the go-to composer for Caple Jr. while scoring his coming-of-age drama The Land, for which he also orchestrated the song “This Bitter Land” performed by Nas and Erykah Badu. JB’s other recent work includes the CNN special The People vs. The Klan, the dramatic feature Last Night in Rozzie directed by Sean Gannet, and the CNN Films documentary Citizen Ashe that premiered at the Telluride Film Festival. Up next for JB is the Arkane Studios video game Redfall.

JB has scored dozens of features, series, and video games in all genres, fusing a contemporary sound with timeless emotion. His other recent projects include original scores for the Lifetime biopic Clarke Sisters: The First Ladies of Gospel, the Toni Braxton-led drama, Faith Under Fire, the Sundance selection Leimert Park produced by Charles King (Mudbound), and additional music for the Epix series Godfather of Harlem starring Forest Whitaker. JB’s scores have echoed at Cannes, the Warsaw Film Festival, Pan African Film Festival, and the American Black Film Festival, as well as at home on Netflix, CNN, HBO, BET, Lifetime, NBC, Showtime, Netflix, PBS, and Disney XD.

Mark Smythe is a New Zealand-born, Los Angeles-based composer known for his film, choral, and contemporary classical music. Most of his recent film work has been in the horror/thriller genre, notably this summer’s The Reef: Stalked – but in 2021 he scored the uproarious rom-com Love You Like That – described by Filmink as “A highly contemporized version of a French chamber piece or frothy Shakespearean comedy, with all the inherent silliness that implies.” Mark has garnered four Hollywood Music in Media Awards nominations, for The Things She Did (starring Daryl Hannah), Flying South, Unfallen (starring Michael Madsen) and “Umbra Animae” from his 2021 Choral EP Cantilenae. He twice won Best Original Score at the Australian Screen Industry Network Awards for Daddy’s Little Girl and Charlie’s Farm (starring Tara Reid).

In 2017, Christchurch Symphony Orchestra performed his concert suite version of Flying South live to picture, with Mark guest performing on ukulele. Later that year he made his conducting debut with Bulgaria’s Rousse Philharmonic, performing “Fiordland” from the same film. Mark’s concert music includes the regularly aired “Moto Mojo” for harp and delay pedal, several choir works, and a popular arrangement of Radiohead’s “Street Spirit (Fade Out)” for harp and female voices.

Catherine Joy is a composer for film, media, and live performance who has a passion for music and collaborations. She won Best Documentary Score for the uplifting feature documentary Gold Balls. Catherine scored the documentary Naughty Books (Hulu) which features narration by Aisha Tyler, Allison Tolman, and Aimee Garcia, and resulted in an ASCAP Composers Choice Award nomination. She recently scored the documentary Prognosis: Notes on Living about the final journey of Oscar-winning social justice filmmaker Debra Chasnoff and the award-winning short doc animation series There’s No ‘I’ In Island (Screen Australia). She then was awarded the New Music USA Reel Change grant for her score for the documentary Women In The Front Seat, directed by Indy Saini. Catherine is the founder and CEO of Joy Music House, a full-service score production company, and the President of the Alliance for Women Film Composers. She also teaches film scoring for the NYU Steinhardt Masters program. 

*** IMPORTANT – PLEASE READ ***

FREE for current SCL members (click HERE to check membership status).

Attendees will be emailed a Screening Link upon Registration and a Q&A YouTube Live Stream link on Monday, August 29, 10 minutes before Q&A start.

Attendees can ask questions on YouTube chat, and the SCL Host will pass them on to the Moderator. The SCL Member Code of Conduct applies to online Q&As.

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