Janal Bechthold

It’s so heartwarming to see all the love for #SilverScreamers!! This documentary was so fun to score! 🎶
#FantasticFest

It is 2066: 36 years after a catastrophic geomagnetic storm disrupted the world’s power supply and caused world-wide chaos.

You are tasked to keep a solar mission on track, and secretly, to discover a saboteur. Will you trust the right people?

Wishlist Now: store.steampowered.com/app/4006340/...

This looks so good!! 🙌

Aw thanks so much! 🥰

This is an interesting article by #ZakirKibria examining how more people are using images and music depicting post-apocalyptic world as a sleep aid. Zakir presents some good theories!
#music #sleep
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#creativity and #process is so individual though… I’d love to hear what inspires you!! 💫

#inspiration

🎬 I’m also inspired by the meaningful discussions with the #director and creative team on the story, characters’ motivations, and the experience they want the audience to move through while watching. It’s about collaboration and finding those unique moments where #music can really make a difference.

On another film I created a score using water and breathe, pairing the two to highlight important imagery that the director was using in her storytelling. The high concept score was really effective for this film!
#filmmaking #filmcomposer

I often look for interesting visual elements important to the story that I can draw on. For example, on my latest #animatedseries the character invents and repurposes items so to mirror her actions of building with her hands I added a lot of body percussion like clapping & slapping! #composer #bts

Smiling woman looks directly into a camera. She is a composer for film, television, animation and interactive media. Behind her is a music studio desk with a keyboard, large computer monitors, speakers, and a Canadian Screen Music Award trophy. The colours are vibrant and there is pink light from off screen shining from the right side of the photo

As a #composer I’m often asked where my inspiration comes from when I’m creating original music. I’m inspired by visual elements such as the texture of a film, drawing style in animation, the pace of the edits, the overall colour palette, lighting, production design, etc.
#filmcomposer #filmscoring

Picture of a confident woman with long brown hair sitting with one arm leaning on a wooden chair and the other resting on her chin. Behind her is her music workstation with coloured tracks on the screen. The picture is in a black box with the words “member spotlight” below. To the right is the AWFC logo in aqua with an orange W and text in white below reading “Alliance for Women Film Composers”, “JANAL BECHTHOLD • "While working with people with Alzheimer's Disease, many of whom had lost the ability to speak or use language to communicate, I would use live music to help tell their stories, watching them emotionally respond to the music of their past, work on muscle tone and cognitive skills, and briefly regain a sense of self.

A close up of the woman from the previous picture framed in white with the Alliance for Women Film Composers AWFC logo below. Text at the top of the frame reads Spotlight Janal Bechthold

Thank you to the Alliance for Women Film Composers #AWFC for the feature!

In this interview I talk about scoring Nelvana’s animated series #MillieMagnificent, composing music for interactive media, and attending #SXSW with #TheChoiceVR!

theawfc.com/spotlight/ja...

#filmcomposer #womencomposers

Great challenge @alisonborealis.bsky.social! Here’s my iconic #CanCon #Canadian items: #Participaction fitness patches!!

Emerging Screen Composers • SOCAN Foundation This annual competition is designed to recognize Canadian composers who are 30 years of age and under, for original musical themes or scores created exclusively for audio-visual support (TV, film, Int...

#composers!! Apply for the SOCAN Foundation’s Emerging Screen Composer Awards by May 1st! $25,000 in prizes and a new #videogame category. You have to be a #SOCAN member and 30 years old or under.

www.socanfoundation.ca/awards/emerg...

#ScreenComposer #filmscoring #Prize #gameaudio #Awards

Our booth for #TheChoiceVR at #SXSW 💜🩷

Selfie of a woman with curled brown hair wearing a black lace top. She is smiling and standing in front of a yellow “step and repeat” backdrop featuring the SXSW festival logo and several sponsors including Rivian, the Austin Chronicle, Direct TV, and Redbreast.

Thanks @sxsw.com for all the amazing, challenging, authentic conversations this past week. Showcasing #TheChoiceVR Chapters 2 & 3 was really special! #gratitude #composer #SXSW

A 3D animation photo of a young girl with brown hair in low pigtails, blue leggings, and a red dress with white polka dots and pockets. Her right hand is raised in a greeting and she is smiling, showing two front teeth. Her small light brown dog is sitting next to her. He has a dark brown snout, a circle around his right eye and one ear cocked. The words “Malla Mahtava” are written in graphics on the top left corner of the photo which match the girl’s red dress and blue leggings.

This is fun - Nelvana’s #MillieMagnificent is live in Finland!! It’s so neat to see the show translated into languages around the world. I hope kids watching #YLE are having as much fun watching #MallaMahtava as I did scoring it! 💕🎶✨
#animation #composer

Voting day!! Come on Ontario, get out there and make your ballot count! 🗳️
#ontario #election2025

Four young women, dressed in 90’s clothing and wearing sunglasses, sit on a picnic blanket in a park. All are holding open books while looking into the distance.

A promotional poster for Wench film festival, India’s first film horror sci-fi fantasy film festival! The bright orange and green lettering is on a black background. An Indian woman sits in the center of the frame with large hoop earrings. Around her reads Opening Party, Q&A sessions, film screenings, masterclasses, flea market. February 27 to March 2, 2025

🎬 Super stoked for the #WorldPremiere of #BraveRebelArmy!

“After a terrifying incident on campus involving one of their own, four young women seek justice by taking matters into their own hands.”

It’s the second film in the trilogy by Michelle D’Alessandro Hatt! 🎉

#womeninfilm #Wench

I can’t wait for Nelvana’s #MillieMagnificent to be released to the world. It’s such a sweet, smart, and imaginative show and I’ve had so much fun composing the music for it!! 🎶🎉
#animation #composer

🤞🤞

I feel a lot of #gratitude to get to create music that helps to tell stories, across all genres, and through all sorts of different mediums.

My latest projects are an #immersive installation, a #VR experience, and a children’s #animation television series. I love it!!
💕🎮✨🎶🎬🎉

It just shows how important #relationships are in the #film #tv and #videogame industries. Word of mouth and networking are how I find folks whose creative sensibilities are similar to my own. We all want to have fun making something cool or feel like we’re making a difference through our art.

Another student had a friend who was a #filmmaker and needed a new composer. The recommendation turned into a long time partnership with a film company. We created 14 television documentaries on human rights, adult adoption, truth and reconciliation, slow life movement, Canadian history…

So back to getting started as a #filmcomposer… like many other composers, the first films I scored were student films (I answered a casting ad in the local paper to connect with the team). I was lucky that the teacher liked my work and hired me for a documentary series called “The Writing Life”!

Creating and composing music wasn’t new to me. I wrote my first #composition when I was 9, after a particularly inspiring organ lesson where we learned how to #improvise! I knew if I could remember what I played it could become a new song - It changed everything for me!! 😍

This #musictherapy training taught me to be reflective, insightful, intuitive, and compassionate.

While working as a therapist I realized that one of the things I loved the most was telling stories, and was inspired to find new avenues to create music which would intersect with #storytelling.

Much of my music therapy training is how to observe the smallest physical changes in a client and interpret those either as a result of emotional changes, reduction in pain, shifts in cognition… I took classes in psychology & music, while learning specific skills to apply in a clinical setting.

My degree was in #musictherapy. It was a really wonderful foundation on how music conveys emotion and reflects the human experience. When I worked in an Alzheimers unit I used music to help tell their personal #stories and reflect a sense of self back to them.

Truly all the #composers I know have a different entry story of how they got started. Some have come to the industry after being in bands and are tired of touring, others have studied audio engineering, classical music composition, law, computer programming, were DJs & teachers…

One of the most common questions I’m asked by emerging composers is how I got started as a #filmcomposer. At the time there wasn’t any university programs specializing in screen scoring or writing music for film and television in Canada. Luckily I had some excellent mentors!