Film Music Composition - Panel #1

TUESDAY, Sept. 23, 2025 - 10:00am - 1:00pm

(10-11am mixer) Food and drink provided by Republik Coffee.

Location: Hollywood Production Center, 300 N. Third Street, Rooftop, Burbank, CA 91502

Please note: NO high heels on the rooftop.

The complete process of music composition in film, from various industry professional experts.

-PANELISTS-

(COMPOSERS/MUSICIANS) FOUNDERS OF THE NIGHT TEMPLE

CARISSA MELLADO & ANDREW DALIELL

Carisa Bianca Mellado is a Chilean-Italian Australian composer and singer with a 4 octave vocal range. Her voice traverses many genres and styles, from pop to metal and opera and she has built her style and career on innovating, writing & performing in the field of experimental vocal composition, microtonal and multi-tonal vocal work. She was also heavily involved in ballet and contemporary dance between the ages of 3 and 15, learning music through the body and physical performance. She has been a vocalist and bass player, writing, performing and touring with several rock bands. Her band, The Time of the Assassins recorded with Steve Albini in 2007 and not long after that she moved to the United States. She studied Film Composition and Music Production at Berklee School of Music and is an accomplished electronic musician, bass player, pianist and producer.  

Andrew Dalziell is an Australian multi-instrumentalist, percussionist, Taiko drummer, guitarist, and cellist. With a Masters of film composition at Berklee, he is a skilled orchestrator and an accomplished instrumentalist who has performed and toured with multiple orchestras and ensembles as well as writing, performing and touring with rock bands since the age of 16. He met Carisa in the United States while on tour in 2015 with his post-punk act Concrete Veil, and moved to the States in 2016. 

Together, Carisa and Andrew have scored over 20 short films, several operas, ballets and plays as well as two feature films. Some recent credits include the feature Kapō, directed by Etienne Aurelius and produced by Chelsea Winstanley (Jojo Rabbit, What We Do In The Shadows); Pea'hi, a coming of age feature directed by Etienne Aurelius and starring legendary pro surfer, Kai Lenny; The documentary, Nature Humaine: A journey into the art of Jean Paul Boudier, Pele Pictures;  Une Promenade Gâchée directed by Michael Salerno; they wrote the title credits song for Succubus (Ron Pelman & Rosanna Arquette) by Daniel Hanna and recently scored the horror, Burning in the Garden by Catalina Cielo.

They also write and perform songs for their dark, indie, art band Night Tongue. They are also the founders and hosts of The Night Temple music & film events, and the Music In Visual Media Conference, as well as The Night Temple Podcast.

(MUSIC COMPOSER)

Duncan Thum

Composer: Chef's Table, Live to 100: Secrets of the Blue Zones, We’re Here

DUNCAN THUM is multiple Emmy winning composer and multi-instrumentalist based in Los Angeles, California. A host of sonic explorations lead Duncan from co-forming LA's d.i.y. music scene fixture Pizza! to performance at the Disney Hall with Glenn Branca's Hallucination City: Symphony for 100 guitars.Duncan’s muse crystallized in writing music for his first feature film, where the interplay of emotion and image provide a spirited context for his eclectic background. Duncan has composed in this collaborative manner steadily since, evoking a range of mood and musical color for film, documentary, animation and other forms of branded story telling.Notable credits include Emmy award winning Netflix documentary series "Chef's Table”, “Live to 100: Secrets of the Blue Zones” and “We’re Here” (HBO). Feature films include “Brittany Runs a Marathon", "Dealt", and “A Secret Love". In addition to his long form work, Duncan has garnered critical acclaim for his collaborations with APPLE and other distinguished agencies. Duncan is a graduate of USC’s SMPTV film scoring program..

(MUSIC COMPOSER)

David Bertok

Composer: Chef’s Table, Peace by Chocolate, Daughter of the Sun, Botero

Emmy winning Composer Chef’s Table, and of the award-winning feature films Peace by Chocolate, Daughter of the Sun, and Botero, David Bertok writes for film, TV, and the concert hall. After graduating from music college in Germany, David enjoyed a busy career as a live musician touring Europe with progressive rock bands opening for acts such as Scorpions and Saga. His band, Subsignal, reached the German album charts twice during

his tenure as keyboarder, songwriter, lyricist, and producer.

In 2012, he relocated to Los Angeles on a Fulbright Scholarship and was admitted to the famed Scoring for Motion Picture and Television Program at USC. David’s lush orchestral themes and distinctive melodic approach can be heard on Netflix’s Chef’s Table and Home Game, as well as Amazon’s Brittany Runs a Marathon and For the Love of George, just to name a few.

David’s musicography extends to songwriting, producing, and more. He has lent his orchestration skills to the 2018 Deadmau5 release of “Where’s the Drop?,” arranging for 2018 America’s Got Talent Semi-Finalists Angel City Chorale, collaborating with German Idol winner Marie Wegener and scoring a 60-minute symphonic orchestra work for the art installation “Stranger-Mankind,” debuting in Munich in 2022.

Whether scoring for a full orchestra or creating an intimate piece with a single piano, David has the spectral ability to tap into a project’s soul and lift it off the screen into your memory. Recent projects include the feature films Daughter of the Sun (Audience Award winner at Montreal’s Fantasia Film Fest), Peace by Chocolate, which premiered at the 2021 Tribeca Film Festival, and the documentary Botero, brilliantly highlighting the life and works of legendary Columbian artist Fernando Botero.

(MUSIC COMPOSER)

Freya Berkhout

Freya Berkhout is a Sydney-born multi-award winning composer and creative technologist based in Los Angeles.Over the course of her 15 year music career, Freya has composed for film, television, podcasts and interactive media, notably The Greenhouse (Netflix) and Pillow Talk (Audible). Her scores have been heard at festivals around the globe, including Cannes, Warsaw, Tribeca and BFI London Film Festivals. She is a graduate of Sydney University, the Australian Film Television and Radio School, and has a Masters in Computational Art from Goldsmiths, University of London.

Freya’s passion is to manifest profound, emotional, thought-provoking experiences, creating sonic worlds that span the dark and enigmatic to the delicate, exquisite and transcendental. She revels in bold, celebratory intersectional feminist and queer narratives and perspectives.