When thinking about films, most people probably focus on the actors or the director. For alumnus Kory Hilpmann ’17, music is the star of the show. Earlier this summer, Hilpmann won silver for Best Music/Film Score at the International New York Film Festival (INYFF) 2021 for his animated short “Beanstalk.”

Hilpmann is a musician who currently does a lot of freelance composing and teaching. He has always loved music, and he originally came to Elizabethtown College to pursue a degree in music therapy.

“I’ve always had a passion for music, but I was trying to figure out how to make that a career,” he said.

Throughout his time at Etown, he transitioned to music education and then to music performance. In the middle of his college career, Hilpmann wanted to pursue composing music for films, but he didn’t know where to start. His composition professor was the one who encouraged him to try his hand at film scoring.

“It was his suggestion to pick a common story, like a folk tale…and try writing music to that story,” Hilpmann said. “I was scoring to an imaginary movie.”

This assignment led Hilpmann to write “Giants and the Beanstalk Boy,” the song on which “Beanstalk” is based. He imagined the story from the giants’ viewpoints because “we always hear it from Jack’s perspective.” The music developed from there.

Hilpmann created the music in three parts or themes. The song starts with the giants in a tribal and earthy tone. It transitions to Jack with more mischievous sounding music. The end confrontation combines the sounds in an explosive way. This one piece of music is able to tell a fully fleshed-out story without any words.

The transition to a short film actually started with Hilpmann reaching out to the film’s director, Tom Cassese, to do some light animations for a music video version of “Giants and the Beanstalk Boy.”

“As we progressed, the animations got more in depth, and the story got more in depth, so that we ended up turning it into a little short film,” Hilpmann said. “Once you start something, you never really know what it’s going to develop into, and sometimes it can go a lot further than you expected to be something really cool!”

Most animated short films start with the story and then move to music, but the process for “Beanstalk” was reversed.

“He [Cassese] found it interesting to animate it specifically to a story that already exists and music that already exists,” Hilpmann said.

While Cassese was working on the animation, Hilpmann added sound effects and made the film score bigger and more realistic.

The film was finished around the time the world was shutting down in March 2020. Hilpmann and Cassese submitted the film to some festivals, but because of the pandemic, Hilpmann’s first film festival experience wasn’t exactly as he had imagined.

“Normally, you get to see people’s reactions to watching your film, or you get to network with people who are there, so that was kind of a bummer for the first few festivals,” he said.

He found the whole process rewarding, though, especially when it paid off in the film score award at INYFF.

Hilpmann is excited for future film festival experiences, but because of the pandemic, most films were put on hold and weren’t looking for music. He has still been working on projects, though, including making a demo reel as a portfolio of-sorts for his work.

Hilpmann has done audio production and composition work for podcasts, such as “The Wolf Among Sheep,” “Feelanthrope,” and “One Million Musicals.” He has also been working on an Australian student film, “Poppy,” that is still in production.

Hilpmann has found a lot of success after college, even though his journey wasn’t as straightforward as he had expected. His biggest piece of advice for Etown students pursuing their dreams is to “carve a path for yourself if it doesn’t already exist.”

“If you love it, do it,” he said.

You can find Hilpmann on his website, www.koryhilpmannmusic.com, and his Instagram, @quirkykorkeys.