Budgets: Putting Your Money Where Your Mock-Up Is

“How much money will I make as a film composer?” That’s the six million dollar question, isn’t it? As much as we can try to come up with a complete answer, the only true answer really is, “Whatever you can!” The bigger question—and the one I want to tackle here—is “How much money do live players eat up during a film score’s production and how do you plan for the bloodshed?” The answer to that questions is… “I wish there was an answer.”

Now that I’ve been no help at all, let’s see if we can figure it out together…

It Hurts to Work: The Musician’s Silent Epidemic

There’s an epidemic going on that no one wants to talk about. Lots of people in our business are hurting, and computer work is the main culprit.

Spotting With the Composer and the Sound Designer

Yes yes yes…I know…we entertained this subject last month. However, in the tradition of Post, I am following up last in the process!

This subject has been of particular interest to me, and has sparked a lot of interest among my colleagues in Post Production. Discussing spotting is a subject unto itself as we have seen with all the fascinating articles and comments these past weeks. The focus this time will be on the advantages, disadvantages, pluses and minuses of spotting a project with the Composer AND the Sound Designer present with the Director. Sitting down in a room, all together, with the same goal in mind… helping the Director tell the story. On the surface, it seems like a no-brainer — why NOT do this? Save time and energy; reduce the classic ‘conflicts’ during the final mix; the left hand knows what the right hand is going to do; efficient; cost saving; keeps the creative focus. Ah, if it were only that simple.

An Open Letter to People Who Make Film Music

And the Oscar goes to….

Michael Giacchino for “UP!”.

Even though Jennifer Lopez and Sam Worthington butchered his name many times during their presentation for “Best Original Score” at the Academy Awards on Sunday night, there was no denying who won the award once Michael Giacchino got up and took the statue in his hands. With a simple speech about how kids who have dreams of entering into the entertainment industry should never listen to those who say it is “a waste of time”, Giacchino accepted his award with grace and respect, and then went and sat back down in his seat for the rest of the show.

With a contentious race in many categories, including Best Original Score, it didn’t take long before I was seeing people on Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, and Tumblr light into Giacchino, assessing his win as a “fraud”, a “mistake”, a “travesty”, “non-deserving”, and even “political” (Political? WTF? Really?) Since the awards broadcast, I’ve even received several emails from people in our community asking me what I thought of “someone like Giacchino winning the award up against Horner and Hans”.

“Someone like Giacchino?” What does that even mean?

More after the jump…

Unexpected Competitors

So… your demo is standing tall. Your people skills are honed, crisp and extra-sparkly. You’ve targeted a few level-appropriate projects, and maybe one or two “long-shot” gigs, just to start getting higher-ups familiar with your work. Your phone calls are getting returned, and the gatekeepers seem ready to say the magic word—yes. Then, one by one, those gigs just… slip away. Black swans start cropping up in your work life—unforeseen interlopers that threaten to swoop in and snatch the fruits of victory out of your hands. What—and who—are these unexpected competitors? Knowing about them—and how to compete with them—should be an integral part of your game plan. So let’s take a look, after the jump….

The “Gigs” Don’t Exist

I have dinner every couple of months with a great group of working television composers. Part strategic network, part support group, our times together are always amazing and I’ve never not come away with either some juicy info on a cool new compositional technique or a great new way to implement some sort of hardware or software tool. Composers often get pegged for some of our antisocial behavior, but when these 20 or so composers get together, the discussion and conversation flow can be endless, and these social gatherings often drag into the wee hours of the next morning. At the latest of these dinners this last weekend, I became engaged in a conversation about…

Making Money from Your Music: Part 2

Over 1/3 of the music industry in America is based on music licensing. If thats even anywhere close to being true, it gives you an idea of how big an industry music licensing really is. Here’s a quick primer on how to get in the game.

Advanced Mockup Techniques

I’m going to dive in straightaway in this month’s column with a handful of advice for those of us that have to mockup our music (i.e., all of us). LEARN YOUR SAMPLE LIBRARIES The simplest way to do this is just working on a project. If you don’t have a big one on the table, make some exercises or write some library music- get to know the strengths and weaknesses of your samples, and their unique characteristics. Is there reverb on the sample? If it is nice reverb, perhaps you can leave it in or match your other samples using similar reverb settings. If not, can you alter the release or decay section of the…

“Luck” Has Nothing to Do With It

I’ve been on my back for the last 24 hours with the flu. I don’t know how I got it, except to say that lately I’ve been running pretty hard on very little rest, and so I think it was just my turn. When you’re sick you can’t do much, which is a real pain in the ass for guys like me who hard time sitting still for five minutes. I’m pretty sure it’s God’s way of telling me that I need to take a break. Today, I got that chance, and it provided me with an opportunity to share something with all of you that I thought was pretty cool. In one of my…

Silence is Golden

Why is music used here? and What is its function?

Before diving headlong into an analytical frenzy surrounding the functions of film music, I want to begin by establishing a frame of reference by which the very existence of film music centers. In doing that one must not immediately look at specific moments in film that are supported by music but rather moments which are not.

ESP and Music

“I was thrown out of college for cheating on the metaphysics exam; I looked into the soul of the boy sitting next to me.” (Woody Allen / Annie Hall) Some directors know exactly what they want, others will define what works as a process of musical evolution. For me, discovering the director’s sensibilities is a top priority. By ‘sensibilities’ I do mean mind reading. How do you talk music when words can’t express the colors, emotions, and pulse? Yeah, I know you can discuss music academically, but guess what? It doesn’t work. No matter how articulate you might be, a director has a vision which is usually satisfied with music, not words. Keep in mind…

Maximizing Your Time: The Essentials

So here I am, responsible for getting these columns off to a delinquent start! But, I have a legitimate excuse, which I am going to use to kick off my first post here in my series “Composer as Producer.” Before I get started, I’ll take a quick moment to explain the purpose of my column. As a lecturer at UCLA, my personal goal is to train students in the skills they need to bring their music from the initial moment of creativity to the finished product, whether it be a live performance, an electronic recording, or a combination of the two. Even as the prices of music production equipment continue to fall, and the opportunities…