The OP asked about representation for composers of film music, and named several film composers specifically. This is a thread about film music and the film "industry/business."
_Mike
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@mverta said:
The agents only care about the money, Paul, but they don't care how or where or under what circumstances you get it. So what I'm saying is, control how you get it, because you can't trust people like agents to find it for you, or protect what you do, or care about you at all. I'm saying leverage yourself as best as possible on the artistic front, because the business aspect of it will never serve your creative endeavours at all. But once you've got the gig, they'll take the money, no questions asked 😊
_Mike
But even that, Paul, that the whole business is a big turd soup is only half true. The studio system sucks, and yes it's a crap factory, mostly, and yes, the quality of the average filmscore has just plummeted, but for every two dimensional pointless rehash of a film, there's an independent director doing it right. It's a pendulum; it swings. There are young directors that I talk to that hate the same stuff you and I do, and love the same things we do, and they're as up-and-coming and connected as the crop of crap slingers. So you just keep an eye out for the people you want to work with, build relationships and let time take care of the rest. The studio system has died and been reborn a couple of times over in the last 100+ years, and it's always the same. So for me, it's worth riding out the game until the swing back, especially if I can find things to do in the meantime that I love. And thankfully, not of that actually requires an agent.
_Mike
@PaulR said:
You have to work and get paid. You, as a writer of film music, regardless of how wonderful your score is going to be, cannot polish a turd. .
No, you can't, but that's part of why I say you have to try and leverage yourself. If you "have to work and get paid," and you end up on a crappy film, they still put your name 12 feet across the screen on a single card in bold type. Plus, you feel like you just wasted X weeks of your life. Plus, because it was a crappy film, it was 10 times harder to write the score for. I just went through this in January, when I did the score for a Sci-Fi Channel movie. If you've seen those, you know how bad they are. But this one was being produced by a friend of mine, who produced the series Farscape, and he's a great writer, plus a friend, plus my girlfriend ended up being in the movie, so I figured it would be the exception.
Wrong.
It was a nightmare; the director walked off the picture the second they wrapped, and the movie was just atrocious. I had 5 weeks to write 80 minutes of "try and save this crapcan movie" alien music, with nobody clear on the drama. The cue sheet read like, "01:05:00:09 - Marines arrive. Marine music here. 01:05:04:15 - girls get scared. Girls-are-scared-music here. 01:05:14:23 - Alien pops out. Alien popping out music here." It was from hell. Plus, I didn't sleep, hated my life, and at the end, hated every note of music. So even here, when I didn't take the gig for the money, and it seemed like everything would be cool about it, it was just horrific. And my name's on it, tweleve feet across on a single card at the top. I'm just glad amongst the godawful reviews, nobody's taken particular notice of the music at all. Fine by me. Just walk away and let's pretend it never happened, shall we?
So I'm saying that since it can always go south, for the "best" of reasons, it's usually better to give yourself the best odds you can first, by truly seeking out people who tell the kind of stories you like, and envision using the music the way you do, and like the music you do. Hard to find, but totally worth it. And if you can do other music gigs to ease the money pressure and allow you to be more selective, so much the better. And yes, the Coen brothers either totally hit it or totally veer left, but however sparse the Carter Burwell score, I always hear something cool I wish I'd thought of.
_Mike
I have a lot of respect for mverta for doing that score. Far more than Hans Zimmer getting a good film to ruin with his lousy block chords or James Horner getting Aliens 2 to plaster a John Williams rip-off all over. The reverse is usually the case - it is the great problem that a film composer faces - being given shit and trying to write music for it. How can you find inspiration?
In that case of Herrmann of course, he didn't need to search for inspiration.
What is with the incessant Hermann worship here? I rather listen to Zimmer's lousy block chords than Hermann's cacophonous noise that he attempts to pass off as "music" LOL!
But that was a great comment though about Zimmer's block chords, so true lol, he is not a true composer he is only a pop rock melodist and wouldn't survive a day without his trusty 30 gigastudios/keyboards/libraries assembly.
William, I often see you barking around about other's works, I am curious to hear or at least know what sort of works it is that you yourself compose? Are you a professional 'in the industry', a bitter hobbyist, underpaid orchestrator, or perhaps just a programmer that got lost and ended up on the wrong forum? Just curious what sort of brilliantly artistic, inspiring, idealistic, divine music it is that you write. Could you share a sample perhaps or at least describe to us mortals what ineffable aural pleasures stream forth from the sumptuous fruits of your indefatigable labours?
Just a small point of clarification, here - Hans Zimmer only writes a small percentage of "his" music. Most of it is done by a stable of ghost writers. He makes no attempt to hide this. He will openly say to a director, "Oh for this romantic scene let's use my guy so-and-so, he's great at the romantic stuff," etc. There's actually quite a lot of that in town. A few of the "big composers" are just name brands.
_Mike
Mike that seems to be very common at the "top" of every field. In fact last year I met a professional artist who told me that EVERY major player in the 'art scene' (sculpture/painting and the like) has a stable of proteges that produces 75-85% of their work which they just sort of stamp with their name at the end. I mean hell, to this day there's many paintings that are attributed to Rembrandt and the like that have been found to be made by his students and passed off as his, because thus was their skill and technique, equal to his own, although in someone like Zimmer's case the proteges' skill and technique probably far surpasses his own considering he has zero musical training and is nothing more than a rock keyboardist with no theory knowledge and probably a poor ability to read music.
Paul to answer your question yes I am relatively young, 26 to be exact. But don't let that be too much of a moral victory for your theories because I happen to like Korngold and place the 'greats' of yore on the highest pedestal, I just never liked Hermann because I'm not a fan of that school of music.
Mverta - That is interesting to hear about Zimmer. Just like Nancy Drew. I suspected as much.
Requiem - You are quite correct in appreciating Korngold. I applaud you for that. Also - you may have problems with Herrmann because you were born into the Leitmotif school along with Korngold, Steiner, Rosza, Shore, etc. If that is the case, I appreciate you and have no argument. It is, as a matter of fact, part of one's genetic makeup to be part of the Leitmotif School, or part of the Non-Leitmotif School.
However...
if you EVER, EVER insult Herrmann again, I will find out where you live...
...come there....
...and force you to listen to my music for several hours straight.
Consider yourself warned...
Interesting because almost all of these big guys in interviews EXPRESSLY and specifically state that they do not use orchestrators. I know for a fact Hans Zimmer has stated "I don't often use them, because I like to do all that stuff my self" and I seen a interview recently on youtube of James Horner who also said he only seldom uses orchestrators etc.
Okay, well that is absolutely untrue. Logistically, they'd never have TIME to orchestrate all the cues by hand, even if they had the ability. 99% of cues are given to orchestrators as sketches. What varies is how detailed the sketches are. John Williams' 12-line (approx.) sketches are extremely precise and detailed, and don't truly require a lot of "orchestration" skill, whereas some composers literally give a melody (maybe) and some chords (maybe) and some notes ("Real scary!"). Truth. The average level of composing and orchestrating ability out there is laughably low. On one of my first sessions, the orchestra began the downbeat of cue 1 with a horrific cacophany. We quickly learned the copyists had put all the transposed instruments in the wrong keys: apparently, nobody even writes transposed scores anymore, so they took my masters as concert pitch. The young guys can't even read and write native tranpositions!
_Mike
@requiem_aeternam7 said:
Interesting because almost all of these big guys in interviews EXPRESSLY and specifically state that they do not use orchestrators.
Regarding Elfman, yes, Bartek does all the orchestrations, and more. That's no secret at all. Elfman focuses on the 70 layers of synth stuff he brings in to go with it. You know who else is like that? Thomas Newman. Thomas is all about the synth stuff, pads and sounds and stuff, and he spends forever getting all that right, and THEN he has the strings play whole notes for 3 days. At least, that's what the string players tell me.
By the way, curious little thing... I saw a concert celebrating the film music of Bernard Herrmann and John Williams, conducted by John Williams, hosted by Spielberg and Scorsese. The Herrmann stuff sounded better live than the Williams stuff did. Orchestrationally, it was like JW's cues work fantastically on a recording, but the Herrmann stuff was more impressive in the room. Really struck me, cue after cue, all that night.
_Mike