From day one, talk about the music you love. A composer explains how student directors can communicate with a film composer and get the score they need.
Right off the bat, you should start discussing your favorite music, including bands you listen to and a few of your favorite soundtracks (or favorite movies, which often have great soundtracks) and why you like them. This is important, and helps us determine how best to write for you. Are there types of scores you like, such as minimal and electronic, or instruments that annoy you, such as trumpet or 80’s synthesizers? If you haven’t already, familiarize yourself with your composer’s previous work and pick a few tracks that you think might be closest to the feel of your film.
Ideally, most composers prefer to have a locked cut of your film before beginning, but if timing is tight we can start work with a rough one. Early in the process, you and your composer should have a spotting session to determine when the music should occur. With your composer’s help, you should determine: During the editing process, you and your editor or music supervisor should pick out temp tracks that sound similar to what you want to hear in your score. This gives us clues to the mood, pacing, tempo, and type of instrumentation you might be looking for. Ideally, your editor will provide us with a separate dialogue track, sound effects track, and the temp track so we can use them for reference but mute them as needed. Each track should have a 2-pop so that we can sync them all together.
Once the composer has given you a draft of your scene, if you don’t think it fits, feel free to ask for revisions or an alternative version. Try and determine what you didn’t like about it. Is it the wrong mood? Right idea but not produced well enough? Does it not sound enough like the temp? (‘Temp love’ is a real phenomenon. Make sure you’re not just too used to the temp track you’ve heard over and over. You want the score to be different, but a radical departure could be a problem.)
Does the music need to be more or less busy? Is it too repetitive? Is there a distracting instrument sticking out? Is the music too hot in the mix and burying the dialogue? Could this music be used elsewhere but not here? If you feel yourself getting frustrated, suggest working on another scene and coming back to it.
We are all fragile artists, but the film is your baby, and providing specific and direct feedback makes the process go faster. The composer wants to please you and get it right, so don’t be afraid to speak up if the score is not what you were expecting. We all have the same goal of creating moving, mind-blowing cinema.
Related filmmaking guides
- The power of sound in film
- Understanding microphone frequency response
- ADR: automated dialogue replacement explained
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