As a director looking for a score, it helps to know what is involved. Composer Kristen Baum explains the film scoring process from spotting to delivery.
As a director seeking a score for your movie, it’s important to understand what’s involved in the making of a score.
The workflow between the composer and director is only a portion of the scoring process. It doesn’t just go from the composer to the director then back to the composer and then poof, there’s a score. The part that happens behind closed doors can often seem like that part of a math equation where the teacher wants us to show our work and we just want to say a miracle happens here, but following that analogy in film scoring, there’s an intense amount of activity that follows the director’s approval of each music cue (the composition itself) to prepare it for the scoring session.
The needs of the music department vary somewhat depending on the type of score desired, but whether the score will be played by a large orchestra, by ten musicians or even three, the process for taking music from the demo to the finished product is the same.
For this article, let’s assume there will be a group of musicians that will be hired to play the score at a recording session (or sessions) for the purpose of discussing workflow and personnel.
Scores that are played live and recorded involve many people. The composer is one of those people. The composer’s team for a live-recorded score includes an orchestrator (or team of orchestrators), a copyist, a contractor, musicians, a conductor and a music editor. Additionally, the scoring stage must be rented, and a recording engineer hired. For lower budget projects that don’t have the funds to hire each of these positions, understand that the work is the same and the composer will have to absorb cost—time and money—to accomplish the necessary work.
So, here’s what the workflow looks like with the various positions filled:
Once a cue is approved, it goes to the orchestrator, who prepares the music for the musicians to read. After the orchestrator has finished each cue, it must be proofread, whether by the orchestrator’s team, the composer or both. At this point, the cue goes to the copyist and to the music editor. The copyist prepares the score and parts for each instrument. The music editor will often coordinate with the orchestrator and will prepare an individual ProTools session for each cue, assuring that the click track and picture are aligned so that bar one of the score matches bar one of the ProTools session. That insures sync with picture. At the same time, the contractor hires musicians and reserves the recording studio where the session will take place.
Each job requires a certain amount of time to complete, so any changes requested by the director at the last minute are often difficult to accommodate as time is usually in short supply.
On the day of the scoring session, everyone comes together to play the music so it may be recorded. Provided good prep, the scoring session will run smoothly and seem smooth.
Just like good pre-production of a film insures that the shoot goes smoothly, good pre-production of the score will insure a good scoring session and thereby a well-produced final score. Good communication between composer and director coupled with an understanding of the composing process will help insure the music department has adequate time to deliver your optimal score.
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