By Roger Jackson and Klaus Badelt
Previously: Music for Movies, Expert Tips, Part I of II
This is Part II of Expert Tips from composer (and Kinonation co-founder) Klaus Badelt. Klaus has scored over 80 films. His work spans Hollywood blockbusters such as Gladiator, Pirates of the Caribbean, Catwoman, Poseidon, Rescue Dawn, 16 Blocks, The Recruit, K-19. And a ton of US and European indies, including documentaries, shorts and even video games.
11. Choosing a Composer
When seeking a composer, you’re actually looking for a “filmmaker” to work on a dramatic collaboration — he just happens to be called the “composer.” The worst thing you can do is to ask for demo music for a scene of your film from 5 different composers. Why? Because creating a score is collaborative and if you ask for demos you don’t learn or experience collaboration with the composer. You’re much better off asking for score examples from their previous films. But your main objective should be to find a composer you trust and like…with whom you can talk story first, music last. A good composer must be, above all, emotionally invested in the story you’re telling.
12. Big Arcs
Use music primarily for the “big arcs” within the story. Think of music cues as the film’s connective tissue…each cue might be 30-60 secs. Generally not a good idea to use music for short transitions. That works in a Seinfeld episode, but if you’re deploying short cues in a movie it could be a red flag. There are always exceptions…Klaus wrote a 5 sec cue for Pirates that was a single chord.
13. Question Everything
Don’t use too much music, trust the power of the scene to convey emotion without music. Always be asking if the scene really needs music. Try to err on the side of a lean (rather than abundant) percentage of the overall film being scored. American films are often over-scored, with 60-70+% music, whereas a 100 minute European film may only use music for 35-40 minutes.
14. Music for Documentary
Docs should have the same approach as narrative features. A common mistake here is to use an on-going “underscore” in an attempt to punch-up the impact of the film. This rarely works, and often becomes annoying for the audience.
15. Music for Trailers
In bigger films the director often isn’t even involved in the trailer, and typically a composer’s deal doesn’t include creating music for the trailer. Trailers are :30 sec and 2:30 minute commercials for films — they’re ALL about marketing. Thus it’s unlikely that music from the film will work for the trailer. i.e. don’t recycle, because your emotional impact objective for the trailer is very different to the movie itself.
16. Saving Money
Ask the composer to deliver an “all in package” which includes his creative fee and all production costs for recording, scoring, mixing, etc. You can also offer to let the composer keep the publishing rights. Or you can license the score as if it was a song, which will be less than the creative fee, but the composer gets to exploit his score elsewhere. Either way you spend less upfront.
17. Music Licensing
You can use anything for the temp track, but you must have licenses from the get-go for the trailer, since this is immediately out there to the public. It’s usually a bad idea to license music for the film just for festival use — since it’ll be such a pain post-festivals to re-license everything. Instead, expand the license to include festival, DVD and video-on-demand, but probably exclude theatrical since this is more of a release long-shot anyway. Remember: it’s all negotiable, so ask to defer fees until the film has revenue.
18. Cue Sheets & Chain of Title
A film cannot be released without a clean chain of title for the score and songs. But it’s very easy to get tripped up. Bottom line: protect yourself as a filmmaker with a detailed, readable and accurate cue sheet. This is a simple but mission critical spreadsheet-like document, showing (in linear order) all music “cues” — score and songs. For each cue you need to list in-out timecode, score/song title, publisher (often the production company), master owner, royalties society, comments. Then show it to your lawyer!
We Want Your Films
Kinonation wants your film to distribute to dozens of video-on-demand outlets, with no cost, no risk and 100% integrity. Click to Get Started.
Next Up: Post # 41: Blockbuster Trends
Roger Jackson is a producer and the co-founder of film distribution start-up KinoNation. He was Vice President, Content for digital film pioneer iFilm.com and has produced short films in Los Angeles, documentaries in Darfur, Palestine and Bangladesh, a reality series for VH1 and one rather bad movie for FuelTV. You can reach him at roger@kinonation.com.
