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Career Advice
Hey Everyone,
I saw this article and wanted to pass it along since it has some great advice for anyone thinking of making a career out of film scoring.
Since there wasn't already a thread on this topic I decided to create one. I am certainly not qualified to be handing out career advice for this industry but I wanted to start a thread to place this kind of information, where ever it comes from. I came to this site more from the background as a recording musician involved in various projects, but not necessarily from a film composing background as many of you on this site are. (there's some very talented composers here!) Composing for film has always intrigued me, which is why I participated in the Zenoids music theme contest.
Check out this article below, there's a lot of interesting ideas here about the industry of film composing and getting started in the business. I hope that others find this helpful.
--Jim
Discussion started by jpfeifer , on 01 December 06:10 AM
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Hay, from the Green,Chickens side... I'm just starting out in Animation, making my own cartoons. Making music and voices for low end cartoons is very hard! I have older equipment and a lot of dreams, not to be rich, but to make people laugh and forget there problems for a while... “Too say that was cool!” I find no help around with this type of problem? Any Info would help, and thanks, for bringing this up! G.C.
Thursday, 03 May 2012 10:42
also i think this is probably the most important piece of advice one can give in regards to writing music, if you are writing for the money, or the fame or because you want to be as recognized as Hans Zimmer or John Williams....then you are doing for the wrong reasons, write music because you want to write music! as an example i love to express story through music i get a real kick out of it as the Hollywood composer Christophe Beck once said "write the music you want to write and you will always be happy" i don't care if i ever get paid for the scores i write as long as i am writing scores i am happy :) also i second WorldofWandag's comment on REMOTE CONTROL if you really want to excel as a film Tv or PC game composer REMOTE CONTROL is the best place for it
Thursday, 03 May 2012 00:14
@alpha: you're welcome. =)
@jpfeifer: no problem. yeah it takes a lot of sacrifice and a lot of luck too. I mean a LOT of luck. but i DO notice the "luckier" people are the ones that put themselves out there and meet people.
OR
last piece of advice would be... to audition for REMOTE CONTROL. One of my mentors said, "if you're young and have no family, suck it up and join remote control" lol.
@jpfeifer: no problem. yeah it takes a lot of sacrifice and a lot of luck too. I mean a LOT of luck. but i DO notice the "luckier" people are the ones that put themselves out there and meet people.
OR
last piece of advice would be... to audition for REMOTE CONTROL. One of my mentors said, "if you're young and have no family, suck it up and join remote control" lol.
Wednesday, 07 December 2011 13:08
@WorldofWandag, This is a great post as to the reality of doing this as a career, and what that takes. Thanks for sharing your realistic view from someone who is actually doing it. Best of luck to you and thanks for sharing your insights! I admire anyone who can make a living doing this sort of thing. It's always been a dream of mine and I look up to anyone who can do that. It's definitely not an easy thing to do.
--Jim
--Jim
Wednesday, 07 December 2011 12:31
I want to preface this with... I am in no way a full fledged HOLLYWOOD film score composer, but I've been scoring films for 5 years and have had music placements on TV like Access Hollywood or misc commercials. I will say that I was able to quit my dayjob and do scoring full time... with that being said, here's what I've done to get there.
1) attend seminar after seminar after seminar. The biggest thing about this is not necessarily what you learn (although I've learned a lot at these events), it's also who you meet and exposing yourself to what's out there. I've met a lot of folks I've eventually gone on to collaborate with and / or shadow (i.e. Alf Clausen composer of the Simpsons) When you surround yourself with industry folks and events, you'll realize just HOW MANY people want to be composers and how talented everybody is, so just being a good composer ain't gonna cut it. Meeting like minded folks and working professionals opens your eyes to what you're up against... suddenly, I realized that I wasn't as good as I thought, and it made me work harder because of it.
the industry cats will tell you, DON'T COMPOSE EVER... and mean it. They have good reason to say that... most people are wasting their time. Either because they don't have the willpower to keep on going year after year or because they're not the type of people that know how to make lasting impressions on people. Now if you still don't believe that, then the next piece of advice I've gotten from composers like Michael Giacchinno and his team, Alf Clausen, and other big time composers goes something like this... "compose 2 minutes of music everyday". For a lot of composers that could take up to 2-4 hours (considering the recording aspect and the mixing and mastering process as well)
2) make friends with directors and producers. this one is a no brainer. you have industry friends, they hook you up.
3) go to social dynamics school... okay there's really no SCHOOL for this, but just like the article said, most people live in their caves. go out and adventure... practice talking to people. Learn how to make people like your company. It's easier to get gigs when people like talking to you... which brings me to my next point... I don't usually talk about music with a lot of the industry cats. I let my music speak for itself. I do talk about how to crate train your dog... what my travels in Turkey were like... how John Locke was the coolest character on LOST... how approaching women indirectly usually yields the greatest results for guys who don't know how to talk to women... how you could eat pretty much any food and still lose weight as long as it's non or minimally processed... and so on and so forth. Point is, producers, directors, and big time composers hear about music all the time... they get bombarded with that sh*t so they don't want to hear it. When you're warm and interesting enough, they usually open up to you more and a lot of times, you don't even HAVE to mention the music thing and they're already talking to YOU about it instead.
4) there's way more but now I'm rambling and I want to eat scrambled eggs and coffee.
I hope some of this information helps. Honestly, this is a TOUGH market... the last seminar I went to made me realize that, unless you're getting placement after placement and scoring film after film after film, the money is HORRIBLE. However, stick it through, learn to adapt to all types of music (sh*t, just knowing how to Rap got me through a tough feature I just scored), get your a55 OUT THERE!!
1) attend seminar after seminar after seminar. The biggest thing about this is not necessarily what you learn (although I've learned a lot at these events), it's also who you meet and exposing yourself to what's out there. I've met a lot of folks I've eventually gone on to collaborate with and / or shadow (i.e. Alf Clausen composer of the Simpsons) When you surround yourself with industry folks and events, you'll realize just HOW MANY people want to be composers and how talented everybody is, so just being a good composer ain't gonna cut it. Meeting like minded folks and working professionals opens your eyes to what you're up against... suddenly, I realized that I wasn't as good as I thought, and it made me work harder because of it.
the industry cats will tell you, DON'T COMPOSE EVER... and mean it. They have good reason to say that... most people are wasting their time. Either because they don't have the willpower to keep on going year after year or because they're not the type of people that know how to make lasting impressions on people. Now if you still don't believe that, then the next piece of advice I've gotten from composers like Michael Giacchinno and his team, Alf Clausen, and other big time composers goes something like this... "compose 2 minutes of music everyday". For a lot of composers that could take up to 2-4 hours (considering the recording aspect and the mixing and mastering process as well)
2) make friends with directors and producers. this one is a no brainer. you have industry friends, they hook you up.
3) go to social dynamics school... okay there's really no SCHOOL for this, but just like the article said, most people live in their caves. go out and adventure... practice talking to people. Learn how to make people like your company. It's easier to get gigs when people like talking to you... which brings me to my next point... I don't usually talk about music with a lot of the industry cats. I let my music speak for itself. I do talk about how to crate train your dog... what my travels in Turkey were like... how John Locke was the coolest character on LOST... how approaching women indirectly usually yields the greatest results for guys who don't know how to talk to women... how you could eat pretty much any food and still lose weight as long as it's non or minimally processed... and so on and so forth. Point is, producers, directors, and big time composers hear about music all the time... they get bombarded with that sh*t so they don't want to hear it. When you're warm and interesting enough, they usually open up to you more and a lot of times, you don't even HAVE to mention the music thing and they're already talking to YOU about it instead.
4) there's way more but now I'm rambling and I want to eat scrambled eggs and coffee.
I hope some of this information helps. Honestly, this is a TOUGH market... the last seminar I went to made me realize that, unless you're getting placement after placement and scoring film after film after film, the money is HORRIBLE. However, stick it through, learn to adapt to all types of music (sh*t, just knowing how to Rap got me through a tough feature I just scored), get your a55 OUT THERE!!
Wednesday, 07 December 2011 06:38
Here is an interview with our esteemed leader, Gov. Giacchino! I'm sure his insight will spur us on!
http://www.craveonline.com/film/interviews/178565-michael-giacchino-on-super-8-john-carter-and-mission-impossible
http://www.craveonline.com/film/interviews/178565-michael-giacchino-on-super-8-john-carter-and-mission-impossible
Thursday, 01 December 2011 11:38