Film Music Guild provides support for underappreciated art form
Composing for film, like every other facet of the film industry, has rapidly changed in recent decades due to advances in technology, the growth of popular culture and an increasingly independent mindset. As such, it is becoming increasingly difficult for young and talented composers to find success, or even recognition, in Hollywood.
Saturday, Oct. 3 marks the first conference held by the Film Music Guild, a new organization founded by a group of ambitious students at Biola University. The guild has been busy arranging workshops and seminars for those eager to learn the ins and outs of commercial composing while also emphasizing the skills needed to be an effective storyteller.
The guild aims to provide members with the most savvy information that is available to the craft. Topics of discussion at the conference will include the business of music, musical storytelling and modern film composing.
The conference will feature a powerhouse ensemble of speakers including Pete Docter (director of Pixar’s Monster’s Inc and Up), award-winning film composer and editor John Ottman (The Usual Suspects, Valkyrie, X-Men 2), and Christopher Young (composer for The Exorcism of Emily Rose).
David Martina, Film Music Guild president, feels the conference will cement the guild’s place in the industry.
“[The guild is looking to] establish a credible name-brand as a basis to build connections and networks between students and professionals,” Martina said.
Students and professionals alike agree that the business of scoring for movies is a cutthroat one, with jobs for composers as competitive as ever.
Joel Kreimeyer-Kelly, a scoring for motion pictures student, said he’d be “crazy” not to worry about finding work after graduation, and feels like it’s an unfair ratio of network to talent.
“I know some awesome musicians who just haven’t met the right people,” Kreimeyer-Kelley said.
USC professor of Scoring for Motion Pictures and Television Jon Burlingame agreed with Kreimeyer-Kelley’s sentiment.
“There are fewer movies made at studio level today, but more at an independent level,” Burlingame said.
Independent films often offer more range for creativity, but pay far less. Martina worries for the livelihood of the artists acquiring most of these jobs, warning that composers for film are often abused because they don’t have a union to fight for them.
“Composers have no bargaining chips. There are so many aspiring composers, they could be skipped over for someone willing to work cheaper,” Martina explained. “They are entirely at the mercy of the producer.”
Burlingame added that composers are also often under appreciated. Composers are hurt by the fact that “most film critics don’t understand the importance of film music, and therefore almost never mention it.”
According to Burlingame, music also plays a key role in setting the location, mood and atmosphere of the story.
“People think of movies as a visual medium, but they’re not,” Burlingame explained. “They’re audio-visual.”
The emotional component music contributes to film is paramount to the overall success of moving an audience. Strong director-composer duos seamlessly connect the audio and visual portions of the story. Burlingame noted that pairs like Alfred Hitchcock and Bernard Herrmann, who worked together on Psycho, North by Northwest and Vertigo, to name a few, yielded extraordinary results.
But this challenge of collaborating with a director is one of the chief factors that attracts composers to certain films.
“It’s very cool to get their vision across,” Kreimeyer-Kelley said.
And even though the primary goal of the music is to enhance the emotional undercurrent of a story, Burlingame reminds us that “the best film music works outside the confines of the film itself.”
The basic function of music in film, to assist a story and convey emotion, has never changed. And it probably never will, despite the fact that scoring films is done quite differently than it was in the Golden Age. For example, editing was once a much trickier process, involving the physical cutting of film. Now, with the advent of Avid, Final Cut Pro and all the other editing software, editing a film is so easy, it can be done up until the very last minute. This has made it very difficult for composers to keep up with the changes.
“Even the most minor changes visually change what the composer has to do,” says Burlingame.
But Burlingame says technologies have also made it easier on composers. Synthesizers and samplers allow instant playback of ideas and permutations, which enriches the collaboration between director and composer. There’s also a much greater variety in the types of music composed for film than there once was.
“You can take your music anywhere,” says Kreimeyer-Kelly. “Period pieces, techno, ethnic music or orchestral.”
The addition of pop songs, when used appropriately, has also enriched the film music experience.
The most troublesome change for Martina has been the accessibility of applications like Pro Tools and Garage Band. According to Martina, the quality of scores can greatly suffer from the overuse of these products, “over-saturating the industry and cheapening the process of writing songs. People who have studied music have more of a voice than those with just the tools.”
Although the film-scoring business is often an intimidating one, Martina and Burlingame do have words of advice. “Get as much training as you possibly can [in music] — and remember that this is a theatrical profession. Its all about the drama,” he said. Martina feels that unfortunately in this business, “it’s not what you know, but who you know… but don’t be that guy who just wants to give out business cards. Show people that you actually value them.”