FAQ
Film composing is a part of post production often shrouded in mystery. Let me pull back the curtain a bit for those interested in learning more about what I do.
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FAQ
General Questions
Here are some answers to the questions I get asked most or might be of most help to a prospective client.
What I do
Film scoring is a creative endeavor that differs from composing music for concerts because it relies on collaboration with a director/creative team who provides the canvas on which to paint the musical part of the story. Music in a film should serve as an extension of the emotional life of the characters and world. My process is to communicate with the director/creative team frequently to musically support the narrative and character development they seek to achieve. This back and forth informs the themes and motivic content of the score and generally inspires my work. My hope is that the process is reciprocal, and that I inspire them as well.
Writing a great film score is about bringing to bear all the craft one has learned over the years while always remembering to serve the story. It’s also about being open to the feedback of a director at the various stages of the writing process. Film composers also generally come up with musical themes and motifs, which are essentially shorter chunks of themes that can be layered into the action like puzzle pieces as the story calls for them. My process for coming up with these themes and motifs is to identify which characters, places or ideas in the story warrant a theme or motif and begin to work the music until it is flexible enough to express the full range of emotions needed.
When working on the score to Lil Balzac 2 I had to utilize all my best director communication skills while developing a brilliant score that could both support the story and stand on its own as exciting and engaging music. This required establishing a common emotional and psychological language for the main character of Balzac, as the whole story is essentially told through his perspective. My director had strong ideas of Balzac as a sort of hero character even though he is an utter loser and bringer of chaos. By understanding the underlying concept of the character I was able to craft a score that took seriously the emotional journey of Balzac amidst the absurdity of his circumstances.
I help directors find the most direct language to use with me to get what they want from the score with as few edits as possible. Often they will use emotional language or language that gets at the flow of what they are trying to achieve without using music terms. As a composer, I love words and phrases like "can we ramp up the intensity here?" or "more movement," or "bolder," or "get out of the way of the dialogue," or "like a faint cry." These kinds of descriptors are wonderful jumping off points for me to get started. Everyone experiences music differently so opening lines of communication about the music you want in your film will set you up for success when working with Smith Music Lab.
Other Services
I am experienced in mixing and mastering, conducting session orchestras, and recording musicians.
You can find out more about these services here.
I have experience mixing orchestral tracks of my own scores, but I also have experience tracking and mixing vocals. You can see some samples of my work mixing a talented vocalist linked here.
I think being a performer myself endows me with intuitive sense of how to get the best take in the moment when time is money and nerves might get in the way. By tracking a great raw recording from the artist, I preemptively solve many mixing issues that could arise.
Things I do to capture best takes and create top notch recordings include:
- listening to the quality of the artist's voice/instrument and optimizing their mic position accordingly.
- coaching them on addressing the mic properly while also helping them to let go and relax into their natural sound.
- Rehearsing the entire track to set levels that will capture the full dynamics of the performance.
This is a question composers get a lot. Many projects WILL be done entirely in the box (meaning with sampled instruments on a computer rather than with any live musicians) due to budgetary or logistical constraints. With the quality improvements in samples over the past twenty years this is totally fine and I would say that 90% of scores are recorded this way.
However, if you have the budget and a desire to elevate the music of your film that one notch higher, I can't tell you how much even one live soloist can add to the emotional life of a film. There is an irreplaceable quality to a live musician that is hard to describe except for saying that they are as much a character in the story as someone on screen.
If you can afford a hybrid solution (some live elements and many sampled ones mixed together) for your film I highly recommend it because you could get the best of both worlds: the scope of a full orchestra, done with sampled instruments to meet your budget, combined with the emotional nuance and depth a soloist brings to help your film stand out.
Hiring Smith Music Lab
This really depends on the scope of the film score itself. I estimate about 8 hours of time spent to fully score and produce 1 minute of music. This also includes mixing and engineering the music as well as crafting the sample libraries to sound authentic and clean.
When elements of the final product are taken care of by another artist (i.e a live musician recording instrumental/vocal tracks instead of me engineering them with samples, or another mixing engineer mixing the track) my time commitment becomes a fraction of this, but often I'm asked to take care of all aspects of the music production.
When you hire me, you not only get my decades of experience, Smith Music Lab will provide:
- creative leadership
- thousands of sample libraries
- hundreds of audio plug-ins
- use of Logic and Pro Tools
- ability to provide written scores for live sessions
- tens of thousands of dollars in microphones and audio equipment
This question comes up often in the iterative process of collaboration when making a film. Realizing that the creative vision for a scene can morph and grow, we build in two revisions on each cue to allow for some flexibility while we all aim for an appropriate tone and function for the music.
In cases where this is insufficient, we may need to re-negotiate the contract accordingly. Smith Music Lab strives to be as reasonable as possible in these negotiations.
This will vary greatly depending on scope and is project-specific. To help with this conversation it is best if you can tell me:
- what services you need
- how many film minutes you need serviced
- how many times you plan to refine or change the timing of the film (i.e., how many drafts before "locked picture" you are)
- your budget
As a general rule of thumb, about 1 minute of completed score, which includes composing, mixing/mastering, and sample synthestration (orchestration), costs around $500.
As budgets vary from project to project we will always do our best to meet you where you're at and find ways to cut costs when desired.