When the director calls...

[dansouth]

Suppose you get a call from a director who wants you to score his film. Assume that he wants you to work in whatever style you feel most comfortable with. You'll start work in about a month, and you're expected to produce a score within four weeks of the start date. What do you have to do? What legal and contractual issues need to be ironed out? What equipment might you want to pick up, and what equipment (of yours) would you expect to use? What training might you need? What kind of assistants would you look to hire? What else, ANYTHING else, would you need to pull this off?

[Alndln]

I don't work in film but this is what I would expect.Have all the visual segements given to you in AVI.or MPEG if it's window's your dealing with,I heard nothing but horror stories concerning do overs and syn problems concerning external gear.Get your stuff copyrighted,get a lawyer to battle the publishing,get Nuendo or Sonar to work in.Nuendo exports in OMF,from there the Digi translater is what will probably be expected.

[gtrmac]

A lot depends on budget. Legal issues need to be handled by a lawyer. ProTools is the defacto standard but I am involved with Nuendo as a system configurator and I have a lot of faith in the software. In any case having a hard disk video recorder such as a Doremi V-1 is the best way to work using 9-pin/SMPTE sync. I would use this system for composing to picture and pre production. I would want enough in the budget to be able to work in a professional recording studio and also have a Post Production studio handle the editing and laybacks. I would like to have experienced engineers do the engineering so I could concentrate on making music. I would want to be able to hire musicians to play a lot of the parts also. Now if a director would just call I'm ready. ------------------ Mac Bowne G-Clef Acoustics Ltd. Osaka, Japan My Music: [url=http://www.javamusic.com/freedomland]www.javamusic.com/freedomland[/url]

[GY]

The first thing I do is is view some footage (assuming it's shot and in a rough edit stage) or read the script. There's nothing worse then saying yes to a project that ends up being an embarrassing piece of crap that you don't want to be associated with. If you're interested, ask if they have some sort of contract in mind and have a look. Have an attorney take a look. If you need a name, let me know. I prefer to license my music for projects as opposed to selling the rights. This can turn a lot of producers/directors off. That's okay, they just want to have control and screw you anyway. If the project is quality and the music is good, they'll pay for it. I still work from VHS video with SMPTE time code and window burn. Chase the video and record. It's quick. I deliver finished mixes on CD or DA-88 with SMPTE. I hope this helps. Good luck Dan and keep us posted!

[gtrmac]

VHS with an audio track used for SMPTE is an alternative way to save money. A lot of people use this method I think.

[David R.]

Totally depends on the budget and size of the studio producing the film. When I scored a short film, they gave me a copy in Quicktime which imports into every program I am aware of. Made life easy. Talk to the director and ask what they have been using for temp scores to give yourself a direction to go in. Software/hardware - depends on what you have and know how to use. Good luck. -David R.

[Anderton]

Here's something interesting. I don't think it's a trend just yet, but it may be a sign of things to come. When I first started doing soundtracks with a particular producer, I started doing the usual thing - time code, sync up, etc. But this guy also happens to be a musician. Over the course of several movies, he started to hold off on editing until he had the music in hand, gave as close an idea as possible to what kind of music he wanted, and cut to the music wherever possible. On the most recent movie, this process went one level further. I essentially gave him immensely long pieces of music (12 - 20 minutes) and he treated it like a music library, cutting and splicing to fit the video. In other words, I was really generating source material more than a "soundtrack." Interesting.