Film Cue

Constantly shifting tempos, holds in musically unusual spots, variable time signatures including 3/8 bars, 5/4 bars, etc., etc.. It's deep. Constant tempo music is the enemy of film. Now....it's not that you can't do that, but it's not how film composers work. There's an art to hitting picture. Knowing when to hit, when NOT to hit, getting things to start, change, and end correctly. It's serious.

For just a a few small scenes, find the spots where the music needs to “hit”…the places where it needs to sync and highlight what’s happening on screen. That’s your end point, now work backwards and find your starting point.

Ive only scored a few short films, and it was way harder than I thought. Good luck, it is fun.

I'm no drBill but after a decade away I did recently tiptoe back into music for picture with some cues for various episodes in a series. I agree with all that's said above. I tackled my scenes by grabbing effective stingers to use as markers, and as mentioned above I worked backwards from there, only thinking of mood and ignoring constant tempo and bars. Funny thing is once I built it up it all felt natural and you wouldn't notice all the odd musical changes.

I should also mention what it's like from the other side. I was editor, mixer, and SFX on a recent project and the composer, while musically amazing, was a firmly old school guy. He couldn't keep up with the pace of changes as he didn't work in a way that facilitated this. After continuously chopping and manipulating his music up to make it work I finally gained his trust enough where he'd just give me stems so I could make the cues to the producer's liking. Wasn't an ideal situation but we got by. However, the project immediately after that for the same production company used a different composer who was used to the pace and we got to the finish line with much less stress and a better product.

Film scoring and commercials are pretty radically different. At least the majority of the time. Music for picture is also quite different from film scoring. By nature, film scoring flows, it stops and starts, it changes up, it makes radical transitions - then - there's the emotion of the music itself which can almost come secondary. Most commercials these days are more akin to songs than they are to film scoring. Now, to add in the availability of film re-edits to be done literally during remixing on the dubbing stage while final audio is being assembled and it's a madhouse. Crazy town.

Film scoring is really more akin to art and math than it is to traditional music.  Traditional musicians almost always fail to see that the music is secondary to the film.  They think that their music is what is important.  It took me a couple of decades to finally learn that.  Making decisions that "hurt the music" from a traditional perspective, while making the film shine is what scoring is all about.

And yeah, re-writes are not a possibility.  They are an absolute fact.  If you're not getting paid enough to keep re-writing until the film is up on the big screen, then your agent (or you) screwed up.


PS - I left Hollywood for good almost 10 years ago and never looked back.  I still do mostly music for picture, but I rarely score films anymore even though I love the work.  Directors, producers, music supervisors - they don't have a life, only live for their beloved film (which is often a POC/S), and have no sense of other peoples lives and schedules.  They don't even break for Christmas or New Years or ??  Fill in your favorite holiday.  The industry is totally messed up, and music is of course on the bottom rung of the ladder where the movers and shakers scrape off the $#!% on the bottom of their shoes....  

This is a fascinating thread, folks. Thanks for the 5 minute education.

Haha!!  Indeed!   . I didn't want to say it out loud.....  LOL

Maybe - or maybe not.  What are you writing?  

Dramatic underscore?  You might be hosed unless the editor cut to a specific tempo'd piece of music or it's a more modern approach to the edit - i.e. rhythmic driven and not dialog or picture driven.  At which point, all you might need to do is find that tempo, and you could be 90% there.  

Source cue?  ala music that's happening outside the drama - i.e. DJ spinning discs at a party, band playing in a club, Muzak in an elevator, etc..  Most of those types of cues are just like writing a "song", and it's often detrimental emotionally, or perhaps I should say kinda amateurish or a little to "on the nose" to "hit" picture cuts.  Although sometimes these types of cues put one foot on either side of the spectrum - and although "technically" source, the director still wants some dramatic cuts to happen.  But it's not like underscore where it's like a romantic slow dance between picture / dialog / and music.

So.....Good luck!  What's the worst that can happen?  Key into what the director wants.  That's where the money (figuratively and literally lol) is.

Yes - and when it comes to all things "audio", music is at the tail end of the rest of the audio.  Following ADR, Foley, SFX, etc..

That's where tempo changes are handy. Also, you don't have to be a slave to 4/4 time. And when you mark out sync points, it's not hard to line 'em up and knock 'em down. The hard part is making the audience feel the right things.

Yes, film scoring is its own distinct skill set. Sometimes, the best composer will NOT be the best at scoring; a lesser talent might be better able to understand the challenges, and produce a better overall result. It’s a very complex and subtle problem, the way sounds and images affect each other.

My favorite film scoring anecdote: typically film scoring is done last, and in recent years the director just want mild variations of the temp music — meaning, minimal creative input from the composer. In 1968, composer Toru Takemitsu was given the film “Double Suicide” (dir. Masuhiro Shinoda) to score. Takemitsu (a well-established contemporary classical composer before his work in scoring) sent the film back to Shinoda and told him he couldn’t score it because the editing of the finale was bad. Amazingly, Shinoda respected Takemitsu so much that he actually went back and re-edited the film, and thanked Takemitsu. The Takemitsu score for the re-edited version is brilliant, and the film is regarded as Shinoda’s best.

(Think about that, the next time you’re asked to replicate temp music…!)