@Jeff - Thanks for your input! :) Yes I had to get used to doing this. Problem with this particular situation is that the director finds it very difficult to explain things about music. No, I don't expect him to be a music expert - I'm saying for eg, years ago I worked on a piece and he said it's too "Harry Potter" in style and believe me it had nothing to do with it. So I was left guessing and simply got lucky on the 2nd version I sent coz he liked it.

But I have to admit I'm a bit spoilt - 90% of the time I'm given a brief so I start sketching, then I get the video footage and work to that. But yes you're absolutely right, that on the other hand working with no visuals gives us more freedom :)

@craigb - I think Elfman is way overrated! Just my opinion :) Most of his "awesomeness" comes from his orchestrators / arrangers rather than his musical prowess.

@bapu - Words have to be taken in context right? :) I used it with the same weight if I said, "I hate cold coffee". Actually I quite like this particular director so it could be the Mediterranean temperament that makes us use stronger words than in other parts of the world ;)

@Rain - That's pretty much the time frame I have / had. I need to hand it in this afternoon so the video editors can start working on the visuals so it's ready by Sunday evening to hand it in Monday morning.

Hi,
 
Make it easy ... turn the sound off, go to You Tube and grab a few things ... with a fight in it from any movie, and then a love scene from one of your favorite pornos, ... so you have a minute of each or so, and then ... cut and past the two together so you have this superimposing that ... and what not ... and now define some music for your 3 minutes ...
 
If you did not come up with anything, movies and film music is not for you ... remember that most of this is about illustrating the visual ... so START with visuals ... but take the sound out ... you need to work the mind muscles to help you find some music for it ... you can compare later what you want to do with it, when you listen to it with the sounds ... now you can go back and ... chenge this or that and clean this part or that ...
 
Voila ... if you hate directors, you are in the wrong business, son ... grow up!

samhayman
@Jeff - Thanks for your input! :) Yes I had to get used to doing this. Problem with this particular situation is that the director finds it very difficult to explain things about music. No, I don't expect him to be a music expert - I'm saying for eg, years ago I worked on a piece and he said it's too "Harry Potter" in style and believe me it had nothing to do with it. So I was left guessing and simply got lucky on the 2nd version I sent coz he liked it.
 

 
The best music in film ... is ALWAYS about the visuals. My suggestion is always to start with the visual and do not "listen" to the sound ... because it throws your inner "voice" off with various suggestions and innuendos from the words and visual. You have to visualize these ... directly ... I like to say ... and this is what the great ones ever did ... the Bernard Herrman's, the Nino Rota's, the Maurice Jarre's, Vangelis ... and such ... in most cases, and David Lean admitted it one time, it was the music that forced him to expand the visual sequences in Dr. Zhivago ... so to think/say that some directors are picky ... yeah ... I can tell you what I would like in a scene, but I'm not going to give it to you, because I like the free form stuff and I can ADJUST the camera and moment to suit your music, because you can ALSO create something powerful that can help define the movie!
 
The majority of Hollywood film musicians are a bunch of ... nobodies ... that will never be remembered with the great composers of soundtracks in movie history. Bernard Herrman has been said that he create some off instrument choices together because he wanted to have a laugh with Alfred, because he had absolutely no idea what music could do to his shows at the start ... he learned later!
 
IF a director says he needs this and that ... he then, does not need a "composer" for music for his soundtrack ... he just needs a jingle maker, which most of the Hollywood folks are!
 
You can see, for example, how Xavier Koller used the ECM music in his own Oscar winner ... very different, and you can tell he used the music to define several visuals!
 

samhayman
...@bapu - Words have to be taken in context right? :) I used it with the same weight if I said, "I hate cold coffee". Actually I quite like this particular director so it could be the Mediterranean temperament that makes us use stronger words than in other parts of the world ;) ...

 
Not necessarily. And saying that to Bapu ... will send get him bapu'd really good! Words are NOT, always the important partt of the whole thing, and this is where the music can shine the most! It might be subtle ... and it can add a subtext to the film itself that the director might not have seen or thought of before.
 
Remember, that above all, most film is a compromising thing ... you pretty much have to agree on every thing, so to speak, in order to get things done, but a give and take is always what separates the better music makers from the rest ... you WILL remember the music ... every one remembers the clacking sound and Vangelis ... everyone remembers ... "it's all tears in the rain ... time to die!" ... and if a director has no "ear" for music ... the chance that you will get good work done with that person, is doubtful.
 
Best excample of this is Scorcese ... loves music, was one of the camera folks at Woodstock that gave us priceless images ... and he doesn't know how to use music in his own films ... has no idea ... and it is so Hollywood'ish as to be boring! You will NEVER remember a single piece of music in his films ... because he is music'less as a person. He never sniffed the stuff either just like Clinton!
 
I defined music for the films that I made, from visuals, and some of it came from music. I made a film of the lyrics of Kevin Ayers song "Once I Awakened" and merely gave it a visual with an introduction and an ending ... that blew away the class ... I didn't care what anyone thought and I visualized what I saw in the pieces of music ... I did not give a cahoot to ideas and thoughts ... I merely visualized it all with a camera and went out and shot. THIS is an extreme, but in the end is the best way to learn how to use music.
 
While it was never used, I had, for example, created a whole scenario for the Coffee House Band, that was not understood, or accepted, or perhaps not that serious, and it was a "visualization" that would have sort of come off a typical half satirical  Hipgnosis cover ... and the picture for the "cover" would have been a part of that film ... the film I started to write, had no story, but someone remembered something about a band last night, and all they can see now is an empty stage, lights out in the bar, and someone forgot a single light in the middle of the stage which is the only thing you can see ... off to the side was the subtext story, the janitor was asleep on one stool with his hands on the bar and a mop and bucket on his side, barely seen ... it kinda turned things inside out and made the "visualizer" wonder if this was the janitor thinking, or someone just catching this sight, which, of course, is not important to the visual or the story at all! The whole thing was to be brown-toned, except the lamp barely lit left over on the stage ... that had "color" in it ... for me it was a way of saying that what was on that stage was colorful, and the rest was not as important ... did anyone see it?
 
That's ok ... I have this scripted and I will publish this with 4 other scripts ... with a thank you to the CHB, but no thanks to their appreciation! In fact, they didn't like it! Or get it ... not sure which! I actually cried, because I had written this and created a story board ... but folks that do not "see" visuals or film in their music ... will rarely be able to do good work for the screen.
 
This my recomendation that you just grab 5 films off your shelp with your eyes closed, grag 5 sequences sight unseen, put them together on top of each other, and then take the sound out ... not go add some music to it, as IF you were adding the sound to it all!
 
Nothing, will EVER teach you more ... than to learn to let your imagination go and hear music off a visual .... after all, this is what film is about for the most part!
 
But above all, go look at the Science Fiction films that Bernard Herrman used his music for, and then go compare how his music was used for Alfred ... it is one of the greates lessons in what music is in film that you will ever learn.
 
Lastly ... and I know that yours is about music ... but see a film called "Visions of Light" as it is about ... cinematographers, and there is another beautiful bit in there that will floor you. Ryuichi Sakamoto and David Byrne won an Oscar for music in a film, and David wrote the Eastern music and Ryuichi wrote the Western music! And they readily admit that the visuals made the music much easier ... but then that director was also known for floating all over the place when something he liked appeared, be it an actor, music or anything else.
 
Good luck ... that is a place where the majority of musicians are not worth the hassle. Even Christopher Franke, that created so much movie magic with Tangerine Dream, and had good moments in Babylon 5, never was able to do it right or well in Hollywood. Wrong people! And to boot, when you watch the Babylon 5 series, you can tell right away that most of the directors they used, never knew how to use music at all ... and made the whole thing look cheap and poor and not even close to how good it could be! It was good, but the music was misused grossly 75% of the time!

I think you have missed the point totally Moshkiae. This discussion is NOT about writing film music to visuals but in fact about writing film music with no visuals. A situation that is becoming increasingly more common now especially with library production music.

I have written tons of film and TV music to visuals so I am no stranger to it. And on this point the music is NOT about the visuals at all but rather the music is about the underlying emotion in a scene. One must never forget that.

But I was merely pointing out that a lot of music is created these days without visuals. If you are not aware of this then it is obvious you do not do this stuff for a living because that is what is happening more and more. Of course I am not talking about important films where obviously visuals are the guiding light but an increasing area of music that needs to be produced without them at all and it has to be done fast too.

And as Samhayman has correctly pointed out the directors in these situations are not always great at expressing what they want. So we have to look to other means to get that sort of info. Like finding a movie clip that has the exact situation and listening to the music to get some sort of idea as to what is actually needed.

It would be really cool to see the clip when it is finished if you get a link to it... and if you are allowed to share it here.

Me? I'd just meltdown... 

@rain Do you ever wish you could reach through the phone and grab some people??... but I guess if you don't do the job the next guy will though. Still it would be nice to have a little consideration. In my "real job" I find that real estate people are the same way... they want everything cheap and now.

J

Julien - yeah, I know what you mean. :) TBH, that was the first time in my life - and one of the very, very few times - where I felt completely fed up w/ music. Usually, I regret calling it a day and I go to bed anxious to start again the next day. I'm the guy who sits backstage w/ his guitar after the gig, or during breaks in rehearsals, and keeps on playing. lol

In that case, it was 6 pm and I was already exhausted. I think I took a 90 minutes break/dinner/nap/shower and got back to it. 
When I finally went to sleep the next afternoon, I felt drained and miserable. I think it was a few days before I sat in front of the computer or picked up a guitar again. ;)


But, after all is said and done, I'm glad I did it.

Ok I might have explained myself badly or rather missed out an important bit when I started this thread meant to vent and 'whine' a little. And I never thought it would be taken so seriously either...! 

The reason I said what I said about this particular occasion was because the director had been telling me for almost a month, "We're working on the trailer. Once it's finished we'll give it to you so you can compose to it." Then on Friday he calls me at 9.30pm with a "we need 3mins by tomorrow evening coz the trailer is airing on Monday".

I'm very familiar with tight deadlines. It's just that lately, (luckily for me) I've been extremely busy so this was a case of it being the straw that broke the camel's back.

I'm very happy to work non-stop and have sleepless nights. I do this because I love doing it - and I'm lucky to have a very supportive wife who thinks that the sun shines out of my butt so she doesn't nag at me when I don't go to bed for 3 consecutive nights coz I'm working on something that's very urgent.

Moshkiae, we ALL whine to ourselves and curse directors or whoever but most of the time we keep it to ourselves - we "lump it" as they say.

But just because I said it out loud and made it somewhat public it being a forum, doesn't make me unprofessional and / or inexperienced. I've been doing this for years and actually, most of the time, I work with no visuals at all. And I know some "promises" are made to be broken, especially in the film industry - things are ALWAYS running late. And usually it's the composer at the end of the production line, who has to make up for time lost by others. But like I said, I just vented out a little frustration - it wasn't my intention to have this "i hate directors" taken so seriously! (hence my reply to Bapu).

Yes taking ideas / getting inspired by watching / listening to other stuff on Youtube is what I do all the time.

So... to put cream on top of the cherry :) I get another call very early this morning saying, "Don't obsess too much on the trailer - it's only for PBS sales people to pitch their sales for the TV slot with it." You know... something to show to their potential client buying ad space during the breaks.

Anyway so here's what I came up with. It's UNFINISHED :) so please don't tell me it's a bad mix and whatnot :) I sent it to the editing studio so they can work with it. In the meantime I'll be tweaking and fixing stuff here and there tomorrow. Then just replace audio.

http://soundcloud.com/sam-hayman/trailer

EDIT: As requested by the director by his "a bit of this and a bit of that", the "cue styles" I slapped together are: fight scenes, romantic, mystery, fight scene / end climax.

If you could let me know what you think, I'd appreciate it.

Thanks guys
Sam

The track sounds great. I hope you are talking about only the first 51 seconds or so, that would be my idea for a trailer. (action part that is) 

I would make it more percussive with some big multiple tom hits here and there but as you say that percussive stuff might be in there already but just not mixed right. I want to hear snare drum, orchestral bass drum, cymbal crashes and some of those gigantic multiple tom hits. I usually mix all the percussion first in a cue like this and add all the rest after. Sounds like you have done it the other way around.

They love cutting on sharp big percussive hits and at the moment the track does not really have anything to really cut hard on.

Also try leaving some space hear and there too. Can you drop the music down to almost nothing (silence with reverb hanging and not for long of course) in say 2 or 3 spots. They will love you for that too. But overall, great and you have captured the mood and that is what is important.

Hey Jeff,

You might have missed my edit. Sorry.... director calls it a trailer and I keep calling it a trailer as well.
It's more of a very short clip for TV sales people to be able to show their clients sort of "this is the show, you will want to have an advert during the breaks". This was the director's update very early this morning.

Your advice is more than perfect. And yes it does have a snare in the beginning and at the end. Some timpani too but like I said - it's a very bad mix. Will add the big percs tomorrow as well :)


Thanks again for your input Jeff!

Jeff EvansI have written tons of film and TV music to visuals so I am no stranger to it. And on this point the music is NOT about the visuals at all but rather the music is about the underlying emotion in a scene. One must never forget that.

 
Film ... like any art ... changes all the time.
 
A lot of films, today, are using canned music for this and that ... however, many of those films will rarely, if ever, be remembered for their great music ... because of the one thing that makes it all come together ... there are different emotions in the film that a musician can attach to -- which are not there for the musician to see -- and there are different emotions in the music that the director has not heard to attach to the film ... as what he wants is just on his visual. This is the way of some of the blockbusters out there, and the absolutely horrible music used on them ... that is so canned and copied and tried and boring ... that it does not make, or help the films get better.
 
I, sincerely, doubt, that any of these music folks will ever be remembered or appreciated like the real big names.
 
You are better off finding some kids in film school and attach yourselves to them, and add to their films ... and make it a grouping that has a chance to show itself and get noticed.
 
It's all very mechanical ... folks thinking that a bit here or a bit there will help define "magic" ... and there might be a nice romantic ability and quality to that ... but it is not likely to shine as much as the real thing!
 
Learn from the best ... not the money'iest ... or anything else.
 
This is not to demean or take away from your job ... lots of television does NOT need a composer ... just jingles, and there is a market for that and you can gain some moolah from that ... but if FILM is what you are looking for, this is not prime time TV and is not the soap opera tv ... that only uses jingles, because it is cheaper and you do not have to pay a "composer".
 
But the psychic intensity and quality, suffers horrendously ... and if that is not important to you, I'm ok with that ... but do not think that others believe the same you do because you have gained a few dollars more!
 
This, is, almost, just like what I say, that offends some folks ... there are "musicians" and then there are "artists" ... and the rest is up to you and your heart. There is a place for musicians ... but I can tell you it is not as satisfying as the other place, despite all the horror stories and literature and everything else ... none of us would trade that experience for the moment!