Doing scores for movies, commercial music, etc...

[Black neon bob]

Is anyone doing this on this forum?

Lately i have been getting into movie scores and getting interested in doing tunes/music/FX for commercials, videogames and radio... i wonder how hard it is to get into this kind of business.

Also, is it me or do movie scores, especially orchestral scores sound FREAKIN HUUUUGE compared to album music?

 

[Seizure.]

this is were the money is.. junkie xl aka tom holkenborg is only doing sounds for games now and making GOOOOD money while doing so.

 

[ItsAFugazzi]

Writing music for film and film scores are my main interest, musically speaking. In fact, that's what I spend most of my time doing... Not so much recently though because so far I've only had one job and that was for some internet advert that STILL hasn't been released.

I would LOVE to make money scoring video games, short films, ads, clips.. ANYTHING at all. It's something I really enjoy and to make money from it would be absolutely awesome but as of yet I've found it hard to make hardly anything.

 

[James Murphy]

i am movie score freak, and aspire to compose for film eventually.... i have a huge score collection at this point.... my favorite guys are Tyler Bates (Doomsday, Dawn Of The Dead, Slither, Rob Zombie's Halloween, 300, The Devil's Rejects, The Day The Earth Stood Still, Watchmen), Paul Haslinger (Death Race, Prom Night, Shoot 'Em Up, Underworld, Blue Crush, Rainbow Six: Vegas), Ramin Djawadi (Iron Man, Prison Break, Mr. Brooks, Deception), Marco Beltrami (Hellboy, The Eye, 3:10 To Yuma, Underworld: Evolution, Max Payne), Javier Navarrete (Mirrors, Pan's Labyrinth), Graeme Revell (The Crow, Aeon Flux), James Newton Howard (The Happening, I Am Legend, plus Batman Begins & The Dark Knight w/ Hans Zimmer), John Powell (The Bourne Trilogy, Hancock, Jumper, X-Men 3), John Ottman (8 Legged Freaks, Apt Pupil, House Of Wax), Brian Tyler (Bangkok Dangerous, Bug, Eagle Eye, War), Trevor Rabin (Get Smart, Gone In 60 Seconds), Steve Jablonsky (Transformers, the recent Texas Chainsaw Massacre films, The Island, D-War), Nathan Barr (Hostel, Hostel II, Shutter), etc., plus composers like John Debney, Tuomas Kantelinen, Mychael Danna, Mark Isham, Geoff Zanelli, David Julyan, Clint Mansell, Charlie Clouser, Atli Orvarsson, Alan Silvestri, Klaus Badelt, Alan Howarth, Brian Reitzel, Kevin Riepl, etc.

and i can't leave out my classic faves like Jerry Goldsmith, Richard Band, Tangerine Dream, Philip Glass, Hans Zimmer, John Carpenter, Jerry Fielding, Christopher Young, David Williams, Basil Poledouris, etc..

and the best for last... Danny Elfman (Beetlejiuce, Hellboy II, Darkman, Hulk, The Kingdom, Spiderman, Wanted, Nightmare Before Christmas, Pee Wee's Big Adventure, Batman, Nightbreed, Edward Scissorhands, Dolores Claiborne, The Frighteners, Planet Of The Apes, Sleep Hollow, Red Dragon, Tim Burton's Corpse Bride, Instinct, and a many many more)

My Favorite style these days is the mixture between organic and electronic sound "manipulation/mangling/sequencing/layering" and orchestral.

Film Scoring is very well known to be very difficult to break into.... but it can be done.

Games & Televsion are a bit easier, but still very competitive. it's considered to be the common wisdom that to even begin to break into the biz you need to move to the LA area or to NY. i think this will change over time owing to internet networking advances. we'll see... in the meantime i feed my habit by buying 3 to 6 new Score CDs per month and study everything on the subject i can get my hands on... anyway i'm focusing on production and mixing for the forseeable future.

 

[abyssofdreams]

Hahaha, I was about to write why I don't see any Danny Elfman in it and then you mentioned him
His best one is the Army of Darkness score for me but all of his work is brilliant.

What bout John Williams? Jurassic Park has one of the best filmscores of all time...

 

[Randyisgod15]

Lately I've become obsessed with movie/video game scores. I have been considering a possible deviation from the current Music Industry major I've been pursuing and leaning towards movie/VG scoring, voice acting/dubbing, sound effects, and all that fun stuff. Not that I plan on abandoning the major, but my real focus has been Audio Production (which i'm also minoring in). Sadly my theory and composition skills are not up to par (to put it lightly), so composing a movie score would be a stretch. Mixing/Tracking all the music/effects/voices for film however, would seem much more fitting.

I would be very interested to hear about any of the experiences any of you guys might have had doing this kind of work, and also if you have any advice for breaking into this field. I already live in New York, so at least I have that much covered already heh.

 

[Notuern]

Id love to do movie scores, as i am very influenced by that rich orchestral sound(Which is my goal to achieve in metal too.).
The gameindustry isn't that hard to get into, in fact, if i where you thats what i would aim for first(I'm a former leveldesigner.).

 

[ze kink]

This is something I'm also very interested in, but I do not know how to get into the business either. I've got a classical background (I've played classical guitar as my main instrument for 11 years, nowadays I focus on electric) so I know my theory somewhat well, though I failed the piano playing part of figured bass. I'd really love to make music especially for games, in the vein of e.g. Akira Yamaoka.

My guess would be that making music for such stuff as potentially good games by companies that are just starting out could be a good starting point. The Finnish game company Remedy that made Max Payne had a song made by Poets of the Fall, I think it was in the ending or something? Anyway, the game became very popular, and at the same time, the song by Poets of the Fall became very popular, and I think they nailed a good record deal and gained a lot of listeners because of it.

 

[wishtheend]

Clint Mansell and Philip Glass - HANDS DOWN. Mansell's score for The Fountain actually changed my life, even used some of the songs at my wedding.

 

[GarethSE]

Thomas Newmann

His scores for The Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile and American Beauty are absolutely heartbreaking.
Beautiful shit.

 

[ItsAFugazzi]

Thomas Newmann

His scores for The Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile and American Beauty are absolutely heartbreaking.
Beautiful shit.

As funny as that term is "beautiful shit", I have to agree.

Thomas Newman and Bernard Herrmann are my two favourite composers... Some others would be Alex North and Nino Rota.

Bernard Herrmann is king.

 

[nwright]

I like John Williams and Ennio Morricone...Probably the 2 most visible, but what can I say, Star Wars and the music changed my life, haha. And, The Mission is IMO far and above Morricone's best work. I tend to gravitate towards the more straight orchestral soundtracks over the more modern hybrids of electronic/classical elements.

 

[abyssofdreams]

Thomas Newmann

His scores for The Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile and American Beauty are absolutely heartbreaking.
Beautiful shit.

And Shawshank Redemption was prolly one of the best movies ever!

 

[Chryst Krispies]

What about writing songs for movies/games?

Is there any way to get into that, like where you write rock/pop/whatever songs and just sell them to the movie/game?

 

[Splat88]

I used to write orchestral, pop, and "extreme" (blah) music for a company called Digital Juice. They paid me around $1,500 per track and kept the copyright to the song. Kind of a bummer to lose the rights and it was very hard work. They made you create a full length version of a song, a 60 second version, 30 seconds, 15 seconds and 10 second. They make you go through several revisions before they take the song and it burned me out very quickly. Despite the frustration, it was rewarding to hear the finished product. I actually heard one of my tracks (a kind of smooth hip-hop style track) on HBO in between programs for a Dish Network pay-per-view advertisement for a soft-core porn style photo shoot of girls on some beach. I was stoked.

 

[Metaltastic]

John Williams and the Star Wars music are such obvious choices, but it's one of those things where you're away from it for awhile, come back after hearing a ton of other stuff, and realize that it's still one of the greatest scores ever written (the "force theme" when Luke is looking at the twin suns on Tatooine, DAMN does that still get me). Also, I REALLY like Harry Gregson Williams' work, both from the Metal Gear Solid series (of course ), as well as Call of Duty 4, which actually has SPECTACULAR music.

 

[TheDude]

My Favorite style these days is the mixture between organic and electronic sound "manipulation/mangling/sequencing/layering" and orchestral.

Yep, same here. Have you heard Harry Gregson-Williams (Wikipedia)? His work on "Deja Vu" is awesome.

 

[Youpimatin]

I write some orchestral stuff à la Kurt Wimmer (listen to Equilibrium OST), I just need to arrange and record it...

 

[abyssofdreams]

Yep, same here. Have you heard Harry Gregson-Williams (Wikipedia)? His work on "Deja Vu" is awesome.

Isn't the Deja Vu stuff from Saw?

 

[nwright]

John Williams and the Star Wars music are such obvious choices, but it's one of those things where you're away from it for awhile, come back after hearing a ton of other stuff, and realize that it's still one of the greatest scores ever written (the "force theme" when Luke is looking at the twin suns on Tatooine, DAMN does that still get me). Also, I REALLY like Harry Gregson Williams' work, both from the Metal Gear Solid series (of course ), as well as Call of Duty 4, which actually has SPECTACULAR music.

The Halo series and COD4 probably have my favorites scores of the video games I've played. No MGS4 for me, I'm an XBox360 guy, but I'd be interested to hear the score. From what I've heard of the cut scenes, it should be pretty epic material.