Episode 03: Leggo My Ego

In this podcast episode, the speaker discusses the importance of letting go of one's ego in film music composition. They explain that while they write the music, it is ultimately a collaboration with the client's vision as the main influence. They emphasize the need to accept criticism and trust the process of collaboration. The speaker also mentions the problem of self-publication and the benefits of receiving criticism from others. They highlight the value of feedback from focus groups, especially in student film projects. Additionally, the speaker suggests overscoring the project and being open to changes and cuts in the music. They provide suggestions for including key details in a contract to establish clear expectations and communication methods. Overall, the main message is to embrace collaboration, accept criticism, and be adaptable in the creative process. Hi there, this is Karl Irwin, and this is Spotting Cues, a podcast for the amateur and hobbyist film score composer. We're going to look today at a really hard subject to talk about, and more so a hard subject to get one's brain around, and for a lot of composers that get into doing media composition, really any kind of client-based composition may take some time to really wrap their heads around, and more so wrap their egos around, and this is really what the episode is about. Let go of my ego. So what I want to talk about is the manner of the music that is written for a client. It's not really, at least I can say in my case, and I can really only ever speak for myself, it's not really my music. It's not really my music, and I have found that that's a really, really important conclusion to reach in order to do healthy work in film music. It's not really my music. The music can't avoid my fingerprints and DNA, that's for sure, I'm the one writing it, but ultimately the voice that is found in the music is a collaboration, which we've addressed on the previous couple of episodes in some part, particularly episode one. It's a collaboration, but it's a collaboration in which my share is pretty small. I mean, it really is when you think about it. If I was writing concert music that had some kind of influence, I might reason that my share is fairly small in even that situation, because obviously there would be some kind of influence for the concert work if it's that kind of music. I mean, if it's absolute music, and you know, I'm writing Symphony No. 2 or whatever, and it doesn't necessarily have, it's not pointing to anything besides itself, perhaps I wouldn't have as much, wouldn't be as much outside influence, but that's neither here nor there. In the case of writing film music, the influence is quite determined by somebody else's perception and somebody else's messaging. So it's not my music. It really isn't. Again, it's got my fingerprints all over it, but ultimately it is a collaboration in which my share is small. So once you, once you, I think that once you grapple with that, you can feel a lot better about the work that you do and particularly about the criticism that you will get in the process, because in a collaboration there will always be criticism. And because as a film composer, we are much more a client, I'm sorry, they are much more a client to us than we are to them, the filmmaker, I think it's really important to accept criticism. We're not in much of a place to offer criticism on the film. There may be very minor opportunity when solicited to describe our feelings about the state of a picture or a scene where you can share some criticism. But in general, I find that that doesn't happen very often. The criticism really is for them to give to us as they are the client, meaning the filmmaker. Now, you need to trust the process of criticism, though. I found this over time, but it's better to just trust the process and understand what the process is. I want to point out the problem of self-publication, particularly whenever self- publication is done in a vacuum. I have other hobbies and other interests, and this is completely unrelated to music, but I'm actually an amateur magician, close-up magician. I do some close-up magic, I've been doing it ever since I was a kid, and I've published in this area on some pretty big markets and websites for magic. And some of my material that I've created is being performed by magicians and mentalists around the world. I've done my share of some sales in that arena. The problem, though, I've discovered not only in my music for film, but also in there is that the problem of self-publication is real. Because I'm alone in my publication, I don't have always the greatest benefit of criticism. Whereas if I was working with a firm, with a group of people, and I had an editor and I had someone looking over my shoulder and I had a focus group looking at what I was doing, my publication would be better than it could ever be when I'm doing it myself, right? And I've just found that to be true, that more- and we're not talking about having too many cooks in the kitchen because that can be an issue, too. But when you do have other people giving criticism, we ought to embrace that and be quick to accept it and listen closely and try to discern the good criticism from the maybe less useful criticism. Now, in the case of student film composition, the one thing you want to remember is that more often today, student films are being shown to classes in progress, right? And they're getting feedback from classmates in the studios or in their classroom environments. And this is a very good thing. It's like having a weekly focus group to tell you what needs to be done. So when you get criticism on the score that is coming from a focus group situation like a class environment, you really want to listen to that. Certainly, as I mentioned an episode back, a couple of episodes back, there can be some of that sophomoric mentality and just, you know, trying to find problems just because one feels like they have to find problems in a collegiate environment or a school environment. But in general, you want to trust that process of that focus group kind of criticism and pay close attention and be quick to respond to it, not in a defensive way, but in an adaptive way. I find that that is very, very useful. Remember that if you were doing this on your own without any kind of criticism, you probably would be much more likely to be blinded by your own ideals and ideas and really get it wrong. So you want to listen. You want to listen closely because there's a lot of eyes that are looking at these projects, again, particularly in student kinds of film projects. Another thing that you want to be ready for in terms of your ego is to be ready and willing to overscore the project. Be ready and willing to overscore the project, to write more music maybe than what they're asking for. This is probably the best opportunity to give your opinion. It's not necessarily done verbally. It's through the work product that you do. You can put out maybe a cue that goes a little bit beyond or runs a little bit ahead, or maybe you run some music over a montage that wasn't necessarily asked for, or you can sneak in some scoring under a dialogue scene that wasn't necessarily solicited. And you can just say, hey, you know, I was looking at the scene and I did think about this and I just wanted to make sure that you, you know, had had some choices. But always with the understanding that it's not necessarily going to be used. So be ready and willing to overscore. But more importantly, when you do this, also allow, be ready and willing to allow even a larger margin than what you've provided that wasn't asked for. If you're going to be, you know, giving some unsolicited material, be ready for stuff that was asked for to be cut because that happens quite a lot. They ask for a sequence to be covered. You provide the music. You put a lot of thought into it. You provide it and then it is either cut or reduced or edited short or it's covered up by other elements. You know, there's the other soundtrack elements that are going on in there or whatever else or other sound effects or other kind of atmospheric effects that might be added by the editor. That can happen sometimes, too. Be ready and willing to allow that to happen and just understand that that is OK. That is their vision. It's not your film. Right. Be ready and willing to do that and be very comfortable with it. Don't let that be a big concern for you. And there is some, there's a couple of things I think you can do to really offset any kind of anxiety over this that I'll get to in a moment. But just at just as a general principle, be willing to let stuff fall to the cutting room floor. Here's one thing you can do, I think, that can help alleviate the anxiety about this. There's usually these days some kind of contract that's drawn up. And if the filmmaker doesn't ask for one, maybe suggest one. And some things that you usually include in a contract, these are not terribly binding things, but they have some elements that I think that are important. Things that are important, I think, in a contract is very basic things. Deadlines. You know, what is a deadline? When do you need to have material done? When do you expect to have, you know, what interval of time between a request on material that's provided? Do you expect, you know, what kind of time frame do you expect to have a return on that request? What are the deadlines for picture lock? When is the picture going to be locked or scene going to be locked down? And how much time will I have after that lock to make adjustments or write new material? That stuff should be kind of outlined very basically. You know, there should be a calendar of events, an itinerary that should be outlined. I think that's very important. You know, simple stuff in a contract. What format do you want the material in? You know, what is the sample rate you want this in? Do you want it in 441 or do you want it in 48? What, you know, what kind of wave form, what kind of a file format? Do you want it in WAVE? You know, what do you want? Those things matter. Communication methods. Are we going to be communicating through email? Are we going to be having meetings with some regularity? Are we going to meet every week, every month? How quickly do you expect, do we expect each other to reply? Should we expect, a common one is the expectation of a reply of some kind, even if it's just to acknowledge that our message was received within 24 hours or 48 hours. That's very important. So people don't get the wrong impressions and feel left hanging. Those are things you might want to outline. But here's something that you probably should advocate for. You want to keep your rights, particularly for these student kinds of films, right, or low budget, no budget, especially no budget films where you're not trading anything. You want to keep your rights on the music. That doesn't always work in the professional world, obviously. But in this case, I think it's fine for you to keep your rights on the music, that the rights belong to you, but you are licensing the rights for the filmmaker. And here's the key, that they are limited in their rights to use the music for this particular project. That is the limitation of their rights on it. They can obviously screen the movie anytime they want. It's their film and they are licensed to have the rights to the music for that film, but only for that film. I think that's very critical so that you're not writing a bunch of cutting room floor material that sometime down the road the filmmaker will just could possibly just use or share and put on some other project without asking permission or getting credit or giving credit. So make it clear that, you know, the stuff that doesn't get used, it's not it's not used. That's the end of its life as far as the filmmaker is concerned. They can only have the right to license the music which you retain rights on for use in this project. That should be spelled out in very simple terms. Right. And by retaining the rights, the benefit here is that you can optionally give the music a life apart from the picture. Right. By retaining the rights, I can take all this cutting room floor material or even the material that gets covered up inside the film. And if I choose, if I want to, if I find that this music has value apart from the picture and it's something that I think points well to my skill set as music alone, which we'll finish up here in a minute on this relatively short episode, or or just as an album of music that points to the picture itself, that that this music that I have, if I find it has worth, I can rearrange it. I can put it into an album order. I can mix it with music that did get cut. I can I can make a project of my own out of this because the rights are mine to do so. That doesn't mean that I can show the film. There's other rights that they should probably claim. I know a common thing that I see lately with particularly student projects is because a lot of student projects, they want to have the option to put them into festivals for consideration. And usually they'll put a limitation that the film cannot be screened by me or anybody else working on it for credit as an example of credit for at least one year without permission, without explicit permission, because usually festivals will require that, that they that they have exclusive screening or something like that. So they have their own rights on the film. You have your rights on the music. I think in this kind of hobbyist, amateur sort of setting, it's perfectly acceptable to claim those rights and keep them. And that can be very freeing just in terms of the anxiety that can be created with a cutting room floor material. It's still your music. It still has context to the film. It can be distributed by yourself with that context in place apart from the film. And it can be rearranged and it can be improved and sequenced in a more listenable way as music unto itself. And that that I think alleviates a lot of anxiety, just knowing that you have that possibility that the music isn't just going to go away. You're not doing a lot of work that doesn't get any use. And you know that it isn't going to be abused if you put those stipulations in there. Now, this comes to just a quick little discussion to kind of close out this subject matter about ego. I'm not trying to, when I do film projects, I'm not trying to necessarily do the very best that I can do for my own sake. I'm doing the very best that I can do for their sake, the sake of the filmmaker and to their end. If I'm writing music for myself that is going to be of a quality that I am proud of as music by itself, that's different. That's a different kind of music and it comes from a different place, I think. There's a lot of talk for composers. I get a little bit on a soapbox. I don't want to get too soapboxy on this podcast. I do have very strong opinions about a lot of different things, even about film music. But I don't really want to, you know, get into that. But I will say this, I don't find that film music, commercial film music, is a terribly great place to get inspiration from. Obviously, I am influenced by film music and I get a lot of my strong feelings about music from film music, particularly that I've been exposed to and grew up with. But ultimately, if I want to find good sourcing, I have concluded, like a lot of other people, that I should go to the source of even the film music that I like. And that is really to the classical, romantic and other art music compositions that have been historically created. That's the good stuff. That's the stuff that really is created as music for the sake of music without other cooks in the proverbial kitchen. And it's not serving another layer above it itself. That, I think, is something I find to be quite true. If I really want good influence on what good music does, well-crafted music and what that looks like and is constructed like, I don't want to spend an enormous amount of time analyzing film score. I really ought to be looking more so at art music and the source of inspiration for that film. If I want to look at Americana, and I love Americana, I love that style. I do. A lot of people find it very sicky sweet, you know, but of course, I love the John Williams kind of, you know, Americana that there is in a lot of his films that he's worked on. And, you know, even some of the older James Horner, James Newton Howard kind of stuff. I love it. I love it. I do. I really do. But if I really want to know Americana, I shouldn't spend too much time looking at that. I should be looking at Aaron Copland. You know, I should be looking more at the source of that voice and really want to spend my time there when I'm thinking about writing concert music and maybe even when I'm writing film music. If I'm going for that, if the filmmaker wants electronica and I need to write some electronic music, I might do better to look at the synthwave movement and the composers in the synthwave movement rather than look at other film scores that use electronica. I might do better to do that, not only for the music that I may choose to write, but even for the film music. And that's just a piece of advice I've found to be very true. Think of it this way. It can be like creating a carbon copy of a carbon copy of a carbon copy. And honestly, if that's where I'm getting my influence, I really shouldn't be too proud about what I'm doing. I shouldn't have too much of an ego on it because, you know, my influence is really somebody else's influence from another source entirely. Just a little bit of logic for you to consider as you're kind of finding your own feelings on this. Everyone's going to kind of differ on where they come down. But anyway, yeah, check your ego at the door and don't be so quick to feel bad about the process. Be quick to embrace it, particularly the criticism side of it, because there are other people looking at it as a film. We have a very difficult time just, you know, just like the actor has a difficult time looking at the scene from the perspective of the director. Actors often have feelings about what their quote unquote their character should or shouldn't be motivated to do. But ultimately, it isn't their character. It's the character of the writer and the director. Sometimes they'll advocate for what they want and sometimes they'll sway the director to get it and sometimes they will not. Ultimately, I think it's good for an actor or any other person, the cinematographer, anybody else involved in the collaboration to ask questions first and then formulate opinions second. I think that's very, very important. So let go of your ego. Make sure that you're willing to overscore, let some of it fall away and let even a larger margin fall away. If you're going to try to influence, put your opinion in there in an influential way, wait to be asked or very subtly submit alternative cues and say, hey, I was thinking about this. I just wanted to give you another another idea that kind of fits the way I think of music vocabulary. You know, there's been a longstanding suggestion out there, even in commercial work, that you can write more than one cue for something. You write the one they ask for and then you can compose the one that you would do and submit both. Say this is what you asked for. But I was also thinking about this. I just wanted to make sure you had an opportunity to weigh this, but be willing to let it go. Right. Be willing to let it go and do your best work for both. I think that's another good piece of advice. Make sure that you don't do what they ask for to the bare minimum and then put your best work into the thing that you think you deserve because you don't really deserve anything. Not really. OK, put your best work in what they ask for. And if you want to, put your best work in the way you see it and offer them the option. I think they like to have options. Right. The last piece of advice I'll leave you with is if you find that your ideas are often being turned down, stop offering them, obviously. It just isn't going to be a good working environment if you're constantly appearing to be jockeying for your way. So just a few thoughts on on the ego side of things. Be quick to let go of your ego. Spend your time. If this is a problem for you, you find it very anxious. Maybe this isn't the kind of music work that you should be doing. Maybe you should be doing a lot more of your own music composition. But honestly, I have found it very fulfilling to do work for a film knowing that some of it isn't going to get used, but it's mine and I can always re-sequence it, make it more of an album type rendition. And I can release that digitally and get that, you know, allow that to be heard. Be quick to share that with a filmmaker later. Say, here, I put all this stuff together in a nice, neat package and here it is. I'm gifting it to you. This is your copy of it to listen to if they want. So there you have it. Those are my thoughts on the ego side. In the future, we're going to be spending some time down the road looking at more specific tactics to composing more specific types of music and specific scene situations. I know one recommendation that popped up early on the social media forums that I posted this podcast to was a question about scoring underneath dialogue. You know, how do we deal with that, particularly whenever you're dealing with a low budget, no budget movie or a student film where the production quality is going to be of a certain limitation? You know, the acting quality will be of a certain limitation, all the rest of the elements. How do you write music for that kind of level, particularly in a dialogue driven situation? You know, how might this be a little bit different and where might there be some other considerations to make when writing music for those? So we'll look at things like that. If you have any ideas, please send me a message either on the YouTube channel, which is Karl Irwin Music, or you can hit me up at the forums where this has been posted. Anyway, good luck with all of that and happy composing.