Whoever does the work of choosing a composer might be tempted to select someone simply based on the composer’s music. This might not be the best criterion. Certainly, you want to consider a composer’s musical tastes and skill, but simply listening to a demo reel gives you no idea of how well the music served as a score. You will also get no idea of how well you can communicate with the composer, or how tuned in that person might be to the themes and ideas within your piece.

Before you make any decisions, you’ll need to show your picture to the composer, discuss ideas, and see how well you can work together.

Today, composers are typically given about six weeks to write a score. While most big-budget films devote 1.5 to 2.5 percent of their budget to a score, low-budget films can often come in much lower. If the composer likes your work, she might be willing to work for much less.

In addition to paying your composer, you might need to pay the musicians required to record the piece, although sometimes the cost of musicians is included in the composer’s fee. If you were imagining a full orchestral score, remember that you’ll have to pay all the people in the orchestra. Many composers can cut production costs by using synthesized instruments or synthesizers augmented with a few acoustic instruments. You’ll need to discuss production costs with your composer and try to determine what type of music you can afford to record.

Do It Yourself

If you’re thinking that you might like to try your hand at composing your own score—or maybe you have some friends who you think could do a good job—remember that composing for the screen is not as simple as just sitting down and writing a song. Not only do you have to compose to achieve a particular narrative or emotional goal, but also, depending on the edits of your scene, you might need to compose with the intent of having certain movements, motifs, or beats occur at a particular time.

In addition, you’ll need to compose with the understanding that your music will be competing with other sounds. Remember, your score is meant to complement and assist in the storytelling process. When composing, make sure that you are supporting the other audio in the scene. For example, a scene with many young children talking on a busy playground would not be well served by lyrical, high-pitched violin music, as the violins might be too close to the timbre of children’s voices. When mixed with the natural sound, your music would only serve to muddle the sound and make the scene less intelligible.

Halfway between composing and canned music are programs like Apple’s GarageBand and SonicFire Pro, which let you string together prerecorded loops to create original tunes (see Figure 15.13). Far superior to straight canned music, loop editors let you craft songs that exactly match the cuts in your movie. In addition, some of these applications also let you record live vocals or instruments over your sequenced loops.

342 The Digital Filmmaking Handbook, 4E

Figure 15.13

Loop editors like SonicFire Pro let you easily create soundtracks that exactly match the timing of your edited picture and provide an interface to help you purchase and download library cues from the Internet.

Fix It in the Mix

As we’ll discuss in Chapter 18, when you perform your final output to tape or film, you will also perform a final, finished mix. Although your final mix will give you the chance to balance your audio levels, and equalize your tracks, don’t think that you can just wait and fix any audio problems then. It’s best to try to get your audio as polished as possible during your sound editing. This will make it easier to identify any problems with your audio, and will make for a shorter (and possibly less-expensive) mixing session when you create your final output.