Networking: for the Film & TV Music Composer
Knowing who to contact is half the battle; but as important as this information is, it will come to nothing if you don’t present yourself and your work properly.
Firstly, how do you even get to speak to these people ?
Let’s look at the path the Composer would take.
…for The Composer
There is a fundamental difference between how a Composer should market themselves and how an Artist or Songwriter with pre-existing material should market themselves.
A Composer is hired to realise the musical vision of the Film/TV project – the Composer needs to be aware they are being paid to do a job and if they disagree with the directions given, beyond a certain level of constructive debate, they must concede and undertake the work that is required of them.
On one level, this may seem like an unappealing scenario and goes against the very self-expression which leads to creating music in the first place. However, the spirit of teamwork, not to mention the potentially perfect marriage of music with pictures, brings its own high rewards.
The teamwork the Composer-Director/Producer relationship demands requires great personal skills, so the Composer should make it a priority to start networking with those people from the non-Music world discussed on page 11.
For the beginning Composer with few credits to speak of, whilst it not impossible that they land a major Film or TV score, it is safest to assume they need to “work their way up the ladder” in the time honoured tradition. Therefore, they should go where the beginning Directors & Producers go.
In the USA this would include organisations such as AIFFP (Association of Independent Feature Film Producers) and in the UK this would include PACT or NPA .
Despite the huge advances in telecommunications over the past decade, unfortunately the Composer will still be disadvantaged if he does not live in a centre of Film & TV production. In the USA this would be New York and Los Angeles, in Canada it would be Vancouver and in the UK it would be London. It is not impossible to get good-quality work outside these regions but the vast majority of post-production tends to be done there, making it an ideal base for the Composer (who does much of his work during post-production).
Therefore, to avoid potentially losing work by being known as living “out of town”, there are a number of services that can be used to avoid letting people know – such as voice and fax mes-sages which can be received on a normal telephone number but transferred via the Internet or a non-geographical number. You could also rent a PO box or use a mail forwarding service.
Agents
It is an early goal of many new Composers to obtain an Agent at the first opportunity. Principally, this is because the Composer believes the Agent knows “everyone” in the Film & TV world that is worth knowing and work will therefore be much easier to get.
The truth of the matter is, whilst a good agent is definitely someone worth having on your side, a good agent will be unlikely to work with you until you have a good resume and are therefore already generating regular business for yourself anyway. Agents are business people who earn their living by taking a commission from the fees they earn for their clients – it is not their job to take a Composer with little in the way of credible or “top-drawer” work and elevate them to the echelons of Hollywood.
There are many, many more Composers looking for Agents than there are Agents looking for Composers.
That being said, Agents would not exist if it wasn’t for Com-posers and the music they create, so obviously there may come a time when appointing an Agent is a real possibility. Consider it a long-term pitch and market to them in the same manner as anyone else in this book.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.