#4

When to hire a composer

So you’re thinking about hiring a music composer for your project and don’t have much experience with that kind of collaboration. You might have wondered “when should I get one?”.

The answer is… it depends!

Do you have the budget to hire a composer earlier? Or, as Benjamin Pracy suggested, are you able to rebalance your budget to include original music? How much music do you need? How much time do you have in total? How essential is it to the storytelling?
All of these determine when and if you should be looking for one at all.

However, for now let´s look at the perks of hiring earlier vs hiring later.

Earlier

We enjoy being brought on board early on so that we can really get into the story and understand all its nooks and crannies because it allows us to make deeper and thought out musical decisions in the story and also have time to test ideas out. This will allow you to spend less time thinking about the music’s details because the composer is testing them out alongside you, without the need of using temp. tracks (already licensed music used temporarily on projects for the purpose of getting a feel of how things will look and sound like in the end).

Hans Zimmer famously wrote hours worth of demos just for the Joker’s theme. Check out on the video below at 1min55sec:

In the game Pathless, Austin Wintory (Journey) took 2 years to solidify the music concept for the game. You can hear him discuss this at 8min53sec in the following clip:

Essentially, bringing a composer on-board earlier allows you to:

1. Help identify the project’s colours and style in good time:

   Asking a music composer to rewrite a cue is usually due to the following factors:
   1) the emotion is not where you want it to be yet
   2) the cue doesn’t acknowledge something on screen
   3) structure - you might want the music to reach a climax or subdue at a specific point - and/or
   4) style, that is, something is off on the tone and colors of the music and you don’t know quite how to put it.
   1) 2) and 3) are in my opinion relatively easy to adjust. However, I have found that whenever rewrites are hard to get right it usually has to do with 4).
   By allowing time to find the style and colours of your project, you have removed a big obstacle out of the way and made the project easier for both you and the composer later down the road.

2. Come up with an unique concept:
   You will have the time to trial and error different ideas and slowly discover not only what you want but also what you don’t want and you will be able to avoid resorting to formulaic solutions.

In addition, just as you know how a scene should look, having in mind how the music will play out might help you plan your production. The “Brams!” , made famous by Inception, started as a plot point in the script where they made specific references to that sound.

Later

Most of the time, we composers experience a lot of projects where there isn’t much notice. We understand that productions get delayed, which therefore might tighten the time for post-production. Or that you had to prioritize other elements of the video game production before deciding to get a music composer involved. This is understandable and composers will do their best to provide you with the best score with the time and means available. However, a director should be realistic with their expectations. Whilst it is true that limitations can spark creativity, that is not always the case when the accompanying budget does not reflect the reality of the work ahead.

Having a composer join later means that you should have a good idea of when/where you want music; for what reason and what emotions it should be conveying. If you do not prepare yourself, you will risk discovering it as you go along, when there is less time to allow for revisions and rewrites and part of the job as a composer is to try and get inside your mind to understand how you look at and hear your project. You can hear Academy Award winning composer, Danny Elfman, explaining a bit about that process in the video below (11min27sec to 15min).

Another thing you might end up with is with a formulaic score, in other words, a score that bets on trends and proven comercial formulas. Note that this is fine if that is what you are aiming for - they say that “it’s called a cliché because it works”.

There are, of course, some great collaborations done last minute, or at least that is how this one accidentally turned out to be (didn’t I mentioned before it is common to happen?) - watch the success story below in this interview with the late, Academy Award winner, James Horner (BraveHeart, Titanic, Avatar). This makes me break into a sweat just thinking about it!

Personal conclusion

As a music composer, I enjoy having a balance of projects where there is time to get deep into the story and also those projects that require speed to problem-solve and come up with something quick and efficiently.

Hiring a composer earlier, someone you feel good bouncing ideas, test things out and work as a team is a very rewarding experience and collaboration and helps you get a stronger musical concept for your project.

If hiring a composer late in the process, I do recommend that you spend a bit of time beforehand to figure out what you are looking for music wise (where exactly you want music and why). If you don’t, chances are that you won’t have a clear idea of what you’re looking for and that process of discovery will most likely mean more re-writes from the composer at a stage when time is of the essence. If you are prepared, or if you trust the composer enough to not worry, then this process can also be very rewarding.

“Got it J, so how should I audition a composer?”
That will be in my next post!