Speaker 1: Hi everyone this is Leon Ross and in this video I want to show you some tips and advice on beginning a film collaboration as a composer and some little proven things that have worked for me to get a good collaboration going with a director and a producer. So some great stuff to talk about to start with is okay you've been hired, you've got the job and you have no idea who this person is that you're going to be working with. So I've done plenty of jobs where I jump right in and we start working but that has room for error and some difficulties at times. So what I find works incredibly well is if you can schedule some kind of face-to-face meeting that could be you guys catching up for a coffee, going out for a beer or a lunch, whatever it might be and starting to just have a chat. What notable films have made an impact on you? You know what kind of film music have you been deeply inspired by? Stuff like that. That begins an intrigue by jumping in straight away to talk about the project. I'm thinking these colours or these musical instruments or the director also going okay we have this timeline and it's just too much and it needs to be simplified so that you know who you're going to be working with. So what I like to do is I go hey I'm Leon, it's great to meet you, tell me a little bit about yourself. How did you get into the film industry? Beginning that sort of conversation really helps and then naturally the director or the producer will just want to share clues and concepts about the film that you wouldn't have figured out if it was on a script or if it was on a music brief or an email or something like that. Very very often that initiates the collaboration in a positive way, it initiates things so that you both understand the collaboration style between you and it also shows what style of communication they prefer. Maybe they are more face-to-face, maybe they do require a little voice on the phone to call them up and talk to them rather than just words on a screen. You just go to gauge what your collaborator needs and feels comfortable with and then you can go from there. So okay, you've had that meeting, you've met up with them, they've told you, they've divulged all their inner love for film and why they're in it and the core of what their film is about. Once that's done you should have a fair bit of inspiration actually for the project and for the collaboration and for the people that you're going to be working with. So I like to go straight to my studio after that session. So I'll go off, I'll come to my studio, I'll just sit there for quite a while, let the conversation seep into my consciousness and begin something. I call this a sketchbook. So a sketchbook is essentially a flow of consciousness, ideas that just are erupting from your mind that are all inspired by those conversations you've had. This could be lots of small different colors. Maybe it's linear to the way that the script is written. Maybe it's just abstract things, throwing paint at the wall and seeing what will happen, seeing what sticks. And then from that you're able to not be confined by the linearity of film. We're stuck within the frame. The mise-en-scene is dictating that we need to be within the frame, within the score. The dramaturgy needs to describe what's in the scene or what's the subtext. And so that becomes very limiting very quickly in terms of when you're just getting started. You might not know how to solve this compositional riddle initially. So that's why this sketchbook process is so helpful. So what I recommend is that you go into the studio, you experiment. You can take as much time on any idea. And what that means is that maybe in the film you only have two minutes to explore a theme. You know, the theme can only play for two minutes. But in your sketchbook, you can take 10 minutes or you can take five minutes to fully see and unravel the potential of that musical idea. So some people have this as medleys, conceptual cues or musical diaries. I call this sketchbooks and it's a way of just exploring the full potential of these ideas before you even write a single note to vision. Once this is done though, you can bring the successes to the director and say, Hey, what do you think? And you can try to describe it. Use dramaturgic language, which is like cinematic language. Your director and your producer are not composers or very often they're not composers. And also you're not a director. So you might not know what kind of camera lens is being used in the film and they won't know exactly what voice leading or chord progression or orchestration you're doing. Let's minimize misunderstandings and use a common language between you two. And that's the dramaturgic language. So that's the cinematic word. You will speak in emotive words, words that unifying both of you, that is a common understanding between both of you on a film. So that could be describing the emotion of a scene, the psychology of a scene, things that both of you would be on the same page. Then that gives them also incentive and investment into you as a composer because you have already shown you are deeply living with the film and you are considering what the film is going to be. You've shown your sketchbook. Make sure they know that this is early conceptualizations. Things are malleable. We don't want directors to be giving specific notes on your sketchbook because it's purely flow of consciousness. There are no limitations. The only limitation is your mind. You just go for it as much as you can. If you're involved while they're in production, it means they're going off to film and sometimes they'll use your sketchbook or your material on set for the actors to listen to, to the director to listen to, to get them into the right headspace for the scene they're about to film. So that's really great. Sometimes you'll be brought into a project, what we call the 11th hour. 11th hour of the film is where it's right about at completion. We already have picture lock and we need to get this done and it's down to the wire. We need to work fast. You still took the time to do a sketchbook, great. And then you are suddenly not looking at a blank canvas. When you bring up your film, you have your identity, you have your colors, you have your palette that you're going to choose. You know what kind of tricks and riddles can be solved and used in the film. So that way you can get started ultra fast and get right onto it straight away. On a film, there are normally three stages of film edits that you'll receive. That's a rough cut, fine cut, and there is a picture lock. So rough cut, assemblies. That's where things are coming together. Timing will change. It's all over the place. That's quite challenging to be involved in early on. If you're writing music for a rough cut, that's just because the nature of the edit will change. You may end up chasing your tail if you keep scoring to another rough cut, another rough cut. Try ideas in your spotting session, which is where you demo ideas up and you figure out with the director and the producer where the placements of music will go in the film, where the entry points, where the exit points are. What does the audience need to feel here? We do a spotting session. That can be at varying places of the schedule, and that just depends on the nature of the film production. If the film is already in post-production, there's already a picture lock. You're just having to get straight into it. You will have to do your spotting session pretty fast with them. The great thing about doing it on a picture lock, the timeframe, the linearity, the edit is locked. There is no timing that can be changed. If it's a rough cut, the timing can be all over the place. Time cut, things are starting to align, but it's not locked. I put emphasis on this locked cut because, especially within sound design, you need a locked cut in order to do dialogue editing, things that are sequenced, very dependent on time code. Music is malleable, however, for full productivity and speed on a project, it's better to be involved in a picture lock. Do a spotting session at varying places of the schedule, depending on the project. At the moment, I'm a Box Hill Institute film scoring lecturer here. We essentially have film collaborations with Deakin University and Swinburne University here in Melbourne. What that means is that the composer students that we teach will have the opportunity to actually work on real films with real directors, real film teams from university. They're both on a similar level and they build up together. I've had a lot of professional development through this. On these projects, often the timeframe is very tight, and so the composers will have to be involved in a spotting session all the way in the rough cut, just because there is no time and they have to get started now because there's refinement and you have to get everything already in by picture lock, because picture lock, you have about five days to do it before it gets sent off, reviewed, and then off to a DCP. The students go through a lot to get that in, and there's a lot of different stories, there's a lot of different experiences, but from my experience when I was a student here as well, I built some of my best professional relationships from these films and then those film directors through word of mouth and recommended me onto other clients, and that allowed me to get future projects. Okay, we've done a sketchbook, we've done a spotting session. You can actually use some of the sketchbook in the spotting session to demo up and temp score some of your ideas to test just how it will work, how it will translate to the vision if the emotion conveys correctly to the director. Now you have to do your first score pass. That's where you take your spotting session or your cue notes or your entry and exit points, and that's where you just full on go for it. Your spotting session is really, really important to show you what you'll be actually writing. It will give you a path, and it also will help with the director because the director and producer will feel like, okay, that meeting was of value and now the composer will go and achieve this big thing we spoke about. You would do your first pass. Often this is in MIDI just because you don't want to actually get into a studio like where I am now and record with a full orchestra and then they go, ah, we sort of don't like this idea or we're changing two minutes and we've cut that part from the film. If you've gone and recorded real instruments, that's going to cost a lot, and it also just would be incredibly frustrating for the structure and for how it all pieces together. So what's better to do is to map out your score in MIDI to begin with. Become really skilled in MIDI mock-ups. Make it very realistic, but there are incredible videos even on YouTube that showcase how to create convincing mock-ups, legato techniques, expression maps, multi-mics, layering techniques and things within a mixing and production world that can help. So okay, you do your first pass of the score. Once that's finished, show the director and the producer your work. A big rule that we have is that we always bounce to vision. Another importance, which I covered in a previous video that's up on my Patreon about SMPTE. SMPTE timecode is so critical for our work. It's our universal language and it allows us to communicate through code essentially. This will allow you in your spotting session to figure out your exact SMPTE timecoded entry and exit points. It will also allow you to send notes to a director. And this is sort of where I'm heading. With the first score pass, when you submit it to vision with the SMPTE timecode embedded, you need to send a document or at least some kind of communication with them to describe what you've done, your inner workings, so that they understand your train of thought and they are fully in the same wavelength as you. So what I like to do is a score note analysis where I will submit my score to vision. And then I'll create a document that has SMPTE codes of the cues that I've written for the film. So cue one, 1M01, which is real one, music cue number one, titles, right? We've got to start somewhere, titles. And then you have SMPTE code 01.0000 to 01.01.0000. So that's a one minute duration of that cue and you write it as such. So it's very visible that you have your entry and exit point. And then you analyze what you are doing in that cue. So you emerge from the frosty depths of this icy palette and a solo glassy cello emerges from the depths, evoking an inner coldness of this character's heart. As soon as we see the first footsteps as the focal point of the camera zoom in and focus into the character, we emerge with a swell that grows to the accent point of titles. Boom, titles, accent point at SMPTE code reference, right? SMPTE code reference at 01.00.32, whatever it might be, hit point, titles, main theme or whatever it might be, low contrabass, detuned, describing things, but not only in a musical way, it's actually better to describe it in this sort of terminology I was just saying. You know, words that describe narrative, words that describe emotion. So that's really helpful. And then if you're writing it in that way, they are so immersed in your writing and they read that alongside or before they listen to the cue. It brings excitement to the project. It brings excitement to your role and they trust you more because of this step. Even what I'm describing here could be an in-person meeting or a Zoom phone call or anything like that. As long as you can verbalize your ideas and you deeply understand what the film is about. So that means you need to be living with the film. And if it's a short amount of time, live with it anyway. You need to live and breathe this stuff and understand the narrative to such depths that sometimes you understand it to further extents than even the director. And so when you bring up a point that you've done in the score, some subtle, interesting thing, it could be a concept that the director hasn't considered before and they go, I haven't thought of it that way. That's really fascinating. Let's lean into that idea, you know. That's your score pass, right? We've done one score pass. Then director goes, hey, I love that part. This bit, can we change it? Can we make this a bit slower? If they give notes, I really advocate directors to give notes that are dramaturgic. So in the same way that we communicate to a director in the cinematic language, directors should communicate back to us in that same language. That way they go, oh, it should be slower because the pulling sensation of this character's heart needs to be so slow and aching. They need to communicate in the same way that you do so that you're on the same level there. They may have some revisions and once the revision's done, you go off and make those changes and then you submit score pass two. It's where the score needs to be very close to completion at this point. All the cues should be very polished. They should be sounding amazing. Only to the absolute maximum you can get it to in MIDI and maybe even some solo elements. Ultimately, once we get the all clear from the director that this stuff will stay and that it's safe and confirmed and locked, then you can just go to town on recording. You can do full orchestras, soloists, vocalists, whatever you need and that can really help. Obviously these are guidelines and guidelines can be broken. Maybe a first demo of something, you need a vocalist or a first demo of something, you need a few solo instruments. As long as it's okay to do that with the understanding that it may change, then go for it. Hopefully at that point, you're ticking off cues. They're really happy with it. They're ready for the full actual recording session. Once they're happy, then that's where you take it to this final stage. The third pass of the score is basically the submission. That's what I like to think of it as. It's the submission of the film where you're sending off your mixed cues, stems for the sound mix. You're getting it all the way to completion. You may be working with a music editor or a music supervisor, a mixing engineer, an orchestrator and all of these other people. This is really a critical point for that team and it's why a team is really helpful because if you go off and try and do all of these roles yourself, one, it takes time. It's exhausting and you can do it all. Yes, you can do it all but delegating is actually a very helpful task. By working with a team, you're able to oversee certain qualities, certain elements of the production of it all but you're able to still stay focused in your domain. By you understanding how every step, like by you being able to do it yourself means that you do understand every step that is being done. You understand the orchestration. You understand the mixing. You know what plugins are being used or what outboard gear is being sent through. You know what microphones are being used in a recording session. It might be an AEA ribbon mic or it might be C414s or a U87, whatever it might be. You need to be able to be on the same page as the people that you're working with. That is the same for in a film. You need to know what your film crew is doing. You need to know what an editor is doing. You need to know what a cinematographer or your sound department is doing. By understanding their roles, it helps you actually work better because your work will be informed by their work and that's what true collaboration is about. It's about thriving off each other's collaboration, off each other's passionate creations and additions to a project. So by successfully collaborating with someone, you'll be able to build something that is truly better than what you could achieve on your own. And that's why working with a team is great and that's why working on a film is great because you can reach these heights, these potentials, these worlds of storytelling that you could never achieve on your own within your own thought. By collaborating with these high vision, high concept, really interesting stories, we can really build worlds. So I just want to say a big thank you for checking this video out. I love going on these rants. I teach all my students this sort of stuff. Again, I teach at Box Hill Institute. I teach film scoring and I've taught sound design and all sorts of different departments within music production, mixing and mastering. It's a lot of fun. I've worked with over 75 films in the last year and I've done about 70 to 80 films for myself in terms of short films, features, TV pilots, documentaries, all sorts of stuff. I've also been very grateful to be mentored by an Australian composer that is one of the greatest, George Papaniclou. I have all to thank for George. He has really shown me how to understand the inner workings of a film, how to collaborate, how to communicate with directors and the vision of it all. So anyway, I want to say a big thank you. I have Box Hill Institute here to thank. I was a student here, now I lecture here. I do studio technician work where I help make sure that these studios run smoothly. I help students co-run the sessions and help make sure all the gear and all the music studios are working with software, hardware, everything. I'm going to be continuing to make some of these videos where I show the inner workings of how to work on a film as things I've taught my students before. I hope they're of value. My hope of all of this as well is to share valuable information that helped me grow as a composer and hopefully online this can help you as well. Thank you so much for watching this video and I can't wait to see you in the next one. All the best. Bye.