Working with Music for Your Film: How music is used, types of rights, working with your composer, and more… by Myrl Schreibman

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Reference: StudentFilmmakers Magazine, May 2007. Working with Music for Your Film: How music is used, types of rights, working with your composer, and more… by Myrl Schreibman. Pages 30 & 31.

The most powerful aspects of any project rest with music. Music propels the action and increases the emotional risk. It is a powerful and manipulative art form that never needs translation into a foreign language. Music can stretch the soul of a story, tell us when danger is near, or let us know the emotional passion of the characters.

Music is used primarily in three ways in a movie. The first and most common way is as background composition that underscores the dramatic action. It is motivated by the image, plot, or the characters. This kind of music causes us to tear up at the right time when we hear those lush strings in the orchestra, or be scared when the tympani is warning that danger is lurking. It makes our heart beat faster when the shark is nearby, or makes us scream when the knife rips the shower curtain. Background music will tell us when we should laugh or cry at what we see, and it can be dramatic, melodramatic, or overly dramatic. It can be subtle to the action or blatant to the story. It can make a weak project better, or weaken a better project. It can comment on the characters and heighten the dramatic intention of the film. And most of all, it can make a project stay in our emotional system for days after we have seen it.

Music is also used as source material or as part of the story. It might be coming from a car radio as Thelma and Louise is tearing across the desert landscape, or motivated by live musicians as in the opening wedding scene in Coppola’s The Godfather. The second treatment of music involves the use of songs as either source material or background score. Do you remember Sleepless in Seattle where songs were used to underscore the emotional feelings of the characters? Can we ever forget Louis Armstrong’s version of “What a Wonderful World,” played on the radio while seeing the images of killing and destruction in Good Morning, Vietnam? Songs are also used to motivate the characters or the action in a story. What about Tom Cruise in his underwear mouthing “Old Time Rock And Roll” in Risky Business? A classic movie clip!

And finally, songs are also used to underscore main titles, as in the opening title sequence of Mike Nichols’ The Birdcage when we hear “We Are Family” while seeing a night shot traveling over water to a digitally created shoreline full of people. The image then quickly dissolves to a matching live action shot as the image comes down to ground level, moves across a busy street full of summer tourists, through the doors of the Birdcage Nightclub and right up to the performers on stage who are singing the song.

Music is an art form that is creative, and motivated by the project. Even though you will not pay a lot of attention to its need or its use until postproduction, it must be instilled into the vision of the project from the development and pre-planning stages. Although there are music libraries and internet companies from which you can purchase pre-recorded music cues, most background scores are written specifically for a project. Background music licensed from music libraries or through the internet is not inspired by your project, and since it is pre-mixed, it will prevent you from being very creative with your music.

When you use existing music or use music that has already been recorded for another medium, you must acquire certain rights before you can use the work, the least of which is the publishing rights, which are purchased from the publisher, lyricist, and composer of the musical composition. The only exception to this would be music that is in public domain such as classical music. The second rights you must secure for pre-existing music are synchronization rights, which is the right to use the music in timed synchronization with visual images. These rights are required no matter how the project is being used. The third type of rights you need to secure are performance rights, which is the right to use the performance of the artist or artists performing the musical composition.

Of course, if you are going to re-record the musical composition, then you only need to secure the publishing rights. Other fees you may have to pay are re-use fees, or a fee to the record producers or recording companies who manufactured the pre-recorded music. All clearances should be obtained before you make the project. In the event you do not get clearances, you will be stuck! And do your homework carefully. Even a simple song that we sing every year, “Happy Birthday,” has clearances. The tune is an old children’s 18th century folk tune in public domain, but the lyrics are owned by the estate of two ladies who wrote them.

Original Songs

Music for your project should be thought of as having a separate importance to the project. The business of music has its own structure different than the business of the visual medium. Publishing and performance royalties are ascribed to music played on the radio sold in music stores, over the internet and played on videocassette or DVD.

Songs or musical themes that are written and recorded specifically for your project may be used to promote the project or a soundtrack album. You don’t necessarily need to commission a song to be written in order to use original songs. There are many new musical artists and bands that are represented by music agents and managers who will be looking for an opportunity to put one of their songs in a film or video project. They will gladly provide you with the tracks and free synchronization and publishing rights. You will not, however, be entitled to any ownership of the song. If you are creative and find an artist or group who is on the way up the musical ladder, you might increase the longevity and promotion of your project.

Working with Your Composer

Music should not be an afterthought with your project but instead thought about and even discussed with a composer in the pre-production phase, as this discussion will let you feel the project before it is even shot. Although your composer begins thinking creatively during the pre-production stage of the project, the producer, editor and director should, with the composer, view the picture once it is creatively locked, and before it is handed off to the creative sound team for sound design, select the moment that feels like it needs music as underscoring. This is called “spotting for music.” The spotting session is used to discuss the particular underlying intent for specific music cues, to talk through the moments you hope will be enhanced with music, and to hopefully avoid having to tell the composer, “…Maybe music will help this scene!”

After spotting cues for music, the composer begins the task of writing the score, usually working with a computer file, videotape or DVD copy of the project as a picture reference. When the score is eventually completed, the composer should deliver it to you with the lead sheets of the musical compositions and cue sheets noting where each cue is to begin and end. The cue sheets will be used by the person editing the music tracks in preparation for the final sound mix of the project.

Some composers like to have the final creative control over how their music is mixed so they do a separate music mix of the tracks before delivering it to the producer. This practice reduces your creativity during the final mix of the project. You should ask for the music cues to be delivered in no less than four tracks. One track should have SMPTE, Pro Tools, or Video Time Code, while rhythm, melody, and tympani sounds should be separated on other tracks. If the delivered music tracks are separated, you will have more control over the creative intent of the sound during the final mix. If the music is pre-mixed for any scene, you will be stuck with pre-determined levels of musical tones which may fight other sounds that are being mixed into the scene.

Also, new or inexperienced composers sometimes do not have a sense of how a scene will play with their music score, so they might have a tendency to deliver tempos a little slow. The music is intended to play against the picture, and slow tempos will only make the picture feel slower. You can speed up the tempo a bit in the final mix, or you can avoid the slow tempos by visiting the composer from time to time during the preparation process and see the cue played against the picture.

During the final mix, do not be surprised if the composer asks to have the levels of the music raised. Composers are sensitive to their music, and their egos influence them to make sure the audience hears every single nuance they intended in the score. Try to handle these egos with care, as egos can be fragile, and you are building relationships for future projects. Remember, music is one of the last creative elements that you are putting on your project, and it can have a tremendous impact on its artistic, creative and promotional outcome. So approach it as an all inclusive part of your project.

Movies are magic, and they speak to us all. And to quote Billy Joel, “music in itself is healing. It is an explosive expression of humanity. It’s something we are all touched by. No matter what culture we are from, everyone loves music.” So use it well!

Myrl A. Schreibman is a Producer/Director, professor at UCLA Film School, and author of the book, “The Film Director Prepares, A Practical Guide for Directing Film and Television.”

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