Composing : Music Composing for Exposure by Christopher Birk

trades are more than acceptable, and a much more professionally equitable arrangement.

Are you just happy to get your work featured in films that can't pay?...doesn't excite me, but as you can see it does others.

To me it really depends on the project. If it is a film that I really like, and it is well made, I would probably be ok with doing it for free or something on the back end. Especially if I can tell that the other filmmakers involved are passionate and making quality work that I think has a chance to go somewhere.

If it is a short film, I would be much more inclined to do it for free, but features take a lot more work.

I am a bit of renegade - I will score any short for free as long as the music is used once I start delivering (I have an 'agreement' signed by both of us). I have done something like 27 shorts that way so far (6 this year). But again, if I score a film and then you decide to go in a different direction, you pay for the music you didn't use. I charge for features.

I disagree with the ones working for free. First of all they ruin the value of the scores, that is a lot lower than in the past. This value should go higher because the scores are more complex and producers are more demanding, but it's going the opposite for the ones working for free. Second, they indirectly give the impression that "composing music" is an hobby and not a profession, and this ruin the value of our careers, our studies and our talent. There's a lot more I would like to say but it's enough to discuss, I think. For now.

You're problem is an easy fix :)

I think it probably, or hopefully, gets to the point for most composers where it's just no longer possible to work for free. When you're starting out, it's probably important to say yes to almost anything for a bit, but once you start working and once you leave your day job to do it full time, there quickly becomes not enough hours in the day to be able to work for free. When I'm not working on a film, I have to continuously compose and produce music that I can then license out to TV or such to keep up my passive income, and when not doing that, I try to carve out some time for purely musically creative endeavors. It's a tough balance. Sometimes you get things that come your way that you just like and would like to contribute to, even without pay, but you just can't. One also has to be very careful of getting a reputation of being willing to work for free or on the cheap. One can quickly lose the respect of the community that way and then when the filmmakers do have a budget, they then move on to composers who fully charge.

It really has a lot to do with the 'community and the life situation that the crew member is in. As one looks outside the major communities such as LA and NY or even the smaller communities such as Atlanta and Austin (not to mention the communities outside the U.S.), the 'terrain' looks much different.

For example here in Houston (Texas), very few paid features come to town and when they do, very often the film uses local talent for production, but the post production rarely stays unless the producers and stakeholders are local. In the film composing world, Houston has no film specific sound stage that I am aware of - very few orchestras and ensembles --- most of the audio work is done in recording studios used for non-film projects as well.

As far as what is happening in the Houston composing world which may mimick other small(er) composing markets in the U.S. - those who work full time as composers do not earn their predominant money (imho) for film scoring. Two of the most prolific composers here in town (with credits in larger budget features), work in production (for location sound), do corporate and commercial work, teach at local universities, etc. Sure they earn in film music and I am obviously not familiar with every composer in a city as large as ours (4th largest in the U.S.), but based my years of attending local festivals, professional groups, and local networking events, the count of full time composers (earning all or most their money in films) in Houston is probably less than 10.

So most of the actors/actresses/crew here likely have day jobs. Some of those jobs could be connected to film work (actors/actresses work for talent and modelling agencies - some even are prince and princesses at kids parties ! :) - others like me are part of the wedding videography business. Point is, they do not rely on income from the film business as their primary source - I don't.

So then we can address the 'concept' that people who do film here do so only as a stepping stool to something bigger perhaps moving to a larger market. Perhaps - I am sure there are some. But I have also worked with crew and acting people here for over 10 years that are going nowhere - they are happy to live and work here in Houston. I am certainly not planning on going to LA or NY (and I am a native NY'er - born in Brooklyn :) ). Most of my family lives and works here and Texas is a great and inexpensive place to live (if you don't mind the 8 months of heat and humidity and the occasional hurricane).

With that in mind, we can now turn to the question of pay. Would it be nice to get a few hundred or a few thousand dollars for the most common film made here - a short? Yes, that would be nice but clearly with the budgets of a short, a few hundred would be nice but that could be a substantial part of the filmmaker's budget and a large majority (possibly larger) of the shorts made here (and even the out of town ones I have worked on) do not pay any of the crew (except perhaps the screenwriter). In addition, many of the shorts are made for competitive festivals such as the 48 hour film project (we just had 38 teams compete in that last month) or the 168 film festival in Burbank coming up in three weeks (I have two scored films showing) and these festival prohibit payment.

So many of the acting and crew people including myself are involved in our local communities because we have passion about our products and the filmmaking industry and we enjoy what we do and we would rather work at little to no cost than not work at all.

I can not provide myself accurate data, but my experience here has shown that most local filmmakers have never worked with professional composers and either don't use music at all, purchase packages of music online that they have to figure out how to break into parts and place into the film appropriately, or they work with bands or individual musicians most of whom are interested in fame and fortune in the country, rock or jazz genres.

So we can discuss the general issue of whether we believe that people who create music deserve to be paid for their intellectual creations - great idea in concept, but in reality in places like Houston - composers would not earn much money from their creations and could be more interested in participating in a vibrant and close knit community when they are not working their day jobs.

I have now scored 30+ shorts and have yet to get paid for any of them (other than informally through gift certificates and other small items and things of value). And I am OK with that. I do charge for features and any film over 30 minutes.

An equitable professional barter is always acceptable. I've scored projects in exchange for a director cutting my reel together, or setting up my website, or directing a music video for me. As long as I feel respected and valued as a professional, money isn't everything. That being said, I always accepted these jobs on the understanding that more would happen in the future with actual money attached.(9 times out of 10, that pays off, as well.)

I have a rate. Like many professions and people existing, I have bills to pay. However, I understand the low budget film predicament. I have worked on a number of projects for free. Some I've never wanted to see again, but others are some of my best work with my favorite collaborators (some who HAVE paid me real rates on previous projects, but for whatever reason may not have a budget for music for a personal project or non-profit type thing).

If you're able to pay someone to hold a boom or edit hours of footage, you should be able to budget in music, that's part of the process and the reason to create a budget. Talk to the composer first and see what their rates are and how you can fit that in. Negotiate, we're usually OK with that (or at least, used to it!).

I do music, because, that's what God gave me to do, along with a whole host of other blessings. upfront, backend or free it all works out the same for me. I have over 400+ songs written and am getting ready to update my BMI soon. my thought is, What good is the music if no-one hears it or uses it? It's not about me, it's about you and how the music sits in your film. is it right for the scene? if someone was to contact me and ask for a song and tells me I have very little money or no money, at all but will give me credit and a plug. 9 themes out of 10, I'd give them the song. AS LONG AS IT's LEGAL AND NOT IN POOR TASTE OR ANY PORN (I WILL NOT GIVE OR LEND MY MUSIC TO ANY PORN) I DON'T DO PORN. Everything is not about getting paid for me. I have a song you have a scene. I filled your need and you helped me out. That is how it's supposed to work.

Kenny

In my humble opinion, if the project is expected to be published, that helps me a lot as a composer. What country is it slated for release? Will you pay a small amount at first? Will I get credits, that I can use in a demo reel? Just tell me the style of music, I send you snippets and we can select from them, items created specifically for the project.

Hi Christopher! Great topic. I feel anyone that works should be paid. Even if it isn't a large amount, it only feels right to pay people. Music is a gift and not everyone has it. If you knew of all of the hours and money invested in the craft of music you wouldn't even feel good about not paying someone for their time and unique abilities. :-)

That said though, as a musician, I write songs for others and have given much away for free if it is to help someone along the journey. A way to share love in a hard world. Those songs I give away for free. But I like what Kenneth said. I think he said it well.

I've been writing songs for 30 years and started writing short underscores after watching the documentary "Score." After taking the Hans Zimmer Masterclass on film composing I thought I might be ready to at least experiment with short video pieces. I believe at the right time, if you just hang in, you will connect with the film you were made to score.

So, here is my latest experiment in scoring a short video: https://youtu.be/O6LaWEqG76A

As a composer I think there are different forms and routes of payment. For example you could offer the composer a share of the future income of the film. Or you can offer your services as payment to the composer, as in editing a demo reel, creating a logo for the composer, or anything that could be useful for the composer. Don't offer "exposure" unless you are absolutely sure that the film will be released and have proper distribution.

If you do a Kickstarter campaign make sure that you also put in music and sound design into the budget. Otherwise the composers might get offended when they realise that you planned to pay everyone else but not the post-production crew. I hope these advices will be helpful!

What kind of film's are you making?

Karl - learning from the masters is crucial to growth. In addition to the 'obvious', don't forget to read classic texts like Nelson Riddle's arranging book

https://www.amazon.com/Arranged-Nelson-Riddle/dp/0897249542/ref=sr_1_1?d...

or Mancini's

https://www.amazon.com/Sounds-Scores-Practical-Professional-Orchestratio...

There are countless examples of groups and performers in the modern pop industry who are 'followers' and those who are 'pacesetters'. You can make money and have impact both ways. The question is - do you want to create your own sound and brand or do you want to 'sound like' someone else (or do you want the sound like to eventually become a brand)?

BTW - to this day, while there are so many highly effective orchestrations in film, I still think one of the best I have ever heard was done by Nelson Riddle - especially with the strings and horn. You can learn so much just by listening to this (and yes - this actually came from a film, https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0057840 - music by johnny mandel and johnny mercer)

https://youtu.be/kvLTsJdX0V4

Some thoughts on the "Work for me for free" approach. Please don't take this personal:

1. an absolute beginner wanting to build up their portfolio might agree with making music for a shortfilm for free (IMO). On the other side, hiring an unexperienced composer might be a boomerang: production issues, deadline issues - and you can't really complain because you are not offering any compensation.

2. It is very difficult for me to believe that the budget for original music in any film is really zero. How could one justify it? "We can't pay for your music because we have to pay the taxi to the first actress / the pizza service / the ink to print the script"? In that moment, the reaction would be "if you pay for the pizza, you pay for the music; if you want to save money, don't make a film".

3. If the folks are not getting any money for the music, can you offer least a "donation receipt" that they can deduce from taxes? If not, we might have a credibilty issue here (how real is the producer's interest in that music? This is not longer about the money, is about recognition).

4. Are composers receiving back-royalties from the music included for ever? If yes, those royalties might compensate the lack of upfront money and the deal might slowly be etically acceptable.

5. Is the music used on an exclusive basis or non-exlusive? Is the composer retaining all rights on the music, also publishing rights? Might the composer re-use the music in other projects? Might he/she put the music on Spotify and generate (small) income from it?

6. Can the director / producer guarantee such a massive exposure that it certainly compensates for the lack of fees?

Please don't hate me for my rudeness. Not too much at least.

Juan Maria

Working for exposure hardly ever works out. The amount of exposure needed to really outweigh paying someone is such a high bar that it's rare to have something like that really happen.

Trades are a bit more appropriate IF and only if the trade is actually fair. For example, I once had a guy that wanted a full soundtrack but only wanted to spend maybe 1-2 hours on some really subpar logo art in return. I turned down that offer.

At the very least, I never give my rights over to a film if they cannot pay me. I'll grant them a license to use my work in the film, sure. But the rights will always remain with me and I'll be the exclusive owner of the work. Another thought to consider is this: you can quickly become known as "the free guy/gal" by some. They'll come to you for free music and sing your praises but the moment they have actual budget, they'll drop you for a bigger name to bring that brand recognition to their project.

So from a business angle, it rarely makes sense to work for free. You can do it for a little while at the very beginning, but once you start having some credits to your name and actual experience - you need to charge.

In short: If you want to be treated as a professional, act like one. Charge what your worth. Hope that helps!!

Nathan Madsen your words remind me what my brother once told me: "never play a concert for free, because they will not call you when there is something important".

Yup! Precisely.

Remember when a group of talent would get together and create films? Actors, director, camera, composer, editor and wardrobe would stay on for all future projects, like a troupe; destined to be together and jointly benefit from every production. I would say if a partnership can be established and the composer is a part of the film making and marketing of works with a goal to make a living and sell product it could be fun to have a team to work with. At that point, it’s not really free, but collaborative. And, as long as the goal is to find distribution, to build a name for the production team, it’s work. Business partners, contractually bound to succeed or fail.

Deriq, the problem with this situation is it's either:

- rare

- sloppily set up

More often than not if the film can find distribution then only a few people really profit from any commercial success the film gets while others are left with just being able to point to it as a finished/published product.

Too often instead of the troupes you describe, it's more of a "every person for themselves" kind of vibe. I love the idea of building a relationship with clients over a number projects/years and I've been lucky enough to do this! But those relationships have almost always included secured payment for all involved too.

You could contact maybe the artist or label and negotiate a deal?

www.soundcloud.com/virtuoso2000 I often upload 'B' mixes and oddball musical ideas to my pseudonym SC account for just this purpose. All I ask is to be named in the credits.