Nathan Bell: Student in Melbourne, Australia.

Absolutely, you've got to lead the audience on. I find it very effective to make an audience fall in love with the main character, then make them think they're going to die, so that the audience feels the most jeopardy during the action, and is relieved and happiest at the end of the film.

Fantastic article! It also helps to illustrate how important the role of the composer is in creating the emotional backdrop throughout the film. You could't create this kind of effect by simply relying upon library music, lacking any kind of theme to be used and adapted throughout the movie for the most impact. This is the reason that people hire composers! I was watching the film Castaway the other day and noticed that the movie uses only one theme that is adapted throughout the entire film. Thanks for sharing this article!

Jim - I am doing this from memory and do agree with you that Castaway uses a central theme - Alan Silvestri is really good at that (e.g., Back To The Future trilogy). But as I recollect, this is an example of how only a dribble of music is used in the whole film (perhaps one cue in the whole film - when he is on the raft; or maybe two). This film is an example I use when I talk to people about how a feature can have minimal music - versus "Hook" which is the other end of the spectrum. Another good example of how a director can use sound effects (or perhaps just non-pitched percussion) instead of music to achieve perhaps a higher level of tension than can melody and theme. One of my two favorites are the 6 min car chase scene in Bullett or the 7 minute car chasing the train scene in the French Connection. In both, sound effects and design shaped the scene and made it more exciting. No need to use music to heighten the emotion. So point is - I agree what music can do but there are also places where no music is preferable.

I'd rather stay on Mac because I've been using it all my life so far. Though it's not the cheapest option and spending 3k on a Mac is quite a commitment...

Here's another thing: has anyone of you guys ever heard of Hackintosh? It's basically a PC running MacOS. I'm not sure if it's that good of an idea though... Any experience with that?

Would not advise hackinstosh at all. 1) updating OS (something you have to do with Logic) is not easy. 2) it's a lot of work, spend the time composing.

Hi Nathan, another thing you might try is connecting with some local film makers and see if there are any film contests going on, and offer to help score someone's film for the contest. These can be a great way to get some experience with the process and also network with local people involved in film making. I've been doing this in my area and it was a great experience.

When asked this, most would say that "Cast Away" has very little to no score.

Cheers guys, my uni is actually partnering with another uni to collaborate over scoring for film, so that's a good start. I'll also have a look at festivals and the like

Thanks a lot, everyone!

Sometimes it depends on your budget, what you have, and where you want to spend your money. I decide some years back when I started that I will have the tools to fit the job. As I was going to start off with shorts and local filmmakers, I much rather limit my spending on the hardware so I found an old pair of Bose 201 shelf speakers not in use, bought two stands and put them in the corners in my converted studio (used to be a bedroom). As I am not in the point where I have a offsite facility (and an administrative assistant) like some of my local friends who have a few dozen features with lots of corporate work :) , the sound from these speakers is well above my minimum bar. No one here in Houston so far has asked for a Dolby mix and if they did, I have a dolby 5.1 system in my living I could use for the time being if I needed to. Thing is, as I am not yet in an industrial space and I have not sound proofed my studio, I can't really turn up the music very loud anyway, especially if my wife is around as she has her own (non-music) studio where she does paid sewing and monogramming and complains if the music is too loud. One of the things I have done which I find particularly useful is also have and use a high quality noise silencing headphone (Bose QC25). I find that particular useful when I am trying to sync my music to the film as I can hear things on a headphone that I can not hear through studio speakers and often it's things that the video editor forgot about that needs fixing in the sound mix. For me the bottom line is that in the environment I am currently in (local film industry, most shorts and occasional feature), I much rather invest when I have funds in things that directly impact what the filmmaker / sound editor/mixer will get. Studio speakers are more of an internal thing like the number of monitors I use to score.

Okay, Thank you Joel!

Thanks for being a star brandi

Hey guys - been gone for 8 or 9 months but I'm back. Been busy both on the 'day job' (where I shoot about 20 to 25 weddings a year as a videographer) and the composing end. I have had some interesting experiences on the film end both positive and not so positive. As y'all may know, I 'draw the line' for pay at shorts which I score for free. Scored four shorts last year - one was a very long short - about 40 mins. Was on crew to shoot my first feature drama about breast cancer. The film shot last summer and then kept on delaying in post. The director kept delaying on wanting to do a contract because the whole crew except the screenwriter worked for free (they were promised money if the film earns anything, yeah right....). Eventually he asked two other composers to score scenes in the film and when I asked to spot, he just said he would give a scene and see how I did. We never made it to the money issue. The next day, I stepped off the crew. I can not score a film that way with two other composers (one was an audio engineer and the other was an r&b artist). I guess 'issues' come in bunches. Last month I was supposed to score a short for the 168 film competition in Aug. This is a four minute film for kids (pre-teens/young teens). I started with the opening 20 second scene (included the opening credits). Gave it a really cool juvenile sound (my composing instructor at school loved it). The producer nixed it. Then she suggested perhaps a high energetic opening. I suggested a contemporary Christian sound as this was a Christ-based film festival. Played her a 'sounds like' from a well known Christian group from youtube. She was OK. I did that. The director didn't like it and nixed that. He suggested a super-hero/marvel comic opening cue. So I rewrote it a third time - made it sound exactly like the track he gave me the link for. Then he said, he didn't like the arrangement and instrumentation. Three times - 20 second cue spanning 2 weeks. I never made it past the opening 20 seconds. At that point I suggested they try a different composer. The director gave me a different kid film instead. It was called "Clean Your Room". It is really cute. He left me alone and I scored it completely in just over 2 days. He loved the music and all we had to do is move the hit points in three places slightly. I actually had a great time doing a full orchestra score for the 45 seconds of end titles they gave me - straight out of the Alan Silvestri playbook! Now I am waiting for the 'speed film' - that's the one that has to be done completely from scratch in 168 hours (7 days) starting this coming Sat. Not only do I have to score, but the main character is a female rock star so I will have to write music for her to perform on screen with a Rock band (we'll record it off screen and lip sync - this will be a film first for me though I have played in a rock band myself earlier in my life). A finally there is my struggling documentarian. This is my one and only stage32 project to date. A first time film maker that is really struggling. Its about the homeless in downtown LA. He started it two years ago and I wrote some preview cues for him back then. Didn't hear from him in 2 years. Then all of a sudden he's back and wants music. But he really doesn't understand the role music plays in a documentary and he is REALLY struggling. He does not appear to have a computer and goes to the public library to get to the Internet, so today I found out when we were supposed to do a spotting session that he doesn't have the spotting sheet and does not really know where he wants the music. Neither is his film time coded and he doesn't know how to divide seconds into frames. This is going to be 'interesting'..... And in between all that in the Fall last year, I upgraded all my equipment to 32 GB of memory, mutliple 1 TB SSDs, etc. and began moving to Kontakt from 10 years of Gigastudio along with a full set of samples from Cinesamples. An interesting learning experience.... Meanwhile I continue to write for live performance, especially small Jazz ensembles (and have also done big band pieces but not recently). In fact, one of the film themes I wrote in 2013, got re-written as a smooth jazz piece. As it was a 'film noir' (sort of private detective piece), I called it "Sweat". Here is the studio version - http://www.icompositions.com/music/song.php?sid=215163 (this was my first attempt to work with Cinesamples by the way except for the sax and percussion) And here is the more recent (two thu's ago) of the two live performances of it (both different arrangements) - https://youtu.be/DvLgP91ka6k (that's me conducting though they really didn't need a conductor) So I guess I'm staying 'busy' with lots of 'interesting' experiences! :)

Awesome!! Thanks so much for that. It's really encouraging to hear all the different types of work you can get