How do You Practice Writing Cues to TV Scenes?

[Lawrence]

As someone who is just starting out writing music for TV/Film, I'm curious if any you use video clips from TV shows & sync them up to your cues for practice. This would be ideal for someone like me who is new to composing instrumental music specifically for TV/Film. Or should I go about it a different way?

[Sunset]

Lawrence,

It's hard enough ( and not legal) to try to rip tv/movie vids to disk , but you could try to write your cue and then play it against a You Tube Vid with the sound muted-
Far from Ideal, but its one way.. ( i have done this occasionally for some cues against the You Tube references..)

For just general practice , you could google search for royalty free video, and see what sites might show up.. hopefully they would allow you to
download a vid which you could then use to write to.

You also have to be careful not to use copywritten videos with your music on your website by accident to attract new business.. again, you might run into copywrite issues...


If you find a rich source of royalty free videos,let me know - I always look for these.

Sorry I didn't have an easy answer for this..

John

[Lawrence]

Thanks John, I figured the answer wouldn't be easy. It would be cool if there were a service that allows you to license TV show clips for practice/non-profit purposes. I know there are song remix contests which are sanctioned by the copyright owners that allow you to use certain stems. I wish something like that existed for this specific use case. I appreciate your feedback.