Music Placement: Film & Television ?

[frankii]

Hey all, New member here, not Taxi member yet, (I used to be a screener for them a few years back, HI MICHAEL). .. Anyway, wondering how the composer side of things are going e.g., those that create music cues? I'm a songwriter, have worked with some of the best in the biz, but am also wondering (having produced samples Cd's for Tascam / Sony Media (Sonic Foundry), how well Taxi members that are sound designers, composers do if they are not, per se, a song writer.Anyone here with experience and success with placement?Thanks and Cheers, Frankii Elliott

[gitarrero]

Hi Frankii,welcome aboard!it's cool to have a person here on the board who used to be a screener.concerning your question, I have a couple of TV and a few film placements besides album & single cuts for recording artists. Other folks like matto or andré are defenitly more experienced in the tv-area than I am, but I think they'll reply later. I'll write as far as my experience goes:I'm currently on 4 diffrent MTV shows in the US (pimp my ride, next, denied, parental control) and it's great to produce music for such oppurtunities - I just love to write and produce for a wide range of diffrent styles and genres. For example all the MTV stuff is HipHop/RnB, at the moment I'm doing the mix of an album of a italian chansonier and overdubbing some guitars for him, and I just came back from I meeting with a marilyn manson-like metal band (with a deal in germany) for whom I've written two songs (now they want another one).So writing for TV/Film is defenitly a cool thing. I love to work in the background, I don't need the spotlight and that "your-the-best-guitarist-I've-ever-seen" - Blabla I've heard on stage sometimes when I played live cheers,Martin

[davewalton]

Hey Frankii,There's a LOT of opportunity for composers and quite a few hang out on the board here. For myself (I do just instrumental tracks), I submit to these categories:Children's Music (on rare occasions)Dance/ElectronicaFilm/TV/Video Game MusicHard To Classify (when they have instrumental listings)Instrumental (duh!) Jazz (not too much)World MusicSince you asked, I can't help but toot my horn and Taxi's horn at the same time. I got a music deal with a music library which subsequently used a track of my music for a "Feed The Children" program that ran on some of the major cable networks for a couple of months this summer. I also got a composer deal to write music for The Oprah Winfrey Show. It's an ongoing situation and there's something like 10 of us that got this deal through Taxi although not at the same time.Mostly the available deals are for music but there's also some good composers listings where they're looking for composer services as opposed to just music.Through the critique process, Taxi REALLY helped me modernize my overall sound and has made my music much more current and useful. Because of this I've picked up around ten filmscore deals outside of Taxi. These have been mostly low to ultra-low budget films but there's always a lot of competition for these and they're great in terms of getting more experience. I'm a Taxi fan. Dave

[sgs4u]

that just somehow made my day, thanks

[frankii]

Thanks everyone - - its when I got Mikes last email about Film TV music, which is what I do, I thought to myself, why not join the forums and sneak around a bit.Marshall Altman and I used to work together (different depts) when we were both back at Capitol Records.For me, I got into Soundtracks A&R, then Production, then Music Sup, then Freelance.At the time, I presently make CD's for Sony/Tascam, loop stuff, and have composed for various projects. It can be feast or famine though and you guys make it sound pretty much on the feast side of things. LOL.To be fair though, I haven't really persued getting music placed as much as I should, you know, ok, its not ready yet, need to tweak some more, suddenly, a year or two goes by and your either board with what you are working on or busy tweaking that new plug in or piece of hardware.I guess I will keep my ear to the ground with Taxi for the next several weeks, months and see what happens - in the meantime, perhaps I should join (wonder if there is a screener discount, LOL, ), like another said, no need for the spot light, play all instruments, content, but music is the soul speaking out and hearing your music on film/tv is a great feeling. Ad campaigns are even better. BIG, HUGE HUGE money for :30 second spots if you can get it, but Taxi would need good relationships with Ad Production houses, who sometimes have in-house composers who all bid for the job. One job I had, where I created the first A&R Music Supervisor postion was Groove Addicts, and they had/have 20+ different music libraries and with the quality of todays softsynths, drum plug ins, DAWS, anyone anywhere can make decent music.Regarding gear, I scored a trailer or two using just ACID once, so don't be discouraged on "gear" issues as its how you use the gear, IMHO.Anyway, to that posted that sent me an email, I will be glad to get back to you on how creating loop libraries works, the ins and outs and so on.Will check back later.All the best, F. Elliott

[matto]

Hi frankii,Quote:It can be feast or famine though and you guys make it sound pretty much on the feast side of things.Hehee...in the beginning it's pretty much all famine...BUT, if you're REALLY starving a slice of bread can look like a feast. I've mostly done music library work (both songs and instrumental music, may be about 30/70) and built a fairly large catalog with a number of libraries over the past 8 years or so, most of which I hooked up with via Taxi listings. I find that the larger the catalog, the more predictable (and feast-like ) the income becomes. It's almost like a diversified stock portfolio...a single library track will never make you as much as a single commercial, but the track's shelf life tends to be a lot longer...plus the film/tv placements it hopefully engenders tend to make backend for a long time...it may be "small money", but multiplied by a large number of tracks it becomes "big"...and it's relatively predictable and dependable. Moreso than ad gigs or straight underscore gigs, unless you manage to have a steady supply of those...Taxi obviously has tons of library type listings. Also, there are a large number of listings directly from music supervisors on Dispatch. There have been some ad house type listings (moreso recently), some video game listings, occasionally things looking for indie film composers and the odd shot at a major cable or broadcast TV show theme.Mostly music listings though, very little sound design that I've seen.All in all I've found it a very worthy investment in my career...I've always looked at it as a longterm investment though, not a get-rich-quick type of thing. As such it has delivered...beyond my expectations. You probably know that you can sign up to get the listings without becoming a member, so can keep an eye on things .Good luck,matto