Popular Post Disco Stu 15,495 Posted February 21, 2022 Popular Post Share Posted February 21, 2022 These are all issues and discussions we're very familiar with, but it's interesting to see it break through into mainstream coverage https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2022/02/the-ugly-truth-of-how-movie-scores-are-made If you see any composers/industry people post reactions to the article on social media, please do link to them in this thread! I'll put the whole article in spoiler tags for anyone who's hit the article limit Spoiler Creating music in 21st-century Hollywood, as a composer for an Emmy-winning cable series put it, “feels like an underground, a real pimp situation.” He talked about long hours, low pay, and working under a martinet “lead composer”—his boss—who delegated the actual work of writing and recording. “One time he had a meltdown because the director was coming to hear what he had come up with and he didn’t have anything to play him,” the composer went on, “because my computer had all the music on it and it was on the fritz!” He laughed—c’est la guerre. But the irritation and dismay were palpable. Another Hollywood composer summed up the widespread feeling among the men and women who do the day-to-day work of bending melody, harmony, and rhythm to match pictures on a movie or television screen: “There’s no contract, there’s no union. You’re completely beholden to working with someone who’s completely unethical or not.” “The ultimate perquisite of a composer’s life,” said Henry Mancini, “is being able to make a living doing what you truly love to do: create music.” Mancini, who scored such films as Breakfast at Tiffany’s, The Pink Panther, and Victor/Victoria, winning four Oscars along the way, belongs to an all-time pantheon of film composers that includes Bernard Herrmann, John Williams, and, more recently, Hans Zimmer. We don’t talk about film composers much, but their work is essential to the cinematic experience. Try to imagine Psycho without Herrmann’s stabbing violins or Inception without Zimmer’s gut-rattling BRAAAM. As the director James Cameron once put it, “The score is the heart and soul of a film.” Lately, in the streaming era, composers themselves are talking more and more about making a living. With an increasing share of their work moving to streaming, film composers are seeing their royalty earnings dwindle to “pennies on the dollar,” as more than three dozen of them put it last August in an open letter to ASCAP, BMI, and the other performance-royalty organizations, or PROs, that collect and distribute revenues to songwriters. “This raises serious concerns for the future financial outlook for all composers,” the letter declared. Worse still, some streamers, most notably Netflix, are defaulting to work agreements that cut out royalties entirely. Such agreements are known as buyouts—work-for-hire deals that offer a lump payment and no back end—and they deprive the composer of any share in the ongoing success of a hit series or movie. In 2019, a group of award-winning composers—including Carter Burwell (who has written the score for nearly every Coen brothers movie), Joel Beckerman (CBS This Morning), John Powell (the Jason Bourne franchise), and Pinar Toprak (Captain Marvel)—launched Your Music, Your Future, an initiative aimed at raising awareness about buyouts. So far, nearly 19,000 people have signed on. As these new financial pressures mount, they are exposing cracks in the system of film composing itself. There’s rising disenchantment with a system in which paying dues has come to resemble abasement, with aspiring composers working on the cheap without benefits, security, or the leverage of a composer’s union—if only one existed. (Once upon a time it did. The Composers and Lyricists Guild of America, founded in the 1950s, disbanded after a 1971 strike.) Much of the resentment traces back to film composing’s biggest open secret: Many of its brightest stars do not, in fact, write the music they are celebrated and remunerated for. That work, or a good bit of it, is delegated to others. Sometimes those others are credited as “additional composers,” but often they are gig workers, effectively, who receive modest pay and no credit. Such shadow contributors are known as “ghost composers,” and the debate over how name-brand music directors get paid is haunted by their existence. Last summer, Scarlett Johansson’s lawsuit against Disney for opening Black Widow simultaneously in theaters and on its streaming platform—a decision she claimed cost her millions in box office royalties—revealed widespread anxiety about compensation in rapidly digitizing Hollywood. (The suit was settled last September; terms were not disclosed.) Likewise, composers have been nervous as they see venerable ways of doing things change; the new economics of streaming are threatening what is essentially a quasi-feudal system. Composers might not all be happy about that system, but they worry it will be replaced with something more dire. “There’s a secretiveness to it all that’s strange,” one composer told me on condition of anonymity. “There’s the world everyone sees—and then you look under the hood.” Many of the people contacted for this story—composers, lawyers, music supervisors—requested anonymity, fearful that they might jeopardize career opportunities by speaking openly about how their business works. The vibe is “The first rule of Fight Club is: You do not talk about Fight Club.” Which is perhaps why a series of tweets the veteran composer Joe Kraemer (Mission: Impossible—Rogue Nation) posted last year ricocheted throughout the composing community. “I can count the number of mainstream Hollywood composers that I KNOW write all their music themselves on one hand, John Williams being the most famous example,” Kraemer wrote. “Everyone else is a team leader, a figurehead for a team of composers.” Williams has described his methodology, which is not all that different from the way Brahms would have done it: “While composing, I’m scribbling with a pen and throwing pages all over the room.” He makes music with the most traditional of tools: a Steinway and staff paper. His orchestrations are, as he has said, “articulated down to the last harp.” Williams is the image of the composer as solitary artist that most of us hold in our heads. He is an industry paragon. It’s even said that directors sometimes work around his music rather than the other way around. The Williams approach, as Kraemer noted, is exceedingly rare these days. As the Hollywood composer I spoke with put it, “The name brands have had people write their music for 20-plus years.” A veteran Hollywood music supervisor described how it works. “The composers have six or seven projects on the go at any point,” he said, referring to lead composers working in television. “The leader sets the ‘tonal palette’ to get them going. And then the minions do the actual writing.” Let’s say you’re one of these minions—an additional composer or a studio assistant who is allowed to write—and you’re working on the score of a tentpole movie with a major film-music studio. You’re assigned a number of “cues”: bits of the score that you will compose to accompany specific scenes. The lead composer—whose name will go on the final product—has worked up the overall direction. Zimmer calls it “the sketch.” As Devo founder turned film composer Mark Mothersbaugh (Rugrats, The Lego Movie, and four Wes Anderson films) once described it, “You give them themes, you do a rough mock-up, and then those people fine-tune it all.” In some ways, it’s a system that resembles the assembly-line studios of contemporary artists such as Mark Kostabi and Jeff Koons. As a fine-tuner, you write the actual music for your assigned cues and submit demos to the lead composer’s studio. Then comes a process of feedback and approval, followed by the actual recording—which could mean an orchestra. To put film scoring into culinary terms, the cues you’ve written go into a soup (the score) created by many fellow sous chefs (additional composers) working under an executive chef (the lead composer). Part of the idiosyncratic beauty of a Hollywood film score, as the Hollywood composer I spoke to phrased it, is its “cool collaborative aspect, a handed-down-the-line feel.” When the team clicks, there is a shared sense of energy and enterprise. For many young composers, it’s what draws them to Hollywood as opposed to Carnegie Hall. If their contributions end up being credited (usually as “additional composer”) and the pay is decent, the participants can be quite happy. They can pay the rent. They might someday rise to the level of lead composer, as did John Powell, Henry Gregson-Williams, and Lorne Balfe, brilliant film scorers all, coming out of Zimmer’s behemoth Remote Control studio in Santa Monica. (The minions there are sometimes referred to as “Zimlings.”) And then there are the ghost composers. As much as ghost composing is virtually unknown among the moviegoing public, it enjoys a long tradition as an entry-level rite of passage. One of the gods of film scoring, Ennio Morricone, was a ghost composer before earning his first credit on a feature in 1961. “I’ve been a ghost myself (on really big movies),” Zimmer has noted. Occasionally, the issue of ghost composing pops up in the media, as when, in 2014, the deaf Japanese composer Mamoru Samuragochi, a so-called “digital-age Beethoven,” was found to have employed a ghost composer for 18 years. It was regarded as a scandal. On the message boards of VI Control, an online composer community, the conversation inevitably veers toward ghost composing. “When I saw the ‘composer’’s site with ‘his’ reel populated by the stuff I did 100% on it I wanted to puke out of shame for that person,” a poster called AudioLoco wrote last year. Another poster alluded to big-name composers accepting industry awards for music they didn’t write. Ghost and additional composers speak of moments of almost comical awkwardness, as when a director, reviewing the score, marvels at a beautiful passage and exclaims to the name-brand guy who did not, in fact, write it, “Oh, we’re so lucky to have you!” The awkwardness is compounded when the actual, unacknowledged composer is sitting in the room. It’s part of the frustration that ghost and additional composers feel: The world has no clue what they do. “You’re not just arranging,” the Hollywood composer said. “You’re writing.” The issue of payment can cause frustration too. The composer on the Emmy Award–winning series told me that he got $150 up front per cue, the length of which can vary. He might spend as many as 10 hours on each one. “When you break it down, it’s like minimum wage,” he said. The fee for a cue can also fluctuate greatly depending on the project and the lead composer; one ghostwriter on big movies mentioned getting $1,500 per minute of music. When it comes to royalties, the veteran Hollywood-music person told me, the standard split with the lead composer is 50-50 per cue, even if the additional or ghost composer does all the work. (After all, the lead composer is putting a roof over everybody’s head.) In certain studios, if the lead composer does anything on the cue—suggests that the tambourine be lowered in the mix, for instance—the lead composer’s share can increase to 75 percent. And if the cue comes back from the studio, network, or streamer with a “note” (a requested change), then the lead composer can take 100 percent. It is thought that this motivates the minions to deliver flawless cues. Two years ago, Nadia Wheaton, a composer and music-production coordinator, posted a soul-baring account on her website of her frustrations as an aspiring Hollywood film scorer. Despite some notable successes, she found herself making painful budget decisions, such as whether to spend money on gas or on food. She wrote about the specter of homelessness and about studio assistants being paid $12 an hour with no overtime. “It felt like some of our idols were just there to exploit new talent,” she wrote. Wheaton ultimately left Hollywood and turned her focus toward video game music. “A lot of people have come out of that system feeling that they were abused and not wanting to do it anymore,” the composer Carter Burwell told me when I went to see him at his home studio on Long Island’s East End. “But then some people come out, hang up their own shingle, and become a successful film composer. So it’s a sink-or-swim situation.” Burwell, who is 67, has a sagelike aura. He graduated from Harvard and was playing in downtown Manhattan post-punk bands when Joel and Ethan Coen asked him to score their 1984 film, Blood Simple. He has since been nominated for Oscars, Golden Globes, and BAFTAs, and has won a Primetime Emmy for his work, which has ranged from the infernal yodels of Raising Arizona to the somber tones of Fargo. The day I visited, he was working in his studio, a low-key, go-it-alone operation far removed from, say, Zimmer’s Remote Control, which boasts an army of studio assistants and collaborators. Burwell built this studio inside a modernist house drenched with sunlight and set amid a dramatic dunescape with forever views of the Atlantic. “I would not have been able to buy this house if it weren’t for the performance royalties for Twilight,” he told me. “It’s as simple as that.” He said that Your Music, Your Future was established to remind young composers that they need not give up their royalties. ASCAP president Paul Williams—the Grammy- and Oscar-winning songwriter who gave us The Muppet Movie’s eternally wistful anthem, “The Rainbow Connection”—emphasized the you-never-knowness of working as a composer. “The Love Boat—we thought it wasn’t going to last four weeks,” he told me, “and it went on for 11 years!… It is those hits that really help to pay the bills, and I am very happy I never gave up my ongoing royalties.” The royalty system goes back to 1914, when the composer Victor Herbert, having sued a restaurant for using his music without permission, won a Supreme Court decision entitling him to ongoing payments. Herbert then went on to cofound the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers: ASCAP. “It was very highly structured, and it made a predictable business model,” Burwell said. For most composers the rule of thumb is that the up-front fee paid by a studio or streamer goes into the production: It covers your time, any studio fees, and the musicians you hire. The back-end royalties, which you receive in exchange for forking over your copyright, represent your income—the steady drip that can continue for years. According to music-law experts Todd and Jeff Brabec, a composer can earn more than $200,000 over the course of five years from a typical film and considerably more from a box office hit. “Half the income that the composer used to get comes from royalties,” the Hollywood composer told me, “and now streaming is throwing that way off-balance.” The open letter to the PROs said that streaming releases ultimately pay just 5 to 10 percent as much as comparably budgeted theatrical projects. “Netflix presents itself as a tech company, not an entertainment company,” Burwell said, echoing a broadly held sentiment. “They don’t feel obliged to follow the norms of the entertainment industry at all.” According to Nielsen, which last year began reporting improved streaming-ratings numbers, American viewers opt for streaming offerings on television about a third of the time, a percentage that is growing exponentially. Last fall, when The New York Times asked Zimmer if he was worried about streaming cutting into his studio’s revenue, he responded tartly, “I stopped being worried about it because it’s already happened.” Last October, Netflix sent three of its music executives to the Society of Composers and Lyricists’s annual meeting, held online. “We’re trying to find the best way to pay composers,” Amy Dunning, Netflix’s vice president of music creative and production, told the group. The executives suggested that the problem of distributing royalties lay with the PROs and said that composers who don’t want to take buyouts can simply reject that clause when negotiating their contracts—something many early-career composers are understandably hesitant to do. The buyout model was described as a work in progress that would evolve as Netflix continues to navigate the “innovation curve.” Such talk sounds odd coming from a company whose 2020 revenue reportedly clocked in at $24.9 billion; it’s well past the shaky start-up phase. According to a veteran Los Angeles music lawyer who specializes in digital, the streamers pay 1 percent of their total revenue to ASCAP, BMI, and other PROs. (Netflix declined to make their executives available for comment in this story.) Composers understandably see their work as having contributed to the streamers’ remarkable success and believe they should benefit from it. When I talked to Kris Bowers, the 32-year-old Juilliard-trained jazz pianist and producer who scored the Netflix megahit Bridgerton, he said, “We’re not having a conversation about actors not getting back end. Our music is a representation of ourselves, even if it’s not actually us on that screen.” With back-end royalties dwindling or cut out of the equation entirely, there’s a growing feeling of disgruntlement in the vast community of additional and ghost composers who fuel the Hollywood-music studios. Zimmer’s Remote Control studio is perhaps the most cited avatar of the hyper-collaborative system that has taken root in blockbuster-focused Hollywood as deadlines tighten, pressures mount, and digital editing forces scorers to aim at moving targets: Scenes can be tweaked ad infinitum before reaching “picture lock.” A website devoted to Zimmer credits the many collaborators who make up the Remote Control “team.” There are 66 composers, 74 cocomposers, 28 arrangers, 72 additional arrangers, and 23 credited with “additional music.” Sixteen more people in various capacities round out the list, bringing the total to 279. If Zimmer can’t get a cue right, one composer told me, “he has 60 people behind him willing to give it a shot.” Zimmer is arguably Hollywood’s top film scorer, a visionary innovator who once played keyboards in the Buggles and who happens to be extremely intelligent and ultracharming. He is a regular presence on VI Control, where he is also the number one topic: Is he overrated? Is he a genius? Does he actually compose? “It’s almost like he’s a sound designer with notes,” one poster said. Zimmer, who is 64, is probably best known for that epic BRAAAM: an unforgettable sonic rumble that became so imitated that Zimmer himself professed to be tired of it. In 2013, after Zimmer did an interview with Vulture about Inception, a ghost composer named Mike Zarin came forward to claim that he was, in fact, the author of BRAAAM, venting his frustration to IndieWire: “Seeing someone on the inside, who knows exactly how everything happened, outright lying, that bothered me.” (Zimmer declined to speak for this story.) Zimmer is sometimes asked to address the issue of authorship. “I make them partners in the project,” he said of his team last fall, when Dune was released. “I try to give them credit.” For him, cinema is a communal experience and so is creating the music for it. “I try to be fair,” he has said, “but sometimes it’s just not possible”—there are complications involving the run time of end credits, the maddening bureaucracy of cue sheets. (One composer I spoke with said that the perception in the industry is that Zimmer is doing better with giving credit than he had been in the past.) ASCAP award–winning composer Deborah Lurie, who wrote the luminous score of the 2010 film Dear John and has worked as an arranger with Katy Perry, confirmed that credit can be complicated. But for her, “collaboration is not the issue. I think that the issue is honesty, is secrets.” Gifted with perfect pitch and impeccable chops, Lurie began her career more than two decades ago, working with the ubiquitous Danny Elfman (Batman, Men in Black, Fifty Shades of Grey), whom she described as one of the good guys in the business, “hands on with his music”—that is, he works closely with his additional composers. (In the conversations I had, certain composers tended to come up in this “good guy” category, such as Mothersbaugh, who is generous and assiduous about sharing credit, and Powell, who is known for boosting assistants up the ladder.) She soon became one of the most successful women composers in Hollywood, a field that is, perhaps needless to say, dominated by men. (In 2020, the Grammy-nominated pianist and composer Nomi Abadi founded the Female Composer Safety League, an organization dedicated to the empowerment of women working in the industry. As one music executive told The Hollywood Reporter last year, “Sexual harassment in composing is pretty widespread.”) When I spoke with Lurie, she referred to what she called “the paradigm,” meaning the golden image of what a Hollywood composer is. Lurie had always aspired to this ideal—Mancini, Williams, and their ilk—but found her old-school, go-it-alone ethos increasingly difficult to sustain in streaming-era Hollywood. “Here I was, a bleeding-heart, totally emotional artist who just thought about the movie 24/7,” she said. She didn’t want to be a “brand” or a figurehead or be told, as she was, to just “phone it in.” A couple of years ago, Lurie decided to take a breather from the business. She argues that transparency is what’s needed, a Hollywood-music culture that can emerge from the shadows and be frank about what it is. “I’m not trying to turn back the clock,” Lurie insisted. “I’m trying to figure out how to make things proudly be what they are.” In such a world, star composers would be open about the fact that they are delegators, ghost composers would get credit, assistants wouldn’t feel hopeless, and everyone would be fairly compensated. More than three decades ago, Mancini noted, “With the new technology that keeps entering the media, film composers are constantly being placed in new learning situations.” There is, admittedly, a bit of plus ça change to it all. Yet Lurie articulated what many in the composing community say among themselves: “There was a business that I loved and I thought it was my life and now, as things changed—not so much.” Even so, there’s hope that things will improve; happy endings, after all, are what Hollywood is about. Some of the change will come from the inside. As Joe Kraemer vowed on Twitter last year, throwing a challenge to his fellow composers, “I promise not to hire an ‘assistant’ who is really a ghostwriter.” Zimmer has admitted, “I think we need to be fairer.” Speaking to the financial side, so disrupted by streaming, the Hollywood composer told me, “In 10 years the market will figure out how this works.” Focusing on the artistic side, Lurie—who keeps getting calls to compose music for Hollywood and has been considering getting back into the game—struck a similar chord of optimism. “I want to believe that there’s still a demand for artists that live and breathe one project at a time, the kind of projects that require human musicians and things that essentially only humans can do,” she said. “If there’s still a love for that, if people want to leave a movie humming the theme, there has to be a business model that reemerges. And I have a vision that there will be a new interest in that ultrahuman, painstaking kind of music work again.” Otherwise, as the Hollywood composer said, waiting in his home studio for the next gig, “How are composers going to survive?” Manakin Skywalker, Holko, MikeH and 15 others 12 6 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TownerFan 4,984 Posted February 21, 2022 Share Posted February 21, 2022 Quote “There was a business that I loved and I thought it was my life and now, as things changed—not so much.” That's it. MikeH and TSMefford 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post Ludwig 1,120 Posted February 21, 2022 Popular Post Share Posted February 21, 2022 Ok, so Deborah Lurie is my new favorite person: Quote “I want to believe that there’s still a demand for artists that live and breathe one project at a time, the kind of projects that require human musicians and things that essentially only humans can do,” she said. “If there’s still a love for that, if people want to leave a movie humming the theme, there has to be a business model that reemerges. And I have a vision that there will be a new interest in that ultrahuman, painstaking kind of music work again.” Holko, crumbs, TownerFan and 13 others 10 4 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post WampaRat 1,105 Posted February 21, 2022 Popular Post Share Posted February 21, 2022 Very cool to see this get a spotlight. Also glad Powell and Elfman are, reportedly, “one of the good guys” 😊 Once, Tallguy, Tiburon and 2 others 5 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Disco Stu 15,495 Posted February 21, 2022 Author Share Posted February 21, 2022 The article speaks quite a bit about Netflix regarding the issue of buyouts and royalties, but, especially since they are more aggressively hiring "name" talent for their projects, I'd be very interested to know how composers for Disney+ shows fare in terms of royalty/back-end deals. TSMefford 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post Edmilson 7,474 Posted February 21, 2022 Popular Post Share Posted February 21, 2022 I'm happy for Powell and Elfman being labeled as "good guys" in ther relationship with their assistants. However, I do want to know who are the "bad guys" - those who gain awards and recognition for stuff they didn't write. MikeH, TSMefford and Will 2 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Disco Stu 15,495 Posted February 21, 2022 Author Share Posted February 21, 2022 Hey, Mothersbaugh's name was right there alongside Powell and Elfman. Give him some credit! (no pun intended) Will and TSMefford 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post Fabulin 3,515 Posted February 21, 2022 Popular Post Share Posted February 21, 2022 Quote Henry Gregson-Williams The last of the three brothers crumbs, Disco Stu, Manakin Skywalker and 1 other 4 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Naïve Old Fart 9,556 Posted February 21, 2022 Share Posted February 21, 2022 I tried listening to INCEPTION, without "Hans Zimmer's gut-wrenching BRAAAM". It was much better. Jurassic Shark 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
artguy360 1,844 Posted February 21, 2022 Share Posted February 21, 2022 Good article. Thanks for sharing. I hope this helps raise awareness to how the whole Hollywood composing system works. TSMefford 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Edmilson 7,474 Posted February 21, 2022 Share Posted February 21, 2022 This article really made me feel bad. It's awful to know that some of my favorite composers probably didn't write the wonderful cues I love. Which is why I'd like to know who employs ghost writers without giving them credit (so, unlike Zimmer; he at leasts credits his assistants). JNH? Silvestri? Giacchino? TSMefford and Will 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post Disco Stu 15,495 Posted February 21, 2022 Author Popular Post Share Posted February 21, 2022 6 minutes ago, Edmilson said: This article really made me feel bad. It's awful to know that some of my favorite composers probably didn't write the wonderful cues I love. Which is why I'd like to know who employs ghost writers without giving them credit (so, unlike Zimmer; he at leasts credits his assistants). JNH? Silvestri? Giacchino? Yes, it's an interesting article but ultimately is filled with the same generalized insinuations that we always see around this subject. No one will get specific. bored, HunterTech and Will 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Luke Skywalker 1,796 Posted February 21, 2022 Share Posted February 21, 2022 Giacchino credits the collaborators...at least in the film. And he seems to hire new composers, work with them a few times, then make a credited collaboration effort and then the new composer starts doing things on their own. Chris Tilton, Chad Seiter, Nami Melumad... Though i dont know which tracks could be written by each... Anyway, it's sad how the industry is these days. Will and TSMefford 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Edmilson 7,474 Posted February 21, 2022 Share Posted February 21, 2022 I'm almost sending the link for the article to Silvestri and JNH on their social media channels asking them what they think about it. They probably won't tell if they do that in real life, but it'll be interesting to see what they think. Will 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post Pellaeon 593 Posted February 21, 2022 Popular Post Share Posted February 21, 2022 Quote Williams is the image of the composer as solitary artist that most of us hold in our heads. He is an industry paragon. It’s even said that directors sometimes work around his music rather than the other way around. Yes, do this, release the Williams Cut of TRoS. Giftheck, Tallguy, Brónach and 6 others 6 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post TheUlyssesian 2,478 Posted February 21, 2022 Popular Post Share Posted February 21, 2022 This is an article riddle with a lack of balls and full of cowardice. It needed to be an expose of Zimmer. The general public rides his balls thinking he is the greatest composer that ever lived. It would be a much bigger story if they exposed him completely. It lacks courage because even though it makes some hits at him later on, it absolves him right there in the second paragraph saying he is one of the greats. Any hits later on are not going to register if you start with that. What a missed opportunity. Will, Brando, Jurassic Shark and 4 others 7 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post Disco Stu 15,495 Posted February 21, 2022 Author Popular Post Share Posted February 21, 2022 The article is clearly not meant as a value judgment on the Zimmer approach to the music itself, which after all is really just a modern "outsourced contractor" version of the golden age studio music departments. There's nothing really wrong with this if only credits were clear and fair. Being a film/tv composer of prominence today requires essentially being a small business owner, which is not something all these creative types are cut out for. A company like RCP, if it were run more fairly and transparently, could do a lot of good providing the infrastructure and bureaucracy necessary for a composer to carry out the job. But that's a big "if." crumbs, Fabulin, HunterTech and 9 others 12 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post Brónach 1,302 Posted February 21, 2022 Popular Post Share Posted February 21, 2022 Ghost composers should be called composers and required to appear on main credits, end credits, cd covers and track listing; unless the composer group forms a boy band or something and they prefer that. Smeltington, Tiburon, TSMefford and 2 others 5 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post TheUlyssesian 2,478 Posted February 21, 2022 Popular Post Share Posted February 21, 2022 6 minutes ago, Brónach said: Ghost composers should be called composers and required to appear on main credits, end credits, cd covers and track listing; unless the composer group forms a boy band or something and they prefer that. They should get the bloody oscar nomination too because that is what is going to get them the next jobs and the best jobs and higher pay and better working conditions. Isn't it outrageous that Zimmer - he is likely to win - will head alone on to the stage of the academy awards and receive laurels for composing the score for Dune? Think how transformative it would be for some other composers if they are standing beside him on that stage accepting the laurels as co-creators of the work. TSMefford, crumbs and enderdrag64 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Richard Penna 3,696 Posted February 21, 2022 Share Posted February 21, 2022 12 minutes ago, Brónach said: Ghost composers should be called composers and required to appear on main credits, end credits, cd covers and track listing; unless the composer group forms a boy band or something and they prefer that. I suspect that marketing people might have a few things to say about that, but I agree 100%. If a composer has written anything on that soundtrack, their name should be on the front cover. This could well be something that Zimmer has campaigned for ('aditional music' credits) but he's got enough clout to put other composers' names on album covers, and yet he doesn't. Because he knows he's the 'name', perhaps? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post publicist 4,643 Posted February 21, 2022 Popular Post Share Posted February 21, 2022 1 hour ago, Edmilson said: This article really made me feel bad. It's awful to know that some of my favorite composers probably didn't write the wonderful cues I love. Tbh, my real favourite cues were written long before the era of Netflix, so... Corellian2019, Bayesian and KK 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aliandra 90 Posted February 21, 2022 Share Posted February 21, 2022 Most of my favorite film composers are too idiosyncratic for having their stuff ghostwritten. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WampaRat 1,105 Posted February 21, 2022 Share Posted February 21, 2022 24 minutes ago, TheUlyssesian said: They should get the bloody oscar nomination too because that is what is going to get them the next jobs and the best jobs and higher pay and better working conditions. Isn't it outrageous that Zimmer - he is likely to win - will head alone on to the stage of the academy awards and receive laurels for composing the score for Dune? Think how transformative it would be for some other composers if they are standing beside him on that stage accepting the laurels as co-creators of the work. Didn’t Alfred Newman get like 30 Oscars back in the day because he was the head of the music department of whatever film got best score? Maybe they should change some titles around. That way people would know they’re essentially just directors of all things related to the music. Sure they wrote some stuff. But not every note you hear. (Like the general public would assume) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheUlyssesian 2,478 Posted February 21, 2022 Share Posted February 21, 2022 16 minutes ago, WampaRat said: Maybe they should change some titles around. That way people would know they’re essentially just directors of all things related to the music. Sure they wrote some stuff. But not every note you hear. (Like the general public would assume) or why not give the award to everyone who composed the music? WampaRat 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brónach 1,302 Posted February 21, 2022 Share Posted February 21, 2022 Just now, TheUlyssesian said: or why not give the award to everyone who composed the music? yes this is my suggestion, along with the proper credits Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post Disco Stu 15,495 Posted February 21, 2022 Author Popular Post Share Posted February 21, 2022 Tim Greiving agrees that not naming names makes the article toothless Once, dylanskie, blondheim and 5 others 8 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HunterTech 994 Posted February 21, 2022 Share Posted February 21, 2022 I legitimately wonder if this article might give the fuel for some additional composers to actually speak out about this process, since I always got the impression it was the sort of thing that could get them fired if they dared even allude to it (as one Balfe interview certainly suggests). I've spoken before about how it's incredibly difficult to determine who exactly wrote what, since it all sounds so singular in vision to begin with. Perhaps the team doesn't feel they deserve the big credit if it ends up all sounding like the main man anyway. But with how much I hear about how certain aspects came about thanks to the influence of a particular person on the crew, I suppose more transparency is something that can be appreciated if their names were to be just below Zimmer or others. That being said: an album cover like this probably gonna either be an immediate turn off or just lead the average consumer to be very confused Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post GerateWohl 4,383 Posted February 21, 2022 Popular Post Share Posted February 21, 2022 Wh should the music business be different than the literature business? I am not sure what is worse. The described working conditions or the fact that the industry ask for these generic empty soundscapes where it really doesn't matter who wrote it, the named composer, the ghost composer, the intern or the A.I. Smeltington, crumbs, Tiburon and 1 other 4 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post Bespin 8,484 Posted February 21, 2022 Popular Post Share Posted February 21, 2022 Well I'm not surprised by this article. I knew since a long time ago John Williams was the last of Mohicans in the business. I repeat it since many many years: with him will end a fabulous era of film music! I don't have anything against the idea of having a team to write the music for a movie or a serie, that's personal to each studio or director. It was done like this for some low-budget horror movies in the beginning of "talkies". It's nothing really new! I just consider myself privileged to have lived at the era of "The Last Film Music Composers"... Will, crumbs and Bayesian 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mrbellamy 6,298 Posted February 21, 2022 Share Posted February 21, 2022 6 minutes ago, HunterTech said: I legitimately wonder if this article might give the fuel for some additional composers to actually speak out about this process, since I always got the impression it was the sort of thing that could get them fired if they dared even allude to it (as one Balfe interview certainly suggests). I've spoken before about how it's incredibly difficult to determine who exactly wrote what, since it all sounds so singular in vision to begin with. Perhaps the team doesn't feel they deserve the big credit if it ends up all sounding like the main man anyway. But with how much I hear about how certain aspects came about thanks to the influence of a particular person on the crew, I suppose more transparency is something that can be appreciated if their names were to be just below Zimmer or others. That being said: an album cover like this probably gonna either be an immediate turn off or just lead the average consumer to be very confused Most popular music today has writing credits that look like this. I don't think anybody would be that confused. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Will 2,215 Posted February 21, 2022 Share Posted February 21, 2022 I'm curious about Desplat and JNH... Has either of them ever spoken about their practices re: ghostwriters (or lack thereof)? Giacchino almost certainly must be using a fairly large number of ghostwriters, at least on some scores (like Rogue One). TheUlyssesian and crumbs 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post Disco Stu 15,495 Posted February 21, 2022 Author Popular Post Share Posted February 21, 2022 Of course Williams isn't actually the last film composer to write all the music. People like Desplat and Shore are working! Once, Will, crumbs and 2 others 5 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Will 2,215 Posted February 21, 2022 Share Posted February 21, 2022 I assume Silvestri writes all his music, though admittedly I have no real basis for thinking that beyond the fact that he's kinda from a different, older generation of composer... Not Mr. Big and Bespin 1 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WampaRat 1,105 Posted February 21, 2022 Share Posted February 21, 2022 I find it silly that people would be “confused” if all the other composers were credited. Do people believe the production designer built every thing seen on film themselves? Or the sound designer did it all himself? Each person on the poster just represents an entire department. But I suppose the average Joe wouldn’t know that(?) I dunno. It’s sad not everyone is getting their due credit (or rightful pay). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bespin 8,484 Posted February 21, 2022 Share Posted February 21, 2022 2 minutes ago, Disco Stu said: Of course Williams isn't actually the last film composer to write all the music. People like Desplat and Shore are working! I'm sure Silvestri still work pretty much alone too, well at least he's the boss of his music! Will 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Will 2,215 Posted February 21, 2022 Share Posted February 21, 2022 1 minute ago, Disco Stu said: Of course Williams isn't actually the last film composer to write all the music. People like Desplat and Shore are working! Do we know Desplat writes all his music? I wouldn't be surprised, to be sure, given that he's not really a "Hollywood" guy and his scores often have somewhat thinner orchestration that someone as talented as he could plausibly write quickly. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post Disco Stu 15,495 Posted February 21, 2022 Author Popular Post Share Posted February 21, 2022 Just now, Will said: Do we know Desplat writes all his music? I wouldn't be surprised, to be sure, given that he's not really a "Hollywood" guy and his scores often have somewhat thinner orchestration that someone as talented as he could plausibly write quickly. He has said in multiple interviews that he does not use a team of composers Will, Once, Edmilson and 1 other 3 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Will 2,215 Posted February 21, 2022 Share Posted February 21, 2022 Just now, Disco Stu said: He has said in multiple interviews that he does not use a team of composers Very cool. Major props to Desplat. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mrbellamy 6,298 Posted February 21, 2022 Share Posted February 21, 2022 Conrad Pope also often loves to vouch for him as an exception. Will 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post TheUlyssesian 2,478 Posted February 21, 2022 Popular Post Share Posted February 21, 2022 14 minutes ago, WampaRat said: I find it silly that people would be “confused” if all the other composers were credited. Do people believe the production designer built every thing seen on film themselves? Or the sound designer did it all himself? Each person on the poster just represents an entire department. But I suppose the average Joe wouldn’t know that(?) I dunno. It’s sad not everyone is getting their due credit (or rightful pay). I understand the department comparison. While it is true of Production Design and Costume Design - I think music is most similar to script-writing. It has always been thought to be essentially one person's creation. We generally perceive of classic musical - or symphonic music - for centuries now - to be written by a person. Just like we have perceived literature - generally - to be written by a person. The problem with Film Music - is the advertisement. It is still undoubtedly advertised as being a singular creation. When it is not. I have no quarrel with the model. The model is ... let's just say.. inevitable. What's important is the broadcasting the reality of it and generating awareness. Basically these co-composers should exist, not arguing against their existence, but they should exist more prominently - on covers, and in movie credits, and on award nominations, and on streaming apps etc. The point is the injustice - with literally that composer claiming she was literally on the streets due to lack of credit. They deserve credit so that they can have a better life, better jobs. It is almost a case of survival for some of these composers. enderdrag64, Bayesian, WampaRat and 4 others 7 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HunterTech 994 Posted February 21, 2022 Share Posted February 21, 2022 14 minutes ago, mrbellamy said: Most popular music today has writing credits that look like this. I don't think anybody would be that confused. 12 minutes ago, WampaRat said: I find it silly that people would be “confused” if all the other composers were credited. Do people believe the production designer built every thing seen on film themselves? Or the sound designer did it all himself? Each person on the poster just represents an entire department. But I suppose the average Joe wouldn’t know that(?) I dunno. It’s sad not everyone is getting their due credit (or rightful pay). I'm mainly going off on one instance years ago, when I read an Amazon review for Beltrami's Fantastic Four. The reviewer actually had looked in the booklet and found his usual collaborators listed in the additional section. Given it was advertised as being this proper team up with Philip Glass (who only really did 3-4 cues), they just ended up getting lost over who actually did what and if the main credit really is that accurate. I suppose that more describes what the others have said about the whole ordeal, but I do think it gives a pretty good example of just what the average schmoe might think regarding the subject. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Not Mr. Big 4,642 Posted February 21, 2022 Share Posted February 21, 2022 1 hour ago, Brónach said: Ghost composers should be called composers and required to appear on main credits, end credits, cd covers and track listing; unless the composer group forms a boy band or something and they prefer that. Hans Zimmer forms a boy band called "Hans Zimmer" Will 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mrbellamy 6,298 Posted February 21, 2022 Share Posted February 21, 2022 For sure, it would generate debate, the way that people debate whether a multi-million dollar recording artist writes any of their own music. Why shouldn't that be happening more openly in film music? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marian Schedenig 8,211 Posted February 21, 2022 Share Posted February 21, 2022 4 hours ago, Disco Stu said: I'd be very interested to know how composers for Disney+ shows fare in terms of royalty/back-end deals. Not very well, probably. Holko, Pellaeon and crumbs 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post LSH 969 Posted February 21, 2022 Popular Post Share Posted February 21, 2022 4 hours ago, Ludwig said: Ok, so Deborah Lurie is my new favorite person: I met Deborah Lurie at an event a good few years ago and she is one incredibly lovely, talented and forward-thinking individual. She spoke very highly of Christopher Young, of whom she replaced on AN UNFINISHED LIFE but ultimately assisted completing Spiderman with if I remember rightly. TheUlyssesian, Will, Edmilson and 3 others 6 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Disco Stu 15,495 Posted February 21, 2022 Author Share Posted February 21, 2022 We finally have reaction from an actual Zimling: Geoff Zannelli's Twitter thread https://twitter.com/GeoffZanelli/status/1495849542658531338 Quote With the VF article that came out today, in case anyone is wondering, I have always been credited for the music I wrote, and (nearly) always received an appropriate amount of royalties. I hope the composers who work on my scores feel the same. This means that I am comfortable saying publicly that Hans Zimmer, John Powell, Danny Elfman, Ramin Djawadi, Steve Jablonsky and probably some others I'm leaving out as I write this in haste ALL fought for me to be credited and paid royalties. One example of many: "Don't thank me, thank Geoff" is what HZ said to Gore during a Pirates playback when Gore Verbinski loved a cue I wrote. Others, I know, have had vastly different experiences than me in this industry so I am glad I fell in with the right people. I do know that mine isn't the case for everyone. And I try to pass this all on to people I work with on my own scores. I'm sure I fail sometimes. But I try. Production companies occasionally push back on my efforts, but not regularly. That time I won an Emmy? There were two other people listed on the cue sheet. Blake Neely and Bobby Tahouri wrote addt'l music for Into The West, credited and receiving royalties. It appeared not to factor for awards consideration in that case. Maybe that was just a matter of percentages. Their role was significant and essential to the score, but still not near the majority of the cues. But then on The Pacific, Hans, Blake and I were nominated together for a score that was a three-way co-write. It again appeared not to factor for awards consideration. Maybe different rules for different academies? Will and TSMefford 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheUlyssesian 2,478 Posted February 21, 2022 Share Posted February 21, 2022 5 minutes ago, Disco Stu said: We finally have reaction from an actual Zimling: Geoff Zannelli's Twitter thread https://twitter.com/GeoffZanelli/status/1495849542658531338 Feels like he was asked to post this. TSMefford 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jaaaackified 81 Posted February 21, 2022 Share Posted February 21, 2022 1 hour ago, Will said: I'm curious about Desplat and JNH... Has either of them ever spoken about their practices re: ghostwriters (or lack thereof)? Giacchino almost certainly must be using a fairly large number of ghostwriters, at least on some scores (like Rogue One). This is Joe Kraemer's reply on the R1 story (in the middle of his long thread of sharing thoughs on "why does it take four guys to score one movie") 4 hours ago, Edmilson said: I'm happy for Powell and Elfman being labeled as "good guys" in ther relationship with their assistants. However, I do want to know who are the "bad guys" - those who gain awards and recognition for stuff they didn't write. One example that instantly pops into mind is John Ottman's Non-Stop. He only wrote themes/sketches while his assistant was responsible for all the "blood and flesh". I do not own the CD so I don't know what credits it says there but at least Ottman is the only one appearing on the soundtrack cover Also one confusing case is Kevin Kiner As a composer who often went on record and admitted his sons were a significant part of his composing process, he remains the only one appears on the album cover. and I do think "Music By The Kiners" would make a cool credit Will 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bruce marshall 1,315 Posted February 21, 2022 Share Posted February 21, 2022 Not . Gonna. Click. And, since I can guess what all the posts here will say- I.e. the usual Zimmer bashing- not gonna read. Talk amongst yourselves.😒 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post Marian Schedenig 8,211 Posted February 21, 2022 Popular Post Share Posted February 21, 2022 2 minutes ago, bruce marshall said: Not . Gonna. Click. And, since I can guess what all the posts here will say- I.e. the usual Zimmer bashing- not gonna read. Talk amongst yourselves.😒 Or you could read it and find out that a) it's not primarily Zimmer bashing and b) the criticism is well-founded. Remco, crumbs, Once and 5 others 8 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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