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Thoughts on Natalie Holt Tweet


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It's just a matter of time. Women seem to be better at studying, now that society really lets them do it. As mentioned before nowadays more females go to university. In veterinary science for example, i have seen that now there is almost 90% females. In one decade it will be rare to see a young male veterinarian, and when all old males retire, you would hardly see a man on the job.

 

Maybe forcing equality now with quotas can only slow than trend as males could feel threatened and try to ralentise it...

 

 

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19 minutes ago, crumbs said:

 

Is it the same case for screenwriting then? Because one woman has been nominated for Best Original Screenplay in the last 3 years (she won, go figure) against 19 men in the same period.

 

In the decade prior, 62 men were nominated compared to 9 women.

 

So while I'm intrigued by the argument that women simply aren't interested in film music, I find it hard to believe so few women are interested in writing, considering the plethora of female authors out there! A recent study indicates that 24% of published books are written by women, yet female writers on Hollywood movies only just increased to 4%.

 

The further you dig on this topic, the clearer it becomes there's an industry-wide bias here... it isn't exclusive to film music.

 

Taking on all the bias in Hollywood is probably it’s own can of worms, that I have no intention of getting in to.

 

But as a general response to your post, I don’t think you can draw parallels that easily between different professions in movie making (i.e. between composing screen music and screenwriting) - or even draw parallels between writing a book and writing a script, for that matter. Between the latter, the similarities seem superficial at best to me.

 

But you mentioned screeenwriting specifically. I’d recommend you do a little digging on your own if you’re actually interested, but this was my first result google result:

 

Script Writer Demographics and Statistics In The US

 

C60B6680-9A40-4105-A665-0EE9DA5EEC22.jpeg

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19 minutes ago, rough cut said:

But you mentioned screeenwriting specifically. I’d recommend you do a little digging on your own if you’re actually interested, but this was my first result google result:

 

Script Writer Demographics and Statistics In The US

 

C60B6680-9A40-4105-A665-0EE9DA5EEC22.jpeg

But if you actually look at what they include under this category, you see it's not exactly Hollywood movie script writer:

image.png

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21 minutes ago, rough cut said:

Taking on all the bias in Hollywood is probably it’s own can of worms, that I have no intention of getting in to.

 

Oh absolutely, it's a huge can of worms. I'm just trying to highlight that this disparity isn't contained to film music and female composers (though clearly there's history when it comes to women and classical music, whether subconsciously related or otherwise).

 

21 minutes ago, rough cut said:

But you mentioned screeenwriting specifically. I’d recommend you do a little digging on your own if you’re actually interested, but this was my first result google result:

 

But how many are screenplays optioned by studios? Clearly not many.

 

I guess we can argue about the quality of modern screenplays until the cows come home, also the types of films the studio system is interested in optioning (seems their focus is increasingly narrow, and perhaps these genres don't necessarily appeal to female writers).

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1 hour ago, Naïve Old Fart said:

If she wants to be nominated for an Oscar ™, then I suggest that she compose an Oscar-worthy score

 

Yes, because as this board clearly has shown over the years, every Oscar nominated score was worthy of the nomination...

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17 hours ago, King Mark said:

 

that's  not what i said

 

Also that tweet suggest she cares more about feminism and being a woman composer than the quality of her music

 

You literally did say that.

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20 hours ago, King Mark said:

Also that tweet suggest she cares more about feminism and being a woman composer than the quality of her music

What, If that very same statement would have been made by a male composer, like for example Michael Giacchino, would you assume as well, that he cared more for feminism than the quality of his music?

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34 minutes ago, GerateWohl said:

What, If that very same statement would have been made by a male composer, like for example Michael Giacchino, would you assume as well, that he cared more for feminism than the quality of his music?

 

Well, he certainly doesn't care much about quality.

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On 25/01/2023 at 6:05 PM, Tydirium said:

I don't think women are really discouraged/intentionally left out when it comes to film music these days. 

 

Of course not.

Never in any point in history were people more free to do anything, and was it easier to attain skill and knowledge than today.

Especially for composers, it was never easier to gather knowledge of music, attain means of recording, and ways of publishing and showcasing work.

 

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7 minutes ago, TolkienSS said:

Especially for composers, it was never easier to gather knowledge of music, attain means of recording, and ways of publishing and showcasing work.

 

There's nothing left to hide our laziness behind. 

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On 29/01/2023 at 10:57 AM, Luke Skywalker said:

It's just a matter of time. Women seem to be better at studying, now that society really lets them do it. As mentioned before nowadays more females go to university. In veterinary science for example, i have seen that now there is almost 90% females. In one decade it will be rare to see a young male veterinarian, and when all old males retire, you would hardly see a man on the job.

 

Maybe forcing equality now with quotas can only slow than trend as males could feel threatened and try to ralentise it...

 

 

 

So, when quotas benefit men, that's "feeling threatened", when quotas benefit women, that's "encouraging".

 

Having a percentage in anything doesn't mean the outcome is quality. If you replace "really let them do it" with "encourage them to think they have to do it" that's closer to reality.

 

When I look at young people around me having barely enough attention span for an Instagram photo library, and reaching their frustration tolerance ceiling when doing dishes, I'm not sure that's a crowd for the sciences.

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43 minutes ago, TolkienSS said:

 

So, when quotas benefit men, that's "feeling threatened", when quotas benefit women, that's "encouraging".

 

Having a percentage in anything doesn't mean the outcome is quality. If you replace "really let them do it" with "encourage them to think they have to do it" that's closer to reality.

 

When I look at young people around me having barely enough attention span for an Instagram photo library, and reaching their frustration tolerance ceiling when doing dishes, I'm not sure that's a crowd for the sciences.

No, i meant that forcing quotas for women everytime everywhere could make the ruling male caste to feel their positions threatened and make laws to ralentise change, it is detrimental for womankind.

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Jon Broxton's reply seems like a reasonable assessment to me:

 

Quote

Honestly I think change really needs to start at the top, where women composers are consistently considered and hired for major, prestige, tentpole films by studios/execs. Then the award noms/wins will hopefully follow.

 

https://twitter.com/mmuk64/status/1618017435709472768

 

Whenever we discuss likely/preferred assignments for various big movies, we rarely get female suggestions.

 

But we have a cycle where studios feel it's a risk to deviate from the established composers, but until more female composers get hired for major projects, they won't be the ones who get the call.

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Anne Dudley and Rachel Portman are two very talented and Oscar-winning composers who are still working and it really doesn't make much sense that they don't get more high-profile jobs. At this point they are kind of industry legends, or should be. Portman's Cider House main title is one of the most famous pieces of film music of the 90s! 

 

I feel like Desplat kind of became the new Rachel Portman. And I'm not ragging on him because he is a legitimate composer who is a valuable asset to Hollywood but there is probably a world where she's still in-demand for top dramas and gets three more Oscar nominations for The King's Speech, The Imitation Game, and Little Women, right? 

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4 minutes ago, mrbellamy said:

Portman's Cider House main title is one of the most famous pieces of film music of the 90s! 

 

A bit famous, perhaps, but not very.

 

4 minutes ago, mrbellamy said:

Little Women

 

Why are they so small?

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Shirley Walker is a clear example of a female composer that had more than enough musical chops to tackle any big budget, mainstream action adventure movie, but still only really had major breaks in her TV work.

 

Wasn't she the first female composer to score a major Hollywood production?

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If 1981's "The Incredible Shrinking Woman" counts as "a major Hollywood production", then Suzanne Ciani wins

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Can someone point at a score by Natalie Holt that supports the theory that she would have been able to do a Star Wars-y score if darned producers hadn't "forbid" her?

 

It's a good defensive theory because it can never be proven - but if Lorne Balfe scored a sequel to Star Trek, and he told you he would have loved to write a score in the idiom of Jerry Goldsmith if his producer hadn't "held him back", you'd be a tiny bit suspicuous?

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  • 3 weeks later...
14 hours ago, Marian Schedenig said:

Here's an article about the situation of Hollywood women composers in particular and composer assistants in general:

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2023/feb/20/film-scoring-hollywood-misconduct-abuse-harassment-metoo

This is really horrible.

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1 hour ago, Jurassic Shark said:

Why don't people get other jobs that don't suck, like we do?

 

EDIT: I forgot for a moment there that my job does suck. Never mind.

Often you don't know, that the job sucks until you actually do it.

It is like you are a passionate boatman and a world champion rower and you always dreamed of working on a ship. And when you hire you realize that you just volunteered to become a galley slave.

 

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On 21/02/2023 at 1:01 PM, Marian Schedenig said:

Here's an article about the situation of Hollywood women composers in particular and composer assistants in general:

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2023/feb/20/film-scoring-hollywood-misconduct-abuse-harassment-metoo

 

That second story about Jeremy Soule... yikes, I didn't need that image. Do they sell mouthwash for the brain?

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