“The Minions Do the Actual Writing”: The Ugly Truth of How Movie Scores Are Made

[Cremildo]

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.”

[...]

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.

Read the rest on Vanity Fair.

[Jennifer Lawrence Fan]

Oh, I thought you meant other minions..

[Gacivory]

Will read this later. Heard a story from a friend about Hans Zimmer doing this, wasn't aware it was as widespread.

[dvining]

I've heard similar things about editors through my brother, a video editor and producer in New York with friends in the industry in LA.

[Gacivory]

Originally Posted by dvining

I've heard similar things about editors through my brother, a video editor and producer in New York with friends in the industry in LA.

I feel like editors and Sound designers makes sense. I know Bullet Train, at last in November, had three suites of people working on the sound. Do the editors get more compensation or an assistant editor credit? It's a widespread issue with CGI artists too.

[Monterey Jack]

Film music has been garbage since roughly 2005. The Zimmer Model killed it dead.

[slumcat]

This is an important piece that begins to give hints to the movie-going public about the absolute fraudulent con-artist Hans Zimmer who has scammed the movie composing business for decades now.

This is the composer that most general audiences think is the best composer working today.

Shows how many gullible suckers there are in the world to be duped so blindly.

[-JKR-]

Originally Posted by Monterey Jack

Film music has been garbage since roughly 2005. The Zimmer Model killed it dead.

I like many of Hans Zimmer's (team's) scores, yet I agree 100%.

[drush9999]

Originally Posted by Monterey Jack

Film music has been garbage since roughly 2005. The Zimmer Model killed it dead.

I have hundreds of soundtracks on CD, only a handful of those are 21st century ones.

[CreasyBear]

Is that it? Three paragraphs?

Film is a collaborative medium. To think that only one person could or would write every note of 90-120 minutes of music for a film is naive, to say the least. Just as it is to think that only the cinematographer is the only person that lights the set and places the camera. Royalties are an issue that plagues the entire industry.

[Martoto]

A) It's not revelation that few credited composers write every single cue or bit of musical wallpaper or carpeting that winds up in the score.

B)90% of scores are just that wallpaper/carpet that all sounds like the same Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzimmer score over and over again. So it shouldn't surprise anyone.

C) One of the main reasons is because many movies don't get picture locked until very late on when the main composer had done their work and moved on to something else.

[BudBaxter]

Originally Posted by CreasyBear

Is that it? Three paragraphs?

No. Try clicking on the link.

[BudBaxter]

Originally Posted by monterey jack

film music has been garbage since roughly 2005. The zimmer model killed it dead.

bwaaaaaaaaaaaaaaam!

[CreasyBear]

Originally Posted by BudBaxter

No. Try clicking on the link.

I clicked on it the first time and there were only three paragraphs.

[Cremildo]

Originally Posted by Martoto

A) It's not revelation that few credited composers write every single cue or bit of musical wallpaper or carpeting that winds up in the score.

B)90% of scores are just that wallpaper/carpet that all sounds like the same Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzimmer score over and over again. So it shouldn't surprise anyone.

C) One of the main reasons is because many movies don't get picture locked until very late on when the main composer had done their work and moved on to something else.

Shit, what a pity that Vanity Fair didn't consult you before writing and publishing that extensive article; it'd have saved the writer hours of work since it's so pointless due to it all being common knowledge. I guess that the ghost-composers who actually do most of the heavy-lifting and are seldomly credited for it should just crawl back to their overworked caves and not complain.

[Martoto]

Originally Posted by Cremildo

Shit, what a pity that Vanity Fair didn't consult you before writing and publishing that extensive article; it'd have saved the writer hours of work since it's so pointless due to it all being common knowledge. I guess that the ghost-composers who actually do most of the heavy-lifting and are seldomly credited for it should just crawl back to their overworked caves and not complain.

Aww, diddums. Got your monthly's?

[John1701D]

Lol

[moreorless]

I'm guessing this is probably becoming even more of an issue in the era of "cinematic" TV/Net series that have dramatic scene specific scores covering hours and hours of material.

To be honest this does tie in with something I'v felt about scoring in recent decades, that whilst we do still have big iconic themes films as a whole often tend to have more score thats quite bland, music that whilst it might follow the events were seeing on screen doesnt really add much to them. I'm guessing that kind of music is a lot of whats being talked about here?

John Williams is an obvious example of someone who's best work was both heavily integrated into films BUT also brought a lot of individuality, was watching Raiders a few days ago for example and something like the score to the truck chase I think fits than perfectly. Its reacting to the drama as it happens but its still giving us an iconic composition that brings a lot to the scene itself.

[NeoVisionist]

Bruce Faulconer is another culprit. He scored about 5% of Dragon Ball Z's Funimation dub, and not much of the most iconic stuff either.

[Bugg]

So Hans Zimmer is the James Patterson of film scores?