Do I Need To Move To Los Angeles ?

So as discussed, the principles in this book apply to any country in the world. But the answer to the above question is: it depends.  It depends on what you want for yourself and what goals you set out for yourself. If you want to score the next Hollywood blockbuster, then yes you do need to move out to LA. Community and connections drive this business and Los Angeles is the center of the universe when it comes to the entertainment industry. There may be some exceptions to the rule, but I am only aware of one. Once you establish yourself, then you can move back home or wherever it is that you want to live. But if you want to be on the A-list of composers (the top 20 or 30 highest paid, scoring the biggest movies) then you need to at least start in Los Angeles.

Alan Silvestri lives in northern California and Howard Shore lives in New York State (outside of the New York City ) but they both established themselves in Los Angeles at one point. The rest of the A-list composers pretty much all live out here in LA.

If you see yourself as scoring independent movies and local commercials as a career, then you can probably live in any big city. So if you are from Springfield, Illinois, and want to stay close to home, you could move to Chicago. If you are from Oriskany Fall, NY, you may want to move to New York City . If you are from Huntsville, Ontario, then you might want to move to Toronto. Even if you are from a moderately big city you still may want to move to a bustling metropolis to find work. For a brief time in my life I lived in Brisbane, Australia. The population of the city was hovering around 1,000,000 people. Pretty big, right? But as I tried to find work in film scoring there, I realized there were very slim pickings. If I were to pursue film music at all in that country it was going to have to be in Sydney or Melbourne. I eventually ended up moving back to Toronto as a springboard to get to Los Angeles. Now this is not to say there are no film composers in Brisbane, but there can’t be very many.

As an assistant you will be interfacing with many members of the composers team, such as the engineer, the music editor, the musicians contractor, the agents, editorial (the team editing the picture who will supply you with the latest reels of the movie), the orchestrators and the conductor. Sometimes you might even be required to liaise with the director and producer. So having good people skills is another requirement.

As “Spider-Man 3” went on, director Sam Raimi had less and less time to come over to Chris’s studio to listen to the mockups. So Chris sent me over to Sony to meet with him almost daily. As his liaison I had to make sure that he was represented well.

On one cue towards the end of the movie, as the Sandman emerges into the enormous behemoth at the construction sight, Chris had written a huge tutti section. Of course, even with the best of mockups there is no way to avoid it from sounding dense and one-dimensional. Chris conceives his music for the orchestra in his head, at the piano. He doesn’t write to accommodate his samples. The technology doesn’t influence him in that sense. Composers who write at the computer may not face this problem.

So Sam asked me why it sounded the way it did. I explained it to him just like how I explained it in the above paragraph. He wasn’t convinced right away. I had to assure him and gain rapport with him and have him trust me that it was going to sound amazing on the scoring stage with a real orchestra - and it did. Sam loved it! If I wasn’t able to gain rapport with Sam and really sell Chris’s music, then Chris might have had to rewrite the cue, and that would have not been welcome news to him.

I had another experience like that on the same movie where I had to use my social skills to improve a situation. About 20 minutes into the movie there is a big fight between the characters Harry and Peter. This was an extremely important scene for Sam. He thought of it as the fight everyone had been waiting to see since the first movie. It’s a 4 minute long action sequence. It was also very important because it was being aired on NBC in a week for a promotional special on the movie. The music had to be good and it had to be recorded soon.

This was towards the beginning of the project. Sam was still coming over to the studio. I was sitting beside him when he heard the mockup for the first time. He almost leapt out of his seat with excitement. The mockup was sent to the dubbing mixer (the one who mixes the music, sound effects and dialogue) so he could start mixing the scene with all of the audio elements. When the cue was recorded, he was going to simply replace the mockup with the live recording and then tweak it for the final mix.

When he was mixing the cue with the mockup he noticed problems in Chris’s “writing.” The next day there was a meeting in the Cary Grant Theatre (the big dubbing stage on the Sony lot) with Paul Ottosson (sound effects editor), Bob Murawski (picture editor), Sam Raimi, Laura Ziskin (executive producer) and of course the dubbing mixer. Chris was asked to be there but he didn’t want to get bogged down with that sort of stuff. He needed to be cranking out new minutes of music. So I was sent in his place since I was getting to know Sam pretty well.

We listened to the mix of the scene. The dubbing mixer then told me that he couldn’t mix it well because the music was fighting the sound effects. Now Paul, the sound effects editor, the one who actually designed the sounds, was just observing quietly taking notes. The dubbing mixer asked me (as Chris’s representative) why the music was sounding so muddy, why it was not cutting through, why the percussion had no “umph!” to it.  It sounded like he was suggesting that the problems were in the writing. I told him that it was the mockup. The real thing would sound great. He wasn’t convinced. I even brought the sketch. I had done the takedown so I knew the cue backwards and forwards. I showed him the percussion parts (not that a music score really meant anything to him anyway) and tried to assure him that it was going to sound fabulous with the real orchestra. I told him that there was going to be so much more clarity, sharpness, depth and presence to the recording. I looked over to Sam and he looked at us like two of his children he had to choose between. I never really thought Sam had his own problem with it, but Sam trusted the people on his team and wanted a solution. Ultimately it was Sam’s call.

The sound mixer was suggesting taking the music completely out in places where he thought the two elements were fighting each other. It was always in the middle of a musical phrase it seemed. There was only one place that Sam insisted music be out. That was at the point where Harry throws Peter through the window. Sam wanted to feature the sound effects there. I came up with a solution. The meeting ended and I had made my point. I told them I would take their notes to Chris so that he could start addressing them. I assured them that they would like the solution and for that, I had to get them to trust me, to like me and had to build rapport with them. The music was to be recorded the next afternoon.

I got back to the office and told Chris where the dubbing mixer wanted to punch holes in the music. He wasn’t all that happy about it. I told him my solution and he green-lit it. All I was going to do was write “cue” around the sections in the score that the dubbing mixer wanted deleted. The terminology “cue” means to play the part with the indication, only if asked to by the conductor. So we would know in the score where music was supposed to be out, but the musicians had the notes on the page in case we wanted them to play it. I knew that the problem could be solved by having them hear the real thing. It would be that simple to fix it. So when we brought that cue up on the stage we asked the musicians to play all of the cues, except for the section that Sam insisted be just sound effects. When it was recorded Sam came into the control room for a playback. He hadn’t been there for the rehearsing of the cue. He heard it and loved it. He made some final tweaks. We listened to it with the sound effects and dialogue and problem solved! I never heard anything about the conflicting issues of that cue ever again.

The point of this story was to show that as Chris’s liaison I had let the dubbing mixer and company feel that their needs and concerns were being met while trying to keep the integrity of Chris’s music in tact as much as possible.

Unfortunately you can’t turn to the classifieds in the local paper to seek out work as a composer’s assistant. The easiest way to find a job is by word of mouth. As in any field, an employer is going to want to hire someone more if he comes highly recommended, as opposed to just credentials on a piece of paper. This is why having a network or expanding your network is so vital. If your friends who are working know that you are looking for work, they will keep their ears to the ground for you. If they hear of an opening at their work or somewhere else then they will refer you. Usually when you are working you hear more about job openings. It’s ironic.

So what do you do if you don’t have a network? You need to create one. If you are living in Los Angeles it is pretty easy to join the film scoring community. Groups like the Society For Composers and Lyricists (The SCL) are excellent places to meet fellow composers. They often hold screenings of movies and invite the composer to discuss the music with the audience at the end. The Film Music Network is also another great resource. They hold events for their members, such as discussion panels and there is always a big turnout. It is a great place to meet people and make friends because you will already have a common bond. For about $12/month you can become a member of the Film Music Network and have job opportunities emailed to you. Chris Young runs a class here in Los Angeles separate from his USC class for any aspiring film composer. It is completely free of charge and the assignments he hands out sometimes require a scoring session that he pays for himself. Not only is it a great place to learn, but a fantastic place for networking and making friends. I’ve seen many friendships bud out of that class.

My main network was my USC class but has now become more of the friends I met working with Chris. When I first moved to LA I didn’t know a soul. Going to USC gave me a built-in network of friends and composers who had moved to Los Angeles with the same vision I had. This made the transition easier. Since we graduated I have kept in touch with some of them and have gotten work from some of them and given work to some of them. We always try to help each other out. Now I have a similar connection with the Chris Young crew. Try contacting working alumni from your college in your city if possible. See if your college has any networking strategies or support for their alumni. Also check and see if your college offers any assistance in finding work at their career center.

Myspace.com has exploded in the United States . Virtually every composer I know and could think of is on Myspace. In fact it was originally created for musicians to get exposure for their music. You can meet composers from all over the world just by sitting in front of your computer wherever in the world you are. You should all have Myspace pages even if you already have a website. It is free.

So what do you do if you are not in Los Angeles? Well, with any city that has film composers there is a film composing community. Do your best to find out what those are. It will require some Internet searching. In Toronto, I managed to attend a panel discussion for the Guild of Canadian Film Composers. A composer I knew (whom I met through cold calling) let me be his delegate. More than half of all Canadian composers were in that room. Afterwards there was a social where I got to mingle with other composers and build my network.