{"id":1078,"date":"2017-03-20T14:59:46","date_gmt":"2017-03-20T18:59:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/?p=1078"},"modified":"2017-03-20T14:59:46","modified_gmt":"2017-03-20T18:59:46","slug":"film-composition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/2017\/03\/film-composition.html","title":{"rendered":"Film Composition"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-1079 alignright\" src=\"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/chris-heckman-p-300x200.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"200\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/chris-heckman-p-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/chris-heckman-p-768x512.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/chris-heckman-p.jpg 960w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/>We had composer Chris Heckman in on Friday to talk with our composers about careers in Film Composition.\u00a0 Chris is a good colleague who has worked on projects for Disney, Danny Elfman and the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra.\u00a0 He was direct and informative with the students: no sugar-coating, no blasting the bad guys, just shared a clear sense of how the profession works.\u00a0 A few themes emerged.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>First, speed.\u00a0 Film composition is not for people who like to sleep on an idea.\u00a0 He made it clear that you go with your first idea and make it great, or the job goes to someone else.\u00a0 If you can create five minutes of riveting music in less than a half hour, all the better.<\/li>\n<li>Second, off-the-beaten-track.\u00a0 As in: avoid at all costs.\u00a0 Or, more specifically, avoid especially the more it costs: films with big budgets can\u2019t afford to risk alienating viewers with unfamiliarity.\u00a0 More creative options are available with lower budgets, but even that is not the norm.<\/li>\n<li>Third, filmmakers often have a particular musical genre in mind, and it\u2019s not your job to convince them another option would be better.\u00a0 Figure out what they want and deliver.<\/li>\n<li>Fourth, if you are lucky and get a big credit for something you\u2019ve done, that\u2019s probably who you are for the rest of your life, regardless of how you might envision yourself.\u00a0 He shared the story of a friend, a fine composer, who got the Music Editor job for one of the <em>Lord of the Rings<\/em> films. Great credit, great money\u2026 and the end of his career as a composer.\u00a0 From then on, all anyone wants him for is editing.<\/li>\n<li>Fifth, there are a lot of composers in the industry who do really great work, make really great money, and never see their names in the credits, or are even allowed to list their work on resumes or websites.\u00a0 The main composer gets the credit for the project, and a good main composer often has an even better farm team.<\/li>\n<li>Sixth, no such thing as banging out a rough draft of what you are thinking, everything has to be the best possible quality from day one.\u00a0 To get there, invest in serious hardware and software.\u00a0 To get to the top, expect to spend in the 6-figure range.<\/li>\n<li>Seventh, once you create the music, let ownership go.\u00a0 You may be particularly proud of a particular passage of beautiful stuff, but it\u2019s perfectly possible it will get buried under the sound of a speeding car in the final edit.\u00a0 He even told the story of a filmmaker who used his music played backwards, because he thought it sounded cooler.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I\u2019ve always admired good film composition, and I\u2019ve always known it was not the right thing for me.\u00a0 There are aspects of the above that suit me pretty well \u2013 making music quickly comes pretty naturally for me, and I can easily imagine enjoying the anonymity of being a farmhand.\u00a0 But other aspects of the job just don\u2019t appeal.\u00a0 And that makes me happy to have colleagues like Chris who can spell out the pros and cons for my students and even share some of his wonderful work in the medium.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We had composer Chris Heckman in on Friday to talk with our composers about careers in Film Composition.\u00a0 Chris is a good colleague who has worked on projects for Disney, Danny Elfman and the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra.\u00a0 He was direct and informative with the students: no sugar-coating, no blasting the bad guys, just shared a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1079,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1078","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uncategorized","8":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1078","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1078"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1078\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1082,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1078\/revisions\/1082"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1079"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1078"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1078"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1078"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}