MFG Member Brent Holland has been composing music professionally for over 20
years and has had the privilege to create music for all major network broadcasting
companies in North
America including: CBS, FOX, NBC, ABC, NASA, PBS, Cox, Clear Channel, CBC, Radio Canada International,
SRC, CTV, TVA, APN, CHUM, CORUS, RDS, Global,
etc. Credits include feature films and international broadcasters. Mr.
Holland holds to his name, two Bachelors of Fine Arts, one in of them is in
music, and the other in Theatre Design. Contact info below.
Putting
Music to Picture is a series of articles derived from my real-world-guerilla-grass-roots 22 years
of experience scoring for film, TV, docs, etc. coupled with my work in composing
for and operating a stock music library. In short, these are articles for the
rest of us who make a living everyday in the
business of the non-Hollywood world. These are not Òhow toÓ articles, but
instead, they are Òtry thisÓ articles interjected with stories and anecdotes of
my everyday experiences in the trenches.
-Stock Production Music Libraries for the Brave & Bold-
Why
Production Music
For those of us working in the non-existent-budgetary
world of guerrilla film making, actually being able to hire a composer is often
a luxury. For those moments, there is stock music or more commonly known as: Production
Music. Production music is encountered throughout our everyday life. It is the
background music of all broadcast programming. Virtually every broadcaster of
both radio and television makes use of production music for sports highlights,
local ads, news, local programming, etc. You may also be surprised to learn
that even the big guns of Hollywood use production music sometimes. It happens when
their custom score hasnÕt been finished and they need some music to carry their
trailers. But most often in high budget films where a composer has been hired, production
music is used as ÒIncidental MusicÓ. This is the term given to the music heard
in the background during a film such as on a car radio, elevators, TVs and the
like. An example would be when a character is channeling surfing on a car radio
and they go past three or four different stations playing music. The various songs
the character hears from the stations is what is referred to as ÒIncidental
MusicÓ. It has nothing to do with the actual score.
The
advantages of Production Music are two fold:
Cost:
$10.00 from a music library for a 30-second commercial compared with an
original composition for the same commercial priced upwards of $100.00 to $100,000.00
and beyond.
Accessibility:
to thousands upon thousands of songs in every conceivable style, tempo and
instrumentation and all are available instantaneously for screening by pressing
play on a CD player or auditioning online. Wow!
The
downside is the lack of originality and the loss of flexibility. Not much
originality is created
when all of a sudden the song you
licensed for your travel videoÕs scene of Mexico turns up the very same day on
a radio commercial advertising a local restaurant of the same country or even worse
something completely unassociated with the subject like a tire sale. In most
cases, however, this will not present a problem. Production music, by its very nature,
tends to be generic and inconspicuous. Put voice over on top of it and itÕs
pretty much transparent in the background and instead it plays on the
listenerÕs subconscious. A certain amount of inflexibility does occur when you
may need a different vibe in the middle of a song than whatÕs present in the production
music song. Too many instruments (brass and lead guitar are usually the worst
culprits here) along with durations and hit points present their own challenges
as well. An example of the latter is: just when you need to punch up an edit
that is truly visionary and Oscar noteworthy, the crescendo in the song happens
2 seconds later. So, you end up compromising by extending the scene or cutting to
the music or even worse trying to cut and edit the music yourself. Either way,
it may not be the best solution for the sceneÕs edit to ÒworkÓ. There goes that
Oscar again until next year.
What is a Production
Music Library
A
Production Music Library is a collection of songs categorized in much the same
fashion as that of a traditional book library. For example, if one were
searching for a book about ÒsportsÓ, one would look in the stacks under ÒsportsÓ.
If youÕre looking for a book about ÒmysteriesÓ you would
go to the ÒmysteryÓ stacks. The same is true for a production music library. If
an announcer is looking for background music for their
ÒsportsÓ highlight package, they would search for music in the CDs labeled
ÒSportsÓ. If they need ÒmysteryÓ music, they would search the CDs titled
ÒMysteryÓ. Production music is used en mass by Broadcast, Television, Radio,
Cable, Film and Audiovisual / Postproduction Internet Web Sites, Web
Broadcasts, Multimedia, Educational Institutes, Satellite, and Performing Arts.
Usually anywhere budgets are challenged and youÕre unable to hire an original
music composer.
A Grass Roots Approach
for Choosing Production Music
It
goes without saying that there are as many exceptions to the above approaches
for choosing production music as there are stars in
the sky. There are Òno rulesÓ; this is art, so have fun and experiment.
Search & Rest Cued
We
are living in an era of instantaneity. We no longer need to bother searching
through stacks upon stacks of CDs to find a single song. Instead we have indeed
been rescued from our plight by the
online search engine.
90%
of music libraries have their own online sites where you can go and search,
audition and then download the tracks you want. You simply choose key words
from their search engineÕs pull down menu and then all the songs that fit those
key words pop up in a list for you to audition. This system works exceptionally
well for those of us in the Audio-Visual realm doing industrial / corporate
videos. Buyers beware, however. There are a plethora of production music sites
on the net these days, which in a free enterprise, competitive sense, is
healthy and in another sense: scary. Many of these sites are
put up by non-professional composers with a synthizer
in their parentÕs basement in order to make some money and hear their music
online. Fair enough. There is absolutely not a thing wrong with that scenario and
creativity in all guises should be encouraged. But, when it comes to licensing
the music: Red Flag. These sites are
usually more than willing to Ògive the music awayÓ but then are gone by the
next year. What do you do about the song you licensed from them last year when a
corporate client comes back for a new video shoot with new information added
and a complete re-edit and 10,000 additional copies? Your license may not cover
you and you may have just shot yourself in the foot to save $10.00. But whatÕs
far worse is you may end up looking like an amateur in front of your client who
has chosen you as a professional to oversee these things. A good rule of thumb
for choosing music libraries is to take a look at their orchestra work. If they
donÕt have any, be prudent. Composers
who have the skill to write for orchestra tend be serious craftsmen as opposed
to those who throw a few preassembled break-beats looped together. A great
analogy is: someone who buys stock photos and puts them together in a montage
and then calls themselves a photographer. Not.
Broadcasters,
on the other hand, have tended not to embrace online downloads and for broadcast
specific reasons. Many broadcasters have three, four, sometimes more edit suites
where their staff goes to edit their video film for broadcast. It is much
easier for them to simply grab a CD labeled Sports, as an example, and then run
to the edit suite, place it in a CD player and transfer the music to the audio
track. The problem that crops up with broadcasters and online search engines is
one of time consuming issues and simple logistics. It requires the staff to go online, search, examine the
license to make sure theyÕre covered, pay for and then download and transfer
the chosen song, to say nothing of which web site to go to in the first place. When
youÕre up against a show deadline for News, as an example, the internet can decide on the most inconvenient time to crash.
In
some cases, broadcasters have chosen to receive an external hard disc full of a
music libraryÕs complete catalogue in .wav or .aiff files. The hard disc usually contains its own
search engine and again, will also enable the end user to search by selecting
key words. This works really well for smaller broadcast facilities. However,
for larger stations, the problem arises on how many hard discs to license.
Given a station with the 3- 4 edit suites, as mentioned above, the budget for
licensing 3 or 4 corresponding libraries usually exceeds the money allotted for
a single library. There are work a-rounds, of course, like making a licensing
agreement with the library to enable the copying of the contents of the
external hard disc to a desk top hard disc. Word of
warning though, make doubly sure you have permission and the licensing from the
library to do so, and donÕt do it on your own without it, it is illegal and you
may find yourself in copyright infringement. The other obvious problem arises
with staff running down the hall to an edit suite with a complete library on a
single hard disc in hand. What if someone else is in edit room 2 needs it for
their piece? Or all the suites need the music...now?
Bang for Buck
Production
Music remains the best avenue for all of us involved in everyday video and film
making to get professional sounding music at bargain basement prices. Its benefits
far out weigh its detriments. For what you would spend on going to see a movie
you can license a fully orchestrated piece of music for your own film. ItÕs the
most cost effective part of any production; period.
Brent Holland
B&H
Gold Production Music Library
(705) 585-2029
the
power of music
if
there were words for it
we
wouldn't need it
Reprinted by
the Montreal Film Group with permission from Brent Holland.
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