How does the film music industry function?

Film production goes through multiple stages of development, including pre-production and then production, before entering the phase of post-production. This phase is where film music comes in, along with other musical elements to be added, such as finished songs, Foley, SFX, sound design, and underscores. Together, all these elements contribute greatly to the final experience of moviegoers.

Let’s quickly look at the history of the film-music industry.

A step back in time

Back in the days when legendary film composer John Williams was scoring/composing music for iconic films such as Star Wars, Jaws, and Indiana Jones, things were done a little differently.

Originally, the composer would sit at a piano with a pen and a blank sheet of music paper while watching film excerpts on the tiny screen of a Moviola projector. A common workflow would involve complex time calculations and conversions to make sure the composer’s initial ideas were in sync with the picture, all of which was done by hand. At the same time, the composer would meet with the film director so that they could watch the film together and swap ideas so that the composer could understand the director’s vision (this meeting still happens today, and we will explore this shortly).

After the completed score had been sketched out, which commonly consisted of five or six staffs on a single sheet of music paper, it was then passed to the film’s orchestrator. The orchestrator expanded the written sketch and filled out all the required instrument parts for a full orchestra before preparing it for the live orchestra recording session. When the entire score was successfully recorded, the music was then mixed and sent over to a dubbing stage, where the dialogue, SFX, and music were mixed. Once approved by the director and producer, the entire mix was attached to the picture and the film was ready for distribution.

This process required the film composer to have strong synchronization skills, and the film director also had to trust and understand the film composer’s ideas. As a lot of film directors didn’t (and often still don’t) have much music education, they didn’t know what the score would sound like outside of just a piano until they heard the final score.

It was this uncertainty on the director’s part that led film composers to come up with the idea of creating something called orchestral mockups. This was developed in the 80s with the introduction of the Music Instrument Digital Interface (MIDI). MIDI allows the sequencer to connect and communicate with many synthesizers and samplers to create and emulate the sound of a real orchestra. As you can imagine, this process was very costly and cumbersome, and stacking countless synthesizers, sound modules, and samplers loaded with recorded orchestral samples never seemed to be a fully satisfying experience because of the sound quality limitations. However, it was good enough for the film director to make the final decision to accept or reject the composed score and so it was used.

Scoring to picture today

As the music industry continued developing ways to achieve better-sounding mockups, in the 90s, well-known film composer Hans Zimmer decided to create a custom-made software sampler by recording the London Symphony Orchestra. This huge move forward in the development of music technology set new standards in the music industry. The usage of computers and software samplers took over and found themselves in countless film composers’ studios during the late 90s and more so at the beginning of the 2000s.

The well-known software sample library EastWest, developed in 2001, provided a great-sounding sampled orchestra that was available to film composers worldwide. The orchestral sample libraries are installed and streamed on multiple computers, to offload the heavy RAM and CPU consumption, so that a vast amount of great-sounding orchestral instruments were at the film composer’s fingertips. This was a game changer for so many film composers at the time. It was one step closer to achieving great-sounding orchestral mockups. Film composers were thrilled and so were film directors and producers.

Since then, going ahead in time just over 20 years to today, film composers can still use one, two, three, or more computers networked together to accomplish the demanding task of scoring to picture. Specifically, they use Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) software (such as Logic Pro!), which allows them to load a movie file and synchronize music to picture. It can also load multiple patches of different virtual libraries, instruments, and countless audio files.

Music is prepared “in the box” using a computer with a DAW such as Logic Pro. This is often logistically less problematic since there’s no live orchestra involvement. Today, more than ever, the samples of live instruments sound excellent, making this the choice of many young film directors, who do not have funds for live players.

Additional ways of scoring to picture can be achieved using an iPad or iPhone, though it might be a little challenging because of the many limitations that those devices present. For example, these portable standalone devices and their software and hardware components are not equipped with enough power to handle demanding tasks like Mac computers can. Within that context, there are many other types of iOS music software available today for composers, such as notation programs, but again, there are limitations because they are only phone devices. Despite the iPhones' and iPads' existing software ability to control Logic Pro, which can help in the film scoring process, they can’t handle the complete task of scoring.

As you experience and learn about this constantly evolving industry, you’ll decide what method will work for you, either by using sheet music and sketching out your music ideas first or going directly into Logic Pro. Scoring is subjective, and what method works for someone else may not work for you, and that’s okay.

Now that we’ve explored the history of scoring, let’s start talking about the meeting between the composer and director. This meeting happens before you start scoring to picture.