Networking

I just got back from a meeting with Jack Bradley. He is a composer of most of the ads you see on TV today like Bounty and Samsung to name a couple. My band director from high school met him, and passed the name along to me so we met up today. He's such a great guy and so easy to talk to. We spoke of how we got started and he has a story quite similar to mine. He started playing piano when he was 5 and loved music until he got to college where he wondered how he would ever turn that love into a job. So he got into film instead and went into the production end of things. We wound up producing commercials and had the most fun working with the music guys. Now that he knew people in music, he wanted to go back to writing. Before too long, there he was, writing TV ad music.

He wanted to hear about my trip and said that he knows a bunch of guys out in LA, and even some who work with Hanz Zimmer. Networking is almost more important than the talent because it's so necessary to know people who can get you work and keep you working once you're doing it. I'm so grateful to know all these people who are willing to help and it really speaks volumes about the community of people that I'm trying to associate myself with. I haven't seen a single big ego yet even though so many of these people definitely could have them. Instead I see this group of people who love what they do. It keeps them young and they want to help anyone out who has put in the work to get into this industry. Jack had to leave for a meeting after about an hour (which went so much faster than I thought) but we agreed to meet up again soon so we can share some music. First week back in CT and things are already looking good.

On another note, I have 4 events coming up that I'm very excited about. I'll be giving a lesson at my high school in two weeks to the kids about film scoring which should be fun. They have a digital music class there which is so cool that the kids can be exposed to it in a classroom setting, so I hope I can encourage them to keep up the interest in it. Second, I'm going to my college to do a forum on film scoring and my experience in LA to the music department, so that should be interesting. Third, I'm giving a talk at the local SECT Filmmakers group about how important music is to film, which I'm hoping will raise awareness that thinking about music starts as early as the screenplay and maybe get me a few local jobs in the process. Finally, I've received word that our film 'A Step in the Wrong Direction' has been accepted into a festival for viewing in April, so my music finally gets to reach a general audience. I'm very excited for that. I'll give more details when I know them. So it's good to be back, and being back has been good to me, so here's to a great time back in CT!

Media Woes

Here is the finished product for Ansel's project. I'm very pleased with how it turned out. I'd like to take this opportunity to talk about tempo. Now Mike told me way in the beginning that tempo was the most important thing you could do with music for picture. Boy was he right. I edited this film with no idea what the music was going to be like. When I sat down to write the music, I could hear a tempo in my head. Once I started writing, I realized that I unconsciously picked a tempo that lined up with every beat I wanted to hit in the video without needing to tweak the picture! It was incredible how right Mike was that if a composer can pick up on the implied tempo of the video, then your music will be so successful.

The other thing I did on this little project was play around with the virtual positioning of the instruments using microphones. The software I use allows me to choose any of 3 mics (a close mic, a mic on the stage, and a mic in the 'audience') to 'place' the sound in the room. Once the strings come in in my piece, they were too muddy and hard to hear. I added the close mic position to it, and they became so much clearer. Overall I'm very happy with this video and I hope you enjoy it.