Hey everyone. The website for Sirius Black and the Secret Keeper just went live. You can see Part One now. More to come soon.
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Saturday, July 14, 2012
The 3 Day Test
In my last post I mentioned that I had some big news. Well here we go. Thanks to Brandon and Mike Post, I was asked to score my first real feature film. On the phone, Brandon made it sound as if it was a very small film, and I guess when you work on Law and Order every day, it might very well be. But to me, who's just getting started, few things are small. On friday I was invited to their studio to talk about terms and spot the film. Remember, spotting is when you watch the film with the director and those involved in music decisions to determine where music should be in the film and what its purpose is. Their studio is located in (go figure) Studio City, which is right outside of Burbank where I did my fellowship. On my drive up it was nice to see familiar places I had been during my time with Mike, and I passed the Disney studios again which always makes me happy. Someday...
When I arrived at the studio, I was greeted by Jim, the producer who I had been speaking with on the phone, Chris the editor and Corbin, our writer/director. The studio was beautiful and it felt fantastic to be back in that environment again. Corbin had to finish up a few things before getting started so I was able to chat with Jim a bit and hear about the project. The first person to arrive was Chris and he wanted to go over terms. Here's where I start to get surprised. The first thing he told me is that I would maintain ownership of all my music. Here's what that means. Usually when music is written for a film, that music is then owned by the production company so only they can say when and where it can be used and make money off of it. If I own that music, it means that I can still post it wherever I'd like, and I would make a small cut every time the DVD is sold or if the film were ever to air on TV. Speaking about TV, I was now told that this film is scheduled to air on TV in november! I don't know which network yet, but you can be sure I'll tell everyone as soon as I do. So I'm already ecstatic. I'm wondering why did Brandon say this was low budget. He gave me a number for the budget of the film, and that number seemed too low for the scale of this project. It turned out that the number Brandon gave me for the budget of the film was the budget for the music - meaning my paycheck. Fully in shock, the meeting continued.
Corbin, the writer and director for the film was last to arrive, and he is such an amazing person. Extremely nice, easy to talk to and immediately puts you at ease as soon as you're in the room. He asked me questions about my music style and if the proposed deadline of August 20 is something I can hit. It's going to be tight, but I think I can handle it. I shouldn't say think. This is my big shot, and I will blow this one away. The whole time I'm talking to Corbin, I think that he looks so familiar and I can't put a finger on it. It wouldn't be until the next day that I figure it out, and that's a good thing, but I'll get to that. From there we went into the editing room where I sat down with Corbin and Chris, the editor to watch the film and make cue notes. They had already temped the film with music that fit very well and that will help me a lot with such a tight deadline.
Corbin and Chris wanted my input as well and told me to let them know if I thought anything should be changed or if music could be different. I felt very comfortable so I was very honest about where I thought things should go and they were very respectful of my input. They were surprised by my age, but that was not a barrier for them like it can be with other people, and that was one of the best feelings I could have. After spotting, we talked for a bit to get to know each other and I went home to get started.
The next day it all got crazy. I'm on my lunch break at the Apple store where we have a bunch of computers to do whatever we'd like or watch TV. I'm in the middle of the show Psych and the dad of the main character is on the screen, and it's my director! That's why he looked so familiar. The Corbin that I'm working for is Corbin Bernsen, who has appeared consistently in major TV shows for the last 30 years. Here is the IMDB page for Corbin as well as the page for The 3 Day Test, the film I'm working on.
Corbin Bernsen
3 Day Test
Many of the other actors in the film have pretty impressive track records as well and I'm beyond honored to even be a part of the film, let alone write all the music for it. This is a dream come true. After seeing who it is I'm actually working for, it's a good thing I didn't know all this going in or else nerves may have gotten the better of me! So as of today, I have just under 5 weeks to score a feature film so I'd better stop writing here and get started! But I'll be sure to write about my progress and maybe give some inside peeks into the music.
When I arrived at the studio, I was greeted by Jim, the producer who I had been speaking with on the phone, Chris the editor and Corbin, our writer/director. The studio was beautiful and it felt fantastic to be back in that environment again. Corbin had to finish up a few things before getting started so I was able to chat with Jim a bit and hear about the project. The first person to arrive was Chris and he wanted to go over terms. Here's where I start to get surprised. The first thing he told me is that I would maintain ownership of all my music. Here's what that means. Usually when music is written for a film, that music is then owned by the production company so only they can say when and where it can be used and make money off of it. If I own that music, it means that I can still post it wherever I'd like, and I would make a small cut every time the DVD is sold or if the film were ever to air on TV. Speaking about TV, I was now told that this film is scheduled to air on TV in november! I don't know which network yet, but you can be sure I'll tell everyone as soon as I do. So I'm already ecstatic. I'm wondering why did Brandon say this was low budget. He gave me a number for the budget of the film, and that number seemed too low for the scale of this project. It turned out that the number Brandon gave me for the budget of the film was the budget for the music - meaning my paycheck. Fully in shock, the meeting continued.
Corbin, the writer and director for the film was last to arrive, and he is such an amazing person. Extremely nice, easy to talk to and immediately puts you at ease as soon as you're in the room. He asked me questions about my music style and if the proposed deadline of August 20 is something I can hit. It's going to be tight, but I think I can handle it. I shouldn't say think. This is my big shot, and I will blow this one away. The whole time I'm talking to Corbin, I think that he looks so familiar and I can't put a finger on it. It wouldn't be until the next day that I figure it out, and that's a good thing, but I'll get to that. From there we went into the editing room where I sat down with Corbin and Chris, the editor to watch the film and make cue notes. They had already temped the film with music that fit very well and that will help me a lot with such a tight deadline.
Corbin and Chris wanted my input as well and told me to let them know if I thought anything should be changed or if music could be different. I felt very comfortable so I was very honest about where I thought things should go and they were very respectful of my input. They were surprised by my age, but that was not a barrier for them like it can be with other people, and that was one of the best feelings I could have. After spotting, we talked for a bit to get to know each other and I went home to get started.
The next day it all got crazy. I'm on my lunch break at the Apple store where we have a bunch of computers to do whatever we'd like or watch TV. I'm in the middle of the show Psych and the dad of the main character is on the screen, and it's my director! That's why he looked so familiar. The Corbin that I'm working for is Corbin Bernsen, who has appeared consistently in major TV shows for the last 30 years. Here is the IMDB page for Corbin as well as the page for The 3 Day Test, the film I'm working on.
Corbin Bernsen
3 Day Test
Many of the other actors in the film have pretty impressive track records as well and I'm beyond honored to even be a part of the film, let alone write all the music for it. This is a dream come true. After seeing who it is I'm actually working for, it's a good thing I didn't know all this going in or else nerves may have gotten the better of me! So as of today, I have just under 5 weeks to score a feature film so I'd better stop writing here and get started! But I'll be sure to write about my progress and maybe give some inside peeks into the music.
Friday, July 13, 2012
The First Day of the Rest of Your Life
When I started this blog, I had no idea how long I would keep it up or what it would be like if I did. What started out as a record of my Pete Carpenter Fellowship turned into a story of my quest to follow my dreams of writing music for films. As much as I can I try to add in little technical bits of how I put things together, what I'm learning and the people I'm meeting along the way. The dream is only a tiny piece of the whole story. How I get there and the successes and failures along the way are just as important as the end goal itself. My hope is that if anyone ever reads this blog someday who shares in the same dream, that my words can help out in some way and paint an accurate picture of what a journey like this really entails. Following a dream is hard to do, and the path isn't always a pretty one, and I feel as though I left some parts out by neglecting to describe the difficult moments. While hard to write an read about, they are just as influential as my successes, so I want to include them now. But before I do, I should explain what happened that brought me to this decision.
In my last post I filled you in on just about everything that had happened during my blog hiatus. I was fortunate enough to find a passionate group of guys who wanted to include me on their project with 'Sirius Black and the Secret Keeper' and I finally arranged for my meeting with Greg Smith. Well a couple days after that I'm at work and I notice that I have a voicemail waiting for me. During my break I had a chance to listen and it was a call from Brandon, Mike Post's assistant composer. He and I haven't had a chance to speak in months so I was surprised to hear from him. He explained to me that Mike had been asked to score a Christmas, family oriented feature film. The film is semi-low budget but has distribution so exposure is high. Mike ended up being very busy and is in the process of retiring so he was unable to do the film. The director asked if there was anyone they recommended and they said me! I called Brandon back as soon as I could and he told me they were looking for someone who could write family-based orchestral music. Specifically for this score they were looking for a Home Alone meets Mrs. Doubtfire sound. Well guess who's dream fits perfectly into that movie?
Later that day I was called by the producer and director to discuss my potential involvement in the film. They described the movie which sounded fantastic, sent me a digital copy of the unfinished film and asked if I could send them some of my work. I watched the film first and got sucked in almost immediately. The acting and cinematography is fantastic and the characters are believable and relatable. So I pulled together some of my family music and emailed it off. I got a response within a couple hours saying that some of tracks I sent were spot on the sound they were looking for. We scheduled a phone meeting for monday to discuss it further. This whole situation isn't really sinking in yet that my name is being thrown around a bit and people are considering me for real projects now. I can't wait to see how this meeting goes. By the time this blog goes live, I'll have already had the meeting, so read on, and see how it went!
Five weeks ago here I was, living in a new place, wondering if I was ever going to get noticed or get a job in music. Why was I thinking this? Well at that time I had no commercials to work on, no prospects and I had exhausted all my contacts. I was treading water at that point. Now all of the sudden I have an episodic fantasy series, a short film and a potential family feature to work on. What happened? Well, this is where I feel I should talk about the fact that dreams are hard to get to. It's probably why they're called dreams and we want them so bad, because they're not handed to us, otherwise we'd take them for granted and they wouldn't mean as much. That said, I want to respect the hardships and talk about them a little bit, because I believe that had a hand in leading me here.
Before I moved out here, I had a very pretty but naive view of how things would go. I would trek across America to the land where movies are made and use the contacts I established through the fellowship to get a music job within a few months. I had already learned about myself that the place I'm living isn't important so I felt the transition would be easy. At first it was. Everything was so new and exciting and life was good.
But eventually that new car smell wore off and I needed to figure out what I was going to do out here. After about 3 months, I had met with quite a few composers and emailed far more, but nothing was panning out. I had to resort to plan B and get a job to pay the bills. Right around this time (I think it was about December) things started to change. It was wrong of me to assume that I wouldn't have a transition period; creating a new life for myself and leaving a life I had known for 23 years behind. I didn't realize it at the time, but I was depressed, and the person that I was in Connecticut 'fell asleep' for a while as I protected myself from all the changes that were happening, and preparing for what would be a long haul before anything regarding music happened. It was admittedly one of the darker periods of my life and it very much had an effect on those around me. It would take some months and more bad news before things turned around. Nearing the end of spring, things took their worst turn. Some major events took place in my personal life as well as finding out that I would need to find a new place to live with very little notice. I had lived a very stable and safe life up until that point so it is safe to say that this was one of the most traumatic experiences of my life. Now with nothing familiar and completely on my own, I had to figure out what to do. My entire support system and those who care about me were 3000 miles away and I knew I had people who were there for me, but I still felt very alone. At my lowest point, I had to turn things around. Step one was using those intense emotions to my advantage and write a piece of music that I could pour all that into. That's where my song 'Goodbye' came from. From there I was determined to get music back into my life because during that dark period for me, I was writing very little as my heart wasn't in it. I started to write again and began reconnecting with all my music contacts I had out here. It took a couple months but eventually I started hearing back from people. All of the sudden I had my phone meeting with Greg Smith, I was getting commercials, the Harry Potter film, and eventually the feature film. It's as if life was waiting for me to recover from all the negative things that took place and then threw all these opportunities at me all at once.
So here I am. It feels like after coming out the other side of all this, I'm at the beginning I envisioned for myself when I first moved out here. For those of you in my life who stuck with me through the darkest period in my life so far, you have my deepest thanks. From the bottom of my heart thank you. To support someone while they're at their worst, lift them up and love them even though they can't return it at that moment is a true gift, and it saved my life. Because eventually all bad times come to an end, and now that I feel awake and like myself again, it's time for me to give back. As my career in music seems to finally be starting, know that everything I write is for you all, for those of you who believed in me from the start.
At the moment that I finish this post, I have big news for you, but that will have to wait until my next post. Expect another entry in a few days!
In my last post I filled you in on just about everything that had happened during my blog hiatus. I was fortunate enough to find a passionate group of guys who wanted to include me on their project with 'Sirius Black and the Secret Keeper' and I finally arranged for my meeting with Greg Smith. Well a couple days after that I'm at work and I notice that I have a voicemail waiting for me. During my break I had a chance to listen and it was a call from Brandon, Mike Post's assistant composer. He and I haven't had a chance to speak in months so I was surprised to hear from him. He explained to me that Mike had been asked to score a Christmas, family oriented feature film. The film is semi-low budget but has distribution so exposure is high. Mike ended up being very busy and is in the process of retiring so he was unable to do the film. The director asked if there was anyone they recommended and they said me! I called Brandon back as soon as I could and he told me they were looking for someone who could write family-based orchestral music. Specifically for this score they were looking for a Home Alone meets Mrs. Doubtfire sound. Well guess who's dream fits perfectly into that movie?
Later that day I was called by the producer and director to discuss my potential involvement in the film. They described the movie which sounded fantastic, sent me a digital copy of the unfinished film and asked if I could send them some of my work. I watched the film first and got sucked in almost immediately. The acting and cinematography is fantastic and the characters are believable and relatable. So I pulled together some of my family music and emailed it off. I got a response within a couple hours saying that some of tracks I sent were spot on the sound they were looking for. We scheduled a phone meeting for monday to discuss it further. This whole situation isn't really sinking in yet that my name is being thrown around a bit and people are considering me for real projects now. I can't wait to see how this meeting goes. By the time this blog goes live, I'll have already had the meeting, so read on, and see how it went!
Five weeks ago here I was, living in a new place, wondering if I was ever going to get noticed or get a job in music. Why was I thinking this? Well at that time I had no commercials to work on, no prospects and I had exhausted all my contacts. I was treading water at that point. Now all of the sudden I have an episodic fantasy series, a short film and a potential family feature to work on. What happened? Well, this is where I feel I should talk about the fact that dreams are hard to get to. It's probably why they're called dreams and we want them so bad, because they're not handed to us, otherwise we'd take them for granted and they wouldn't mean as much. That said, I want to respect the hardships and talk about them a little bit, because I believe that had a hand in leading me here.
Before I moved out here, I had a very pretty but naive view of how things would go. I would trek across America to the land where movies are made and use the contacts I established through the fellowship to get a music job within a few months. I had already learned about myself that the place I'm living isn't important so I felt the transition would be easy. At first it was. Everything was so new and exciting and life was good.
But eventually that new car smell wore off and I needed to figure out what I was going to do out here. After about 3 months, I had met with quite a few composers and emailed far more, but nothing was panning out. I had to resort to plan B and get a job to pay the bills. Right around this time (I think it was about December) things started to change. It was wrong of me to assume that I wouldn't have a transition period; creating a new life for myself and leaving a life I had known for 23 years behind. I didn't realize it at the time, but I was depressed, and the person that I was in Connecticut 'fell asleep' for a while as I protected myself from all the changes that were happening, and preparing for what would be a long haul before anything regarding music happened. It was admittedly one of the darker periods of my life and it very much had an effect on those around me. It would take some months and more bad news before things turned around. Nearing the end of spring, things took their worst turn. Some major events took place in my personal life as well as finding out that I would need to find a new place to live with very little notice. I had lived a very stable and safe life up until that point so it is safe to say that this was one of the most traumatic experiences of my life. Now with nothing familiar and completely on my own, I had to figure out what to do. My entire support system and those who care about me were 3000 miles away and I knew I had people who were there for me, but I still felt very alone. At my lowest point, I had to turn things around. Step one was using those intense emotions to my advantage and write a piece of music that I could pour all that into. That's where my song 'Goodbye' came from. From there I was determined to get music back into my life because during that dark period for me, I was writing very little as my heart wasn't in it. I started to write again and began reconnecting with all my music contacts I had out here. It took a couple months but eventually I started hearing back from people. All of the sudden I had my phone meeting with Greg Smith, I was getting commercials, the Harry Potter film, and eventually the feature film. It's as if life was waiting for me to recover from all the negative things that took place and then threw all these opportunities at me all at once.
So here I am. It feels like after coming out the other side of all this, I'm at the beginning I envisioned for myself when I first moved out here. For those of you in my life who stuck with me through the darkest period in my life so far, you have my deepest thanks. From the bottom of my heart thank you. To support someone while they're at their worst, lift them up and love them even though they can't return it at that moment is a true gift, and it saved my life. Because eventually all bad times come to an end, and now that I feel awake and like myself again, it's time for me to give back. As my career in music seems to finally be starting, know that everything I write is for you all, for those of you who believed in me from the start.
At the moment that I finish this post, I have big news for you, but that will have to wait until my next post. Expect another entry in a few days!
Wednesday, July 4, 2012
As Long as There's Movement (And Harry Potter)
It's not okay how long it's been since I've updated the blog so I'm fixing that today. I'm sorry it's taken me so long to begin writing, but life always seems to have a way of interrupting the normal flow of things. The period of time between Easter and now has been full of so many stories, where do I even begin?
Leading up to my last blog post, I was working on music that I was submitting to the ASCAP Film Scoring Workshop. I had finished my five entry pieces and submitted them for review. I was told that sometime in May we would receive word either way on whether or not we were accepted into the workshop. Well on May 25th, word finally came in. Unfortunately my work was not accepted into the workshop. This is the letter I received.
Dear Composer:
Thank you very much for your recent application to the 2012 ASCAP
Television & Film Scoring Workshop with Richard Bellis.
Each year the quality of submissions has increased dramatically among
the several hundred we receive, thereby making it more difficult to
select the final twelve participants. Your submission was reviewed by
qualified professionals, including some of the top composers in film
and television. Unfortunately this year, we regret that we cannot
invite you to attend this year’s workshop. However, we strongly
encourage you to apply again next year and thank you for your
interest.
Even though you prepare for this outcome whenever you enter any sort of competition, it's never easy to be rejected from anything. I feel this was important though. To be honest, I've never been rejected from anything big regarding music yet. Strangely I just happen to apply to various things knowing full well I have no chance (like the Pete Carpenter Fellowship) and then I get accepted. I remember one of my posts very near the beginning of this blog I mentioned that it's a nice feeling when all you hear are praises of your work, but it's the criticisms that force you to adapt, grow and push yourself into areas that maybe you never would have ventured had everyone always told you that what you're doing is great and never to change it. So looking at this now, I feel good about the situation, but it's safe to say that like any other rejection, I wasn't feeling so hot after getting the news. It's a big part of why I stopped writing for a few weeks. At that time I felt like I needed to justify myself as a composer again. Even though it's irrational, rejection makes you wonder if you're really good enough, and if you really have what it takes to make it.
So I spent the next few weeks trying to get back into the spirit of writing, which was a challenge in and of itself. I had been holding off calling or emailing composers because of the ASCAP event just in case they wanted to meet during the time I'd be at the workshop if I had won. Now that that time is no longer in question, I have started messages all my contacts again. A piece of advice that I was given during my visit with Chris Beck was that I need to be persistent while making calls. He said (and he meant this with no offense) that I'm forgettable. What he meant is the fact that the people I'm trying to get in touch with have full careers and very busy schedules so chances are they're not going to remember the one guy trying to break into the industry. I need to remind them, so it's not considered rude to be persistent. With that I began sending emails and making calls again. During that time, I did get another email out of the blue from Robert Kral asking me which music software I was familiar with. Robert emails me from time to time asking me questions like that, so I'm hoping he's slowly doing some research on me. I also heard back from Adam Berry who would like to schedule a phone meeting middle of August to discuss music and my path through the industry. After hearing back from some people, I was beginning to feel more inspired to get back into my writing swing.
A while back I mentioned a project that I was starting just for fun with an illustrator I met through Apple. We wanted to make a spoof off of Star Trek and combining that with Apple. We met a few times and I came up with a potential Main Title theme to that project. I wanted to make it sound very cliche and a bit old school as this is a spoof at the end of the day. I still may make some adjustments on it at some point, but here is the main title to Apple Trek:
Apple Trek Main Titles
Leading up to my last blog post, I was working on music that I was submitting to the ASCAP Film Scoring Workshop. I had finished my five entry pieces and submitted them for review. I was told that sometime in May we would receive word either way on whether or not we were accepted into the workshop. Well on May 25th, word finally came in. Unfortunately my work was not accepted into the workshop. This is the letter I received.
Dear Composer:
Thank you very much for your recent application to the 2012 ASCAP
Television & Film Scoring Workshop with Richard Bellis.
Each year the quality of submissions has increased dramatically among
the several hundred we receive, thereby making it more difficult to
select the final twelve participants. Your submission was reviewed by
qualified professionals, including some of the top composers in film
and television. Unfortunately this year, we regret that we cannot
invite you to attend this year’s workshop. However, we strongly
encourage you to apply again next year and thank you for your
interest.
Even though you prepare for this outcome whenever you enter any sort of competition, it's never easy to be rejected from anything. I feel this was important though. To be honest, I've never been rejected from anything big regarding music yet. Strangely I just happen to apply to various things knowing full well I have no chance (like the Pete Carpenter Fellowship) and then I get accepted. I remember one of my posts very near the beginning of this blog I mentioned that it's a nice feeling when all you hear are praises of your work, but it's the criticisms that force you to adapt, grow and push yourself into areas that maybe you never would have ventured had everyone always told you that what you're doing is great and never to change it. So looking at this now, I feel good about the situation, but it's safe to say that like any other rejection, I wasn't feeling so hot after getting the news. It's a big part of why I stopped writing for a few weeks. At that time I felt like I needed to justify myself as a composer again. Even though it's irrational, rejection makes you wonder if you're really good enough, and if you really have what it takes to make it.
So I spent the next few weeks trying to get back into the spirit of writing, which was a challenge in and of itself. I had been holding off calling or emailing composers because of the ASCAP event just in case they wanted to meet during the time I'd be at the workshop if I had won. Now that that time is no longer in question, I have started messages all my contacts again. A piece of advice that I was given during my visit with Chris Beck was that I need to be persistent while making calls. He said (and he meant this with no offense) that I'm forgettable. What he meant is the fact that the people I'm trying to get in touch with have full careers and very busy schedules so chances are they're not going to remember the one guy trying to break into the industry. I need to remind them, so it's not considered rude to be persistent. With that I began sending emails and making calls again. During that time, I did get another email out of the blue from Robert Kral asking me which music software I was familiar with. Robert emails me from time to time asking me questions like that, so I'm hoping he's slowly doing some research on me. I also heard back from Adam Berry who would like to schedule a phone meeting middle of August to discuss music and my path through the industry. After hearing back from some people, I was beginning to feel more inspired to get back into my writing swing.
A while back I mentioned a project that I was starting just for fun with an illustrator I met through Apple. We wanted to make a spoof off of Star Trek and combining that with Apple. We met a few times and I came up with a potential Main Title theme to that project. I wanted to make it sound very cliche and a bit old school as this is a spoof at the end of the day. I still may make some adjustments on it at some point, but here is the main title to Apple Trek:
Apple Trek Main Titles
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