Broadcast
The much improved range offered by production music libraries is a bonus for programmemakers, but commissioned music can take a show to another level, says Adrian Pennington.
http://www.broadcastnow.co.uk/features/tv-music-whats-the-score/5102599.article?blocktitle=Features&contentID=42957
The natural home of bespoke composition is drama, but programme-makers of all stripes want to give their production a distinctive voice and identity, a big part of which is carried aurally.
“Composed music works really well for formatted entertainment shows such as The Apprentice or The Singles Project, where you can have it timed perfectly for a reveal or a story beat,” says Lime Pictures head of non-scripted Derek McLean. “We try to make reality shows feel more like drama.”
Ironically, music in drama has tended to become less overt as a result. “For documentaries and reality, there is often a need to create suspense and mood using a type and tempo of music traditionally associated with narrative drama, because there may be relatively little actual drama happening on screen,” says composer John Hardy.
While off-the-peg music has its place, there is a risk that it could feel generic. “You can never get the subtlety and sophistication from production music that you can get with a specially composed piece of music,” says Anne Dudley, whose credits include BBC1 family comedy Billionaire Boy.
It is the flexibility of being able to tailor, dissemble and time a bespoke track to the story that often attracts producers. “In documentaries, you need quite specific music that lifts the production but lets the footage speak for itself, rather than overpowering it,” says Grace Reynolds, executive producer at Twofour, who has used composed music on shows including Channel 4’s Royal Navy School and Educating Yorkshire. “As much as we may need a full dynamic tune, we are often crying out for simpler tracks,” she adds.
Philip Guyler scored BBC1’s National Lottery Stars and Hollywood movie Her, while his library compositions were used in Ricky Gervais’ Channel 4 comedy Derek and AMC’s zombie drama The Walking Dead.
“With library music, you can probably catch the mood and atmosphere, but you can’t react very closely to the emotion on screen,” he says. “You can move a library track around a bit, but you don’t have the flexibility to tailor it to the picture.”
The right fit
The fast-turnaround nature of some shows can make fresh compositions unpractical, though a decision on musical direction will take the content into account.
“Composed music doesn’t work for TOWIE,” McLean says, because of the show’s tight editorial deadlines and the decision to feature a lot of commercial music to keep the storyline current (it also had a “very successful” product placement deal with Ministry of Sound’s Marbella Anthems album series).
For ITV Be spin-off Life On Marbs, Lime had a particular Balearic soundscape in mind, for which it commissioned composer Dobs Vye.
The two routes are not mutually exclusive. For Hollyoaks’ recent serial-killer plot, regular partner Audio Networks supplied catalogue sounds and created bespoke music.
“It can be more expensive, but it’s worth the investment,” says McLean. “If you can negotiate a share of the rights, specially composed music becomes a revenue stream for the producer and the library gets to retain the music for reuse in other productions.”
Composed music is perceived as being expensive but, as Guyler points out, a good composer will adapt to the budget. “Electronic music can produce realistic acoustic-sounding scores and you can overdub the sample with live music to give more realism. This sort of production can be done cheaply.”
Paul Farrer (1000 Heartbeats, The Chase, Judge Rinder, The Weakest Link) adds: “Obviously it depends on the kind of score you want, but it’s always much less expensive than you think. As with other TV craft disciplines, the key is communication. Be up-front and trusting by sharing your concerns about time or budget – 99.99% of the time the composer will respect that and work with you to provide their best work for the budget.”Working to a brief
A brief can be as open as half a dozen adjectives or fully finished pilot episodes with temporary music. “I’ve had people send me hours of music on CD to soak in and even had 3D set models delivered to give me the sense of scale,” reports Farrer. “The worst jobs are when producers have become welded to a piece of temp music that they don’t have the rights to use.”
Most discussions tend to be about tone. “‘Too cheesy’, ‘not catchy enough’, ‘too scary for afternoon audiences’,” says Farrer. “Once you’ve figured that out, the rest falls into place. Generally speaking, the more creative freedom you can allow, the better it goes for everyone.”
Highlighting specific music or elements of a track is often a better guide than a verbal description. “People don’t tend to know what they want until they hear it, so if a producer has only a vague idea, I’ll request that they identify some existing tracks that they like as a starting point,” says Guyler.
Producers will issue a pitch to half a dozen – sometimes more – composers and production music services. This puts added pressure on the composer to devise the right sound. “It’s a bit of a lottery,” says Guyler. “You might not win the pitch, but then hear music used in the final show that is nothing like the initial brief.”
A pitch can be anything from a sample of previously produced music or a 30-second taster to a full-blown demo. Demos are supposed to command a fee but there are reports that producers increasingly expect them to be done without payment.
“When you get called for a face-to-face pitch, you are aware that lots of others are going for the same job and sometimes you have to articulate coherent ideas before you’ve seen a frame of a picture,” says Dudley.
Composers increasingly find themselves working without sight of the locked-off picture but, much like colourists, it is their skill at interpreting a brief and collaborating with a producer and editor from script to post that is in demand.
“When you are working at speed, then any information the producer can give you is a help,” says Hardy, who scored BBC1 drama Hinterland using instruments as diverse as a bowed psaltery and wind chimes recorded forwards and backwards. “Lots of late changes to the script can be a nightmare if the music is no longer of the right duration.”
Reynolds adds: “I try to contact composers early on and want them to understand the project, with lots of meetings for them to share their thoughts on how music will fit in. We’ll show them footage as soon as we have it and the dialogue continues through the edit as they send tracks and we provide more detailed feedback about specific scenes. Relationships and trust are really important.”
On a returning series, producers will want to retain the musical continuity of the programme brand while moving the show forward. “Labelling and cross-referencing every audio version can come in handy if, for example, the production reintroduces a character from an earlier episode and you can quickly find and insert elements of their musical signature,” says Hardy.
He has used stems (audio elements) in a novel way to create an online game accompanying the third series of Hinterland, in which users can create their own soundtrack to a clip from the drama using a mix of separate audio pieces.
“The days of production music being seen as the poorer cousin to commissioned music are long gone,” says Farrer. “People will always want new music, just as audiences will continue to demand innovative film and TV content. There are parallels with photography. Image libraries are huge and instantly accessible. Does this mean we no longer need new photographs? Of course not.”
case study: Scoring Poldark
Anne Dudley is working on the 10-part second run of BBC1’s Poldark after scoring the first run of eight. “With a long-running series, there’s more opportunity to develop music than with a feature film,” she says. “The overall aim is to hide the music from the viewer while heightening the emotional content.”
She researched Cornish folk music and the history of the drama’s late 18th-century setting before meeting executives at producer Mammoth Screen to win the pitch.
“I went the extra mile and trawled through some film and TV soundtracks that I thought were in the right vein, to give us some references,” she says.
Dudley explored the idea further with Mammoth managing director Damien Timmer before replacing the temp music on a couple of scenes. “At this point, I began to understand the vocabulary the producers were using,” she says.
After a spotting session with the producer and editor, detailing the dramatic drive of each scene, Dudley spends two to three weeks on each episode, typically working to a final cut. “We’re scoring about 35 minutes per hour. Starting a series from scratch is always hard, but as you go on, you can return to certain ideas for characters or emotions.”
The series’ composition will combine elements of the original score with fresh music IDs to accompany new plot threads, themes and characters. Dudley writes on piano before orchestrating for violin and harp soloists, then oversees recording with an 18-piece string orchestra at Angel Studios.
The much improved range offered by production music libraries is a bonus for programmemakers, but commissioned music can take a show to another level, says Adrian Pennington.
http://www.broadcastnow.co.uk/features/tv-music-whats-the-score/5102599.article?blocktitle=Features&contentID=42957
The natural home of bespoke composition is drama, but programme-makers of all stripes want to give their production a distinctive voice and identity, a big part of which is carried aurally.
“Composed music works really well for formatted entertainment shows such as The Apprentice or The Singles Project, where you can have it timed perfectly for a reveal or a story beat,” says Lime Pictures head of non-scripted Derek McLean. “We try to make reality shows feel more like drama.”
Ironically, music in drama has tended to become less overt as a result. “For documentaries and reality, there is often a need to create suspense and mood using a type and tempo of music traditionally associated with narrative drama, because there may be relatively little actual drama happening on screen,” says composer John Hardy.
While off-the-peg music has its place, there is a risk that it could feel generic. “You can never get the subtlety and sophistication from production music that you can get with a specially composed piece of music,” says Anne Dudley, whose credits include BBC1 family comedy Billionaire Boy.
It is the flexibility of being able to tailor, dissemble and time a bespoke track to the story that often attracts producers. “In documentaries, you need quite specific music that lifts the production but lets the footage speak for itself, rather than overpowering it,” says Grace Reynolds, executive producer at Twofour, who has used composed music on shows including Channel 4’s Royal Navy School and Educating Yorkshire. “As much as we may need a full dynamic tune, we are often crying out for simpler tracks,” she adds.
Philip Guyler scored BBC1’s National Lottery Stars and Hollywood movie Her, while his library compositions were used in Ricky Gervais’ Channel 4 comedy Derek and AMC’s zombie drama The Walking Dead.
“With library music, you can probably catch the mood and atmosphere, but you can’t react very closely to the emotion on screen,” he says. “You can move a library track around a bit, but you don’t have the flexibility to tailor it to the picture.”
The right fit
The fast-turnaround nature of some shows can make fresh compositions unpractical, though a decision on musical direction will take the content into account.
“Composed music doesn’t work for TOWIE,” McLean says, because of the show’s tight editorial deadlines and the decision to feature a lot of commercial music to keep the storyline current (it also had a “very successful” product placement deal with Ministry of Sound’s Marbella Anthems album series).
For ITV Be spin-off Life On Marbs, Lime had a particular Balearic soundscape in mind, for which it commissioned composer Dobs Vye.
The two routes are not mutually exclusive. For Hollyoaks’ recent serial-killer plot, regular partner Audio Networks supplied catalogue sounds and created bespoke music.
“It can be more expensive, but it’s worth the investment,” says McLean. “If you can negotiate a share of the rights, specially composed music becomes a revenue stream for the producer and the library gets to retain the music for reuse in other productions.”
Composed music is perceived as being expensive but, as Guyler points out, a good composer will adapt to the budget. “Electronic music can produce realistic acoustic-sounding scores and you can overdub the sample with live music to give more realism. This sort of production can be done cheaply.”
Paul Farrer (1000 Heartbeats, The Chase, Judge Rinder, The Weakest Link) adds: “Obviously it depends on the kind of score you want, but it’s always much less expensive than you think. As with other TV craft disciplines, the key is communication. Be up-front and trusting by sharing your concerns about time or budget – 99.99% of the time the composer will respect that and work with you to provide their best work for the budget.”Working to a brief
A brief can be as open as half a dozen adjectives or fully finished pilot episodes with temporary music. “I’ve had people send me hours of music on CD to soak in and even had 3D set models delivered to give me the sense of scale,” reports Farrer. “The worst jobs are when producers have become welded to a piece of temp music that they don’t have the rights to use.”
Most discussions tend to be about tone. “‘Too cheesy’, ‘not catchy enough’, ‘too scary for afternoon audiences’,” says Farrer. “Once you’ve figured that out, the rest falls into place. Generally speaking, the more creative freedom you can allow, the better it goes for everyone.”
Highlighting specific music or elements of a track is often a better guide than a verbal description. “People don’t tend to know what they want until they hear it, so if a producer has only a vague idea, I’ll request that they identify some existing tracks that they like as a starting point,” says Guyler.
Producers will issue a pitch to half a dozen – sometimes more – composers and production music services. This puts added pressure on the composer to devise the right sound. “It’s a bit of a lottery,” says Guyler. “You might not win the pitch, but then hear music used in the final show that is nothing like the initial brief.”
A pitch can be anything from a sample of previously produced music or a 30-second taster to a full-blown demo. Demos are supposed to command a fee but there are reports that producers increasingly expect them to be done without payment.
“When you get called for a face-to-face pitch, you are aware that lots of others are going for the same job and sometimes you have to articulate coherent ideas before you’ve seen a frame of a picture,” says Dudley.
Composers increasingly find themselves working without sight of the locked-off picture but, much like colourists, it is their skill at interpreting a brief and collaborating with a producer and editor from script to post that is in demand.
“When you are working at speed, then any information the producer can give you is a help,” says Hardy, who scored BBC1 drama Hinterland using instruments as diverse as a bowed psaltery and wind chimes recorded forwards and backwards. “Lots of late changes to the script can be a nightmare if the music is no longer of the right duration.”
Reynolds adds: “I try to contact composers early on and want them to understand the project, with lots of meetings for them to share their thoughts on how music will fit in. We’ll show them footage as soon as we have it and the dialogue continues through the edit as they send tracks and we provide more detailed feedback about specific scenes. Relationships and trust are really important.”
On a returning series, producers will want to retain the musical continuity of the programme brand while moving the show forward. “Labelling and cross-referencing every audio version can come in handy if, for example, the production reintroduces a character from an earlier episode and you can quickly find and insert elements of their musical signature,” says Hardy.
He has used stems (audio elements) in a novel way to create an online game accompanying the third series of Hinterland, in which users can create their own soundtrack to a clip from the drama using a mix of separate audio pieces.
“The days of production music being seen as the poorer cousin to commissioned music are long gone,” says Farrer. “People will always want new music, just as audiences will continue to demand innovative film and TV content. There are parallels with photography. Image libraries are huge and instantly accessible. Does this mean we no longer need new photographs? Of course not.”
case study: Scoring Poldark
Anne Dudley is working on the 10-part second run of BBC1’s Poldark after scoring the first run of eight. “With a long-running series, there’s more opportunity to develop music than with a feature film,” she says. “The overall aim is to hide the music from the viewer while heightening the emotional content.”
She researched Cornish folk music and the history of the drama’s late 18th-century setting before meeting executives at producer Mammoth Screen to win the pitch.
“I went the extra mile and trawled through some film and TV soundtracks that I thought were in the right vein, to give us some references,” she says.
Dudley explored the idea further with Mammoth managing director Damien Timmer before replacing the temp music on a couple of scenes. “At this point, I began to understand the vocabulary the producers were using,” she says.
After a spotting session with the producer and editor, detailing the dramatic drive of each scene, Dudley spends two to three weeks on each episode, typically working to a final cut. “We’re scoring about 35 minutes per hour. Starting a series from scratch is always hard, but as you go on, you can return to certain ideas for characters or emotions.”
The series’ composition will combine elements of the original score with fresh music IDs to accompany new plot threads, themes and characters. Dudley writes on piano before orchestrating for violin and harp soloists, then oversees recording with an 18-piece string orchestra at Angel Studios.
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