The Reality of the Modern Film Composer

MFA Programme Director Dr. Andy Hill sat down with George Christopoulos, founder of the Oticons Film Music Agency, to chat about the business side of the film music industry.
Film Scoring Academy of Europe
eafa.iamu.edu/filmscoring

[@l2084]

The quality of the music has dropped significately too. You can’t rush art and you can’t make it cheap.

[@bh-xe2wp]

The situation has got a lot worse, fees are much lower and film makers are now calling the shots. Either do the work for X amount or we will find someone else. This is what's happening. 3.30 in to this video, He is basically saying that the lower budget is justified by only needing a midi keyboard, laptop and mouse. So it completely asks the question regarding the film scoring academe, why do we need an orchestra. It's basically hypercritical. Why do we need 50k we can do the same with 15k. Makes me furious to listen to someone that thinks like this. Thats like saying my solicitor typed a letter and charged me £100 he should type that important letter for £10. The truth of the matter is that George Christopoulos, is trying to convince new members that everything is looking good for the film composing industry and trying to justify why people should go to his academe. 4.11 in to this video he says we don't have too many composers we have more work out there than composers. UTTER RUBBISH!! there are far too many composers for what is available work wise out there, again he's trying to justify why future film composers should go and register at the academe. Most film creators directors producers will want to own the piece of music you create simply because if the film is a success they would want to keep 100% rights to that film. Sometimes what makes or ruins a film is the music. Music plays a very important part and film companies know this so this is another bullshit piece of advice to justify the academe. If a film producer agreed to these terms it would be a very low budget film company who would want to pay you nothing under these agreements (owner rights) and you probably would never see any money out of your score because the film didn't even get in to the theatres. It's only composes such as Vangelis for example who Hugh Hudson (chariots of fire) producer would agree for Vangelis to own the rights to the music. Today you have got no chance unless the film producer undoubtedly and without hesitation wanted a specific film composer to create the score. This is what's known as a relationship between composer and producer. Director is another conversation all together. So far I am NOT impressed.

[@KrystofDreamJourney]

I 100 percent agree with you. I was even contemplating attending IAMU online course once, but... there's no work guaranteed, that I would ever recouperate $$$ invested in a program. So, for now I will just do my self-education, perform live gigs, and the rest is just pure luck (or depending on certain location - you need to live in a city where the media is based : L.A. , N.Y. London etc. $$$ to live in any of those cities - you may go bankrupt before you even see ANY job going your way). How you get the jobs is just a pure luck, no matter how heavily you advertise yourself, and how good as a composer you think you are. Too many people are competing for the available jobs, and taking writing fees further down...

[@Daneiladams555]

If you really want it, go for it
Forget this negative take
But it’s good to understand it too