MUSIC FOR PICTURE THE ULTIMATE GUIDE
Whatever your moving images, be they holiday memories on your phone, corporate videos, amateur plays, or even full-blown Hollywood masterpieces, we can guarantee that each and every one will be enhanced with a decent soundtrack. The art of putting an audio track together with visuals has never been so important. As a music producer in the 21st century, you should, at the very least, be engaged with the idea of getting your music soundtracked to video. If you want an outlet – paid for or otherwise – there are now more TV channels and other content platforms churning out video than ever before, and there are also more library (or ‘sync’) companies. As a working producer, it’s easy to get involved and grab a part of this action, so learning the art of soundtracking – so you can demo your music alongside video – is an absolute must.
This feature is primarily focused on producing scores for films but in reality, of course, there are probably only half-a-dozen composers in the world right now who can, hand on heart, call themselves A-list movie scorers. But don’t let that dishearten you. If we aim for the top, the same fundamental rules and practices can be applied to any music-topicture project. That applies to producing music for anything including college drama projects, corporate videos, music videos or web adverts. The same principles apply to all soundtracks. The art of spotting, composing, ordering, and using trial and error – all of these things apply just as well to producing music for a friend’s promo video as they do to a short two-minute, tension-building sting for an international movie trailer.
Over the following pages, we’ll look at the many various ways that top TV, film and documentary composers work with directors when producing a soundtrack. We’ll look at some of the fundamental practices involved
