I can’t understand the process of score production. When a film is being shot, I suppose the director and the music producer do their stuff simultaneously. So how come the final movie has a synced-up music to it?
What I mean is that a particular music track has its pace, moments of culmination, build-ups etc. the same applies to the image.
I guess it must be post-production and montage, but how is it that both parties know how to express a given scene? What’s first? The music or a silent scene? Which one dictates how it looks like?
The same for songs. Do you first write the lyrics or create music? How does the process look like, especially, when there are different people working on it?
In: Other
The scene comes first. In most cases the movie will be edited and given to the composer (at least a rough cut) with no music. The editorial team may use what’s called temp tracks which is music they find that sort of fits the vibe that the director is looking for or helps them edit to a rhythm. Temp tracks are very common but they often don’t sound like the final score ends up sounding. It’s just something to work off. There’s been some instances of temps that do end up sounding like the final film like George Lucas using Holst for Star Wars. On Star Trek Picard season 3, the editors used some of Frederik Weidmann’s music as temp music while they were editing and the producer liked it so much they just ended up hiring Weidmann to do the final score for a few episodes.
The composer and director will watch the rough cut and do a spotting session where they go through the film and try to figure out where music should go and also what the emotion of the scene should be. Once that’s determined the composer will get to work writing the music to the picture. On a big movie a composer will have a staff, and often ghost writers helping them out. John Williams has worked with people like William Ross and Thomas Newman to back him up behind the scenes if there’s a lot of music to get through. Hans Zimmer similarly has a team to help him out. There are orchestrators and music editors that come into the picture as well. It’s rarely ever just one person pounding away at a piano at least on bigger shows. The composer might produce a musical sketch that his team fleshes out into a full blown score.
There are times when a composer may be brought on early to develop some ideas. The composer may read the script as well to gather his or her thoughts. But in most cases the composers work only starts after the movie has been shot and there’s at least a very rough cut. The score is often one of the last things added to a film before it’s released. In rare occasions if the score is compelling enough a director might re edit the film to fit the score. That famously happened in ET when Spielberg recut the end of the movie to better match John Williams score (Williams at the time had written something he had a hard time conducting and hitting all the beats in the edit so Spielberg told him to just conduct it freely and he’d make the edit work to the music).
Now in a musical it’s the opposite. With a musical the music comes first. So say for something like the Disney musical animated films like Beauty and the Beast or Aladdin the basic story is written followed by, at very least, the songs (because you can’t really make the movie without the songs). The score can come later.
If we’re talking about songs with lyrics (for regular movies not musicals), they typically come after the fact. There’s usually a music supervisor who will work with the director to find and place songs that are appropriate to the scene. The song may be edited or cut down to work with the action. In other cases like The Guardians of the Galaxy movies, the script was written with certain songs in mind. The ability to use existing songs is often driven by rights and fees. There of course are also instances where a song is written specifically for a film. That can happen at any point of the process. The Bond movies famously all have opening songs that are written for each film and the producers will hire an artist typically during post production to write and perform the song. Billie Eilish and Finneas worked with Hans Zimmer on No Time To Die (and won an Oscar for their efforts).
Latest Answers