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Pretty interesting piece by Mark Rozzo!
https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2022/02/the-ugly-truth-of-how-movie-scores-are-made?fbclid=IwAR3y-ogagD-G5Ksj1Q01EzMq_l_PN2Ysxx-VkgVuu8jnyvatuLJdoykRDCI
I talk about it on my blog today, a little:
https://www.lukaskendall.com/post/vanity-fair-ghost-composers-piece
Any thoughts?
Lukas
From my blog -
Vanity Fair has published a fantastic piece by Mark Rozzo about the prevalence of ghostwriters for Hollywood film and television composers, and how it’s become an even larger problem for the ghostwriters to earn a living with reduced or eliminated royalties in the streaming age.
The article doesn’t “out” anybody—no stunning revelations—but it’s well-researched, nuanced and insightful.
I don’t love contemporary film music the way I did even in the 1990s—in fact, I don’t even like it. I kind of can’t stand most of it. There are all sorts of aesthetic reasons why—but it’s quite likely a major reason that it’s simply not “written” anymore.
It’s neither composed by hand, nor by a single artist. It’s by a small army of anonymous musicians operating software doing musical sound design—then, under larger budgeted situations, re-recorded in whole or part by an orchestra.
The scores that I still find delightful and seek out for listening are those that do have a single, artistic point of view to them—Under the Skin by Mica Levi comes to mind.
It’s even more problematic in television. If you’re seeing one name on more than one TV show, it’s just physically impossible for one person to be writing it all.
I find it especially sad when some of my favorite composers of decades past (names withheld to protect the innocent, and the guilty) now sound like...well, everybody else.
I don’t want to speculate publicly without knowing the facts. But it’s just a sad reality of the modern world.
I was recently looking at the published score for Poltergeist and it’s just impossible to imagine something like that being written today. I doubt very many composers know how to do it, first of all—and none of them could approach Jerry Goldsmith’s level of mastery. But also, Poltergeist was made in the old days of reasonable postproduction schedules.
Just a depressing state of affairs—but a terrific piece from one of my favorite magazines.
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Thanks for posting this here. I might have missed it.
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Posted: |
Feb 21, 2022 - 10:16 AM
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By: |
c8
(Member)
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Like Lukas I didn't sense anything truly revelatory for those in the know (like us) but it was nice to get some perspective on who the "good people" are (Elfman, Mothersbaugh, Powell, even though I feel like all three were already known to do well by the people they work with), hear from Lurie about her distance from Hollywood, and just sort of get all the scuttlebutt in one place. TV, for sure, is where I had heard that a composer can merely be a brand.
Maybe I am reading too far between the lines but I feel like the article gently tries to lay the blame for this trend at Zimmer's doorstep without ever saying it and attracting Zimmer's ire. But again, is that breaking news? As the article alludes to pretty directly: Zimmer hasn't exactly been hiding his methods in recent years, especially as he goes on record with his sketchbooks and explain what they're for.
And really bigger names have had to, for their survival, move to systems like this. Even someone as revered as James Horner was moving toward it before he died. Granted, Horner kept a small and close-knit music team, but Simon Rhodes and Simon Franglen were credited as score arrangers on Horner's last few scores on top of their normal duties (Rhodes also got credit as an orchestrator on Horner's last few scores). This is probably what let them raise Horner from the dead for Magnificent 7 and will allow Franglen to seamlessly do the Avatar sequels.
The other thing this article didn't touch on is the history of ghostwriting in Hollywood (save for the acknowledgement Morricone started his career doing this) and how this isn't entirely new. Not to cast aspersions, but again as a Horner fan, I can take an educated guess he did not do the majority of the writing on some of his early 90s scores *cough*AFarOffPlace*hack**wheeze*. When someone with such a strong voice has a score credited to them that sounds absolutely nothing like that strong voice, well, you know. Even seeing the convoluted list of credits on Looney Tunes: Back in Action shows how even someone like Jerry Goldsmith (to his credit was extremely ill and gave McNeely and Joel G. credit on their respective films) had to use extra help. Of course this form of ghostwriting was hidden behind said ghostwriter getting an orchestrator credit (if they got credit). That is just one example of many, but we can't pretend like the people we revere, no matter how talented, didn't have to resort to farming out some of the labor if there were deadlines/quick rewrites/were terribly ill/etc.
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Posted: |
Feb 21, 2022 - 12:02 PM
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By: |
SchiffyM
(Member)
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As others have said, the ghostwriting part isn't news, or especially new (we all know ghostwriting happened all the way back in the '30s, though it's possibly more systemic now). And with films costing hundreds of millions of dollars, no studio executive who wants to keep his job is going to approve some guy named Steve Mazzaro for a tentpole feature – the exec would leave himself too exposed – but nobody gets fired for hiring Hans Zimmer. (If it sounds like I'm mocking this invented executive, I'm actually not – they're fired on whim, and they want to support their families just like anybody else.)
What concerns me most is the Netflix buyout issue buried a bit in the article. And the long-ago demise of the composers' union, the Composers and Lyricists Guild of America, is a serious problem. (The specifics of the article differ somewhat from what I've read here: https://thescl.com/mission-and-history/, but the issue is the same regardless.) These composers cannot fight these fights alone.
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Agree with the posts here and sentiments. I've gone back to 20th century concert works largely, or classic film scores for my listening enjoyment.
I will say that we shouldn't admonish software in its entirety as the agent of destruction here. Programs like Sibelius or Dorico, both notation-based, are analogous to writing notes on the page. It's the same interface and the thought process behind it remains the same as it was a hundred years ago.
Digital Audio Workstations (DAWs) are the culprit here as they allow for easy recording and capturing of ideas without the same adherence towards the development of a theme, melodically, harmonically, rhythmically, or in terms of its orchestration. The very nature of their GUI precludes the kind of writing Lukas eluded to with Goldsmith's Poltergeist. By contrast, mixed meter changes, dense or complex orchestration, all of it can be accomplished in Dorico very proficiently. Steinberg is working intently on making Dorico a solution for media composers who still want to write music using traditional nomenclature. I'm hoping that this will also elicit a return to the musicality and stylistic breadth we once all enjoyed very much about film music.
The big question is, does Hollywood want it?
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I knew this was going on, but I wasn't aware it was such a widespread thing. I think it's part of the reason why I don't care that much about contemporary film music in general. It's almost all mechanical business and the art part has been mostly squeezed out. What's easiest/fastest/least resistance is the name of the game. It generally works fine in the films, but it's not something I need to hear detached from it.
Netflix, like many other "technology" firms, seems to be going overboard in trying to be disruptive, and composers aren't the only ones getting burned here from what I've been reading about their practices.
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Fascinating article, and commentary. I remember doing interviews with composers in the late '90s/early '00s, during which ghostwriting would sometimes come up, and it was basically an open secret that everyone used ghostwriters for one reason or another.
Outside of, say, Williams or Goldsmith or the other old-school fellows, everyone else used them, usually because they had no choice; post schedules were shrinking practically by the minute and there were only so many hours in the day. The musicians who are still in this game are the ones who've embraced these newer models, for better or worse.
Nowadays, the technology has democratized the process to the point where anyone can change anything at any time, and it's resulted in a slow crawl towards a flattened curve. It's not just film music either -- I've heard this from friends who work as cinematographers, editors, writers, you name it.
Filmmaking, in general, used to be a process where only a select number of artisans in their respective disciplines had the know-how to achieve it; now, if you do anything at the studio level, you have to get used to it being a highly "collaborative" experience where it's a moving target subject to any number of revisions, rethinks, and redos. It's no longer a medium that's designed to amplify singular voices; frankly, once studios started being owned and operated by corporations, the "corporate creep" was inevitable.
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Thanks for posting this Lukas. I think you are right, and the current state of film scores is only more depressing for people who compose and study music, because it's so obvious how low-quality and brainless things are, but people still consume them.
I talk about this a lot here, but streaming culture + the tech industry is not just a technological change, but a huge systemic problem. To frame all of this as the result of inevitable technological advances misses the big picture. The concentration of money and power in the tech industry is one of the most significant changes to society in the 21st century, and a historical anomaly that has only been allowed to happen through a perfect combination of deregulation, cyberwarfare, and technology exceeding the understanding of government institutions. At the same time, the tools have resulted in assets that governments and corporations want, namely DATA, much of which has been acquired unscrupulously.
This impacts films and film scores significantly because it has allowed for a generally risk-free mass production of "content" that is meant for nothing but highly targeted quick consumption and rapid discarding. Complain about the big studios and media conglomerates of yore, but they never had the unregulated access to this kind of data and the vast financial resources that Netflix / Amazon / Apple have now. There is little to no wiggle room now. The idea that streaming creates more opportunities for more creative filmmakers is also naive and perpetuates the content machine that draws in low-wage, anonymous labor, like ghostwriting, under the fantasy that they will make it big. Shows that seem niche or for "underrepresented" groups in society are not coming from a pure creative place - they are coldly, surgically targeted. They are marketed to death with the false narrative that they bring society together, but that is impossible because the very goal is niche-targeting. Effectively, everyone gets the content they want in their own happy little bubble, with no impact to other bubbles. That is hardly the connected utopia that the marketing story tells.
Streaming is convenient, there is a show or two that we like yes, but the cost to the artform and to people is very high.
In another conversation about showrunners, the response was that there are people who are just trying to do a good job without egos. Yes, this is 100% true. As much as you hear bad stories from the industry, much of the industry is filled with these people - BUT, they are at the whim of studios and now, much worse, tech companies that have gotten into the business of "content creation". If you look at SEO data for the term "showrunner", it was a niche term before absolutely exploding as streaming took off in the post 2010s when it became more widely used in press releases and promotional media around the time of GAME OF THRONES. Why? Like the singular composer taking credit for the work of army of ghostwriters, the showrunner is a similar construct that is marketed for the purpose of gaining audience attention and further selling the idea that if you too do low-wage uncredited writing and producing, you can become a showrunner too. The role of showrunner hasn't necessarily changed, but the marketing value of it has.
While this sounds like a big massive plot, it's not. It's so utterly mundane, and it's simply money and power of which tech companies have a historically unnatural large amount of due to lack of regulation. The article alludes to the idea that getting credit and bringing ghostwriters to light is important - yes. But the unspoken political aspect of this is the larger target and what really needs to change. Tech companies need to be regulated and pay taxes with offshore loopholes closed. Data collection needs to be severely regulated and in some cases prohibited. With those, I guarantee you'd see the budgets and numbers of production drop because the content glut we're experiencing is not a creative opportunity, it's simply the most lucrative opportunity for companies with endless pots of money to rake in data and perfect microtargeting tools that can be sold off for other purposes. The audience IS the product.
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John Williams rules. That's mostly what I take away from this.
But, jeez, you know, thinking, the last non Williams score I enjoyed enough to put on rotation that wasn't a Marvel film(which I assume is all ghost written anyways)... Wall-E? Yikes.
Add Howard Shore to that as well. Granted he's not scoring much these days.
Not to shout doom and gloom, but I wonder what the state of film score composing will be like in the near future, after our last few greats have left us. Like another poster here, I find myself gravitating more and more towards older film scores - the stuff I grew up with, as well as Waxman, Steiner, Herrmann, North - and classical music. Not much new stuff I listen to these days.
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Posted: |
Feb 21, 2022 - 5:59 PM
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By: |
SchiffyM
(Member)
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I agree, Jurassic. Film (and television) has always been art and commerce, sometimes more one than the other, of course. And if you made a film, of course you knew that to some extent you were selling popcorn and Raisinets, and on television, you were selling laundry detergent or 1-800-COLLECT. Even so, the equation was pretty simple: if people went to your movie, or watched your show, it would have longevity and would be successful.
It barely works that way anymore. Most theatrical films, what little is left of them, make their money the opening weekend. Whether the movie is any good is secondary to how well they can market it as a must-see. Word-of-mouth is irrelevant. If your movie or show is on a streaming service, it doesn't really matter if people watch it so long as they subscribe to the service because they intend to watch it. It's a matter of constantly feeding the service with content, month in and month out, to keep the subscriptions up.
I'm not saying the people making these things – and in that, I include the executives at the services – don't care whether you like or watch these things. They're mostly good people who take pride in their work. But Netflix, Hulu, and Disney+ et al are selling subscriptions. HBO Max can be bought a la carte but most people get it as part of a cable/satellite package that benefits WarnerMedia, formerly AT&T, and imminently Warner Bros. Discovery. Amazon wants to keep you paying annually for two-day delivery, and their streaming comes with that. Apple is pushing a suite of services you can buy in packages that go with their hardware ecosystem (though not exclusively).
So yes, it's all part of churning out new product that can appear on their apps' home screens. So long as you don't cancel your subscription because you're planning to watch "The Gilded Age,' it really does't matter whether you ever actually get to "The Gilded Age."
I even know of some shows that have been ordered because the perception that they're valuable IP drives up the parent company's stock, even if in fact viewership isn't really so hot.
What does this have to do with ghostwriting? Just that the studios – again, not out of malice or cynicism, just out of pragmatism – turn to the brand names on their lists of composers, the names that have proved themselves dependable. I'll use as an example a composer I often admire – Bear McCreary – because I'm not trying to damn anyone here. Everybody knows that McCreary can't possibly compose music for multiple hourlong weekly series simultaneously. But he's a guy who knows that at any time the work could dry up, he's not turning down work (actually, I'm sure he's turning down some, but he's taking a lot). So he takes the gigs, writes some key themes and cues, and farms out other cues with instructions to those composers. This does the trick, the shows are scored professionally, and everybody is happy. But it'll never be a replacement for somebody sweating every detail from the main title until the end title, at least not to me.
Again, it's not like Hugo Friedhofer didn't ghost some cues in Gone With the Wind, or Fred Steiner in Star Trek: The Motion Picture, or a thousand other examples. And it's not like television in the '60s wasn't scored with library cues as often as not. None of this stuff is new, or by its very existence a betrayal. But it does feel like it's become systemic in these days where there's more content than any person can even grasp. (I passed a billboard a few weeks ago for a show I'd never heard of, and it said "Final Season" on it!) I don't happen to think that the sheer volume of shows and movies, and the budgets of these things, are sustainable. But for the time being, we'll keep drowning in this stuff.
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Here's a (brief) excerpt from my book, The Struggle Behind the Soundtrack, which goes into more detail:
The days are long gone when one director or one producer was in charge of musical decisions. Now there are countless different producers and decision-makers who attempt to guarantee that a movie, with all its ingredients, is marketable. As Bruce Broughton puts it: “In the last few years, they have wanted it fast and cheap. Because of the schedules and all the silly previews, they make the composer rewrite cues several times for no reason at all. This has made it economically difficult for composers and nearly impossible to work on their own. Today, I would go home, start to write and then I would have to put it into the synthesizer. Somebody would then send the file to the producers or director and I would have to wait for their notes. Then I would send the new file of rewritten cues and they would send their new notes. I'd be working endlessly just to get ten minutes of music done. I would need somebody else to help. Nobody is on salary nowadays and very few are getting a fee. They are working from a 'package'. They get a music budget to pay for all the expenses themselves. Some guys do very well with that. Others are terrible with that. It is a very difficult time. I don't think it is a happy time.”
Producers and directors expect the composer to work as quickly as the quickest person in town, never mind how many assistants it is necessary to employ to get the job done. This increased pressure in the industry has lead composers who value working on their own, rather than relying on a team of arrangers, interns, assistants and orchestrators, to reject offers that would require them to work as the head of a team to get the job done in time. As Rachel Portman admits: “It is really sad – or not. It probably isn't when you are a young composer trying to get in. I think it can help them if they get a break. It's not something I am interested in doing, really. I have been quite purist about it. When I have been offered projects where I know I would have to have a number two composer underneath me for me to do it, I turn them down. I want to write music that is bespoke. All of it. When I did Used People and Benny and Joon I orchestrated every note of it. I loved it. I am not interested in handing things over. That's not me.”
Bruce Broughton recounts a rather amusing anecdote about a director's expectations: “Years ago, a director came over to my house. At that time I had a piano in the room where I was working. I had some synthesizers in another room. He came into my piano room, looked around and said, 'Is this your stuff?' I said, 'My stuff? Yes, this is what I write on.' Then I understood what he was talking about. He expected to come in and see what a lot of composers were getting in these days, all the hardware. So I had to show him 'my stuff'. Well, I have now heard: 'Where is your team?' They expect you to show up with other people. If you just come up with yourself that's very old-fashioned. Do you still write with a pencil? Do you ride on a horse and buggy? Do you have color photographs or just black and white? They expect you to have a team. Everybody has their team.”
Are most directors and producers aware of the fact that the composer they commission works in a team rather than writing everything themselves? Not necessarily, as one composer and arranger, who wishes to remain anonymous, says: “I don't think many producers and directors know about the extent of composers farming out work. Composers make sure that their clients never interface with the people who are actually writing the music. Especially in the context of television series, producers must be aware that the composer they are hiring is already working on five or six other shows. It's easy to look up that information on IMDb. Yet, they seem to be convinced that the composer alone is going to have enough time to address their every need, while simultaneously working on five other shows and maybe also on two features and a video game. Occasionally, you hear a story of a director asking a composer to not employ ghostwriters on a specific project, but that seems to be rare. In most cases, composers are scared of their clients finding out that someone else has been writing their music, and the arrangers are scared of telling the truth, in fear of never again finding work in an industry that will shun them.”
Yet Broughton argues that today's producers are more ready to accept the idea that they also hire the composer's team when they hire a composer. “They may not think about what the team does though. What the team does varies from composer to composer. What happens as well is that after you presented the score, the producers or director decide to use the score in a completely different manner and they rearrange the whole score on the stage. Is that ghostwriting? As a composer, you can never be sure how your score gets into the film. I'm under the impression that people are now used to seeing the composers' team. You walk on the stage and you have at least an orchestrator there, likely a technician running clicks, likely some software or hardware programmer. There are video monitors everywhere, running all kinds of software all at once. It's obvious that the composer is coming in with a team. Who did what, I don't know. The producers and directors care about the name of the person they hired.”
Matthew Margeson has had a slightly different experience as a composer in Hollywood, which leads him to assume that producers and directors are now very well aware of the fact that only few A-list composers in town are writing everything themselves: “Especially in the studio system no one is oblivious to that any more. Directors and the heads of the studios know that it's a team effort and that there are maybe some young composers that are just trying to make their way. It's a beautiful thing because it's giving a lot of young people a chance, and because everyone is aware that it happens maybe the need from the composers perspective to hide isn't as great as it once was.”
Yet the revelation that a composer's work was partially written by ghostwriters may not only anger directors and producers, it can also be disillusioning for young composers who grew up as fans of film music. Admits John Ottman: “The whole factory mentality is still weird to me. When I first started I was like, 'Wow, how can a composer go into a meeting and people know that other people are writing for him?' Now people just know it and they accept it. As a composer you are now seen as sort of a director. They are basically an architect or a contractor who has his workers around. We know when that whole factory mentality started. It was just so in the face that everybody just accepted it. To me it's still weird. But I'm an old fart. Now it's necessary for composers. Even if it's just a few cues, you got to have some help.”
[...]
Ghostwriter are always at the mercy of their employer. Whether an arranger/ghostwriter will receive credit or royalties depends on several factors, as John Ottman explains how he approaches paying his staff: “Everyone is treated the same. But I don't have a massive team. It all comes down to the project, whether I am paid well or not, and how much I am paying this person as well. I feel horrible subjecting anybody to writing ghost music. I know how agonizing it is to write music. I almost feel terrible when asking anyone to do it. I pay really well upfront because I feel bad. Then I put them through hell. I don't think any writer writes a cue for me less than ten times, sometimes more than that. So I pay them a lot because of the hell I put them through. It really depends on the project. Then I treat everyone the same. On Non-Stop, Edwin Wendler wrote a lot. That was a different situation. When I work with people, they do a couple of cues. But Edwin wrote the music for a couple of reels because I was busy doing Days of Future Past. I had written three reels of Non-Stop before I had to go to Montreal, so Edwin worked with me on a couple of reels. I am not going to hide it that someone helps me out so much.”
Matthew Margeson makes the payment for his arrangers and ghostwriters dependent on the actual work they contribute, something which differs from project to project. As he elaborates: “I like to keep it a very static system. If I have written a piece of music, fully orchestrated it myself and I then get an updated version of the film three weeks later where they removed 30 seconds of that scene, I won't have time to adjust that music accordingly. So I may have someone come to my studio in the middle of the night and remove that 30 seconds and musically connect the tissue, so it still sounds like a piece of music. That may be a lightly less of a creative job than me sketching out a piece and having someone else orchestrate it. I take all this in consideration when giving out the royalties. […] There are definitely composers that I worked for who will say, 'This is something that I can't give any royalties out for,' or, 'I need you to do this under the radar.' I think that in some cases, in their defense, that may be it's the first time they work for a specific studio or a director and they do want to keep that relationship with that director close and not let them through the smoke and mirrors completely.”
[...]
The set-up of Hans Zimmer's studios is explained by Matthew Margeson who started his career with Zimmer before venturing out on his own and writing the music for productions such as Eddie the Eagle and Kingsman: The Golden Circle: “When I was working for guys like Klaus [Badelt] and Jim Dooley, it was just an employer/employee relationship. I was brought on and paid as an assistant. As long as you didn't mess up too bad and you got the job done in time you were welcome to stay. In a lot of the composers' suites, not only at Remote Control, there is maybe a writing room for the composer and then an assistants' room which may have a smaller set up in it, or a place for you to do administrative tasks. But then of course when the composer leaves at the end of the day, that's a lot of the time when my job would start. I would then go into the writing suite and clean up what he was doing as far as backing up things, or finishing arrangements, or uploading a finished cue to the server, or emailing it to a director, or doing the preparations for the next day.”
When working with a team on a film score it is essential to make each piece of music fit homogeneously into the overall sound of the score, rather than having a mixture of styles and different approaches by the various composers contributing to the project. Nothing is more irritating than a patchwork score which actually sounds like a patchwork.
The approach to resolving this potential problem is elaborate, as explained by C., a former assistant at Remote Control who wishes to remain anonymous. At the beginning of each project, Zimmer has a meeting not only with the director of the movie and perhaps some of the producers, but also with the composers who will contribute to the score, as well as a music editor and possibly some assistants – a group of not more than ten to fifteen people overall: “In a production meeting, the division of work is being scheduled. As a composer, after you return from the meeting and go back into your studio, there are already several messages on your computer with detailed notes about the production which was just talked about a few minutes ago. The work flow is absolutely amazing and necessary. It is incredibly quick and one meeting is not enough for that.”
Indeed, in the course of the production of the score for a movie there will be several meetings at regular intervals, as C. continues: “Even when Hans is mentioned as the main composer on a project, the director talks to all composers involved in the team during a production meeting. As the music is being presented in a meeting this makes sense. At the end of a production such a meeting is likely to be held every day, or at least every other day. Sometimes Hans asks a question during the meetings and sometimes you do better not to answer. Because sometimes he just wants to have your skills proofed.”
The amount of music Zimmer writes himself varies from film to film, but the process itself is always the same, with Zimmer exploring new, unusual sounds as the composer explained: “Before writing a single note, my team and I spend a lot of time programming new sounds, sampling new instruments. [...] The moment I start writing, I start mixing. Since I don't write on paper, I spend a long time making each note and sound convey the right emotion. It helps later with the live musicians. I can be very specific in my language (and I use English, not Italian) to convey to them why I want a note or phrase played a certain way. I don't make changes on the scoring stage, I don't let directors make changes with the musicians there. The recording is about getting a performance, not re-writing the cue. Nothing sounds worse than a bunch of bored musicians that had to wait while someone's changed an arrangement.”
After programming new sounds Zimmer writes a suite of music for the movie. C. elaborates: “This suite is based on his talks with the director and the musical ideas he got from them. The vision is his. Of course, he asks for opinions from people at Remote Control, but the overall concept is his and his alone. Some composers who worked for Hans were not able to deal with the stress. You can't solve problems with logic. You need to solve them psychologically to be able to survive there.”
After each production meeting the composers who have been assigned to write parts of the score retreat to their individual studios and work on their cues, which are based on the themes by Zimmer. To be able to work as efficiently as possible in a team, Remote Control has its own internal server. During the night, everything that had been written during the day is synced to all the computers so that every composer has the same data available when they come into the studio the next morning. Every composer not only has all the music written by every other composer, but also has all the materials created, such as virtual instruments and samples. There are people working at Remote Control whose job is to build virtual instruments, manage the samples and ensure this content is available to the composers.
With this way of working, every new production has a set of new sounds, ensuring that each project is distinctive. As elaborate as this technology is, it can cause problems, as recounted by C. in a rather amusing anecdote: “One night, I was in charge of the back up. But I needed some material from the computer which I wanted to put on my private hard drive. I put my hard drive in and pulled it out again afterward. Or I thought it had been my hard drive. As soon as I had pulled it out, an error message of the sync software appeared on my computer, saying that the back up could not be completed. I looked at other computers in the studio as well and found that the message appeared on every single one of them. I had pulled out the wrong drive! This meant that every computer had a different amount of material. I panicked. I then had to do a night shift to repair the damage by walking into every studio and checking every computer to see what the individual status was and if any material had been damaged.”
https://www.amazon.com/Struggle-Behind-Soundtrack-Discordant-Scoring-ebook/dp/B07WQP9PSS/
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Posted: |
Feb 22, 2022 - 12:43 AM
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By: |
keky
(Member)
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Geoff Zanelli wrote this on his facebook page:
"With the Vanity Fair article that came out today, in case anyone is wondering, I have always been credited for the music I wrote and (nearly) always received an appropriate amount of royalties. I hope the composers who work on my scores feel the same.
This means that I am comfortable saying publicly that Hans Zimmer, John Powell, Danny Elfman, Ramin Djawadi, Steve Jablonsky and surely some others I'm leaving out as I write this in haste ALL fought for me to be credited and paid royalties.
One example of many: "Don't thank me, thank Geoff" is what Hans said to Gore during a Pirates playback when Gore Verbinski loved a cue I wrote.
Others, I know, have had vastly different experiences than me in this industry so I am glad I fell in with the right people. I do know that mine isn't the case for everyone. I try to pass this all on to people I work with on my own scores and I'm sure I fail sometimes. But I try. Production companies occasionally push back on my efforts, but not regularly.
Regarding awards, that time I won an Emmy... there were two other composers listed on the cue sheet. Blake Neely and Bobby Tahouri wrote additional music for Into The West, credited and receiving royalties. It appeared not to factor for awards consideration in that case. Maybe that was just a matter of percentages. Their role was significant and essential to the score, but still not near the majority of the cues.
But then on The Pacific, Hans, Blake and I were nominated together for a score that was a three-way co-write. It again appeared not to factor for awards consideration. Maybe different rules for different academies? But acknowledging your team with credit and cue sheet (two different things!) ought not to prevent award consideration.
And I know I'm being long winded. But being credited and getting royalties for my work is the opposite of "ghostwriter."
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