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This is a comments thread about Blog Post: The 2009 Top Forty Composer Countdown (in 2010!), Part Three by Scott Bettencourt |
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http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20100112/film_nm/us_union In Bid To Unionize Hollywood Composers After 28 years without a union, film and television composers are attempting to unionize again. The new union would be designated the Association of Media Composers and Lyricists and would be the first group of its kind since the Composers and Lyricists Guild of America, which dissolved in 1982 after a punishing seven-year legal battle with the major studios. (A subsequent attempt to create a new union in 1984, with the assistance of the Writers Guild of America, was derailed by the National Labor Relations Board, which denied the Society of Composers and Lyricists guild status.) The attempt to organize is being led by record producer/composer Alan Elliott ("Cop Rock," "Celebrity Deathmatch"); Bruce Broughton, a former Society of Composers and Lyricists president; James Di Pasquale, who helped form the SCL in 1983; and Alf Clausen, the veteran composer of "The Simpsons." The timing in many ways couldn't be better because conditions for film and television composers have never been worse and fees have dropped radically from their levels a few years ago. "Thirty years ago, the average television all-in fee was $35,000 -- for an hour of television," Elliott says. "That would include the money that would go to the studio, the contractor, the musicians, the orchestrators, the copyists, the players. With inflation from 1979 to 2010, that should be $104,000, but most network television shows now are around $14,000 all-in, which means that the total number has fallen to about 13% of what it was."
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Interesting to see Shore fall out of the top 10 this year. LOTR didn't seem to lead on to other blockbuster work... or perhaps he turned them down?
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Interesting to see Shore fall out of the top 10 this year. LOTR didn't seem to lead on to other blockbuster work... or perhaps he turned them down? It's not so much that Shore dropped (though I suspect he isn't necessarily eager to jump back into blockbusters unless the project is just right) but that some others like Desplat, Giacchino and Powell are having such incredible streaks right now that someone has to fall back, just in comparison.
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Add to that (see silvestri): "the team may return to live action with a film version of Jonathan Franzen's acclaimed novel The Corrections." The correction is not a confirmed project but one that zemeckis has shelved and its not likely that he will return to it soon. The next confirmed project for zemeckis is a performance capture remake of the beatles movie yellow submarine. It remains to be seen if silvestri will have a major role in this one other than arranging beatles songs. And there is strong word that a who framed roger rabbit sequel will follow after this one which will likely be performance capture as well. You have also forgotten to mention that he contributed a song to hannah montana: the movie, directed by peter chelsom with whom he worked before. Which brings me to another question: How do you determine the spots on this list? For instance, silvestri had arguably one of the most successful years in recent time in 2009 and even made the top ten of biggest box office composers of the decade, yet he is not even in the top ten of that list! What must a composer achieve to make the top ten?
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I know how gratifying it is to spend hours writing something and then have someone come along and pick a tiny flaw, so please allow me. [Randy Newman] "This year's new Disney animated feature, The Princess and the Frog, is the first time he has written both the song score and the incidental music for the same film" What about James and the Giant Peach? You got me there. And his Peach score was even Oscar-nominated, so I was doubly lame.
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How do you determine the spots on this list? For instance, silvestri had arguably one of the most successful years in recent time in 2009 and even made the top ten of biggest box office composers of the decade, yet he is not even in the top ten of that list! What must a composer achieve to make the top ten? it's entirely subjective, of course, but Silvestri is a little lower partly because he seems to be working with only a handful of directors these days (Sommers, Zemeckis). He did have a good year, but he's had better ones (I think there were four films in the 99-00 period that grossed around 200 mil), and it's hard to compare to the hit streaks of people like Giacchino and Powell (not to mention the latest blockbusters from Horner and Zimmer).
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