"Reel World" Advice for Film, TV and Video Game Composers

Before you create the first note of a score, there should be a thoughtful process of discovery and careful consideration in order to ensure that the road you take is the best and most preferable road. A great score is not an arbitrary collection of musical notes or cool phrases. Perhaps the single most important step in creating a score is to decide what might be the best approach from every musical possibility. A score can be for a large orchestra, electronics, or voices; it can be jazz, minimal, ambient, heavy on percussion or guitars; use only small chamber groups or world music ensembles or soloists. A score can be traditionally melodic, highly experimental, or a hybrid of styles, textures, or overall approach. The most important first step in creating a score is to decide on an approach and stick to it.

That decision will come from a few sources. The first, and by far most important, is to talk with your director (or producer, if they are in charge of music) and see what musical approach or sound they think is most appropriate and desirable for the project. A good director will have ideas. It is vital for any composer to really get inside the head of the director and get a deep understanding of what they like and dislike musically. If possible, sit down and ask them about what they hope the music will achieve for the project. Ask them to explain the project’s story from their personal perspective and listen carefully to what they say—they will illuminate the story, characters, and style for you. Perhaps they see the hero as vulnerable, and that might give you musical ideas. Perhaps the love story is more tragic in their eyes than you might have thought, and that will help you decide on more interesting musical choices. Ask questions and dig as deeply as possible into what they want, and what their overall vision is.

Generally, directors and producers have specific musical tastes, and it is helpful to find out what sorts of music they like. On one episodic series I scored, I saw the producer had a lot of blues in his music collection. So, when I suggested adding some blues to the score, he was ecstatic. It also happened to fit the project very well. Many directors are huge music fans, and not just of scores. In fact, they usually don’t listen to scores, but have other interests in classical, pop, hip-hop, R&B, or more esoteric styles. Getting a sense of your director’s tastes, as well as what they hope the music will bring to the project, should start to move you in the right direction.

Composers often do research in preparation for writing a score. If the filmmaker is interested in a highly evolved, avant-garde orchestral score, you will want to familiarize yourself with as much as you can from the top composers of that genre by listening to albums and, perhaps, checking out some of those scores to see how they were notated. If you are doing a score for a Chinese historical action film, you might listen to as many Chinese film scores and folk recordings as possible. Composers frequently draw inspiration from other scores, albums, or online videos. There is so much great material in the world, and it’s a wonderful way to gain some insight if you hope to do something very specific.

The goal of research, of immersing yourself in a particular type of music, isn’t to copy it or imitate it, but to allow any music you write to have depth and character. When I was asked to score a movie about Native Americans from various tribes, I listened to over a hundred recordings of Native American music. From them, I learned about the rhythms, instruments, scales, and phrases, and even how the style of music changes dramatically, depending on its geography. I did my best in a short period of time to become an expert in Native American music. My goal was to serve the film’s drama and plot without resorting to music that might be shallow or cliché. I had a lot more to draw from after my research. And it was a lot of fun as well.

I’ve steeped myself in all kinds of music prior to most every creative project I do. I’ve listened to all sorts of musical styles with which I wasn’t familiar, specific artists or scores the director especially loved, and music from different historical periods or from various cultures. Anything that might inspire me to do something personal, but that draws from these sources. Think of it as the difference between what you compose and why. Good music (all good art, in fact) knows why. Good music isn’t just a bunch of notes—no matter how beautiful they may be. Film, episodic, or video game music has a purpose and a perspective, as it relates to the project you are doing. This doesn’t just apply to musical oddities. It is as inspiring to listen to great artists as a warm-up to getting to your personal craft and musical personality.

After the research, and once you start to actually sketch some preliminary ideas, you can let go of all that other music and begin to sift through the music you feel is right for the project. Start sketching without thinking about specific scenes or characters. Just write. Get into your own musical head space. Sketch as many ideas as you can to find the stylistic “front door” to the overall score. Hopefully, each will get you closer and closer to something that works well. You’ll know when you’ve created themes or sketches that reflect all you hope to achieve musically in the project. Your goal right now is to fulfill the director’s vision, but do it with music that will inspire and surprise them. Organize your sketches as best you can, and draw from them as you start to actually write to picture. You are through the door.

Before moving on, there is one last aspect of spotting to discuss. It is one of the truly fundamental aspects of what it is to be a composer. Every cue in every project must serve a purpose. And before you can write it, you must ask yourself—“why does this scene need music, and what will the presence of music accomplish?” If you can answer that question clearly to yourself, then you will know what to write. What are some of the reasons to have music in a scene?

Finally, it’s not uncommon for a director to simply say, “I think this scene needs music.” If you didn’t see the need, but you get the request, then you should ask them, “What would you like the music to do here?” Directors have usually seen a scene, dozens or hundreds of times before a spotting session, and may simply be bored. They may feel they did not get a good performance by an actor and want to add some missing life to the scene. Even if you disagree with the assessment of the director, the best thing is to simply comply and try music. Sometimes it takes a sketch to show a director that music isn’t actually needed in a spot, but if they are happy with the concept and the result, then you are a hero to them. Accept it.

When scoring a scene, think about the moment you want the music to be well established, then look backward slightly from there to find a good space to begin to start it off. Unless you intentionally want a cue to come in suddenly, the goal is typically to gradually sneak in with some subtlety. This is absolutely a judgment call on your part, and only you and your director can decide what feels right. Nonetheless, this is a technique that works the vast majority of times.

Cues often start with a single tone, harmony, the first notes of a melody, or something equally as simple. When done right, the audience often won’t notice music starting, but they’ll get the music’s full emotional impact when it is really needed. Not all cues need to sneak in. Rhythm-heavy action pieces, scenes with no dialogue, or any time the director asks that the music come in boldly are fine. Generally, though, bringing music in a bit slowly and carefully is preferred. A good idea is to experiment with starting the cue a few seconds earlier or later, trying different ways for the cue to begin, and then settling on the one that sounds and feels best to picture.

If someone in a scene says a line of real importance to the story that triggers the music, wait for a brief moment after the line for the audience to take it in and understand its impact. Don’t rush in. After that brief moment (called a beat in film and theater jargon, and not to be confused with an actual musical “beat”), the music can begin. Always give the audience that beat to take in the information on the screen, and then allow the music to respond. In some cases, a cue might start several seconds prior to a scene to create a sense of anticipation and curiosity (at the end of a somber scene comes a happy piece of music, which leads into a scene of a fun event). This is called a prelap.

Cues that are more about energy, shock, or surprise than they are about emotions or dialogue can start with a bang, sometimes starting on or just before an edit or other very noticeable visual moment. Finding the perfect moment in the scene to be the launching point for the music is like musical counterpoint. The audience sees something and takes it in. They hear some important dialogue and they take it in, and when music begins, they take it in as well. You typically don’t want everything starting all at the same time. It crowds a scene and makes it confusing. It’s better to weave dramatic elements in one at a time. The result is a much better flow.

With fast-paced action scenes, music that hits edits or significant moments (like something— or someone—hitting the ground, a monster appearing, a gun or explosion going off, or other exciting or vital moments) tends to add a lot to the excitement. It connects the aural and visual experience for the audience, which is part of the satisfaction of cinema, TV or video games. These moments where the action and music hit together are called, appropriately enough, hits.

All of the story elements that go by in a fast-paced action scene can sometimes give the audience too much to focus on, and they can’t always mentally process it quickly enough. Fast-paced editing, rapid dialogue and action, unexpected twists and turns can get a bit overwhelming. Sometimes that’s the point. Directors typically don’t want the audience to be confused. However, the right music, synchronized and sculpted the right way, can help lead an audience along, showing them all of what’s happening as the scene unfolds moment by moment. It elevates a scene into being more emotionally compelling and exciting. Think of an exciting chase sequence: the music as it careens and hits with the action, propelling images right off the screen. Is the hero about to die? Is good about to triumph over evil? Is someone committing an act of true heroism or tremendous evil? Music often conveys emotion far better than images alone. Musical hits can take many forms:

Sometimes hits can be more subtle—like a shift from a minor to a major key when the hero gets the upper hand. Even silence can be used as a tool to accent a key moment in a scene.

Many times, cues have transitions that fall near but not directly on a transition. Staggering transitions between image and music can be a more subtle, and even desirable, effect.

It takes some practice to figure out how to make a cue feel musical while having significant moments in the score line up exactly with corresponding moments in the picture (more on that later). This usually involves a combination of tempo and time signature changes to make it happen. You may pick a tempo you like for an action scene, only to find that a key moment you want to hit lands between two beats in the music. In a situation like this, you have several options to make a downbeat, or any beat, line up with the picture:

And sometimes you can use a combo of these to get the best result. Faster tempos cause more hits to land naturally than slower tempos. Subtle tempo shifts often can’t be heard. With action, you want a musical hit to be right on the desired frame, but a frame or two early is often just as effective. Hits landing even a frame or two late will usually feel wrong.

There can be some restraint regarding hitting too many moments in a cue. Too many hits or transitions can sometimes make a score feel cartoonish. In fact, the term often given to scores that hit too many moments is cartooning. Classic cartoon scores would hit absolutely every piece of action, which actually did make them much funnier. The same applies to any film score, which isn’t always so desirable. A good composer will find the right balance of hits and non-hit moments in a scene. So, feel free to try adding or taking them out as you refine a cue.

Some scenes may feel the need for a lot of hits, but with others you can reserve musical hits for just occasional moments that need some serious extra attention. Part of spotting is defining the truly important moments in a scene, as decided by both the composer and the director, and then choosing the best way to accentuate them. Anything that brings the audience’s awareness to the music will highlight that moment as important.

About Jeff Rona

Jeff Rona is an accomplished and award-winning composer for film, TV and video games, as well as a recording artist and music producer. He studied music, art and photography, but left school to pursue music as his life’s work. He soon became an in-demand studio musician, arranger, sound designer, synthesist and music programmer working in Los Angeles and New York. After working with a number of top record producers, he focused his efforts on film music, most notably collaborating with Philip Glass, Mark Isham, Lisa Gerrard and Basil Poledouris, and in longstanding musical relationships with composers Hans Zimmer and Cliff Martinez. Rona collaborated on dozens of films before landing his first solo composing project, scoring the groundbreaking television series Homicide: Life on the Street for director Barry Levinson and the Ridley Scott film White Squall which launched his solo scoring career.

As a committed and passionate protector of animal rights and global ecology, Rona has given time to score several landmark documentary films, most notably collaborating with Canadian filmmaker and activist Rob Stewart, whose film Sharkwater led to the near global ban on shark finning.

In addition to film and television work, he has written music for multiple AAA video games including the epic God of War III, Far Cry 4, Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite, Transformers, Resident Evil 2, Devil May Cry 5, Quantaar and many others.

Rona’s music appears in numerous Oscar, Peabody, BAFTA and Emmy award–winning projects, in addition to countless film festival honors around the world. He is a recipient of several ASCAP Film & Television Music Awards and the Hollywood Music in Media Award. Beyond many soundtrack albums, he has released several albums of his own music.