Film Music for Filmmakers - Part 2

Composer David Raiklen explains how to tell the story and evoke emotions with your music score. To learn more about him and his work visit http://www.davidraiklen.com/music.htmlTo learn more about Carole Dean and From the Heart Productions please visit www.FromtheHeartProductions.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_07 0:00

Blog Talk Radio.

SPEAKER_02 0:14

Hi and welcome to the Art of Film Funding. I'm your co-host, Claire Capan. Along with Carol Dean, author of the best-selling book, The Art of Film Funding, Carol is also the founder and president of From the Heart Productions and the host of this show. David Raiklan began studying keyboard and composing at age five. He wrote, directed, and scored his first film at age nine. David studied composition at USC and CalArts, later teaching at those universities. Among his mentors are Oscar winner John Williams and Pulitzer Prize winner Mel Powell. David works for Fox, Sony, Disney, Sprint, Mattel, Warner Brothers, and PBS, in addition to many independent producers. He's scored hundreds of films, television shows, video games, and live events, winning multiple awards, including an American Music Center grant, three teleawards, and a gold medal. Carol, I understand that David Rakelin is a generous donor to the Roy Dean Film Grant as well.

SPEAKER_03 1:27

Yes, Claire, David donates his time to create music for the grant winner. And thank you so much, David, for joining us for the show today.

SPEAKER_05 1:37

You're welcome. It's always a pleasure and exciting to hang out with you guys and all of our filmmaking colleagues out there in the blogosphere.

SPEAKER_03 1:49

Absolutely. Now, the interesting thing is, see, at the end of our interview with you on Music for Films Part One, we were talking about the library of music that you have available for filmmakers. So let's start with the library. Give us what you have available.

SPEAKER_05 2:07

I can provide a wide range of styles and emotions from epic to intimate, from heartfelt Americana to uh quirky pop rock and everything in between. I have uh access to a wide variety of popular and uh classical jazz, you name it, the genres that uh we can use as a a springboard to begin the musical conversation. Or if someone wants a a low-cost option, they can use the library to help create the the score for their their picture.

SPEAKER_03 3:04

Oh, that'd be wonderful. That is a very good idea for a low-cost option. Right. Well, I know that you created the uh intro and the outro for our film. Do you also have that available for people if they just need uh uh an introduction to something?

SPEAKER_05 3:22

Using for an introduction. I'm welcoming projects of any and all sizes. And uh for example, I I've done uh uh theme songs for uh uh uh TV shows and uh and and radio shows where uh they're uh just needing a a 30-second brand identity and that's it. The the show doesn't need any more music. Or uh bumpers and transitions, where it's just three to five seconds that allows you to smoothly transition from section A to section B and uh and quickly set the tone. Uh all of these are part of the skill set of being a film composer uh or or media composer.

SPEAKER_03 4:22

Oh my goodness, that's fantastic. All right. Well, back to uh part one on music for films. That's at that time at the very end, you said you should start thinking about music for films, even if you have just one song in mind, because that's the time to contact a composer, because it can take you up to six months sometimes to get a clearance on a single song.

SPEAKER_05 4:47

Yes, that's true. Uh the process of getting music clearance is a pretty arcane one, and some people can uh kind of find their way through it the first time on uh uh luck and good intentions, but uh I never recommend that people rely on luck and good intentions to get their projects done. But it it's actually better to know what you're doing. And in reality, songs can be much more time consuming to get cleared than the actual production of the film. And there's a lot of reasons for this, but the the short version is that any song can have many entities, both individuals and corporations that have an interest in a part of that song. And I know that sounds very complicated, but believe me, it's ten times more complicated than that. So uh if you want to place a song in your film, we can probably get it, but you need to allow time to track down all the parties that may have an interest in that song. And uh the other uh reason to start early is if that wasn't enough, is that sometimes even with our best efforts and plenty of time, the song just isn't available because one of the parties that has a controlling partial controlling interest in the song just uh doesn't want to play along. And then we have to come up with something else. And you want to have time to do that right.

SPEAKER_03 6:24

Oh my gosh, I'm sure. I'm sure you've seen all of these weird things happen with music for films. It can get very complicated, right?

SPEAKER_05 6:32

Uh yes, it can get very complicated, and uh that's uh one of the reasons why the Emmys just added a new category this year for uh uh best music supervision, because the process of clearing the songs that are in TV shows is uh so important that uh you need specialists who work on it full time and uh they now are getting uh uh recognized for it. And uh so uh it it's uh definitely something that uh I can do, but if it's uh a difficult one to get licensed, then I bring in one of my friendly music supervisor colleagues and they will get the job done.

SPEAKER_03 7:23

Oh, that's very important to have someone for that. But uh they're right. They're right to make this uh a part of the uh Academy Awards. That's going to be wonderful. W in the family, uh we always have a vote every year uh to on all of the uh well we do about 28 of the categories or whatever it is, 25, 27, whatever they have. So this will be a new category because I've been winning over the last five years, David, so I have to get really up to date on good music supervisors for this year's Academy Awards. That'll be a lot of fun to watch the films, thinking, uh, how would I tell from watching a film how good the uh music supervisor was? That's a good one.

SPEAKER_05 8:11

Yes, well, you know, uh what it comes down to is that a really good music supervisor working with a uh director or showrunner who gives them enough freedom to do their job well and place a song that sounds like it was written for that show or written for that episode. Uh th they'll find the uh lyrics, the tempo, the the style, uh they'll edit it in such a way that the music and the picture and the the storytelling arc all perfectly fit together. So that's ideally what we want. And uh the best music supervisors actually do that in a way that uh well uh you simply can't uh you can't replace that uh w with just saying that I like this song. Although there's nothing wrong with liking a song. Uh the the music supervisor will have several alternatives and help choose the one that best fits the picture.

SPEAKER_03 9:27

Okay, that's a real good description then.

SPEAKER_05 9:30

Oh, and by the way, Susan Jacobs was the one who uh uh made a little bit of history uh for for Big Little Lies, you know, the one about uh domestic abuse and the songs really do play an important role in that show, uh, you know, in telling the story. So um she didn't just get the song cleared, which we just talked about is uh was a real task, but uh she also made sure that it was the right song and edited to fit the picture, so it became an integral part of the episode. But you know, uh frankly I thought that everyone in the category had done that. So uh this is one where uh no matter who you uh you voted for, uh it would be the right one because they all did a great job.

SPEAKER_03 10:20

Okay, all right. Well, let's get to uh talk about let's talk about the underscore for action, emotion, and dialogue.

SPEAKER_05 10:32

Yes. Well, uh underscore is definitely one of the things that makes movies or TV shows cinematic. It's that combination of the picture and the image. Uh dialogue is really important and so is sound design. But there are uh times where the interplay between the actions, the rhythms, the emotions that are on screen, and the action rhythms and emotions in the music are what make it feel like a movie. And action sequences are probably uh the best single example action sequences often have a lot of sound effects in them too. But a well-sored action sequence will work with just the picture and the music, and you won't feel that there's anything missing. It's complete. And yes, in documentaries we do that too. For example, if there's an establishing shot and you're just seeing the region or the building or you know, whatever uh is the location or the the interview plus music will tell you that part of the story of where you are.

SPEAKER_03 11:58

It tells you where you are, it introduces that place to you, in other words, yes that location.

SPEAKER_05 12:05

But uh for example, let's say that you're starting out and uh you we're in Los Angeles and now the story moves to New York. Well, that's action, that's moving. So it's not action like a battle scene, but it's action and it's moving. So uh the music can transition you, take the action from one place to another. Or if our character is walking and uh we uh want to kind of get into the the mind of the uh subject as they're walking into a meeting or into a courtroom or something that uh an important event, that becomes a a kind of action shot too, where uh we have to keep propelling things forward. So uh even in documentaries, we often will use at least some of the same techniques we would in an action sequence.

SPEAKER_04 13:00

And then of course you know there's uh documentaries about war zones where there's you know full-on battle action. Right.

SPEAKER_03 13:09

But if the a character is walking down the street um then and and they're worried about something, um that's a different type of music than than if they're going to meet a loved one or something. That's expectation. One is one is fear, I guess, one is uh expectations. So you can tr you can tell us, you're giving us the setup for what's gonna happen is or what they're thinking.

SPEAKER_05 13:36

Uh yeah, that's also uh uh part of it. Uh it reminds me of m my colleague uh Hugo Friedhofer's um maxim that uh the job of the uh cinematographer i is to show that the man is walking and the job of the composer is to tell us why the man is walking.

SPEAKER_03 14:05

Oh, I see, okay. That makes sense.

SPEAKER_05 14:14

Uh of course we all can uh tell stories.

SPEAKER_03 14:19

It's all about a story. It's all about telling the story, right.

SPEAKER_05 14:23

Well let me ask you a elements is uh become important for um dramas and documentaries to keep the movie flowing, to keep the story flowing forward. Um so there's uh there's different levels of action. And uh I know a lot of the the people listening here are documentary filmmakers, but uh even if you're not doing a war uh documentary or uh one on uh uh waste car drivers where there's there's obvious uh action, you still want to have action in the story, in the music to help propel things forward.

SPEAKER_03 15:09

Yes. Because we don't even know that's happening in it. If you're really engrossed in the film, the music uh you don't notice the music, right? I mean, isn't that a sign of a really good score?

SPEAKER_05 15:25

That's actually uh something that's uh kind of uh a partial misconception. We're always aware of the music, but when it's done well, it's just like the acting or the cinematography. It's part of the movie. So uh when you're uh seeing an actor perform, we don't really want to be aware that the actor is performing. We want to be absorbed into the performance. So uh it's the same thing with uh music, that we're not necessarily listening to the music as a separate entity, but of course we're aware of it because it's part of the movie and it's part of the flow, and if it were to stop, the flow of the movie would stop. So uh that's kind of a a misconception because every element of the movie is supposed to integrate so that we don't notice them separately as much as they all come together. Like uh we don't really notice the uh foley work on the the the footsteps of the person who's walking. We just uh realize that the person is walking because uh we hear their footsteps. But we are definitely hearing their footsteps, and if you weren't hearing their footsteps there would be something wrong. So uh uh that's how music works. Uh it's just um because music works so well outside of movies, you know, we people will just listen to music. So the I think that's what creates the confusion is that uh we're always aware that there's music there. We're just not listening to it in the same way when you're watching a movie as you would if there was only music and nothing else going on.

SPEAKER_03 17:18

Okay. That sounds good. Well, let me go on here. I wanted to know um how you create continuity and make things flow from shot to shot. That's uh something I think that is done so well, but I really don't know how you do that when you're composing.

SPEAKER_05 17:39

Hmm. Well, uh we uh covered uh a little bit of that. The uh the key is to have a vision of how the movie is flowing, how the story is flowing. So each shot is being supported, but there's elements that are carrying over between shots or between uh sections of the movie. So everything feels like it's inevitable that it's all been set up and uh we're getting the payoff and that's um made effortless by the craft of a composer. Uh a way of uh composing the is really only possible if you get away from using a temp score. Um this kind of uh composing is only possible when the uh music is able to have its own identity. This gets back to the uh concept of uh whether we hear the music. We're hearing and we're feeling the music on a very profound level, and you may not notice exactly what the music is doing as you would in a concert setting, but the story that the music is telling is foremost in people's minds and hearts. That's what tells the story. Uh so the logic of the music if they elements of the music can carry through the whole picture from shot to shot to shot. The audience will be carried along with it, and the fact that it's not a continuous image, but a bunch of things edited together will be greatly softened, and the sense of story and momentum will be greatly enhanced. When uh you're using a temp score, those pieces of music aren't logically connected, or at least uh they're they're connected on a a much uh cruder and less organic level than they are if the cues are you know, the music is specifically composed for that movie and the connections between them are part of the of the movie. So uh this is one of the reasons why uh movies from earlier eras can often seem like they're uh flowing very uh smoothly, even though they're not as technically polished as the movies of of later eras, because the composers are connecting together the different sections of the movie, and on a conscious and an unconscious level, we put all that together. So uh there's no way to to get that if you're uh doing what we call a QE score, where the cues are all separate, and each one might work very well for the moment, but the connections between them. And this is where we we start to get into the mysterious art of composing, that it's not something where you can just uh conjure up an organic connection that flows from shop to shop to shop. That's not something That really happens. It's something that you have to organically develop over the course of composing for the whole film. It's something that you put into the movie as part of the entire process. It's not something that is created just for uh the moment. You can get things that are created just for the moment that work uh in an editorial kind of way. But I'm talking about something more deep and profound than simply editing things together.

SPEAKER_03 22:36

Okay. It I understand. It gets most complicated, but well let me ask you this.

SPEAKER_05 22:42

Oh sorry.

SPEAKER_03 22:42

For someone uh it's funny. Let's talk about Yeah. But anyone who's trying to decide if they should buy existing music or create their own music, what advice do you have for them? Um, really important.

SPEAKER_05 23:00

If you want to buy existing music, then uh I uh recommend that you keep your film very short.

SPEAKER_03 23:11

That it's very short. And you can buy existing music to just cover a short film, it's easier.

SPEAKER_05 23:17

Um Right. The the more you try and cover your film with existing music, the harder it becomes to maintain a continuity. And I see people who think that they've achieved continuity, but what's really happening is that they want to have achieved continuity so badly that they're imagining that it's there when it's really not. The continuity just can't be conjured up by editing together a bunch of different pieces of music. It comes from having uh development of ideas that have a beginning, middle, and end, and all the individual steps in between. But uh some films get by without having uh a strong sense of continuity achieved in the score. Other elements can help pull the audience along. So it's it's not that you can't achieve some continuity um through other means.

SPEAKER_03 24:25

Well, uh for features then you really recommend that they uh create their own music for their films or for longer featured docs, right?

SPEAKER_05 24:35

Right. Again, the longer the project is, the more important it is to have continuous music. And uh a perfect well, uh a good example would be something like uh let's say that you're doing a uh a Kinburns style multi-part documentary series where you're really taking a deep look into a big subject like say baseball or the Civil War. These are huge events, many, many people covering many, many eras, and you need to have music that helps tie it together, and there's uh recurring themes, there's recurring uh you know, in the images, there's recurring themes in uh of characters, uh narrators, there's uh you know other elements that you can bring in there, but uh for example, uh on uh Ken's latest project, the uh Vietnam series, he got the Silk Road Ensemble, which is a group of international virtuosi brought together by Yo-Yo Ma to create music for the series. And he didn't use a lot of music, but uh you know, he made sure that th th there was original music that actually uh by design helped bridge the cultures because you know we have uh the musicians from all around the world that are collaborating, including ones from Vietnam, to create the the soundtrack, the the documentary. So you can see how he's kind of built into the process of creating the music a sense of multiculturalism and a sense of continuity, uh popular technique amongst more experienced directors, uh although it occasionally uh a new director will do this, is they'll actually bring down the composer early while they're still editing to generate original music so they can help set the mood, the characters, the pace, the how all of those elements can organically evolve at the same time.

SPEAKER_03 27:11

Okay. Wow. Well tell me, how do you work with people who want original music? I mean, where do you begin?

SPEAKER_05 27:21

Uh well we begin with how the director or the showrunner likes to work. A service profession, so we're trying to understand what the director wants, what the film needs, and if they want or need music to be part of their the storytelling process, I can come on board and write music while they're doing rewrites on the script because writers will sometimes like to write their script to music or uh animated projects where they're creating I never heard of that, David.

SPEAKER_03 28:06

That's exciting.

SPEAKER_05 28:08

Yes, uh well that's actually pretty common in uh in video games because the process of coding the video games is very, very slow. It's it's like a very extended uh uh production process. And the people who are called the the game developers who are actually uh figuring out the story and the uh play elements of the game will be using the music to help guide them in creating the story and the gameplay. And that will go on for a year or longer before you actually have uh elements of the game that you can play, and then you can uh tailor the music to fit what they've actually uh uh come up with. So, yes, starting at the the very beginning is a good idea. Uh and starting with original music is a good idea too. Now there are exceptions, like uh, for example, Quentin Tarantino is infamous or famous, depending on how you want to look at it, for licensing many, many songs to fit into his movies. He actually wrote those scenes though while he was listening to that song. So he has actually kind of wrote, directed, and edited the scene in his mind to that song. So uh when he actually is going through the production process, he's just um realizing something that was already planned around that song. Uh on the other hand, when he did finally decide to get an original score uh from Eno Morricone, the Oscar for the best song, best score of the year. So uh that shows that even people who work with songs can get wonderful results when they get a an original score. That uh it uh it it didn't hurt his uh his filmmaking to have an original score. You know, what what he got was a very entertaining film that had a terrific score. Exactly.

SPEAKER_03 30:31

Exactly.

SPEAKER_05 30:32

That was original, not made up from uh a bunch of clips.

SPEAKER_03 30:37

So filmmakers can come to you early on in production to talk to you about music and decide many things if they want to work with you, how to work with a composer, uh, what to do, uh, when to come back, you know, just when you get involved and how, all of those things would be answered, right? In a in an introduction or conversation.

SPEAKER_05 31:02

Absolutely. I'm happy to talk to uh filmmakers at any stage in the production and help answer their questions. Um I also have uh found in uh film financing helping uh raise monies for the production as a whole. So it it can also be helpful to consult on that level about um what you need to raise money for and how much. It that's it's really useful to have a sense of what uh a scoring budget might be for that uh that project. And uh I uh had producers who've been in the uh business for decades call me up and say I'm uh having to budget for music on this project and uh uh I need an estimate.

SPEAKER_03 32:01

Right. This is good. Right. Well tell us how people can reach you. What uh is your website address and your email address?

SPEAKER_05 32:12

Oh okay. Uh well m my website is David Raikland, D-A-V-I-D-R-A-I-K-L-E-N dot com. And uh there's uh contact right there up at the top. And uh you can also reach me through Cinematic Music One, D-I-N-E-M-A-T-I-C-M-U-S-I-A-C and the number one at gmail.com. So uh there's a couple of ways to to reach me. And of course, uh I'm always open to uh messages and uh uh finding new friends on Facebook. So uh if you want to uh reach out and friend me, that's another great way to uh find out what I'm up to and to contact me.

SPEAKER_03 33:05

Okay, that sounds good. Now I want to move on to uh this brilliant outline you have in part two, which is listening to music. So explain this for us and some some things about sound design too.

SPEAKER_05 33:21

Well, uh are we talking about the uh the part of the uh outline where I'm uh suggesting how filmmakers can build uh oral awareness?

SPEAKER_03 33:34

Yes.

SPEAKER_05 33:36

Okay, yes. This is uh a big, big deal. There are many film schools around the world. Uh to my knowledge, uh to date, none of them offer a course on film music for filmmakers. So one of the things I try and do, uh especially when I'm talking to filmmaker groups, is uh try and fill that need for an introduction to music or filmmakers. And the role of music in storytelling is enormous. Uh this is not my opinion. Uh Alfred Hitchcock, Stanley Kubrick, Stephen Spielberg, Christopher Nolan, JJ Abrams, the list goes on and on. These are all people who I uh as either met and they've told it to me personally, or I've seen it documented in interviews that I've had confirmed by people who were actually there, they all agree that sound is 50% of the process. This is not uh so much an opinion as it's just a fact of how the medium of film works. That even though it is a visual medium, the visual is 50% of the process, 50% of the experience, and the other 50% is sound. And the sound is basically divided into three categories, three major categories, dialogue, sound effects, and music. And they really are equally important. And sometimes we uh encounter uh filmmakers who think that the dialogue is the most important sound, and sometimes it is. That's true, sometimes it is, but sometimes sound design or music are more important for that moment or for that sequence. So you really need to be comfortable, as part of your director's toolkit or producer's toolkit, to be comfortable with all three of those categories of sound. And often people's experience with music is basically through their music collection, what they hear at concerts, their uh their own personal uh experience of music, and not so much about the vast world of music, which is a lifetime of study for people who are are dedicated to it. I think it's really important for all filmmakers, whether you're a writer or a director or an actor, to learn something meaningful, insightful about all of the other artists and craftspeople that you're working with. And the way that I believe is best to build oral awareness of sound is to listen to movies that have really great sound and to listen to the silo, the the dialogue, sound effects, and music separately. So you become aware of how each of those arts work. Not that you have to become a sound designer or that you have to become a dialogue specialist or a composer, not at all. This is uh about learning how to appreciate what all these people can do for your film and how they can help bring it to life in the best possible way. And everyone that I've ever met will want to have their movie made in the best possible way, with the exception of those films that videos make in in order to show a loss. And even those people who are professional will do their best to to make it a good movie anyway. So it doesn't take uh a lot of time and it's a great deal of fun to just listen to soundtracks on their own. And to listen to kind of music on its own, because film music draws on all forms of music. That's one of the amazing things. It's uh perhaps uh the the melting pot of uh all kinds of art and music. So our uh ability to create a good score for a movie partly depends on being familiar with the music that's in other movies. But it's at least as uh connected to music created outside of movies because that's mostly how music gets into movies. Uh uh styles of composing, sounds, uh genres of music techniques, all of that stuff mostly comes from concert music and popular music. So being familiar with concert music, especially the history of concert music, going back centuries, storytelling is an ancient art that goes back thousands of years and it draws on techniques that are timeless as well as contemporary technology, and that's more true in music perhaps than any other process, with the possible exception of acting. Acting also uh relies on uh timeless elements of performance. So uh a great performer is a great performer. And filmmakers want, or at least I hope they want, they have great performances in their film. And it's important to have a great performance on the soundtrack, in the dialogue, in the sound effects, and in the music. And the great performers have all been trained in classical music. The one exception is that people who are uh great pop singers may not have much training in classical concert type music. Although the funny thing is that as their careers go on, they usually get coaching in all of those things because they find that they're attracted to the timeless power of music that's from other eras that may have thought of things that we didn't think of or were there at first and are more authentic. So uh when I suggest that people listen to Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Wagner, Tchaikovsky, Lavell, Bartok, Stravinsky, these are all composers that are heavily invested in to film scores. The process of creating the Hollywood sound, and not just the Hollywood sound, but the sound of movies all around the world, draws on these composers. So being familiar with their work is getting back to the authentic roots of film music. And when you understand the the roots and the uh the source or what makes film music great, you're better able to direct film music or or produce film music that is the best that it can possibly be. And yeah, there's all kinds of influences in uh film music. It's the great melting pot, and we're always developing new techniques, but those new techniques are almost always based on things that were initially developed by the genius concert composers.

SPEAKER_03 41:56

Okay. So bar talk, I'm not familiar. I have to uh uh uh to shore up on my BAR Talk. Uh give us the names of those composers again, please. Bar talk was one. Beethoven?

SPEAKER_05 42:09

Uh yeah, uh we're going sort of in chronological order. Uh J.S. Bach, uh Mozart, uh Ludwig and Beethoven, uh Richard Wagner, uh Peter Tchaikovsky, uh Maurice Ravel, Philip Arton, Igor Sravinsky, and uh I'll also add Aaron Coleman in there.

SPEAKER_03 42:34

Oh yes.

SPEAKER_05 42:36

Those composers have much, much, much to say about storytelling, heart, passion, and it's timeless art, and the whole point of timeless art is that it still sounds relevant in different times. And that's why we go back to those people and why film composers went to them in the early days and it right up to the present. Now, sure, you can buy uh libraries of music and plug them into the film, but again, Bash has this problem of not having the the long arc, the continuity, the sense that there's a inevitable beginning, middle, and end. In that sense, you have to get back to the basics of how to compose really good music and how to tell stories in in music without necessarily having the support of the film. When you can tell your story and it makes sense without necessarily having the other elements there, then you understand how you can pull back on parts of it and still have that superstructure that holds the whole thing together. Right. Well as one of my friends said, uh you can you can kind of fake fake a melody, you can kind of fake a rhythm, you can kind of fake a style. There's lots of things that you can kind of fake. But one thing that you can't fake is structure. Either the structure is solid and it holds together or it doesn't.

SPEAKER_03 44:25

That's right. That's right. Well, uh David, I want to learn more. So I I know your third section in your outline is how it's done. So you may have covered some of that, but anything that left that you want to share, please do.

SPEAKER_05 44:42

Oh, well, how it's all done is through uh a team of professionals who are dedicated to making the film the best it can possibly be. And uh really the uh the music department is uh extension are uh a another branch of the uh the the whole production team. So the producer, the director, the editor, they're part of the music team too. Uh then you have people who are a little more specialized, like the composer, the music supervisor, orchestrators, the performing musicians, the engineer, the mixer, and uh it's good to have all of those people because they have different skills, different perspectives, and they collaborate in a way that is greater than the sum of the part. So smaller films we may not be able to get quite as large a team, but uh at the minimum you want to have at least one live performing musician besides the composer. You want to have someone who is a gifted expert at playing their instrument in a way that's different than the composer does. So instead of it just being about that one person's way of feeling the music, you can bring a conversation into it, a uh ensemble performance. Uh ideally uh we would want to have uh several players. Uh I think a good number for uh a uh smaller low budget film is eight to ten uh musicians, and then for a mid-budget picture, probably want to have more like uh a small orchestra, thirty-forty players, and then of course, you know, for the uh big productions for something that's really uh grand and epic, then you want to have eighty to a hundred musicians. But even one player makes such a big difference in the humanity, the passion, the interactivity, connectivity the uh of the score. And uh you need to have an engineer because you want to have someone who has a fresh perspective and who spends all day, every day, just making the sound sound good. That's uh something where uh there's there's no substitute for having that objective experience. So I always bring on board an experienced engineer who makes everybody sound good. And they can do things like help make the song and the score glow together so they sound natural, like a part of the same piece. Or they can uh help make a smaller group of musicians sound like a larger group of musicians without sounding fake. So uh that's kind of the the minimum music team. And uh uh there are other positions like music editor where uh they can be uh just a a key supporting role that helps everything move together because if the director is really busy and they uh they don't have a lot of time to talk with the composer, they can uh kind of express what what they want and need to the music editor, and then the the music editor can convey that to the composer. Uh uh this is really uh important if you're on a big deadline and you know you have to get things done quickly. The composer might not have a lot of time uh to meet and the film might be changing because the director might be working with the editor at a frenetic pace trying to finish editing the picture so the music editor can understand what the picture editor is doing and what the director is going for and communicate that to the composer and vice versa, if the composer has written something but the picture is now changed because you know during the time that they were writing it the film got uh edited and that happens all the time, then the music editor can help conform all of that and the quality can stay there, but now everything fits and flows and is in sync. So that's a a little bit about how it's done and and some of the team members that can that can really help uh facilitate the the process. Uh this is so impu very much. Oh, you know you're welcome. Well, there's all these positions and there's actually good reasons to all of them. They can all be lifesavers. Uh so uh it it's good to know what they're doing uh enough so the instead of having a problem and saying, W what do we do? or or you know, becoming uh upset that uh it's not getting done, that instead you go, Okay, what we need is this person or that person to do that job and that will get us through to the finish line. And yes, th there's always uh uh budgetary concerns about, you know, can we afford this? And the the real answer is you can't afford not to do it. It takes so much time and money and effort to make a film, and yet there are still so many films out there in the marketplace that you really have to put your best effort forth in order to have any chance of standing out from the crowd and finding an audience.

SPEAKER_03 50:38

And finding a distributor too, David.

SPEAKER_05 50:41

Yeah, yeah, a little more finding a distributor because they see stuff all the time and if you know they're not impressed by uh what they see in the first five minutes, then uh your shot is done with them. So yeah. It has to stand out to the distributor.

SPEAKER_03 50:59

Right. Right. Well, thank you. This is a wealth of information. So just tell us again how uh filmmakers can reach you in case they didn't write it down before they can.

SPEAKER_05 51:12

Oh great. Well, you can uh contact me through javidrakeln.com. Rakeland is spelled R-A-I-K-L-E-N. Or you can uh reach me at cinematicmusic1 at gmail.com or uh send me a message and friend me through Facebook. Um I love meeting new friends and uh giving advice to filmmakers, and uh don't worry about the cost. We'll find a way to take care of it. I want to help your dream come true.

SPEAKER_03 51:40

Oh, marvelous. Those are words that they want to hear, David. That's what all the filmmakers want to hear. Thank you for your generous donations to the Roy Dean Grant. Claire and I thank you very much for supporting From the Heart, taking good care of us.

SPEAKER_05 51:56

Oh, you're welcome. It's uh a joy to work with you guys, and uh it's wonderful to be part of the filmmaking community. The uh From the Heart Productions and the Roy Dean Grant have just helped many wonderful, deserving filmmakers get their film done.

SPEAKER_03 52:19

Thank you so much, David. It's uh great pleasure to interview you. You're just so full of information. Thank you.

SPEAKER_05 52:28

Well, thanks. Uh I also am uh I'm pretty good at writing music and uh you can get instant gratification also on my website. You can hear some of what I've done.

SPEAKER_03 52:38

Oh, great. All right, that's perfect. Yes.

SPEAKER_02 52:40

Okay, yes, and also I'd like to uh remind our listeners uh that this is part two of an interview with David. Uh we also have part one as well. And if you scroll through the archived uh episodes of the Art of Film Funding radio show, you will see part one in there with David as well. So uh in case you want to go listen to that part one, you'll get even more information as well. And and it is a wealth of information, I might say.

SPEAKER_05 53:17

Well, thank you, Ellen. Uh again, uh you want to have uh a free consult, I'm happy to speak with you or email with you to help your film get made. Uh that's what this is all about.

SPEAKER_03 53:34

Okay. That's a great invitation. Thank you, David. All right. Until next time.

unknown 53:41

All right.

SPEAKER_03 53:43

Be well in it. Listen. Okay. Bye.

SPEAKER_02 53:48

I want to remind our listeners that David Rakelin is a brilliant and talented award-winning musician who scores films and can compose music for a trio or for a full orchestra. David is a very good friend to the independent filmmaker and comes highly recommended by From the Heart Productions. If you need music to help tell your story, please contact him at DavidWakeland.com. That's David R A I K-L-C-S.com. And Carol and I want to thank you for listening to the Art of Film Funding. Please visit our website at FromTheHeart Productions.com. You can also find us on Facebook and Twitter. Good luck with your films, everyone.