How to Score a Film: 5 Tips for Scoring Movies

A film score is music that accompanies a film. In most cases, movie music is written by a film composer hired for the production. The movie score serves to heighten the emotion of the film, creating an aural mood for each scene, along with sound effects and dialogue. The film's composer writes the score, often with the help of an orchestrator, eventually working with instrumentalists or using digital composition software to record the final product.

A film's composer is the person who creates the core piece of music that plays as part of a film's audio track. In movie credits, a film score is often associated with a single composer like Hans Zimmer or Danny Elfman, but behind the scenes, many individuals collaborate to create music for a film.

1. 1. The orchestrator: Some composers orchestrate their own compositions, but many opt to hire an orchestrator. The orchestrator takes melodic and harmonic sketches created by the composer (usually broken into two to four lines) and arranges them for a wide variety of instruments, ranging from a rock band to a symphony orchestra.
2. 2. The music editor: A music editor's job is to handle the logistics of turning music compositions into reality. Many music editors work exclusively for a particular composer and help mock-up their compositions using computer software. (For instance, Hans Zimmer works with a team of music editors in his Remote Control studios in Santa Monica, California.) Sometimes the audio files created by music editors serve as demos for tracks that live musicians will later record; other times, they end up being part of the final score.
3. 3. The music supervisor: A music supervisor is in charge of sourcing music that is not composed specifically for the film. This could be anything from popular songs to classical music to temporary music (known as temp music or temp tracks) that a director works with during the film editing process.
4. 4. The producer: In the music industry, a producer is someone who supervises and directs a recording session. Typically, a film composer serves as their own producer during scoring sessions, but not all composers feel comfortable leading large groups in a recording session. For this reason, they may hire someone to produce a film score recording on their behalf.
5. 5. Copyists: For live scoring sessions, copyists are in charge of producing parts for individual instrumentalists, which are derived from the orchestrator’s overall score. In the studio, a copyist is responsible for giving the correct musical parts to the various live players.
6. 6. Performers: Some composers perform the entirety of their scores on their own. But when the budget allows, composers typically turn their work over to top-of-the-line session musicians, who traditionally belong to a union called the American Federation of Musicians. Film instrumentalists need to possess strong sight-reading skills, as they are expected to deliver a flawless performance the first time they play the orchestral score.

In addition to Hollywood feature film scoring, these same roles are part of music production for television shows and video games. TV and video game music tends to rely heavily on synthesizers and computer-generated sounds, however, as opposed to the live orchestras of many Oscar-winning original scores.

Whether you’re scoring an interplanetary epic or a character-driven indie film, the composing process requires discipline and practicality.

1. 1. Begin with a simple melody. As a composer, your job is to create an original yet familiar theme that pushes the story forward. The theme should tell the parallel story that the director set out to tell, not just exist on its own as a concept. Use this as your only restriction, but be completely free when setting out to create the theme.
2. 2. Compose narratively. Stick to the story and never abandon it. You will develop a score that coexists elegantly with the world the director creates. To do this, you must live in the world of the story. To begin living in the world of the story, learn the rules of it from your director. In addition to reading the script, sit down with the director and try to see the story as they do. Your goal is to arrive at a common language that informs how you’ll approach composing for the story.
3. 3. Think in terms of sound palettes. Your sound palette is the uniquely evocative collection of sounds and instruments you use for your score. Music and image complement one another, so work to create sound palettes that coexist with the cinematographer’s approach to telling the story. Study light, color, and editing to ensure that your music helps with the worldbuilding.
4. 4. Know your role in the process. Keep in mind that a composer works for the film’s director. Some directors give wide leeway to their composers, while some have very strong opinions that may clash with a composer’s instincts. Be fierce but polite when it comes to expressing your opinions to a director. When you’ve hit that crucial point with your director where they like the way a piece of your music works with the film, you can use that as leverage to convince them that a similar approach will work during other moments, or that you can create a variation that will work in an equally effective way for another scene in the film.
5. 5. Stay on budget. In today's film scoring model, most composers are paid a package fee that covers everything from recording expenses to the composer's own salary. This means that as the composer, you are essentially paying all the costs of producing the score out of your own pocket—meaning you may have to think about whether you want to add to the production value of a score (reducing your take-home pay in the process) or find ways to cut costs that won’t noticeably reduce the quality of your score in order to keep your compensation equitable.

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