Leaderboard

Gigantic can of worms opening up here, so let me give you some quick thoughts: Learn your tools. Master them so they're never in your way, learn their tricks, personalities, and best practices. Learn to work fast. Then learn to work faster. Make an excellent demo reel showcasing a variety of styles. Make an excellent web presence to host that demo reel and information about yourself. Make it easy for people to Google you and find your music. Make it easy to listen to and showcase. Send out 10 emails per day to young directors of those fan films whose work you admire on YouTube, to folks you've read about in articles, people you've found on forums dedicated to indie film making, etc. Ten per day. And don't stop until you start getting answers. For every 50 emails you send, you'll likely get between 5-10 responses, of which 3 will be a polite no, one will be a "we'll keep you on file", and the other will be a "maybe, let's talk about it." While you're writing so many emails, learn to write well. Be concise, affable, professional, and courteous. The better your emails, the more responses you'll get. Respect your work; just because you're new doesn't mean you're not worth money. You may not be worth $500/minute yet, but you sure are worth something. Find a number and try to get paid for your work, even if only an honorarium. If you teach people that you think your work is worth nothing, then don't be surprised when they keep coming back expecting you to work for free even when they get bigger budgets. Watch a lot of films, study a lot of film scores, and learn about the process of making films. Not your part, theirs. Find out about cinematography, learn to recognize good editing, refine your eye for good direction and good writing. If you can hold a conversation on their passion with them, you're already a more attractive prospect than the ignorant composer too caught up in his work to realize that other people exist and contribute to a film. Learn to understand the context within which you'll be working, in other words. Learn about audio from other perspectives: learn the physics, learn the psychology of musical influence, learn the biases of cultural identity. Learn about audio formats, about compression, about delivery formats, and about the process of implementing music in a project. Learn to manage your time well. Figure out how many projects you can have on the go at once (if it's just one then you're in the wrong line of work), figure out how many minutes of music you can consistently write per day in various styles (again, if it's just one then you're not going to be particularly competitive), and be diligent about sticking within the zone of comfort that allows you to maximize the quality of your work on each project. But don't stagnate: let that comfort zone expand as you get more experienced. Be careful about considering it as a career. You can make a huge amount of money at it if luck works in your favour, but it takes a LOT of effort and a LOT of dedication. If you can imagine doing anything else for a living, you should probably be doing that instead. There's a basic roadmap for you. It's fun, it's exhilarating, and it's harder than you think. But have fun with it and you'll do fine. :happy:

Well, if you've got the bandwidth to load some acid-trip Gothic Secessionist eye-roaster of a page every time you navigate somewhere, be my guest. I personally would prefer not to be assaulted by something that looks like it was designed by the absinthe fairy trying to combine the influences of Klimt, Dali, Picasso and Canterbury Cathedral in pixel format. Joking aside, there are some very good reasons why YC has a simple and un-fantastic design. It follows the rules of good design and layout with uniform colours and clear fonts. Why do think maps aren't printed on paper that changes colour with invisible pink Gothic fonts? It's because they need to be easy to read at a glance and provide information clearly.

.... what?

Dominus - yeah. As I wrote awhile ago, having my first NYC premiere was one of the biggest highs I ever got in my life.