Film Music Composers Needed

I just wanted to let everyone know about a great place to find and work on film scoring jobs, The Composer Collective (I am a TeamScore member myself):

http://www.thecomposercollective.com/tcc/composersignup.asp

I signed up to this recently and I have to say I'm not really fond of the idea at all. It totally degrades any sense of individual artistry — it's basically like some kind of brothel of composers that film makers can come to for a quick fix. Not to mention the pay is insulting.

I signed up to this recently and I have to say I'm not really fond of the idea at all. It totally degrades any sense of individual artistry

In the last email I recieved with composing opportunities from them, it varied from $15-$50 per minute of approved music that actually gets placed in the film.

So I take it, you work on a piece for a few hours and get only 1 minute of your piece in there as a cue and get less than $5 an hour for it.

lame

My point exactly.

So I take it, you work on a piece for a few hours and get only 1 minute of your piece in there as a cue and get less than $5 an hour for it.

lame

Well, to be fair: if you go by hourly rates, you'll never earn well as a composer anyways. Even if you get big commissions (which again usually take a long time to complete).

I'm still debating with myself whether to sign up. Well rates aside, it may be good for a little exposure...

In the last email I recieved with composing opportunities from them, it varied from $15-$50 per minute of approved music that actually gets placed in the film.

That's great! $15 too little, but $50 not too bad. It's great for YC (young composers!) and it is great for experience. I will join!

Not to mention that in South Africa, some people work for as little as $5 a day. If you have a job here, you are damn lucky. Because there aren't any!

Join up, be my guest, I'm only mentioning my complaints because the whole concept of this website is fairly despicable — it blatantly portrays composers as competitive automatons of music-making instead of any manner of artist.

Remember, those prices are what you get IF YOUR CUES ARE SELECTED FOR PLACEMENT; meaning that if you spend a week and a half of your life writing a set of cues and they're not what the person was looking for, you get nothing but the "experience" of having written them. And if they ARE accepted, then more often than not you get to be put in the credits as "Additional Music By:" or some other such hollow title — which is fine for padding a resume, but it's not really a fair representation of the work.

Oh, and I've yet to see a listing that offers anything but a (measly) up-front cash and questionable royalty benefits. For example, quoting the first listing from the last email, the composer could stand to get:

$600 per minute in projected* potential royalty revenue.

*based on a 10-year forward-looking estimate, if broadcast

So there you have it. Ten years after you write it, you MIGHT get up to $600 per minute of music that that's been approved and finally actually edited into the film. All this IF the film gets broadcast, which is a pretty significant if.

I guess I'm just trying to caution people because this all seems well and good but it lacks in integrity what it provides in sleazy salesmanship. So join if it attracts you, but I myself found it to be a bit of a degrading kind of service and I don't feel comfortable sacrificing my artistic integrity for the sake of a meagre and sporadic opportunity to provide music for projects — without even being in direct contact with the developers, which is one of my favourite parts since we can actually discuss and have the musical ideas evolve along with the film's.

Anyhow, that's my two cents. I'm sure people have had nice experiences with this site, but the trade off doesn't seem worth it to me.

I currently make $0 per minute of music I compose, so $15 per minute would be phenomenal. I couldn't even imagine having the opportunity to get $50 per minute, let alone $600! This pay certainly doesn't insult me.

And as for spending a week and a half of my life writing a set of cues and and getting nothing but the "experience" of having written them, that's what I've already been doing for quite a while. This is certainly a better opportunity than anything I have been fortunate enough to have in the past.

Pay to get job? don't like this at all!