Showreels and portfolios

Hello and welcome to this month’s blog!  I’m going to talk about showreels and portfolios this month and how important they are to demonstrate what you can do.
 
As film and visual media composers, it’s good to be able to show how well your music sits behind a visual. And if you are between gigs and looking to practise and keep your hand in, there are a number of ways you can do that.

Royalty-free visuals
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There is so much visual footage available that is royalty-free and free-to-use without attribution that you can compose to.  There are limitations in that they're mostly silent, many are only 10-15 seconds long and not a full narrative, but often there are different takes and scenes from the same shoot and with a little creativity of your own, you can create a cue around a minute or so long, which is long enough for people to get an idea of your composing skills and also short enough for today's 'goldfish' attention-spans.

Public domain
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There are so many old films and TV episodes that are in the public domain.  Whilst many of them had their copyright renewed and are still protected (despite it being 70+ years) there are many films in the 1930s and earlier that you could take a scene from and practise scoring to.  Many old films have very little music and there are multiple scenes where you could just drop in your own music behind the visual. 

Creative Commons licenses

Look out for short films that are used for scoring competitions and visual media that has been licensed with CC0 (Public Domain), CC BY 4.0 and CC BY-SA 4.0 licenses.  4.0 means international.

Credit must be given to the creator (no problem there).

Share Alike - adaptations must be shared under the same terms, so if you modify it in any way, it must come under the same license.

However!
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Not all Creative Commons licenses are alike!  If the license for any visuals that you are interested in contain the following, you might want to forgo them:

No derivatives or adaptations of the work are permitted. I'm not sure if this means you can't add music; it's a bit ambivalent.

Only noncommercial uses of the work are permitted. This is problematic if your composing is a business.

Be aware that the license can be revoked if you don't follow the requirements but if you do, the license is non-revocable.

Pitching to directors and producers

​Not all directors and producers want to see and hear visual and music together.  I met an awesome director by the name of Kylie a couple of weeks ago and I asked her what she looked (listened) for when thinking about music.
 
“I  like to listen to a composer's music alone (without image)”. She says. “So, for that reason I generally prefer pages with audio tracks that I can quickly and easily listen to (but of course am open to all things)”.
 
So Kylie doesn’t want to be influenced or distracted by a visual that has come before.  “I usually go into a project with a fairly specific idea of what I'd like the work to sound like”, she says, “so I think for me it really just comes down to whether I resonate with the music or not (and whether it feel that it's a right pairing for the tone/spirit of the project)”.
 
And then she says something very encouraging, as there are many composers who feel that, due to lack of experience, they may not appeal to directors.  “For this reason, I don't usually put a whole lot of focus on whether a composer has had much or any previous work scoring for film etc”. she explains.  “I generally feel that if I like an artist's music, I can trust the composer to transition those skills and adapt to working in film”.
 
So how can we cater to as many directors and producers as possible, who may have very different preferences when it comes to selecting music?  Well, there are many platforms where we can share our creative content and we can have both audio and visual content for people to listen to.  For example, you can create a visual showreel on YouTube, whether it’s a video cut together of your work, or a playlist that you can share, and you can also link to audio platforms, such as Soundcloud and Bandcamp.  When you are networking with directors and producers and ask if you can share your content with them, ask if they prefer listening to music with or without a visual.  Or if you are following up with an email, you can include links to both and label which is which.  They can then click on the link that suits them better.
 
And if you’d like to know more about composing for film and visual media, I am running a free webinar this month!  Here is the link to register:

Click here for webinar registration

Anyway, that's it for this month.  Happy creating and I'll talk to you next time.