Preparing a quote for a film scoring gig

I was recently helping a friend who is in the process of negotiating a possible film scoring gig. Since I scored my first feature-length film last year, the process is still fresh in my mind so I was able to share a few things from my experience. Some of the things I mentioned I also learned at various seminars I've taken over the years and was able to put in to practice on my scoring gig.

Here's what I sent to my friend, somewhat edited and amplified in places:

I would try to find out how much music they envision having in the film. There's a big difference between writing 30 minutes of music and 60 minutes of music!! 60 minutes of music is a lot of music, even if it's simple!! You will be collaborating with a director and possibly producers. There's more time involved in a film score than writing and recording the music so budget time for meetings, rewrites, phone calls, hand holding, etc. All of this should be taken in to consideration when answering that inevitable question: "how long will it take you to write the score?".

You could charge a flat fee per minute of finished music. At least that gets them to think harder about what scenes get music because they have to pay for every minute. Sometimes that's hard to do so if you can get a ballpark on their budget and how much music they want, you can see how much per minute you might want to make and see if it makes sense when you run the numbers.

My fee for the film I scored ended up being about 10% of the film budget at the time they hired me. I think they ended up spending way more on post but I'm not sure. Anyway, another way to do it is to find out the budget of the film and charge a percentage of the budget. I ended up composing around 60 minutes of music for the film and I think there was too much music in the film. They wanted me to spot it and I put music over a lot of scenes that would have been fine without it (hindsight is 20/20).. I would try to get a spotting session with the director, we never had one and I'm insisting on having one from here on out. Don't spot it yourself or you might give yourself more work than necessary!!

Profit participation is always an option. A smaller upfront fee in exchange for the backend might be a good deal, but most films don't end up making any money. They end up being a calling card for the director and may get some festival exposure but it's as competitive a business as the music business, if not more. So don't count on much if any backend. If you think this director has some potential, it may be worth it to do the project for less and treat it as a relationship building exercise.

If you think the music might be able to be edited in to library cues (sometimes film cues just don't work outside of a film, some do some don't), then I would insist on keeping the publishing and the copyright so you can make money from the music outside of the film. This may influence your fee as well. If they insist on owning the music (the publishing), then they need to kick down some bigger dollars, IMO.

For the film I scored, I knew they really wanted me because they loved my audition. I really wanted to do the film for the experience and I also knew it was going to be a big job. I knew what I could probably get and would do it for, so I told them "this amount of music and complexity is really a 15K job but I know that's out of your budget, what were you thinking?". This way I got them to play their card first and they came back with the figure I had in mind, and I said, OK!

These are just a few things to think about when taking on a film project. This assumes that you have the composing and dramatic chops to pull it off in the first place. Make sure you have the technological resources and know how to write, record and deliver the score on time and on budget. If not, hire a capable assistant.

Try to get as much information up front as you can before you quote a fee.

Here's a few film composing resources that have been very helpful to me:



Film and Television Composer's Resource Guide

Complete Guide to Film Scoring

The Reel World

Inside Film Music

From Score to Screen

Knowing the Score

The Emerging Film Composer

And last but not least, the best book on film scoring, IMO:

On The Track