Long gone are the days where the main tasks of a film composer were the seeking out of scoring projects and the writing process itself. Over the past few decades, the film scoring profession has undergone tremendous changes that have completely transformed the roles a film composer must fulfill. And these changes have come at an increasingly rapid pace, rendering the profession quite different than it was twenty, ten, and even five years ago. Thus, the many books that already exist on the film music business have in many ways become obsolete and there is a great need for a book that explains the profession as it is today.

This is the goal of Guerrilla Film Scoring, a new book by film composer Jeremy Borum that discusses what one needs to be successful in the film scoring world of today, bolstered not only by the author’s personal experience in the business but those of many other active and professional Hollywood film composers as well. Borum’s book, however, does not merely describe the film composer’s roles, it also discusses how one’s time must be divided at the various stages of the film’s production and, crucially, the kinds of stresses and strains this work can have on the composer. Indeed, Borum’s book is neatly divided into three parts that detail the composer’s roles in the film’s pre-production, production, and post-production. Overall, one obtains a very clear picture of exactly what it means to be a film composer today. Borum’s book is now available through Amazon.com and Amazon.ca, and for previews of the Guerrilla Film Scoring documentary and more Guerrilla Tips visit www.GuerrillaFilmScoring.com/videos/.

I was fortunate to have the opportunity to interview Jeremy, asking him several questions below that grew out of the discussions in his book.

What was your motivation to write this book?

The main purpose of Guerrilla Film Scoring is to fill the gap between the study of music and a career in music, between the talented hobbyist and the successful professional.

I studied music at four different universities and I have always disliked how disconnected the academic world is from the professional world. Most other areas of study have career guidance, job placements, and expected yearly salary numbers built into the programs. That is uncommon in music programs, and there are a great number of music professors and private music teachers who are unprepared to give their students that kind of practical mentoring. People who learn music outside a formal system have even fewer resources available to them.

However, there is an enormous amount of opportunity. My motivation in writing the book was to mentor others, describe the current industry from the inside, and give composers a survival guide for it.

What would you say are its biggest differences from the several other film-composition books on the market?

There are three things that set Guerrilla Film Scoring apart from the other film scoring literature. First, and perhaps most importantly, it’s simply newer. The digital revolution is forcing the industry to evolve very quickly, and books that are 5-10 years old already seem quaint in some ways.

Second, the book is not a single person’s perspective. There are 20 celebrity composers, all carefully chosen to represent a wide variety of niches in the industry. It contains the voice of all of Hollywood, and there is a breadth and depth in Guerrilla Film Scoring that no single composer could accomplish on their own.

Third, it is purely practical and craft-oriented. The majority of the existing literature and university programs are lacking solid practical guidance which is easily implemented. Guerrilla Film Scoring offers exactly that and nothing else.

You mention in the book’s introduction that the available learning resources for budding film composers “talk about an industry model that is increasingly obsolete.” What are the most important ways in which the industry has changed in recent years?

The industry model that is increasingly obsolete is one that assumes a reasonably well funded division of labor. It’s interesting and important to know how it works at the top where we still have orchestrators, copyists, contractors, players, music editors, music supervisors, mixers, recording engineers, mastering engineers, etc. That knowledge is important and it’s fun to be on a big project with a big team, but that way of doing business has largely died out. Compared to the number of composers those opportunities are very rare, and they only exist at the top end of visibility and budget.

2008 was a huge year for media technology. Pandora, Hulu, Netflix streaming, Apple TV streaming, and Spotify all began almost simultaneously. YouTube and Vimeo are only 3 years older. The iTunes store is only 2 years older than that. In a very short period of time the distribution of music and visual media has been completely turned on its head. It’s suddenly free (or almost free) to content creators, and that is influencing all of the business models in film and music worlds.

Scoring for film, TV, and video games is now an overwhelmingly independent process. Budgets are shrinking, schedules are shrinking, and although the expectations of production values remain extremely high, composers are increasingly armies of one.

What are the main ways that these changes have affected the roles a film composer must adopt?

In the old business, composers could simply find a gig and get hired. (Although I say “simply”, that was always hard to do consistently.) Today’s composers need to think about entrepreneurship and new business models as much as they think about finding those gigs. We are now not only responsible for landing the gig and making great music, but also for the business models that will allow us to get well paid. Without long-term business plans and strategies, musicians won’t go far any more.

How will your book help new film composers adapt to these widely varying roles?

Guerrilla Film Scoring assumes the reader is already a skilled musician who is trained and ready to work. What it offers are pragmatic concepts that will help composers to take calculated steps towards building a career. It focuses on ideas, not on specific step-by-step instructions, so that every composer can adapt real-world wisdom to their own path.

You discuss the importance of team-building in your book. Why has this become an even more important element in a film composer’s success today?

Team building is important because it’s no longer built into the process or cost structure. The inertia of the industry carries composers towards working alone in order to save costs and squeeze out as much profit as possible. That approach is good for costs, but bad for the art.

The end product is substantially better when dedicated craftspeople work in their area of expertise, because no single composer can ever master all the steps between composition and final delivery. Building a team in today’s industry climate is a bit like swimming upstream, but it’s better for the music and it can free the composer from some of the busywork. Although it’s often necessary, the do-it-yourself approach to scoring is less professional and produces poorer results.

In the chapter on writing the music, you state that “writer’s block is learned and can be unlearned.” What have you found to be one of the most helpful tips in overcoming writer’s block?

I had a math professor once who had a severe, almost debilitating stutter. It was extremely difficult for her to speak, and the majority of her teaching was through projected notes and handouts. (She was a brilliant teacher despite.) A year later by coincidence she joined a choir I was in. She was able to sing without problem because music always moves forward in time and the habit of stuttering never had an opportunity to develop.

Writer’s block is no different from stuttering. It comes from a place of insecurity, self-doubt, self-criticism, lack of confidence, etc. Writer’s block is self-censorship, and when that stops the writing can flow.

In some way, writer’s block is a luxury that only amateurs can afford. None of the professionals I know struggle with it because none of them have time for it. The way to move past it is to care less, trust yourself, and simply write. Get the bad music out, and then write more bad music, and keep the notes flowing until something good appears. Deadlines are the ideal antidote for writer’s block. If you don’t have external deadlines, create your own and stick to them. Just write.

You discuss the importance of high-quality demos as essential to the film composer. What are one or two ways one can compete in this regard in today’s film composition market?

It’s extremely difficult. The way to stay competitive is through education and fundamentals, just like with any other skill in life. We can’t master every step of the process, but it’s possible to master the fundamentals of composition, orchestration, engineering, producing, mixing, and mastering. Pursue your weaknesses, educate yourself, and practice, practice, practice.

On a more practical level, every element must be well recorded, every mix must be well produced, and ideally every recording that leaves the studio should be mastered. There’s also no room for dated sample libraries and synths, nor for common loop libraries. The sound sources, if not acoustic, must be current and fresh and new-sounding.

You strongly emphasize the preparation of the recording studio for one’s film music. What are some points that your book addresses here that other books do not?

There are many wonderful resources for studio design that go into great depth and get extremely precise and technical. What Guerrilla Film Scoring does is distill the complex science of studio design into a single non-technical chapter which contains quick, easy, cost-effective solutions for composers. Most composers don’t need perfect recording studios, they just need a working space that is good enough. Guerrilla Film Scoring helps a composer to avoid studying acoustics, make their space perfectly serviceable, avoid over-thinking it, and move on to other more important things.

You mention that the composer must often be their own music editor. What are the most pertinent skills a composer must develop to inhabit this role?

Music editing can be a very technical and time consuming task. At the higher levels of production it is very valuable to have a dedicated music editor because it frees the composer to work on more creative things. For composers who are doing their own music editing, the most important things are session preparation, synchronization, and delivery. When sessions are prepared well, recording sessions are set up and run smoothly. There are many ways in which synchronization can be incorrect or drift over time, and that must be tightly controlled. Proper delivery protocols are important, and in smaller productions there can be a fairly wide variety of delivery requirements. Those are the three core aspects of music editing as it relates to composers.

The final chapters discuss many aspects of the film composer’s career and the personal traits required to succeed in it. What would you consider to be the most important traits one must have or develop in order to do so?

​Without question tenacity is the most important trait. Talent and personality will fall short, and self-motivated determination is critical. The first and most natural source for that determination is a passion for music and for the industry. Other great sources of motivation can be more negative, like a dislike of office jobs, a rent payment, an album that flopped, etc. Those who succeed in building a music career use difficulties as fuel, they don’t give up, and they never take their eye off the goal.

For all those interested in the musical aspect of film, it is heartening to see that studies of film music are a growing area of interest to authors that are, in one way or another, connected to the music business. Peter Wegele is a composer, pianist, and arranger whose new book on Max Steiner marks another major writing on a film composer to be published this year following musicologist Emilio Audissino’s estimable book on John Williams. While Audissino’s book was derived from a doctoral dissertation and retains its scholarly feel, Wegele’s is written with the musical layman in mind and strives to be as accessible as possible. Wegele continues the trend of many other composer-oriented studies by exploring both the life and music of his subject, as he divides the book into three large chapters: an introduction, a biography, and an analysis of one of Steiner’s most important scores, Casablanca.

The introduction is clearly intended as a primer on a number of areas directly related to Steiner’s career: the transitional period in film history from the silents to sound film, the process of film scoring, and the components of music itself. For those already initiated in these areas, the introduction will be largely superfluous, especially since the topics addressed will be familiar from many other film music studies, topics such as the multiple functions of film music, film-music-specific terms such as click track, leitmotif, and Mickey Mousing, and broad observations on Steiner’s musical components of harmony, melody, instrumentation, and so forth. There are, however, illuminating tidbits tucked away in various portions of the chapter that are not to be missed. In the discussion of Steiner’s recycling of older material, from both his own and other composers’ scores, Wegele relates that

In his sketches for Casablanca, Steiner not only quoted from other films but directly told Friedhofer [his orchestrator] from which film to take which parts, even specifying the exact reels and bars.

Wegele then shows us an excerpt from one of Steiner’s sketches for Casablanca (reel 9, part 2, to be exact) in which only a melody is drawn in and underneath it on a blank staff, Steiner writes the bar numbers from which Friedhofer is to copy from Steiner’s earlier score to The Life of Emile Zola. As Wegele points out, though, despite this importation of older material, “the music to Casablanca never sounds schematic or like a quickly assembled functional music piece. It plays like a symphonic composition.” And this, Wegele argues, “is what made Steiner an outstanding film composer and artist.”

The second chapter on Steiner’s biography makes it clear that the composer’s path to success in Hollywood was by no means an easy one. Born and raised in Vienna, Max showed an aptitude for music from an early age, composing marches for the local military bands at the age of ten, and at age twelve, conducting an operetta at his father Gabor’s theater. At fifteen, Steiner wanted to stage his first full-length operetta at Gabor’s theater, but in an ironic twist, as Wegele tells us,

his father rejected the idea because he thought the production substandard. Unwilling to take no for an answer, the young Max approached Carl Tuschl, director of the Orpheum Theater in the Josephstadt, making the same proposal. Tuschl, a former stage manager and now Gabor’s competitor, was delighted at the idea of promoting the operetta of his rival’s son. Max conducted the premiere.

But on more than one occasion in his younger years, the success on which Steiner stood was pulled from under him before long.

Moving to London in 1909, he earned a reputation as a highly skilled musician and worked as a musical director for a number of prestigious theaters. Returning to Vienna in 1911, he took over his father’s failing theater business and was imprisoned for a short time when a creditor could not be paid. And even when it seemed that the tide had turned, and he had picked up where he left off in London, the onset of the First World War prompted the British government to refuse employment to German and Austrian immigrants in certain areas of the country. All of Steiner’s property was seized and he set sail for New York in 1914, his wife deciding to stay behind until he could establish himself there.

In New York, Steiner sought work at Broadway theaters, but had arrived unaware that, in order to work at such a theater, one needed to be a member of the union, and in order to do this, one had to be an American citizen, something one could only achieve after living in the country for six months. As Wegele writes,

To survive, Steiner found temporary work as a copyist. . . . In addition, he waited regularly on the stairs at Bryan Hall, a rehearsal stage on Sixth Avenue, hoping to find work as a rehearsal pianist for theater groups.

Finally, while conducting a ten-piece orchestra at Reisenweber’s Restaurant on Coney Island, Samuel L. “Roxy” Rothafel noticed Steiner’s keen musicianship and hired him as musical director at his Riverside movie theater, an auspicious move that gave Steiner experience in arranging music for a forty-piece orchestra to accompany silent films.

After many years of providing arrangements for the silents and acting as musical director for many Broadway musicals, it was in 1929 that his friend Harry Tierney recommended him to the RKO film studio as arranger of a show they were interested in producing for film. So Steiner moved to Hollywood, where he would make his mark in history.

Yet once again, even this breakthrough was threatened less than a year afterward. In September 1930, with a glut of film musicals having flooded movie theaters in the first few years of sound film, public interest dried up, and along with it, a huge number of musicians’ jobs in Hollywood. Steiner was initially sent a notice of dismissal, but with a new job lined up in Altantic City as musical director of an operetta by the son of Oscar Hammerstein, the studio reconsidered and offered Steiner the opportunity to replace the head of the music department, “but without a contract and with the right to be dismissed with only one month’s notice. Steiner decided to take the risk and canceled his engagement in Atlantic City.” Of course, this would be the most important career decision Max would ever make, as he rose in prominence through films like Cimarron, Beau Ideal, Symphony of Six Million, and through his landmark score for King Kong.

The remainder of this biographical chapter is filled with similar kinds of fascinating details of Steiner’s rise to movie music stardom, especially in his high-stakes scoring of Gone with the Wind, and his eventual fall from favor with the demise of the studio system and filmmakers’ shifting tastes towards using less music, and experimenting with popular styles of music such as rock and jazz, and even music with a more modernist edge. Nevertheless, Steiner’s legacy is well recognized in this chapter, as it concludes with a host of quotes from film music greats such as Nino Rota, Hugo Friedhofer, and Jerry Goldsmith.

The real highlight of Wegele’s book, however, is the third chapter devoted to Steiner’s score for Casablanca. Those trained in music will delight in the wealth of excerpts transcribed from the score, some given in full score, and one cue given in its entirety in piano score at the end of the chapter. But even if one does not read music, Wegele’s commentary remains of interest as he trades music theory with anecdotes, historical facts, and stage directions and quotes from Casablanca’s script to form an engaging and highly informative read. To draw one example from many,

Max Steiner, with his antipathy to the entire Casablanca project, made extensive use of these musical patterns [i.e., “habits, formulas, and clichés” of film music]. For example, he pulled the beginning of his title music from the film The Lost Patrol (1934), which he had written before. Author Rudy Behlmer recognizes an older connection in this piece of music, noting that “the Morocco milieu set forth in the main-title music was a reorchestration of Steiner’s North Africa desert music composer for The Lost Patrol (1934), which in turn is suggestive of Ippolitov-Ivanov’s use of a folk tune in his Caucasian Sketches.

For myself, I only wish Wegele had devoted more space to relating his discussion of the musical details directly to the onscreen action since his remarks are always spot on. Even so, there is a great deal to be gleaned from this already densely-packed chapter.

Wegele concludes his book with two appendices, one of which provides a handy list of Steiner’s awards, honors, and filmography, and the other briefly comparing Steiner’s musical style and values of Steiner with four of classical Hollywood’s other premier composers: Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Alfred Newman, Franz Waxman, and Hugo Friedhofer. In one of my favorite quotes from the book, Wegele writes,

Korngold and Steiner seemed to have had a relationship of mutual respect and friendly rivalry. Both were famous for their ready wit and sense of humor, illustrated by an encounter recalled by Korngold’s son Ernst. “One day,” Ernst recalled of his father, “Steiner said to him, ‘Tell me something, Korngold. We’ve both been at Warner’s for ten years now, and in that time your music has gotten progressively worse and worse and mine has been getting better and better. Why do you suppose that is?’ And without missing a beat my father answered, ‘I tell you vy dat iss, Steiner; dat iss because you are stealing from me and I am stealing from you.’”

Even with its moderately expensive price tag, the book is a gem for film music enthusiasts of any kind.

With all the success John Williams has enjoyed thus far over his extensive career, one might believe there to be a wealth of writings on the composer. The truth, however, is that John Williams’s Film Music, published just this year, is the first English-language book to be published on John Williams and a much needed contribution to the nearly non-existent body of work on Williams.

Written by Emilio Audissino, a filmmaker, screen writer, and film scholar, the book stems from the author’s PhD dissertation but has been translated from Italian, abbreviated, and “de-academized” (as Audissino puts it) for the sake of reaching a wider audience. On the whole, it is a thorough, convincing, and enjoyable treatment of how Williams’ has managed to recapture much of the spirit of good old music from Hollywood’s Golden Age of the 1930s and 40s (or what is commonly referred to as “classical Hollywood”) in the manner of Erich Korngold, Max Steiner, Miklós Rózsa, and company.

Audissino sets out by taking the reader through a survey of Hollywood film music history beginning with the silents and reaching Williams’ classical revival with the major films of the 1970s. For those who have read something on this before, it will be quite familiar but even so, there are new tidbits to be found and it is always enriching to have the story told through the lens of another scholar, since the interpretation of events is never quite the same. Thus, one may be surprised to read on p. 59 that in the “modern” film music style of the 1960s,

If we examine the works of Ennio Morricone (1928-), John Barry (1933-2011), and Henry Mancini (1924-94), three of the most successful representatives of this new style, it is patent that the classical-style “spatial perceptive function” (the case in which music directs the viewer’s attention to a particular element inside the framing) holds a minority position in the new style. Consequently, the Mickey-Mousing and leitmotiv techniques became obsolete.

Of course, Morricone, Barry, and Mancini all wrote “themes” for various characters in the films they scored, whether it was Jill from Once Upon a Time in the West, James Bond, or The Phantom from The Pink Panther. But Audissino’s point is that these themes tended to be closed musical numbers and so did not seek to catch moment-to-moment emotional changes but rather express an emotion that described longer stretches, even an entire scene. And this idea aptly describes a key difference between, say, a Morricone theme and a Korngold leitmotif.

Another great quality of this book is that Audissino manages to find the perfect Williams quote for just about every situation. One of my favourites is that of Williams discussing his approach to the main title of Star Wars (pp. 74-75):

The opening of the film was visually so stunning, with that lettering that comes out and the spaceships and so on, that it was clear that that music had to kind of smack you right in the eye and do something very strong. It’s in my mind a very simple, very direct tune that jumps an octave in a very dramatic way, and has a triplet placed in it that has a kind of grab. I tried to construct something that again would have this idealistic, uplifting but military flare to it. And set it in brass instruments, which I love anyway, which I used to play as a student, as a youngster. And try to get it so it’s set in the most brilliant register of the trumpets, horns and trombones so that we’d have a blazingly brilliant fanfare at the opening of the piece. And contrast that with the second theme that was lyrical and romantic and adventurous also. And give it all a kind of ceremonial… it’s not a march but very nearly that. So you almost kind of want to [Williams laughs] [pat] your feet to it or stand up and salute when you hear it—I mean there’s a little bit of that ceremonial aspect. More than a little I think.

And Audissino puts the quote in appropriate context by pointing up the many classical Hollywood traits that pervade this main title music. The one thing I would question with regard to Audissino’s discussion of Star Wars is his claim that George Lucas “planned to have the music track made of preexisting symphonic selections, or at least to use preexisting themes arranged as leitmotifs for the film” (p. 71), then cites the conversation Lucas had with Williams in which the latter supposed convinced him otherwise.

Myself, I am of the opinion that there has been some kind of mix-up in the communication of this little anecdote. As great as it sounds that Williams was the one who thought Star Wars should have an original score, it just doesn’t ring true—why hire one of the hottest composers in Hollywood (who has just won an Oscar with Jaws) if all that’s going to be done is arranging old music? My thinking is that Lucas wanted Williams to conjure up something like Holst here or like Stravinsky there, and that this was Lucas’ idea for the entire film. And probably the clear references to these composers in the film are the remnants of what might have been for the entire film had Williams not spoken up.

For me, the most eye-opening chapter was the one on Williams’ early years. There, after giving a synopsis of Williams’ career highlights during the 1960s and early 1970s, Audissino traces the beginnings of Williams’ classical Hollywood revival in several lesser known scores like How to Steal a Million, Fitzwilly, and Not with My Wife, You Don’t!, and compares them to scores in the “modern” style by one of the most prominent composers of the time, Henry Mancini. It is fascinating to read this because Williams’ early scores generally go unmentioned in any written discussion of his work. But Audissino convincingly argues that their leitmotivic, symphonic, and Mickey Mousing qualities are more prominent than in Mancini (and by extension other “modern” style composers of the era).

In the latter portion of the book, Williams’ score for Raiders of the Lost Ark gets a thorough scene-by-scene analysis of how the music functions. If there are any doubts left at this point that Williams drew on classical Hollywood techniques, this chapter puts them to rest. And evidence of Spielberg’s own fondness for the classical style of filmmaking is discussed as well to further strengthen the argument.

Another enlightening aspect of the book is its demonstration of Williams’ commitment to performing original versions of classical Hollywood film score cues and programming a good deal of them in public concerts, particularly those televised with the Boston Pops Orchestra. In this way, it becomes clear that Williams has been an ardent promoter of film music outside of Hollywood, which has helped to legitimize it as a form of music worthy of concert performance, recordings, and scholarly study. By the end of the book, especially after the chapter on Williams’ tenure with the Pops, one is astounded by just how much the man has contributed in this vein.

Finally, one handy feature of the book is its two appendices, one giving short synopses of the films Williams has scored for Spielberg and Lucas (okay, we can look this up on Wikipedia, but let’s face it, it’s a distraction when you’re reading the book), and the other is a comprehensive list of Williams’ total output. There is also a short glossary containing some key musical and filmmaking terms that many will undoubtedly find convenient.

So whether you’re at all interested in film scores—their history, their changing styles, their reception over the years—or in the music of John Williams in particular, you will find much to enjoy in this new book. It’s the kind of thing we need a lot more of, so I’m very glad Audissino has given us a great starting point.