{"id":148122,"date":"2012-12-01T20:29:15","date_gmt":"2012-12-01T20:29:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/socancom100stg.wpenginepowered.com\/working-fast-and-serving-a-vision\/"},"modified":"2012-12-01T20:29:15","modified_gmt":"2012-12-01T20:29:15","slug":"working-fast-and-serving-a-vision","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/uat.socan.com\/fr\/working-fast-and-serving-a-vision\/","title":{"rendered":"Working fast and serving a vision"},"content":{"rendered":"

Les traductions pour les articles avant l\u2019automne 2013 ne sont pas disponibles pour le moment.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cIf you can be in a band, then you can write for TV,\u201d says Tom Third, a recording artist who once put out albums on Nettwerk Records, and now composes music for The Listener, a drama series about a paramedic with ESP, which airs on CTV and Fox International.<\/p>\n

Third\u2019s simple statement comes with many ifs: if you can write with the psychology of the character, plot direction and genre in mind; if you\u2019re versatile and capable of different styles and sounds; if you can record them using computer software such as Pro Tools, Logic, Ableton or Cubase; and if you can do this in a week per episode, sometimes less, but two weeks max, depending on whether it\u2019s a half-hour or one-hour show.<\/p>\n

Gary Koftinoff, who scores the supernatural medical drama Saving Hope on CTV and NBC, believes, \u201cYou\u2019re probably not going to get hired for a TV series if you\u2019re in a band \u2013 even a famous band. You still have to know how to score a scene. If you don\u2019t have any credits behind you, chances are pretty slim.\u201d He calls it \u201cscoring your way up.\u201d<\/p>\n

Words & Music spoke with Third and Koftinoff, in addition to several other well-established TV composers \u2013 Jim McGrath (Republic of Doyle, Degrassi: The Next Generation, CBC), Keith Power (Hawaii Five-O, CBS), Ari Posner (Flashpoint, CTV & CBS) and Rich Pell (Call Me Fitz and Less Than Kind, HBO Canada) \u2013 about the challenges of writing music for a weekly TV series.
\nNone of them minded working in an area of the music business that\u2019s behind the scenes, where recognition is given only when the end credits roll and at such ceremonies as the Gemini Awards, and the SOCAN Awards, which includes categories for best scores.<\/p>\n

Egos also have to be put aside for another crucial facet of the job: the composer isn\u2019t the boss. Everyone from the executive producer, to the producer, to the director, to the television network can weigh in on the music.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a collaborative process,\u201d says Third. \u201cPeople will ask you to change things, absolutely, but I\u2019ve also fought for things too. I\u2019ll pick my battles.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou don\u2019t get very far in this end of the music business if you get too attached to your pieces,\u201d says Posner, who co-writes the score for the police drama Flashpoint with Amin Bhatia. \u201cIt really is about servicing the vision of the producers, or the directors, or whoever it might be.\u201d<\/p>\n

It could be likened to an A&R person rejecting a song for an album. If a piece of music is not right for the scene, they won\u2019t use it.\u00a0Koftinoff says it\u2019s important at the beginning of a project to find out the person that\u2019s going to be making the decisions on the music. \u201cYou have to assess who it is that you will be passing the music by first \u2013 do they have clout? Do they have a lot of say?\u201d<\/p>\n

Power \u2013 the only one of the six based in the U.S. \u2013 says, \u201cOn a show like Hawaii Five-0, it\u2019s essentially one person\u2019s decision, and that\u2019s the creator of the new version of the series, Peter Lenkov. There are sometimes notes from the editor, but it\u2019s primarily the creator.<\/p>\n

\u201cI saw the pilot, and it was \u2018temped\u2019 [using a temporary score] with million-dollar film scores, so that was the benchmark. The mission was to make the show, week to week, sound like a million-dollar film score, and we do our best with the four days every week that we have.\u201d<\/p>\n

For his part, Posner was sent clips at a very early stage of Flashpoint. The show had a different name and hadn\u2019t been picked up by CTV or CBS yet, but he was always kept apprised of revisions to the plotline. \u201c[The direction of the music] was largely done with the pilot episode,\u201d he says.
\nIn Flashpoint, he says, out of the 42 minutes of the show, usually 39 minutes require music. \u201cIt tends to get exhausting,\u201d says Posner. \u201cThere are weekly deadlines and airdates that have to be kept up with. That burden is kept easier by keeping a library of music, and we have a great music editor [Joe Mancuso] who helps us find cues and re-use things, but each week there\u2019s still a lot of new music that has to be written.\u201d<\/p>\n

Once a U.S. network was onboard, \u201cthere were more people weighing in on decisions,\u201d says Posner. \u201cGenerally, in our case, the notes didn\u2019t come back on the music end; they came back more on story and picture and performances.\u201d<\/p>\n

For Saving Hope, Koftinoff sat down with the director. \u201cWe talked about the fact that the show had this ghost walking around the halls, and the score had to have a certain ethereal quality,\u201d he says. \u201cIt was a human drama as opposed to action, so it had to have an emotional quality,\u201d Koftinoff says.
\nMcGrath \u2013 who scored nine seasons of teen drama Degrassi: The Next Generation and still works on it with primary composer Tim Welch \u2013 started working on Republic of Doyle in 2010, for which he created a unique sound.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a long, and arduous, and horribly difficult process,\u201d he laughs, explaining that the premise is a throwback to \u201870s private eye shows, like The Rockford Files, but set in Newfoundland. \u201cMusically, I tried to go in that private eye direction, but \u201870s cop music is kind of clich\u00e9 so I gave it a twist \u2013 a Celtic, Newfoundland flavour to it, which is the weirdest thing I\u2019ve ever tried to do, and it\u2019s really fun.\u201d
\nPell, who works with creative partner Dylan Heming on Call Me Fitz, says the music style was figured out by show creator Sheri Elwood, and its purpose was unique. \u201cIn so many shows, the music is just transitional,\u201d says Pell. \u201cYou\u2019re just adding icing on mood, or getting [the viewers] to feel a certain way, emotional manipulation.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe wrote the music into the script,\u201d he says. \u201cIn Fitz, the music is like an extra character in the show because it represents so much cool stuff about the rat pack and that era, and what Fitz thinks of himself. There is background music in the show, but a lot of the music plays Fitz\u2019 internal dialogue.\u201d<\/p>\n

On the other side of the spectrum, Third says he wasn\u2019t given much direction for The Listener because he was onboard from the pilot phase, and could help create the sound. When the network got onboard, however, he says some risks [e.g., a grungier indie rock sound] got phased out. \u201cWhen we got into scenes that were more dramatic and emotive, an electric guitar wasn\u2019t doing the job creatively,\u201d says Third. \u201cThen, as we found our footing, we actually brought back those elements into the show.\u201d<\/p>\n

Says McGrath, echoing what television composers generally feel, as does almost anyone from the cast and crew of a show: \u201cThe one thing it seems that producers want is for their show to sound like their show. A classic example is Seinfeld. Whenever you heard that slap-bass, that lick, you knew it was that show. Similarly, 24 and Lost had a very specific vibe.
\n\u201cAll great shows have a distinctive flavour to them.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Composing music for a weekly TV series<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":110259,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[97],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-148122","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-non-categorise"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/uat.socan.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148122","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/uat.socan.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/uat.socan.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uat.socan.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uat.socan.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=148122"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/uat.socan.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148122\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uat.socan.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/110259"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/uat.socan.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=148122"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uat.socan.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=148122"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uat.socan.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=148122"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}