How to score a short film without direction?

I often get approached with scoring short films for people and I find that most of them forget the most central aspect of filmmaking: story.

They can beautifully shoot and compose pictures (a lot of them coming from advertising that’s not a big surprise) but if characters change their way of behaviour out of the blue from one cut to the next it and then change back right away without the film being a study on erradic behaviour and taking that topic to an extreme, I often feel left watching a shallow, badly acted film that could have been produced by a teenager.

Now the million dollar question: how do you score a film like this? Do you take the not existing story seriously and try to create dramatic music? Or do you tell the director: look, your film lacks everything (obviously I don’t tell him that), please use the best songs that you can get clearance for so that people at least stay in their seat and look at the film as a music video?

(Untitled)

Something that happend this morning and that is looking for a singer!

Hang in there for the chorus, it’s worth it!

[audio:http://www.hanshafner.de/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/the-folder-1-2.mp3]

Eat This

A little rainy day track, if you know a singer that would fit to this song, let me know!
[audio:http://www.hanshafner.de/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/eat-this-1-1.mp3]

Gorillas

My wife and I took our 4 weeks old daughter to the pediatrist the other day and came back with a new expression for pretty much everything we do.
What happened there is, that he looked at Lily and started moving his own head from side to side to see if she already follows him with her eyes. She did and then he said: “Ahh… gorillas in haze.”
Since then we are gorillas, Kirsten is the food-gorilla and I’m the changing-gorilla. Although it works well with anything: the dishes-gorilla, the work-gorilla, you get the picture.
I love it.

Idiot wanted!

This was just in my inbox. I hate these job offers in the media industry, they want someone who’s pretty much done everything they have to do but they don’t want to fork over the cash. Fail.

FILM MUSIC JOBWIRE
A Service of The Film Music Network
April 17, 2009 – Job# 4812
===================================
(Film Music Network Members-Only Job Listing)
NYC FILM COMPOSER SEEKS ASSISTANT/INTERN

New York City (Manhattan) based Film Composer seeks Assistant/Intern to work with the composer on a feature film with A-list cast slated for Summer release.

Composer is attached to follow-up feature slated to begin in the Fall, so a positive performance by Assistant/Intern may result in future assignment.

The primary responsibility of this job is to handle administrative and organizational duties to allow for a smooth and efficient workflow for the Composer and his team of Orchestrators, Engineers, Musicians, the film’s LA-based Production personnel and Post-Production staff.

The job will provide opportunities for some limited hands-on involvement in composing, recording, and mixing the score.

Candidate must be comfortable with Mac, Windows XP, WaveLab, iTunes, Toast, Roxio, MS Word, Excel, Project, Google Docs, FTP, QuickTime, Analog and digital cabling. Familiarity with FedEx, UPS, USPS processes also helpful.

The Studio is located in Greenwich Village but some of this job may be done from a remote location.

A small stipend will be provided at the conclusion of the project. Intern needs to have good organizational skills and have ability to communicate well.

Schedule: 5 days per week during normal business hours. Due to the very short deadline of this project, late hours are likely.