Freelance Music Composers

The issue of whether you should work for free is one that will come up often if you are trying to become a film composer. If you are aiming to use the internet to start a career full time or at least part time as a film composer this will most likely mean working for free in the beginning. Most people willing to let someone less experienced score their film will not be offering money for the job, but this does not mean that they are not offering value. This is how you have to analyze the problem; are you getting value in return for your services?

Value is not necessarily money. Money is a placeholder for value that we use in society to exchange and store value in a more practical manner. Nothing more. So just because you are not getting money for a film composing job (or any other job), does not mean that you are not getting value. The value itself is what you need to concentrate on when starting out as a film composer.

The kinds of jobs you will be looking for to get a start in your career as a film composer are most likely student films or other low/no budget short films that will not be able to pay money for the film score. Many of these films will be made with no member of the crew being paid money. However, everyone is still in it for value in exchange for their time and effort.

This value to a film composer can come in the form of simply getting experience. If you have no experience you have to start somewhere, better to start in a lower pressure project that can allow for some mistakes and let you learn without everything being on the line. Every time that you complete a project as a film composer you learn something and there is value in this in the long run.

A related aspect of value comes from adding to your demo reel and resume by doing free projects. When it comes time to get bigger projects people will want to see the work that you have done, and this means having clips of the music you have composed to show them, both as audio files but also as examples from the films themselves. If you have a website, which you should, you will also need clips as examples of your film scoring work to get new clients.

Along with the added material for a demo reel, the relationships you create by working for free on a student film can also pay off in the long run for a film composer. The students you may be working with might be larger players in the film or media industries in the future, and if they like your work, they will remember you. The more connections you have in the industry, the more work you will be getting down the line.

The final main benefit and source of value in a non paid film composing job is the exposure your name as a film composer can get on the festival circuit. If you are providing the score for a film that will be submitted to festivals and get in this can create a lot of good press for you if your work stands out and other filmmakers at the festivals notice it. This can also be the source of awards which add to your exposure and look good on a resume. Even if a film is not submitted to festivals, if it has some distribution method or gets exposure on the internet this can be great for you film composing career.

All of this being said, there will be cases when the value you receive from an unpaid film composing job does not make up for the time and effort spent on it. Although all these things that have been listed can make an unpaid film scoring job seem like a great opportunity, if these non money sources of value are not happening you will not want to waste your time. If the filmmakers working on the film are not very talented or the film is just plain bad you might not want to be associated with it. A terrible film will not do well in the festivals or get you any good exposure.

Some filmmakers may not even be submitting their work to a festival, or trying to get it seen by very many people at all. You will have to think about whether all the non paid benefit of any job as a film composer will be there.

The bottom line is that when starting out as a film composer, it comes down to evaluating whether or not you are getting value in return for your work. Dont count on making a lot of money as a newly minted film composer so that you can concentrate on doing a few unpaid jobs that give you value in return, but also realize that you can work for free forever. Once you have some experience you will need to look elsewhere besides student projects to get some value in the form of money, but no one said being a film composer was easy.

September 20th, 2009. Articles.