Month: October 2015

Bryan Rudds Lecture today was about his past experience working to create a 5 part Radio drama called the Chronicles of Freedom.

This was a Drama that was made specifically about William Wilberforce, to highlight and celebrate his work in the Abolishment of Slavery in the UK. Wilberforce was from Hull orignially, the same city as Bryan, so the two really went hand in hand on the production of the show.

Bryan specifically talked about what was important when producing a show. His role as the sound engineer meant that he had to take control of the team assembling the program, aswell as sort everything out with the logistics, sets, sounds and permissions for the uses of certain sounds and sets. The most critical thing at the starting point for Bryan was asking questions, to finalise what was actually happening. He gave the example of the production budget being a certain amount, but the group needed the permission from Hull City Council, to use a particular place for a set. Hull said it was ok etc, but asked for £1400 to be able to use it. This was way above budget for the radio Drama, which would only use that particular place in a few scenes.

Instead, Bryan chose the wall opposite Ann Summers just off Lincoln High street by the Gate. Ironically, the people of Hull werent very happy about this. The old door was used for the recording of William talking to the Minister/ Vicar.

 

TBC.

Lol Hammond is a music supervisor, Currently working for Vertigo Films, that is based in London. He selects music from Composers and also gets tracks from bands in the music industry. Lol talked about the importance of the relationship between the Director and the Music supervisor when it comes to Film production. The Director is different for every film, and it will depend massively on the film as to how close the relationships are. For example, Lol described the Directors of some films to be there at every moment being involved with all of the musical decisions taking place. In other films they would take more of a back seat and let the Music Team just “get on with it” .

 

Lol then went on to communicate the ways in which Films get music tracks from outside music industries. Most Artists in the current industry are making music which is oned by Universal, Warner or Sony (The big 3 Record companies of the industry) and so negotiaiting deals with them to get the music on the films can get quite expensive. Although this is true, most films have a large budget for music, and Lol describes how some films can have up to a £2M budget for music. Essentially, the music Supervisor can get for a cheaper price, a Composer, than getting official tracks licensed. On avergae, Lol stated that a tune will cost from about £1000 to £2500 for the track itself and then a further 1 or 2.5 Thousand for the PRS Licensing, so All in, about £4000-5000. In the film “the Football Factory” which Lol was involved with, he had spoken to Paul Weller, whom owned the rights to the song “Going Underground”. Together they negotiated the price of the song in the film and got a good deal with it (He didnt specify the exact price). The prices themselves are split between the record companies and the publishers of the tracks.

 

In terms of Composers, the Music Supervisor would negotiate the terms and rights with them to find a suitable agreement for use of exclusive orignial music for the film. The director can quite possibly be heavily involved in work with composers too. Lol Talked about times where the Director was making the”wrong” musical decisions and times where he didnt agree with the directors choices. Of Course though, he stated that you would have to calm that kind of opinion down , when it comes to such a disagreement, in that he didnt want to “Piss the director off and get the sack”.

 

Lol spoke about the way in which Artists would want to know about the scenes their music would be played on. For example , some of the scenes in his films get quite violent and horrific (Murder scenes, rape scenes etc) so artists would have to really know about what the scenes are before they gave the film team rights to the music. Of course, Muisc supervisors would try and water it down because they wouldnt want to lose a potential really good music track that would fit the scene perfectly (which has happened before to Lol)

 

For me, this lecture was very helpful, in that it showed a little more of the actual Role of a Music Supervisor and how personal relationships can be so important in striving towards success in the films. This was a very interesting lecture because it had revealed parts of the way the film industry and directors work with music supervisors and on a personal level. His history of being a DJ too, was interesting and it quite reminded me of how my own sets of interests can relate to beimg in a film