Music supervision: Tv and Film placements

Pro Songwriting Masterclass | Andy Ross (Music Supervisor: Grey's Anatomy, Whiplash. George Carlin's American Dream, El Chapo .... | One Stop Jazz Collective )

I got all three of my bands placements,  one of them in the Wire, which was, sorry, Breaking Bad, which was amazing.  I didn’t remember that until I saw it the other day and was blown away that the song was in there.

And I met the artist recently and he said,  people always talk to him about Riga’s song  in Breaking Bad. The other one, I got the song,  when I say I got the song through syn agents  and myself, and ultimately a publisher, got the song into the season finale of CSI Miami, which was amazing. It was such a great use. and then the, the,  the best thing was one of the  bands I had called sap, we ended up getting the Grey’s Anatomy theme song, which has now gone into its 25th  season.

So they’re making royalties  on their 30 seconds of music and they’ve been making royalties for 25 years and their kids will probably  go up. Well, the kids will end up collecting royalties  for life of copyright. So 70 years after their parents die.  And believe me, that show will keep running forever.

 So  now we move on to  this movie. So there are different types of movies to supervise as a music supervisor. There’s  one like Whiplash, which I worked on, where  there’s so much live music that everything is,  how are you gonna do it? It’s all of strategy as to what is the plan, how can you execute this properly, and pull it off.

 There’s, with a film like Whiplash, everything was recorded beforehand and there’s tons of pre-production to do, getting all the music worked out. the next song, film is a kind of film where  you come into it and there are quite a lot of songs, just needle drops as we call them, which are songs  in the film. and the director has usually,  in some instances, knows exactly what he or she wants.

and they could even be songs written into the script, which a screenwriter’s written. And if the director has the same vision as a screenwriter, then basically,  you know, those songs end up in the final film. so those, I really like films where the director knows what they want because  it makes me more confident in their vision. and I find that facilitating their  vision is just really satisfying.

I mean, there’s lots of different  ways to enjoy working on a film, but I find that really exhilarating whiplash especially was, like that the director knew everything he wanted, so I just had to try and get it within the budget. So, the next kind of feature film is one where  you, there are a couple of songs  that the director wants  and you then have to find the others.

Now that can be equally as rewarding and for people up and coming artists, that’s the the dream scenario really for you because  it means there’s a lot of space to, to put in new stuff and try and get them to open their minds. and it also helps the, the director and the producers with the film budget because  if you end up having  20 or 30 songs in a film,

Your budget doesn’t work if you’ve got loads of big songs. So  that usually off offers, windows for  independent artists to get their songs placed. And I think for, I speak for practically every music supervisor, the most satisfying part of the job is getting, people placed, unknown people placed because  the money goes straight to them instead of a huge corporation.

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