 Okay. so hello everybody.
My name is Julian Drucker. AÂ music supervisor, I’m also a songwriter, like I assume many of you. Â so that is kind of how I got into music supervision, in the first place.
I started out working for a  couple of different really top line music supervisors, Maggie Phillips and Amanda Creek Thomas. They’re kind of like, at this point, sort of two of maybe 10 titans in the field of, music supervision for TV and film. So I, I got to cut my teeth with them working on all kinds of projects, like a, a very heavy volume of, projects, including The Handmaid’s Tale, American Horror Story, big Mouth.
those were like three of the, Â the potentially the most familiar TV shows. And then, a lot of movies as well. with Amanda, it was a lot of the Ryan Murphy slate. So that includes the Politician Ratchet, American crime story. you know, he, he’s a extremely prolific showrunner producer, so that was kind of one of the pipelines with Maggie.
It was, it was  even more varied than that maybe, but it was just like all over the place as far as genre and, style of, of projects. So I,  I started working for both of them, one after the other. And, after about four years in total of that, I went off on my own and started supervising my own projects. That was about two and a half years ago. so I’ve been doing this myself and, and doing a wide range of, of stuff, probably even, you know, a little bit more diverse perhaps, because it’s not all prestige TV or, or film at some, a lot of documentary, a lot of indie films.
sometimes budgets are small, which keeps things interesting and, and creative for me and, and allows me to work with a lot of independent artists. so that’s part of why I’m here, part of the Songwriting Academy. and I love meeting with indie artists and songwriters.
So, but among my credits in, as in my own right, include Love Island, the US version, justice USA, which is a docuseries about the criminal justice system here in the US that just, dropped on HBO Max this past month. I’ve worked on, a lot of indie films such as American Murderer Purple Beats, some music heavy films like that. and, you know, everything in between.
So that’s kind of where I’m coming from, as well as, like I mentioned as a songwriter. So I have that kind of background and, language to speak with you, which is, I think, quite helpful as a music supervisor and just in this way connecting with, Â with, songwriters and artists. so, let’s, let’s get right into it, into the meat of everything. here I just start with a pretty basic question, which I think many of you have some familiarity with.
but getting a deeper understanding of what a music supervisor is and what they do is only gonna help you when you’re pitching to them,  because it gives you sort of a,  a wider, understanding of like  where we’re coming from, what we’re doing all day, all week. And, there’s a very common misconception, basically that we are listening to music all day and night. I wish that were the case.  We are, I  would say, you know, this varies depending on the project and everything, but most music supervisors I’ve spoken with sort of agree that there’s like  20 to 30% of our time is spent actually purely working on creative listening and, and pitching music.
And then  the, the remainder, the majority of our time is spent doing everything else, which involves a lot of clearance, negotiation, licensing. actually that’s a good segue into my next slide here. these are kind of just like an, a broad overview of our responsibilities.
and, and it starts with kind of this broadest point here, overseeing all of the music in a production.  So, you know that, again, every project has different needs, but  sometimes we are involved from square one, like from early on in, in pre-production and prep, which would mean potentially hiring a composer. So like, being part of that process of interviewing composers, recommending, and then finding the right one.
it can involve, you know, overseeing on camera performances. If a TV show or film, includes performances of music, which, Â you know, more often than not, there’s something, it’s not always so elaborate. Like it might might just be a character singing, a capella, you know, a few lines of a song, or it might be a full band that’s on screen. And then we have to kind of coordinate all all of the logistics around that, which can involve, you know, sort of organising a pre-record for the, the song that’s being performed, which is often the way you do it.
And then, being on set to, watch the lip sync from the singers to make sure it matches the prerecord and, hiring the band that’s on screen, dealing with all the union regulations around that, et cetera. There’s a lot of, sort of logistics that would go into that.
Then there’s also, you know, the sourcing and clearing preexisting music, which is  kind of, you know, what most people think of as the main job of a music supervisor, which is still the case for sure. the kind of most bread and butter, situation that we’re dealing with day and night is finding music, pitching it, clearing the rights. So, you know, making sure we have all of the publishing and the master rights cleared for all the songs. sometimes there’s original music, obviously score, for, for scripted TV and film, almost always.
There’s a composer hired, as I mentioned, and, we’re involved in certain ways with that. You know, spotting sessions are, when we get together with a composer, also the editor and director and producers, and kind of talking, moment by moment about what should be a score cue, what should be a song, what, where to start and stop each of those cues, et cetera.
there’s original songs, sometimes obviously, like in a musical theater type, situation. There’s, there’s songs and then there’s, you know, occasionally just like something that was created originally for, the production, which is, always fun. And, and we’re kind of involved in like the, Â the creative as well as the legal and logistical, aspects of that. managing a music budget is a big part of it.
so I mentioned clearance, like that’s also part of the clearance process is getting quotes and, Â and, making sure that we’re sticking to our budget. often we are replacing baked songs with much less well-known songs. That’s a big part of what we do. so providing affordable alternatives that, you know, are usually things that, songs that people don’t know, or artists that people don’t know. And, and that’s where you guys come in, being very helpful, as being sort of an affordable option when we are, not trying to spend, you know, the fees can really be outrageous.
Like, if you think about it, some on average, a recognisable song in a scripted TV show is about $40,000 all in. so that’s just a, a very, ballpark number. But, it can really vary. It can go way up from there. And in film and, and especially in ads, it can go way up, like, you know, Â could, I’ve, I’ve heard about songs that have cost a million dollars, half a million dollars for an ad spot.
and then, you know, indie artists for TV shows, typically it’s three to 5K all in. this is US dollars, by the way. I know some of you’re probably in the uk. but, you know, it, it varies. But in a, in a film, you might see like $10,000, that’s kind of,  would be a healthy fee for a film  for an indie artist. anyhow, reviewing licenses is also, sometimes part of our job is actually being like, kind of like lawyers.
We’re reading over, all of the license agreements that, either we’re providing from the production end or  the music companies are sending to us, and we have to review and redline and go back and forth with changes and all of that. and then finally coordinating payments, which is, you know, an important part. and so we’re, you know, sometimes like actually handling all the invoices ourselves and accounting.
And so it, it’s a really wide range, as you can see of creative and legal and logistical administrative work. there’s more than just this, but this is kind of a good  way to think about it. and we’re often really starting as early as pre-production, and then all the way to the very end of post-production. so, you know, we’re kind of touching every aspect of a project. sometimes not, sometimes we’re brought in  often far too late in my opinion.
Like, we’re hired only when  producers realise, oh, shoot, we need a, a music supervisor. ’cause we have like an on camera, performance that we accidentally shot without clearance, and now we have to clean it up. And so I sometimes refer to this job as like being a janitor when it comes to being, when it comes to music. we are sometimes an afterthought. And anyway, we’re  often brought in, in post-production, so that’s kind of the meat and potatoes of what we’re doing is in post.
but this is a sort of overview, and I think it’s important for  you to understand kind of the breadth of what we’re doing in order to  be, a good partner to us. Like that’s kind of what we’re talking about, is like being a partner as a pitching agent and as a independent artist.
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