HOW TO WRITE FILM MUSIC

Guy Michelmore is an EMMY nominated award winning

composer who has wri8en music for Marvel, Lionsgate,
Dreamworks, Disney and many more. His work includes eight
animated feature films for Marvel, over 200 episodes of television
including Jungle Book for Disney and Lassie for Dreamworks. He
is also the course director of ThinkSpace EducaHon.

Now in its 20th year, ThinkSpace EducaHon was the first online
film scoring school. All ThinkSpace programs are wri8en and
tutored by working professional composers, orchestrators and
sound designers. We teach what we do every day for a living.
With over 5000 graduates and students, ThinkSpace courses
have helped many composers on their way to success. In 2015 ThinkSpace launched the world’s online
only Master’s program in partnership with the University of Chichester.

Introduc)on
Welcome! In this short document, I will
give you the need-to-know, quick start
version of how to write film music.
The basic technique applies to all audio-visual media
- TV, commercials, and video game cut scenes, not
just film. I’m going to explain both the crea?ve and
technical aspects of the job in outline. Any one ?p
here could fill a book and to really master this craD
takes a life?me.
But this is the quick version, so lets get started!
Assump)ons


I am going to assume that you have wriHen a piece
of music before by using computer technology, you
have some idea what a chord progression is, you’ve
had a bash at wri?ng a melody and understand the
basics of rhythm.
theory or vice versa. It doesn’t maHer which way
round it works, you’ll need both good musical AND
technological knowledge.
In terms of technology, you should feel reasonably at
home inside your Digital Audio Workspace (DAW)
using virtual instruments and crea?ng finished mixes
of your music. I’m not talking award-wining levels of
produc?on here, but you need to know your way
around and know how to use all the main func?ons
of your DAW.
That doesn’t necessarily mean you need a high-level
of classical music theory knowledge though, you just
need a good understanding of how to write a piece
of music and make a demo in your own style. Many
film composers have a very limited amount of
classical music theory know-how but have a deep
and in?mate understanding of how to structure a
piece of music and how to write a chord sequence or
melody.
It’s whatever gets the job done.


Students who come to us are oDen asymmetric in

terms of their skillset; all technology and no music

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Technology


You need a Digital Audio Worksta?on or DAW. This
can be a fully featured professional program like
Cubase, Logic, ProTools or Reaper. You can even get
started with GarageBand.

Overview of the Workflow

Here I will outline the steps and then we can walk it through in more detail.

1. THE PROJECT 2. THE BRIEF 3. SPOTTING

The first thing you are going to
do is find out about the project.
Learn the genre it belongs to
and the creators, the producers
or director. You may come to
some early conclusions of your
own crea?ve approaches.
You are then going to work out
what the producer or director
wants. She or he will explain
what they are hoping for.
Some?mes this is very detailed
and other ?mes, frankly, they
haven’t got a clue.
This is the process of deciding
where the music goes and what
func?on it performs. It is oDen
carried out with the director
while you both watch the film
but increasingly is done
remotely. You end up with a long
list of cues: individual pieces of
music which taken together
comprise the film score.

4. SCORING THE MOVIE 5. PRESENTING YOUR MUSIC



SeZng up your DAW and impor?ng the movie so
TO THE CLIENT
you’re ready to start scoring. You pick a cue from 

the list of cues and start wri?ng. Some?mes you I’ll tell you how to make a movie so your client can
spend ?me in theme development geZng the see your work and tell you how much he or she
sound right first, but a lot of the ?me with shorter loves you.
projects, you just dive in and start playing with You’re done!
sounds and ideas while playing to the picture.



A Word Of Cau)on… Well, 108 Words Actually!
To put this in context, live commercial projects can go on for months or years and involve
dozens of intermediate steps. Beneath each paragraph here lie lots of hidden piMalls, over
contains a million typhoons, ready to blow the naïve poorly prepared composer off
course.
It’s my job to make this seem logical and simple so you can get going.

It is also my job to warn you that, in a way, it isn’t really like that and it is fraught with difficulty that only a much
more detailed course like Music for the Media or our Master’s programs that can fully prepare you. So let’s get
going…


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1. The Project


It’s worth saying at the outset that I am approaching
this from the point of view of a commercial project
where the composer is employed and therefore the
composer does what he or she is told. If you are
working on an art film or an unpaid project you might
well be more of an equal partner and therefore have
much more say over the direc?on of the music.

Either way, you need to work out a lot of basic things

about the film.
WHAT IS THE PURPOSE OF THE FILM?


By which I mean is it a commercial film designed to
get released and make a profit, an art house indie
film, a no-budget or a student project? All these
things make a difference.
finance and geZng key cast and crew members
involved.
Pre-producJon: Detailed script work, loca?on
scou?ng, hiring the rest of the crew and facili?es,
working out the detail of the shoo?ng schedule.
ProducJon: When the film is actually shot.

HOW LONG IS IT? Post-ProducJon: Edi?ng the film, music and sound.


A short film can be anything from a minute to half an DistribuJon: GeZng the film out to its millions of
hour but 5 - 15 minutes is common. fans…

WHAT IS THE BROAD GENRE?

Edi)ng Terminology…




Drama, thriller, horror, ac?on, fan film, comedy,
The first draD of the film is called an ‘assembly’ and
romance?
is normally 50% over length.

WHAT IS THE CREATIVE APPROACH?


Cool and contemporary, classic Hollywood on a
budget, art-house indie film vibe or slightly cheesy?
This is where it comes to working out the director’s
approach. Look him or her up on IMDB or find their
website or Facebook page and suss them out. See if
they’ve worked with other composers before.
Technical (but important)
Details
You need to know the schedule and so a
quick overview of the process is in order.
Development: Working out the basic idea, raising
The next is a ‘rough cut’, which is closer to the
finished length but things might s?ll change
drama?cally.
Finally there is the ‘locked cut’ or ‘final cut’. At this
point (theore?cally) the picture doesn’t change any
more so that sound and music can work with the
finished picture.
Once sound and music are done the film is mixed or
dubbed, where music, dialogue and sound effects are
all brought together.
Schedule: So you need to know when the film is
going to be “locked” and when they need you to

3
 Talk to the director if possible and get to know them
and their musical taste. Try to avoid vague
descrip?ve words and pin them down to concrete
examples.

Rather than “yeah make it cool and epic” try “You

mean a bit like Incep?on?”

Use examples of music you both know to



deliver, at the very least a few days before the mix or
the dub. That is your window to score the film.
communicate. This avoids ambiguity but realise what
they say they want at the start might evolve and
change over ?me. This is natural and a good thing,
even though it might not seem like it when they
throw out a load of your score.

You need to know if they have a budget and if they 3. SpoSng

expect or want any live musicians. 

This is where you go through the film and decide
You need to know who is signing off the music and both where the music should start and finish and its
what the approval process will be. purpose. Each piece of music is called a cue.

2. The Brief Films are s?ll no?onally divided into reels roughly 20
minutes long. Tradi?onally cues are numbered:
The director of the film needs to give you
a brief, an outline of the broad direc^on 1M1 = this means the first cue in reel 1
the music should be heading.
1M2 = the second cue in reel 1
This can be anything from
extremely loose adjec?ves like 1M3 = the third cue in
“cool, contemporary and
(yawn…) you get the
upliDing” to very specific
idea…
references to exis?ng styles of
music. Some directors have no
Most films come with
idea what they want or have an
what is known as
idea but want to hear your ideas
burnt-in or visual
first. So you can expect
?mecode, like the
everything from no help at all
example below.
right through to a detailed
blueprint of what they’re
expec?ng to hear. Timecode is a unique
reference to each and
every frame of the film
Frequently editors use
and is always
temporary music to cut to, known as a temp track.
formaHed as:
These are normally commercial tracks that they have
no inten?on of using in the final film and are unlikely
to be able to use anyway, but oDen gives you a good Hours: Minutes: Seconds: Frames
idea what kind of thing they are thinking about.
So if you want to describe the point the cue should
Composers HATE temp tracks. start, you could say “just aDer the man walks out of 

the room” or much more accurately 10:05:06:12,

4
that is ten hours, five minutes, six seconds and if you are scoring a cue half way through a 20 minute
twelve frames. reel.

For technical reasons, more oDen than not, the For the sake of this quick and simple explana?on, we
beginning of the film is not 00:00:00:00 but starts on will assume that the movie starts on the downbeat of
1 or 10 hours.
 bar 1 and the music starts on the down-beat of bar
3.

Star^ng To Score The Movie

When most film composers start watching a movie,
they hear the music in their head. They audi?on
different approaches in their imagina?on. A lot of the
composi?on is actually done by thinking through the
best approach before you start scoring.

Good ideas oDen come from accidents when you


 play or do something wrong.
Try to avoid very short cues of less than say 15
seconds. For cues that go over say 3 minutes,
On a large project you might have spent days, weeks
consider breaking it up into more manageable
or even months coming up with a sound, a musical
chunks.
language and thema?c material that will work with
the project.
Finding places where music starts is oDen obvious.
Where it should stop is frequently more difficult.

Work out in advance with the director how much

music they want and where in the film they want
only dialogue or sound. This is a maHer of taste and
varies a lot.

4. Scoring the Movie

Se`ng Up Your DAW
Now is the ?me to set up your DAW. Make sure first
of all that your DAW can import movie files. All the
major DAWs can do that including Cubase, Logic,
Digital Performer, Pro Tools, Reaper and Ableton
Live.
Garageband can import movies but with limited
func?onality.


You have done your homework. You know the range
of music that this genre tends to use. You have
spoken to the director and received a brief so all that
should have narrowed down the possibili?es
significantly. You should have sorted out a lot of the
more strategic issues like, how much is there, do you
underscore dialogue, what is the general direc?on of
the sound.

Reaper is free to try and can also import movies.

Your blank sheet of paper shouldn’t feel quite as
blank as it was.
You need to make sure the ?mecode in the DAW
project lines up with the ?mecode in the film. This is
So the main ques?ons are: What is the music going
fairly straighlorward if you are star?ng to score from
to add to this scene? What are you trying to achieve?
the beginning of the movie file but more complicated
Is there an overall structure to the scene? Can you
break the cue itself down into sec?ons?


5
Always keep in mind one final macro ques5on – “how does this cue fit into the overall structure of the score as a
whole?”

Here’s a short scene:

A girl, Naomi, is doing the washing up in her kitchen when all of a sudden there’s a knock on the door.

She opens it and Tom, her boyfriend, enters the room. He gives her a peck on the cheek and slowly sits
down at the table.

Looking guilty, he says:

“I’ve got something I need to tell you.”

She turns, looking concerned and suspicious, and moves to sit opposite him.

“Go on then,” she says.

He looks down at the table and then straight back into her eyes.

“I’m just not the man you think I am... I’m… I’m… actually an alien shape shi=ing hamster and my real
name is Murgatroid!”

With a brilliant blue flash, he morphs into a 6-foot alien hamster. Immediately he starts chasing her
around the kitchen.

She screams and throws kitchen utensils and vegetables at him.

They stop, staring at each other pan5ng breathlessly.

She says, “I have a surprise for you as well, my ‘love’…”

She starts morphing into an even more enormous lizard.

She unleashes a mighty lizard scream and dives across the room, grabbing hamster Tom in her gigan5c
lizard claws. With one enormous scream the lizard eats him whole.

Licking her lips, the lizard leaves the room.

(Note to self: Avoid the mushrooms in future)



Breaking Down The Scene


Where is the music going to start? It could be when he knocks at the door or it could be when he says I have
something to tell you.

The first sec?on probably runs from the start up un?l he reveals his true iden?ty and morphs into a hamster.


6
This is then followed by an ac?on sequence. Clearly there is a big moment half way through when she turns into
a lizard, which reaches a climax when the lizard eats the hamster.

So that’s at least three sec?ons – the tension when he is talking, the ac?on when he is chasing her around the
kitchen and the climax as the lizard turns the tables and eats him.

How does it end?

It probably goes down to something low and brooding aDer he is eaten and fades out as she leaves the room.

Hit Points
How many places in this cue does the
music need to be perfectly in sync with
the video, so that it hits a par^cular piece
of ac^on to the split second?
These hard hit points aren’t as common as you might
imagine. Many of the transi?ons between sec?ons !
can be placed anything up to a second either way.
Hard hit points need to be within 12th second or
The faster tempo the further the marker moves to
two frames.
the right.

How do you make your music fit the picture

accurately?

You build a tempo map. If you look at the first

sec?on from the start of the cue up to the
transforma?on into a hamster.

You place a marker in your project at the exact point

where the hamster morph takes place.

You make sure that the marker is locked to the

?mecode and not the bar and beat. This means if you The slower the tempo, the more it moves to the leD.
change the tempo of the cue the marker will stay at
the same ?mecode reference even if the bar and
beat number has changed.

The aim is to change the tempo so that the marker

falls on a beat. Any beat will do, it doesn’t have to be
a downbeat. As you change the tempo you will
no?ce that the marker moves.

Eventually you will have the marker bang on the

beat.

7
 Actually wri?ng this kind of music is a life?me of
study.

Composer Blueprint Training is a great place to start

If this hit is also a major change of mood as it is, you
may want to adjust the ?me signature so that the
beat on which the hit point falls is now the down
beat of the next bar. This is because you may want to
increase the tempo drama?cally when the ac?on
kicks off.
So the early part of the cue could be at 90bpm. The
ac?on will need to be at something like 140bpm.
You repeat this process so that any other hard hit
points are on a beat by changing tempo accordingly
as you go through the cue.
as it shows you how to approach some common
styles including ac?on. You can start to see how this
is an addic?vely fascina?ng way to write music. It’s
also very complicated and there is an element of
three dimensional chess about the way you weave
your cue into one coherent piece of music that
touches so many different ideas at the same ?me.
Once you are happy with your work, mix it down and
bounce it out to a stereo audio file.
5. Presen)ng Your Music to the
Client


So the music is wriHen. You are convinced it’s great
and now you need to send it to the client. That
means making a movie with your music and the
original dialogue mixed together.

Make sure the audio from the movie has been

You end up with a map of tempo and ?me signature
imported onto an audio track in your sequence.
changes that act as a skeleton for your music. The
Almost all DAWs have an “extract audio from movie”
tempo and ?me signatures fit the picture perfectly,
command of some kind.
now you write the music.

Now you want to solo two tracks:

SecJon 1: The Build-up: Quiet moun?ng tension as
Tom enters and under the dialogue with his
girlfriend. 1. The Dialogue and Sound

SecJon 2: The TransformaJon: A big drama?c hit on 2. Your Music


this moment and then into hard fast ac?on as he
chases her around the kitchen.

SecJon 3: The Stand-off: You keep the pace up but

pull a lot of the drama?c material out as the two size
each other up. The ac?on hasn’t ended, just paused.

SecJon 4: Tables Turned: Big hit and reveal as she

turns into a lizard with even more frene?c ac?on
leading up to a huge hit as she eats him.



SecJon 5: The AYermath: Low brooding music Now go through the movie using automa?on to mix
fading out as she slithers out of the room… the music and dialogue together so you can clearly
hear the dialogue with the music underneath.

8
Now export or bounce out those two tracks so you
have one audio file with the music and dialogue
mixed together.
Some DAWs like Cubase will allow you to replace the
audio on an exis?ng movie. The next step is to do
that, so the audio file with your music mixed with the
dialogue replaces the original audio.
If your DAW won’t do that then you are going to
need a video-edi?ng programme like iMovie or
Adobe Premiere.
format they can view, MP4 -H264 is a reasonably
safe bet.
Once that’s done send it to the client via WeTransfer
or Hightail or one of those file transfer services.
Include brief notes about what you’ve done and why
if there is anything controversial or anything you
were unclear about.


You import the original movie and your mix music

and dialogue file. 



You get rid or fade down the original movie audio Now just sit back and wait for the director’s praise
and line up your music and dialogue file so it fits and the inevitable Oscar nomina?ons to flow in!
exactly.
… If only it were that simple!

Now you bounce out a new movie.

Make sure the movie file isn’t ridiculously big. If it is

then you might need to use a compression program
like AimersoD to make it more manageable.




Try limi?ng the bit rate to around 4000 kb/s.

Next step would be to reduce the picture size to

720p as well if that helps.

Don’t alter the frame rate though. Keep that as the

original.

Now before you send it to your client – watch it

through and check it! Preferably check it on a
different computer to make sure it plays back
properly. Make sure you send it to the client in a

9

What next?
Well you’ve got to try it of course! By now
you should be dying to have a go and see
if it’s as easy/hard/fun/frustra^ng as you
think.
We have only just scratched the surface.
We could drill down so much deeper into every
sentence in this brief introduc?on. Mastering the
technical aspects is hard enough but really
conquering the crea?ve and musical challenges
scoring to picture throws up, is on a whole new level.
But that’s why it’s so rewarding.
Fortunately the ThinkSpace team have been working
as professional composers in film, TV and games for
over 20 years and we have fine-tuned the art of
training up and coming composers, to help you get
the maximum value in the minimum amount of ?me.
When we’re not focussed on wri?ng music for major
film and TV projects, we’re focussed on maximising
your poten?al.
Premium Courses
Music for The Media is our flagship premium course
that will give you an excellent founda?on in scoring
for film and TV.
Volume 1 concentrates on wri?ng to a brief,
understanding your clients’ needs and crea?ng the
music that they always dreamt of.
Volume 2 is all about wri?ng to picture including
feature films, documentary, anima?on and more.
As you should realise by now, you will need both to
do the job.
Best of all, you can try the first unit of any of our
premium courses absolutely free. Whether it’s
Composer Blueprint Training, Harmony or Sound
Design, or indeed our original flagship course Music
for the Media you can step through the door
completely free of charge as our guest. Just click the
link to get started.
10
The free trial lasts one month, one month to enjoy
the complete ThinkSpace experience. But make the
most of it. Once the trial is over, it’s gone. Our
community is only those who are really serious about
a career in media music or sound design so this is a
one-?me offer.
hHp://thinkspaceeduca?on.com/mDm1
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Our postgraduate program is a world first and the
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If you are interested in our postgrad program, then
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are really determined to get to the next level. We’ll
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and your future, but joining the group will cost you
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possible.
hHp://thinkspaceeduca?on.com/mastersgroup
Thank you for your ?me. I hope you’ve enjoyed this
glimpse into my working world. Many years ago I
took what seemed like a huge risk in walking away
from a top job presen?ng television programs for the
BBC in order to write music. Never do I regret that
decision for one single moment. Had I not taken that
step I may well have looked back and wondered
what might have been, the career I might have had
and the music I might have wriHen.