# How many cues in one file/project?



## bradbecker (Sep 13, 2020)

When scoring for film or video games, do you tend to create one file / project for each cue or per "act" or the entire 2 hours or ...? 

Fwiw, I'm writing for a video game but sketching out initial cue ideas and themes by scoring to picture of captured footage of gameplay so film scoring workflows are relevant here too. (Later I'll have to also work through the wicked matrix of possible transitions since the music will have to adapt to what the player is doing in realtime.) 

I'm using LogicPro and own VEpro 6 but aren't currently using it because I use an S61 keyboard as my main controller and don't want to lose the KK/NKS features while I'm writing, auditioning libraries, etc.


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## Kent (Sep 13, 2020)




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## dylanmixer (Sep 14, 2020)

I do both, depending on the size of the project. For short films under 20 minutes or so, I'll likely keep it in one file.


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## christianobermaier (Sep 14, 2020)

What Anne-Kathrin said.

What hasn't been mentioned is that by having all cues in one project, you set yourself up for a *very* hard time when dealing with tempo changes.

a) You will have revisions and some of these invariably will be "Please make the second half of cue 14 a wee bit faster". Now, if you change that section in a project containing all cues, then either all cues downstream will be pulled out of sync without you noticing, or you were trying to be smart and SMPTE-locked everything downstream, but this would result in the musical grid being pulled out of sync with the music that stays put, which in turn will make later edits and revisions of all following cues pretty much impossible plus you'll never get a readable score from music that's not on the musical grid anymore.

b) You will not necessarily receive all reels or scenes in chronological order, so you'll get cue 12 after 15-22 are done already. If you start to map out the tempo of cue 12, everything after that will slip out of sync again.

You could, in theory, use compensating tempo changes in pauses between cues, but in reality chances are pretty high that you'll either forget or f these up in the heat of production, or it will bite you when you're later asked to provide a click over that section where you were trying to cheat your way out of a misery.

So, no, having all cues in one project is not a good idea.


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## munician (Sep 15, 2020)

Although I agree with all that has been said before, here is my story from the island of bliss:

I've been working on a successful tv-series for many years now and I run only one project per 43min show.

It has about 35 to 45 cues and about 300+ tracks/instruments in the template. The score is actually very diverse, with comedic and ethnic cues, but no chase or action.

I have to compose about 25 minutes of music within 7 to 10 days, I work completely alone - no live musicians, because there is no time - but I always hire an engineer for the final (music-)mix.

I deal with the tempo changes/style changes within that one project. Since the show is dialogue-heavy I have to be very exact with the timing, no way I could get away with the "saucy" approach. Maybe I would but I don't want to try.

Here comes the bliss-part: I always work to picture lock, there are almost never any revisions. Sometimes they cut in/out a frame or two which I deal with with short tempo changes between cues (I'm a master of that!). Swapping scenes of course is a mess, but it almost never happens. Very rarely I work to a rougher cut when the deadline is tight, but it always has worked out to be no big problem.

More bliss: the show runner completely trusts me - I see him maybe twice a year. And only to be thanked. On the sound stage my music stays in the show 100% the way I delivered it - I can't remember one change in maybe 5 years. Fellow composers never believe that part.
I even get to "break in" new directors for the show - although I always listen very close to their ideas. But mostly they listen to me.
I've never been talked down to, the production company is great and very supportive.
They pay me good money and the royalties...I better don't talk about the royalties...

Unfortunately you can't work towards a working situation like that - you just have to be lucky. I give a lot of money away to keep the Karma...

Sorry to have derailed your thread a little but as to your question:

Yes, in my perfect world you can have all your cues in one project. Everywhere else, no.


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## Mihkel Zilmer (Sep 15, 2020)

The suggestions above are all extremely logical. However, I personally have found cue-per-project to be slower and less productive, and have done the last few feature films all in one project. Live orchestra plus samples and synths. 

Would I suggest everybody do the same? No!
Will it work out without being extremely organised about every aspect of your projects? Very unlikely.
Am I asking for trouble and taking some risks? Yes, though I am aware of what they are..

In my case this works out better, and is much faster than one cue per project.

I am working in Nuendo. 1000+ track template, VEPRO. 

I make heavy use of markers. Multiple tracks, regular markers and cycle markers.

Cycle markers:
- cycle markers for cues. Means I can export mixes, all the stems, MIDI clicktracks for importing into Pro Tools for the recording sessions at various studios - all in one go for all cues. Huge time-saver.
- when I need to provide projects for the orchestrator it's really quite fast to either clean & export MIDI using the cycle markers (I have a lot of custom macros to go from a "human" (read: sloppy) MIDI demo to a fully quantized, overlaps deleted etc clean MIDI). Or I could simply delete all other data except the content inside the cycle marker and save as a new file and send that over.

Regular markers:
- one musical, one time based marker track. Means when I have to revise a cue then this will likely push the markers out of alignment, just realign and you're done. Need more bars? Insert silence. Need fewer bars? Delete time. Takes care of what @christianobermaier was talking about in seconds. 
- I tend to work in parallel with editing, so no picture lock whatsoever. Probably a new cut once a week, maybe even twice a week. By the end of the project I might have several dozen different cuts.
Using markers for cue starts and stops plus on important hit-points means I can adjust to a new cut extremely fast.

The majority of my mix decisions regarding plugins are pretty universal across the entire film. Once I've got my orchestra sound down, I am not going to have enormous deviations from that. Saves me a lot of time not having to apply those settings to each cue individually. And sure, there are cues that call for a different treatment, but that's where automation comes in. Volume and reverb automation is all over the place in every cue anyway, what's a little extra plugin automation?

The thing I enjoy the most is that I can open the export window once, select all the cues I was working on during the day, and export all stems, stereo mixes and surround mixes in one go. Files are uploaded automatically. The routing is tried and tested many times, next to no chance of anything going wrong during export - especially because I am exporting from printed audio files, not directly from MIDI.

Some other benefits:
- maybe I suddenly realise I want a section from cue #3 to repeat in cue #18. No awkward copying between projects needed!
- sound dept. sends me the latest foley/dialogue. I want to drop it in to work with it - again, just need to do it once and done

There's my take on this, and for sure it is a very rare occurrance to see someone work like this - next to none of the composers I talk to do this. If you ever attempt to do something as insane as what I have described then please proceed with caution!


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## DMDComposer (Sep 15, 2020)

Mihkel Zilmer said:


> The suggestions above are all extremely logical. However, I personally have found cue-per-project to be slower and less productive, and have done the last few feature films all in one project. Live orchestra plus samples and synths.
> 
> Would I suggest everybody do the same? No!
> Will it work out without being extremely organised about every aspect of your projects? Very unlikely.
> ...


Mihkel,

Very interesting approach. My only thought that I would find to be the real risk which I'm wondering if you could explain how you're dealing with this since you have a lot of picture edits coming in. Tempo?

If you have a tempo in Cue #3 for example, the new picture edit requires you to rewrite Cue #3 and change tempos, changing tempos would then cause everything written after Cue# 3 (so the other cues) to all become unaligned causing a huge disaster would it not?

Also, I'd be curious to see how you prepare your sessions for orchestrators, perhaps a future video for your YouTube serires.

Cheers!


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## Henu (Sep 15, 2020)

Mihkel Zilmer said:


> it is a very rare occurrance to see someone work like this



I actually work on mixes the same way for the same reason(s) that you do with the cues! It's just so much faster and efficient, yet you absolutely need to know about the risks too. And yes, I also save the project with a new decimal number every time I do anything due to those.


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## Mihkel Zilmer (Sep 16, 2020)

DMDComposer said:


> Mihkel,
> 
> Very interesting approach. My only thought that I would find to be the real risk which I'm wondering if you could explain how you're dealing with this since you have a lot of picture edits coming in. Tempo?
> 
> ...



Thanks,

Two different scenarios - music revision or picture revision.

1) Music revision only. Cue #3 needs a complete rewrite, new tempo etc. Cue #4 onwards has not changed and stays in the same time location as before.

Solution: two marker tracks, one time based, one music based. Music based markers will shift with changes, time based markers will not. After I have my revisions done, realign the two markers and I'm done.

2) Picture revision + music revision. Cue #3 needs a rewrite because of picture changes, cue #4 is now in a new time location.

Couple of ways to go about it. Probably the easiest is to use the 2 video tracks in Nuendo to compare cuts and insert or delete the necessary amount of time. A third marker track can be useful to keep track of precise cut points (be sure to either change your ruler mode to timecode or otherwise zoom in all the way so you can place your markers at the *exact* start of the frame, otherwise things can go out of time). 

And remember to always ask for timecode to be hardcoded in the picture. Then you can keep your eye on both the DAW timecode and picture timecode to make sure nothing has gone out of sync.

Once you're used to working like this it's really very fast, I hardly ever spend more than a few minutes conforming the timeline to picture changes.


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## goalie composer (Sep 16, 2020)

Mihkel Zilmer said:


> Thanks,
> 
> Two different scenarios - music revision or picture revision.
> 
> ...



Would love to see a quick video walkthrough of this if you have a minute at some point in the future


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## mnp.fede (Oct 3, 2020)

@Mihkel Zilmer 's approach seems wonderful, but I have a question for the people using the one project per cue one: how do you guys handle the adjustment of plugins/vst parameters that should reflect across the whole film? I am stuck with reopening all of the projects and doing it manually, so I'd love to know if there's a better and faster way

Thanks


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## MartinH. (Oct 3, 2020)

There's in interesting interview here with a composer that did the entire Call of Duty WW2 soundtrack in one Reaper project: 






Wilbert Roget Interview (Game Composer & Reaper User)


I don't know if this has been posted before, but it should be of interested to some of you:




vi-control.net


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## samphony (Oct 3, 2020)

Oh yes i would love if Studio One gets multiple marker and video tracks.

also changing all tracks timebase on the trackheaders directly is something i miss.


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