# Rescoring existing movie scenes for a portfolio, good or terrible idea ?



## Emmanuel Rousseau (Jun 7, 2017)

Hi everyone,

I am an aspiring composer and I would like to score for pictures. Until now, I've been only composing "blindly" for library music... My wife keeps telling me that I should try to work on a real movie scene, and show it in my portfolio.

What is your opinion on the subject ? I'm not sure what to think about the whole "illegal"/amateur thing ! I don't see any problem in doing this for training purposes, but showing it in a "pro" portfolio ?

Thanks very much !


----------



## windshore (Jun 7, 2017)

You should def work with real scenes but don't post them as part of your "portfolio". Post the audio alone. Frankly many directors I've found don't really want to hear music with scenes unless it's their film, they just want audio.


----------



## JohnG (Jun 7, 2017)

I have seen other people do it and one of my editor pals thought it was great.

Technically, it's dodgy on a copyright point of view. That said, the studios screen movies all the time with temp scores that I doubt have been cleared in any way, so you'd be in good company.

It is certainly superior to putting your music up married to what most beginners have available, "Hysterical Student Film XVII." Besides, even if you have that available, you may not have the rights to it either.

I would personally suggest that you consider using Vimeo or something private with a password as a precaution, but really, there is so much copyright infringement on Youtube that probably that's being over-precious.

Good luck,

John


----------



## gsilbers (Jun 7, 2017)

I agree with john.

At the same time, we are worried about copyright stuff when YouTube, Facebook are just blatantly enabling billions of copyright holders get their rights thrown out the window. its your music with someone elses film, its someone's cat video with your music who cares, its famous songs with other famous movies... whatever goes... as long as people see those annoying ads then its all good. even worse, YouTube decided that to get monetization you need now 10k subscribers... then where does all that ad money go for those under 10k?!
But just try to broadcast (air tv) something not cleared.. we are just giving away our rights to these tech companies cuz its new and cool and that's what people want while artists get jack shiat and those tech companies swim in money made off the backs of artists.

anyways, I know that's very far away the scope of the original question but just a side note about why not to worry about that too much. But you might get a copyright strike in Youtube. Use Johns private video recommendation.

The thing to worry about is not deceiving anyone that you wrote for that movie as the main composer. Because I can grab the dark knight and it would be obvious but what happens if you grab a scene from a very well movie but not well known (or from another country) and just say, here is an example to a potential director or just putting out there like you where the composer and this way try to make it your own in a way. That wouldn't be cool.
But if you just come out and say.. I rescored this famous movie to give an example of what I can do on this style then cool. Its clear, people know what you are doing. The potential directors who will be looking for composers at your level will understand and it helps them visualize your music against picture. For big movies they have a different process that relies on having a pool of composers who have actually scored movies of the same budget (or more) than the one they will be making. (Plus connections etc).
But no, no one is going to go through your portfolio and see a rescore of gladiator and assume you did the original but at the same time, make it clear that you are rescoring it so that way people don't think you are a scammer or something. If you are starting then that's ok. once you have a movie or two under your belt then use only that.


----------



## zolhof (Jun 7, 2017)

gsilbers said:


> YouTube decided that to get monetization you need now 10k subscribers



It's actually 10k lifetime views, users with less than that won't be able to turn on monetization on their channel. According to Youtube, this threshold is enough to know if a channel is legit, but not high enough to discourage new creators.


----------



## Rohann (Jun 7, 2017)

One tip I remember reading is, if you're going to present a film/game re-score to a director/studio/developer, just make sure it's not one of their own scenes .


----------



## Emmanuel Rousseau (Jun 7, 2017)

Thanks everyone for your answers ! This is very helpful. And I'm sure even my wife will agree


----------



## gsilbers (Jun 7, 2017)

zolhof said:


> It's actually 10k lifetime views, users with less than that won't be able to turn on monetization on their channel. According to Youtube, this threshold is enough to know if a channel is legit, but not high enough to discourage new creators.



Yes, but I noticed that there are ads being shown on those videos. which get TY revenue source. and if its a small channel they can upload whatever copyrighted material.


----------



## Rohann (Jun 7, 2017)

gsilbers said:


> Yes, but I noticed that there are ads being shown on those videos. which get TY revenue source. and if its a small channel they can upload whatever copyrighted material.


YT does flag copyrighted material, sometimes erroneously. For random things like a guitar cover, sometimes it will say "video can't be played in X countries", or it will say that a record label will monetize your video.

How this translates to independent composers, I'm not sure. I don't doubt in the least that YT is far less on top of that.


----------



## gsilbers (Jun 7, 2017)

Rohann said:


> YT does flag copyrighted material, sometimes erroneously. For random things like a guitar cover, sometimes it will say "video can't be played in X countries", or it will say that a record label will monetize your video.
> 
> How this translates to independent composers, I'm not sure. I don't doubt in the least that YT is far less on top of that.


yes they have gotten slightly better. specially with bigger movies. but still, you can find full movies split up in youtube. maybe not in English. and there is ads on those. so the point is again, that they YT and other just piggy back profits off the back of artists and other people contents with the excuse that its not them uploading it. and that point btw is veryt off topic ... I am aware .


----------



## lux (Jun 7, 2017)

This is an interesting topic. I always considered looking around for very talented emerging directors and scoring their short movies as probably more appealing out there than just taking pieces of notorious movies (which, most likely, have already been gifted by music from nice and famous composers) and scoring them again. Which, in my perception, qualifies a bit as amateurish.

I found what John said about his editor pal very interesting and a bit unexpected though.


----------



## JohnG (Jun 7, 2017)

lux said:


> qualifies a bit as amateurish.



Yes, it does, but not nearly as amateurish as most of the footage that a student composer is invited to score. I scored over 30 student films before I did a feature, and while some of them showed great promise, they shout "amateurish" more than re-scoring a scene by Scorsese.

I admit, it's a bit fishy, but people select composers often for the most preposterous reasons, so whatever. Obviously you don't claim to have scored some Oscar winner, but people nevertheless might somehow associate your music with a great movie. Even if you are very clear it isn't.


----------



## Rohann (Jun 7, 2017)

Interesting perspectives! Indeed, I've heard great music set to amateurish student films before, and while (being a composer) I really enjoyed the music, I could easily see the music being diminished in light of the amateurish film.


----------



## Leandro Gardini (Jun 23, 2017)

I've always seen bad short movies as the greatest challenges for learning purposes because they tend to force the composer to come up with something interesting out of a bad production. In other words, the composer is responsible for saving the movie.
I have been scoring many bad short movie throughout my career and i believe I have succeeded in some of them. This was my belief until I decided to rescore blockbuster movies and see that great productions are indeed a better challenge.
Rescoring Avatar (2009) is basically what i have done in the last few months and I believe I have become better rescoring these movies than the short low budget ones.
If you want to check my Avatar project go to: https://www.leandrogardini.com/leandrogardini
I have rescored six scenes so far and I plan to rescore few more until the end of this year. Feel free to leave your comments on my Youtube channel.
Today I fully support student composers to rescore good movies. Rescoring teaches the composer and also the audience of the many other possibilities a movie or a scene can have under another musical perspective.


----------



## Hugh Harrer (Jun 26, 2017)

leogardini said:


> Rescoring Avatar (2009) is basically what i have done in the last few months and I believe I have become better rescoring these movies than the short low budget ones.



Perhaps I am naïve, but where are you getting the scenes with Dialog and FX but no music?

VERY nice work, by the way.


----------



## Leandro Gardini (Jun 26, 2017)

Hugh Harrer said:


> Perhaps I am naïve, but where are you getting the scenes with Dialog and FX but no music?
> 
> VERY nice work, by the way.


As far as I know there isn't any source where you can get the movie without the music. I reduce the volume of the original music in Izotope.
Thank you!


----------



## NoamL (Jun 26, 2017)

Emmanuel your wife is correct!

I got started this way! all of these demos are from ages ago, here goes LOL:

Rescoring Star Trek -



And Toy Story 3 (this one is a lot more amateurish, too much Mickey Mousing):



Here is a demo I made 5 years ago just starting to get into VIs



Copyright infringement? Sure, it is. It's also the only way to convince composers & directors that you have any picture sense at all. Nobody wants to hire somebody who's just doing a bunch of 2 minute Zimitation trailer tracks. (which, btw, your work is far superior to from what I've heard Emmanuel).

You should share these privately, not on your website (I'll definitely take down these videos in a few days once I figure out how to get into my old Vimeo account).

To get the audio without the music, you need:

the movie
the soundtrack
Windows
Audacity
and a VST tool called "Kn0ck0ut."

Basically you take a stereo bounce of the movie, sync it alongside a stereo *SAMPLE ACCURATE* bounce of the music (which means if the published soundtrack is different from the music edit in the movie, you must replicate the edit) and then you make both tracks mono, create a new stereo track with the movie on the left (IIRC), and use the Kn0ck0ut tool to subtract one channel from the other. The result is a fuzzy but passable mono track with just the center-channel information from the movie. That is how I got a "dialogue only" version of these three scenes. The fuzziness and phasiness diminishes a bit when you add back in your own music.

I suggest that you find 1 minute or 2 minute scenes from recent movies and take this approach. It's not about doing an amazing job that would actually stand up in the movie itself, it's about showing you have promise and eventually usefulness to somebody (like a composer who needs an assistant). Music and picture are always married.

Do not score scenes that don't have music, because the director already made the right decision and you'll just fuck things up. Like this:


----------



## NoamL (Jun 26, 2017)

Also if I could add 1 further merciless self critique, all of these clips focus too much on scoring "that awesome moment from the movie." Well, that's one moment. And every composer dreams of doing the ET flying scene type scoring. Better to show that you can handle underscore with taste & discretion. Rescoring underscore scenes also puts you less in competition with everyone's memories of the original score. If a director or composer gets to the end of a scene and they've lost track of your music and been absorbed into the scene, you'll impress them. Be careful the music isn't too loud in the mix, also. The examples I just posted are comically loud, and the ones in Leandro's blog are also very far off the mark (but I understand they're that way because he had to duck the whole movie track).


----------



## zolhof (Jun 26, 2017)

Hugh Harrer said:


> Perhaps I am naïve, but where are you getting the scenes with Dialog and FX but no music?



You can grab the 5.1 mix and extract the dialogue track(s) in Audacity. That's how I did this scene from Her:



Dunno if every single movie will work, but if you have the Bluray lying around, it's worth the shot!


----------



## hummingbird (Jun 26, 2017)

There are some public domain film scenes you can score. They might be government videos, black and white films, or even silent picture, but might be better than borrowing from more contemporary films?
https://www.loc.gov/rr/mopic/pubdomain.html


----------



## Emmanuel Rousseau (Jun 27, 2017)

I'm astonished by what you guys have done on these rescores. Wow...

@leogardini : What a project ! Congratulations. Loved the movie, and really liked what you've done so far.

@NoamL : That's amazing. The Star Trek rescore is impressive, and so is the Toy Story. Wasn't aware of the term "Mickey mousing" but I get it, ahah. The synchronisation with the picture and the different "emotions" are beautifully done.

@zolhof : Great job on that piano cover, and thank you for remembering me how awesome this movie is 

I'm currently rescoring a 6min scene from Guillermo Del Toro's "Pan's Labyrinth". I used the 5.1 tracks and was able to extract most of the FX and dialog. So far 3min are done and I wish I choosed a shorter scene as I find the exercice exhausting for a first time ^^


----------



## gsilbers (Jun 27, 2017)

NoamL said:


> Emmanuel your wife is correct!
> 
> I got started this way! all of these demos are from ages ago, here goes LOL:
> 
> ...




lol! - "Zimitation"

Kn0ck0ut look interesting


----------



## timprebble (Jun 30, 2017)

I know I am stating the obvious but .... I see people who do this for sound design a lot (re designing a scene from a film) and while it provides some experience with working to picture, the one very important skill it does not help with at all is learning to collaborate with a director, & learning to interpret & take direction. For this reason if you are going to do unpaid work, I would rather spend the time working on a no-budget project, that you like the director & project. This also provides the possibility of starting an ongoing relationship...


----------



## wst3 (Jul 1, 2017)

Not only does Tim provide some outstanding sound effects, but he offers really good advice.

I haven't done a lot with film directors, my "no pay" gigs have been primarily for all volunteer community theatres. The sound design element was a bit easier in terms of collaboration, and I still do that just for fun. Teaching local directors the value of music has proven to be a bit more of a challenge. But, when you collaborate on a project it really is rewarding, and educational, and you can build relationships with folks that can help you as you travel your career path.

Not to say I didn't try composing and designing sound for videos, but that was (for me) more about the mechanics of working with film vs working with live actors. I haven't shared them because that would violate copyrights - perhaps I am being overly cautious?


----------



## byzantium (Jul 1, 2017)

@NoamL Wonderful work on Toy Story!


----------



## karelpsota (Jul 1, 2017)

I don't know if this fits under the category of "re-scoring"...

But trailer music publishers like to hire video editors to create fake trailers. It gives context to the music. (and for whatever reason, it also makes the music feel "larger").

Here's an example:


----------



## Emmanuel Rousseau (Aug 24, 2017)

Hi friends !

If interested, I finally managed to finish my rescore from "Pan's Labyrinth".
I created a thread in the Members Composition section, which you can view here :

http://www.vi-control.net/community...he-pale-man-scene-rescore-with-dawcast.64530/

Thanks again !


----------



## kurtvanzo (Aug 24, 2017)

NoamL said:


> Emmanuel your wife is correct!
> 
> I got started this way! all of these demos are from ages ago, here goes LOL:
> 
> ...




If you're going to edit the music soundtrack to the movie and make it sample accurate, why not just flip this phase (invert) the stereo soundtrack and add it to the movie soundtrack to cancel out the music? No need to mono it out or buy any plugins. Pro Tools comes with an invert plugin, though I admit I'm not sure if others do, but any phase flip button will do the same thing. Then you should be able to combine those tracks to get a stereo mix with dialog and fx only (though there may still be artifacts from unique reverb or effects used by the films mix engineer and not by the soundtrack album mixer (or vise versa).


----------

