Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: We, we have so many tools at our fingertips that can help us polish things to an absolute 110 quality level.
But I, I again, like, I want to see.
I want to see the threads fraying at the end of the fabric. I want to see. I want, I want to see that it was made by a human being.
[00:00:27] Speaker B: I'm Luke Steinfeld.
[00:00:28] Speaker C: And I'm Wyatt Sarkisian.
[00:00:29] Speaker B: We made the 5050 podcast to support you on your filmmaking journey.
[00:00:33] Speaker C: 50% business, 50% creative.
[00:00:35] Speaker B: Every Tuesday, a new how to.
[00:00:37] Speaker C: This week, we sit down with composer Nicholas Snyder.
Quite simply, Nicholas is at the top of his game. He has composed the score for animated HBO shows such as Scavenger's Reign and Common Side Effects, as well as the highly anticipated upcoming Netflix show Dealies.
Nicholas takes us through his upbringing as a storyteller and musician, what his production and collaboration processes are like, as well as why embracing imperfection is one of the most powerful things in film scoring. Enjoy the episode.
[00:01:13] Speaker A: Cause of the sort of dubious character that he was.
And he was a great dad in many ways, but somewhat problematic character.
And so it was kind of looked down upon with certain members of my family to be a musician.
One of my earliest memories is of my mom speeding away from our house. She's in tears after one of their many arguments.
I was probably about 5 years old, and she looks over to me and goes, nick, don't ever become a musician or your wife will hate you.
And so that, that, like, that, that's what I had to contend with.
And so I kept it, really. When I started making music in my late teens, I, I kind of immediately fell in love with it and felt like I had a knack for it, but I kind of kept it close to my heart that I, that I took it seriously.
And so, you know, I, I went to school for something completely different, not finance.
I have a degree in writing, and it was just in bands and stuff like that, but then eventually started to get some record deals and whatnot. And it just slowly became impossible to hide the fact that this was the only thing that I cared about was
[00:02:34] Speaker B: there that time, like, as a young teenager, I mean, you said you kept it close to your heart, but if, like, okay, I remember what my mom said. And again, as Wyatt said, that sticks with you.
Do you remember, like, when it happened of like, okay, like, I, I gotta do this.
[00:02:53] Speaker A: I don't know that there was a specific moment that I was like, I gotta do this. But I found I, it became in probably like sophomore year in high school, I Started to like music, started to become an identifying factor in my personality.
And there was like, I didn't have a whole lot of friends in my own grade, but the younger grade came in and there were people there that I related to a lot more. And that was. I ended up starting a band with some of those people.
And, you know, when I first picked up an instrument, you, as many do, get lessons. And my first instrument was a bass. And so this guy is trying to teach me Mary Had a Little Lamb on bass. And when you're 14 years old, that's about the least sexy thing you could possibly imagine doing.
And so I just quit. I gave it up and put the bass in my closet.
And then a handful of years later, I'm sitting next to a friend of mine in some class and he says, hey, we're starting a band and we need a bass player. Do you know anybody? And I was essentially like, I'm a bass player.
[00:04:14] Speaker C: You're like, I know, I know. Mary Had a Little Lamb.
[00:04:17] Speaker B: I know.
[00:04:21] Speaker A: So essentially, you know, showed up with zero understanding outside of the. The maybe dozen lessons that I took of how. How to actually play bass, but they didn't know how to play either. And we just all started jamming and writing our own material.
And I just fell in love with that process of like, making stuff up. I never liked learning other people's songs. I still to this day don't know anyone's songs but my own, and I barely even know those.
And. But that was the, like, the writing process, the just making shit up process is what really drew me in. And I don't know that I'd ever found anything like that prior that I felt like I was just naturally good at to a certain degree. Not to say they didn't take a lot of work to go to the next level and the next level after that, but.
But yeah, that's kind of when I had that feeling.
[00:05:22] Speaker C: I know, I know it's obviously sort of your individual and personal story, but I'm curious, like, when you were having those like, moments of self discovery with music, were you in conversation your dad about that? And because he's obviously successful in that similar category and everything, were you like, hey, I want to do this, or were you really just keeping close to the vest?
[00:05:47] Speaker A: No, he, again, he was a somewhat problematic character. And I don't mean to paint him in a completely negative light, because a lot of who I ended up being was stuff that I gleaned from him.
He was always like, he loved weird old movies, old Universal monster movies and. And kind of, you know, exposed me to that stuff very young.
Turner Classic Movies was always on in my house, just kind of in the background. And. And so I was familiar with a lot of, like, movie history and whatnot. You know, he sat me down and showed me A Clockwork Orange when I was probably 11 years old or something.
But when it came to, like, I can only think of one time in my head where he actually sat down with me and, like, taught me how to play something on piano.
And there were a few times when I would ask him, and for him, that was work, you know, and when he was home, he wanted to blob out on the couch and watch tcm. And so there wasn't much guidance from him, but I did steal his record collection and his synthesizers and eventually his entire studio.
So, you know, I inherited much from him, but it wasn't an active mentorship in any way.
[00:07:22] Speaker C: Sure, sure.
[00:07:24] Speaker B: Like, with that band, you guys are all messing around. You're not pulling from any other, I guess, influences. Like you said, you didn't learn any other people's songs or anything.
Did you love the club, the. The collaboration with the band, or was it like, okay, I'm gonna go off, I'm gonna go home and write some songs and come back to the band with these ideas?
[00:07:45] Speaker C: Both.
[00:07:46] Speaker A: I mean, at that time, I had no idea how to write other parts, you know, So I think that there probably were a lot of instances of us just jamming and trying to figure out a song together.
But there were also occasions when it was like, oh, we need more songs. And I would sit in my bedroom and try to write another song and then bring it in, and then we can just kind of do whatever with it. So at that point, like, yeah, it was like, I very much enjoyed the collaborative process of being in a band, and it was very communal for my first handful of bands.
[00:08:27] Speaker B: For that early inspiration, you said tcm, those old movies.
Would you turn to film to, like, get inspired to write certain tracks?
[00:08:41] Speaker A: No, not at that stage.
That happened later, whenever I started to kind of blend worlds a little bit.
One of the last bands that I was in, a band called One two Three.
[00:08:54] Speaker B: It's a great name.
[00:08:56] Speaker A: Some. Some have said otherwise, but I'd never heard the word ungoogleable until.
Until.
[00:09:05] Speaker B: That's why when you passing that for everything.
[00:09:08] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. Yikes.
[00:09:11] Speaker B: But
[00:09:14] Speaker A: toward the end of that band, I started to really get into, like, soundtrack music, and I would sample it and stuff like that. I remember. I mean, maybe I Shouldn't say this aloud, but I will. I sampled Bernard Herman's soundtrack to Obsession for a few tracks on that, and I started to get more into the cinematic elements of.
Of it.
[00:09:39] Speaker B: But.
[00:09:39] Speaker A: But early on it was like we were into, like, Radiohead and like, Second Wave emo, you know, like Get Up Kids and stuff like that.
So, yeah, that was, you know, we were trying to make music like that, but didn't know what we were doing at all. And so it kind of came out its own way, which is what you want.
[00:10:06] Speaker C: Fun.
So you went to college for writing, correct?
[00:10:11] Speaker A: Yeah, I wanted to be a fiction writer, essentially.
[00:10:15] Speaker C: Interesting.
[00:10:18] Speaker A: But what I really wanted to do was make music, and that was my main focus.
[00:10:22] Speaker B: Right.
[00:10:22] Speaker C: So that was just kind of like a passion of yours, but not what you saw as the sort of end all, be all.
[00:10:31] Speaker A: Yeah, I was just going to college to please certain family members.
[00:10:34] Speaker C: Sure.
[00:10:34] Speaker A: Because that's what you do.
[00:10:36] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Did it help to sort of understand narrative and that sort of creative process by learning that?
[00:10:46] Speaker A: I think so, yeah. I think it definitely ended up bleeding into my.
I was also. I was really into good lyrics at the time. You know, songwriting was my first love composition.
Didn't you know, that was just like.
That seemed more like a prestigious thing that hadn't yet entered into my world.
And it was really just about like, writing a good song. And I was obsessed with Bob Dylan and Paul Simon and Bruce Springsteen, who I think are some of the greatest lyricists in, you know, that era of music.
And so Joni Mitchell, eventually. And.
[00:11:38] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:11:38] Speaker A: And so, yeah, learning to write fiction.
I had this. This teacher, his name is Gary Lutz, and he wrote a really specific style where you just like, write one line and it has to be perfect, and then you can't move on to the next line until that line is perfect.
[00:11:57] Speaker B: He was teaching that.
[00:11:59] Speaker A: What's that?
[00:12:00] Speaker B: He was like, teaching that.
[00:12:01] Speaker A: That was his style. Yeah. And it was like his. His main focus was like micro fiction, essentially. Very, very short stories, you know, like four page, five page short stories.
And, you know, it's just like every line had to be precise and beautiful and perfect.
[00:12:21] Speaker C: Yeah. I mean, that very much helps with songwriting, I would assume.
[00:12:25] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:12:26] Speaker C: With packing it all into a very short amount of time, you know.
[00:12:30] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:12:31] Speaker A: That ended up, without me knowing it being a very foundational element that would, you know, still to this day is. Is something that I think about a
[00:12:40] Speaker B: lot because that is super daunting, obviously, of like. That's almost like the antithesis of. Of writing or what you learn in, like, if you learn how to write a screenplay, I'm sure maybe it's the same with songwriting, but, like, it's a first draft, you know, and, like, you just get it out there and. And you kind of can come back to it. And writing is rewriting, and this sounds like.
Absolutely writing is rewriting, but it's like each line counts as a first draft, you know?
[00:13:09] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:13:10] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:13:10] Speaker A: And I'm still kind of like that. I'm not a demoer for the most part. I don't. Like, I, like, I want it to be the thing that it is when I'm inspired to do it in that same band.
1, 2, 3. There was our first album.
I had demoed the entire thing out in a very rudimentary fashion.
And then we got. Got a publishing deal and got money to go to, like, a really good studio in Greenpoint and spent a month in this amazing studio with a really great producer, Nicholas Verns.
And.
But the process was a lot of fun, but it could have been funner because a lot of the exploration had been taken out of it because we were just trying to make the demos better.
And so I kind of told myself moving forward that I was going to learn how to record so that the demos would be good enough the first time.
And that's not to say that over the years that I haven't done sketches of things and then redone them or whatever, but, you know, even with. With. With Joe Bennett, one of my main collaborators with Common Side Effects and Scavengers and whatnot, I have to be really careful sending him unfinished stuff because he will fall in love with. With it as is. He suffers from a similar thing. And so it's just kind of like I.
I want the first draft to be the most important draft, and if we have to nudge some things around here and they're fine, but it's not a.
It's like, I just want, when I'm inspired, I want that to be the product that you hear.
[00:15:03] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:15:04] Speaker B: In collaboration then. Right.
[00:15:06] Speaker C: Like, even that was my question.
[00:15:08] Speaker B: Talk about Joe Bennett. But, like, and Common side Effects, I'm a massive, massive fan of. And we will absolutely get into that. And I could talk for way too long just about the.
That intro alone, but, like, with a collaborator like that and projects like these, like, does the prep then come from so much conversation? Like, how involved are you in the ideation? Or, like, is a showrunner sitting you down? Like, is. Are you sitting with Joe? And I know you guys have worked together for so long. But, like, you knowing your style, as in, I don't do demos. I don't do first drafts. Like, this is the final. Like, this is me. I'm putting this.
[00:15:55] Speaker C: It's a pretty individual process.
[00:15:57] Speaker B: Yeah. Like, are you.
At the end at least, but, like, getting to that. Are you making it a point to, like, sit down with this person and, like, ask questions and sit with the. You get what I'm getting at. Like, are you doing the work in prep to be able to make sure that the product is set?
[00:16:15] Speaker A: Yeah, but definitely. But. But I'm also, like, I tend to work from a very intuitive place.
There's so many times when I don't have the time to overthink things.
You know, we have about two weeks per episode, and I kind of did
[00:16:39] Speaker B: two weeks to score the whole episode.
[00:16:41] Speaker A: To score the whole episode. About two and a half weeks per episode.
So it is really moving fast, and it really has to be kind of first thought, best thought.
But leading up to his show, yeah, Joe and I will talk a lot about.
And you know, him and I are very close friends. We hang out a lot. And so he'll be telling me about projects for months, if not years, leading up to them. So I have a pretty good sense when. The time when we finally get to a project of what he's thinking in terms of it.
And then he's.
He'll usually be the one or an editor will be the one to put in reference music.
But then I, you know, I. It's my role to filter it through my personal style. And. And, yeah, I don't know.
[00:17:38] Speaker B: We.
[00:17:38] Speaker A: I think one of the things with Joe and I is that we. We both have very similar tastes in movies and film music, and so we're pretty aligned in that department in a lot of ways. You know, we.
We have a few differences, but.
But, yeah, at this point, it's. It's pretty intuitive between the both of us, but he was just over here two nights ago and kind of tearing my shit apart, and I've been spending the last day and a half trying to.
[00:18:14] Speaker C: Just cleaning up.
[00:18:15] Speaker A: Yeah.
Nudging things around, changing certain aspects and stuff.
[00:18:21] Speaker C: So I'm gathering you love when he comes over.
[00:18:25] Speaker A: I do typically love when he comes over, but it is like, the hardest part of a film composer's job is the presentation part of it, because you just never know. You know, you're. You've put a lot of time and emotional work into this thing, and you never know how it's going to be received.
There are Times whenever I'm like, this is, this is the greatest thing I've ever made.
And then it's like, yeah, I don't know, I think it maybe could be like a little bit like faster or something. And you're just like, what?
But, yeah, so, but when he. Typically we have a grand old time when he comes over to listen to music, but sometimes.
[00:19:13] Speaker C: How did you guys first meet? Was it through bonding over those movies or like what, what were those first? How did you meet and then how did you sort of establish this long time collaboration?
[00:19:25] Speaker A: Well, considering the fact that this is an educational geared podcast, I'll put it like this. This is one of the things that a lot of young composers, when they ask me for advice of how to get into the biz or like, how did I get where I'm at?
I think one of the most important things if you want to make film music or do sound design for film or whatever, is to be around filmmakers. Like put yourself in the position of being around up and coming filmmakers.
And when I first moved to LA, him and I both moved to LA around the same time in 2014. I think he was a few months behind me.
And at the time and it unfortunately doesn't exist anymore, there was this really great mom and pop place called the Echo Park Film center.
And it was on Alvarado between Echo park and Silver Lake.
And it was just this non profit where it was a literal couple, mom and pop couple that ran it and you could have a membership there and it was very affordable and they had this kind of archive of archaic film equipment and they hosted workshops and screenings for their members and so you could just go out, go there and hang out with a bunch of young filmmakers. And my partner at the time and I were members there and so she went to a workshop that was being taught by Joe's partner at the time.
And Joe ended up sitting next to my girlfriend at the time and they kind of hit it off and she was like, I think you would really like my boyfriend.
And so we all got together and went on like a double date type deal. And sure enough, Joe and I just hit it off from the get go. We had very similar upbringings, loved a lot of the same kind of overblown 90s blockbusters and stuff like that. Growing up just had a lot of similar, similar experiences. He had a sister who was four years older, I had a sister that was four years older.
And yeah, we were both just kind of like film geeks and, and got along. And at the time I was making commercial music and, like, living off of $300 demo fees from that.
And demos.
Yeah, well, again, they weren't demos.
That's just what they call them.
I think that was the holdover from the old days. Whenever you would do, like, a piano demo and then make an orchestral version later or something like that. But for the most part, like, those were.
Those were the final product as well. Of course, they would always have to give me notes and I would have to change things, but that's a different story. But, yeah, I was just making commercial music, and that was like my. That was my music school. I didn't go to music school. I have no classical training.
But that was how I learned to work with producers, how I learned to work to picture, how I learned to. To be really flexible in terms of what style we're going for and what the objective is.
And he was working on a bunch of kind of like, mtv, Adult Swim, Cartoon Network bumpers and things like that. A lot of really short stuff.
And I loved his work from the moment that I saw it. And maybe like, the second or third time we hung out, he was living in a place kind of near Koreatown at the time.
And my partner and I showed up to, like, a dinner at his house, and he was nowhere to be found for the first 10 minutes. And he finally comes, like, bursting out of his office in the back, and he's like, it's done. Do you want to see it? And I didn't even know what it was that he was talking about. Like, yeah, sure. I want to see was the original Scavengers Short.
[00:23:50] Speaker C: Wow.
[00:23:50] Speaker A: Before it was even called Scavengers Reign. And this was, like, a thing that aired on Adult Swim, and it blew my mind. It was like, exactly the type of thing that I was into growing up. I would have absolutely adored this as a. As a young lad.
And so I was like, it doesn't really have a whole lot of music in it. What's the deal?
But I didn't say anything. I didn't want to push myself on him. Like, I genuinely.
[00:24:20] Speaker C: Delicate balance. Yes.
[00:24:22] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:24:23] Speaker A: And we. We were like new friends. And I didn't wanna. I didn't want to him to think that I was just trying to, like, get into his projects. Yeah.
And. And so, you know, he put that out, and it ended up being really successful. And eventually he was like, you make music for stuff, right?
I was like, yeah, that's what I do.
[00:24:46] Speaker C: Oh, yes, he comes to you.
[00:24:48] Speaker A: And.
Yeah, he was working on a short with Joe Pera called Birds.
And that was the first thing that we ever did together. And just like, very first thing that I sent him, he was like, this is, this is perfect. I love it. And ever since then we've been, I've worked on every single one of his projects.
[00:25:10] Speaker C: So it's incredible.
[00:25:11] Speaker B: Dude, you, it like you jump from playing or quitting playing bass, right? Like way back, sophomore year, high school, Mary had a Little Lamb.
You're never classically trained, you're getting commercial gigs and then doing your thing as you are today. But like, did you just get really good at piano over hours and hours? Like, when did that happen? Was it just years and years? Years and years of work? Like, and, and on top of that you have such a sense of sounds and I guess, well, that might be a different question but of like where you're, where that information or knowledge came from. Like if you traveled a bunch or like, I know that's a layered question, but
[00:26:05] Speaker A: I, I like, I'm not a great musician. You know, if, if someone asked me to play piano at a party or something like that, I would be horrified.
I don't like practicing.
I don't have any desire to be virtuosic in any of the instruments. I can play a little bit of everything.
[00:26:35] Speaker B: But.
[00:26:40] Speaker A: The muscle that I have been training for my whole adult life is like song craft and music craft, like composition craft.
And though I don't have all of the foundational elements of that language in me, I have just been doing it so long that I, that's what I have gotten good at is putting music together and different elements of music. And then with the commercial work, that was how I learned to put it to picture and how to respond to visual elements with it, because that was really new to me.
Like in my late 20s, there was a, there was a guy who I had met in New York who was finishing a feature length student film and wanted me to do the music for it. And I didn't even know how to pull the video into pro tools.
I would be like, okay, this, this section of the film is a minute and ten seconds long. And so I would write a piece of music that was a minute and ten seconds long and just email it to him and he would drop it in. And I, I never even saw the final product until it was all done. I never even saw any of the music to picture until it was all done.
And I was kind of like, oh, wow, that surprisingly works really well. And like, oh, that one does not work at all. I should have Done something different there, but.
But it's just been a long process of trial and error and believing that I was. Will figure it out.
[00:28:29] Speaker C: You're really learning as you go. Like you're kind of like getting the gig and then just figuring it out, which I, I feel like we, Luke and I have talked about extensively on the podcast. The art of just doing and the art of just saying, yeah, I can do that, and then really just figuring out. And when you figure it out, it's not going to be the most efficient way. It's not going to be the way that they probably teach to do it in whatever school. Like it's going to be just eventually you refine that process, you know, but you're really learning on the job, which is admirable.
[00:28:58] Speaker A: I am still very inefficient and like naive about the ins and outs of production and technology.
Like, I will get part time assistants who have just graduated from music school and they will come in to help me, you know, bounce stems out of my session and be like, why are you doing it like this? And I'm like, I don't know. It's just how I've always done it works for me.
[00:29:26] Speaker C: I think sometimes the inefficiency is like a very important part of the creative process, you know.
[00:29:33] Speaker B: Well, it's your way. It's like you're. That's how you've done it.
[00:29:38] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, you know, I'm a big fan of outsider art and naive art, and I think there's a part of me that has always wanted to retain a certain ignorance about how you actually do things so that I can misinterpret stuff and it comes out sounding like me, you know, super interesting. I don't know how to, to how to put brass and strings together in a traditional right and wrong kind of way. I just know how to do it by listening to it and doing what feels right to me. And I'm sure that some people would scoff at that and probably rightfully so, but because, you know, we're standing on the shores of giants, people have spent hundreds of years figuring this stuff out. And I respect that and I, I do have reverence for that, but it's just, you know, styles and technology change so rapidly.
All I can do is just kind of like hang on and try to maintain a sense of what sounds good to me.
[00:31:05] Speaker B: That's like the dream of every artist is to be able just to be so.
So it's like present but also like, so connected to your intuition of like this is just what's coming out of me. And then I'm gonna make it sound good, according to me, and then I'm gonna send it to them, you know.
[00:31:24] Speaker A: Yeah. Literally, it's a dream.
[00:31:25] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:31:26] Speaker A: I think that to a certain degree that is why I wanted to at least get to the point where it wasn't just demos anymore because I, again, like that point of, of that, like conduit between you and whatever the source of creativity is, is happening right then and there. And sometimes when you go to like redo things or whatever. And again, not to say that I don't redo things all the time. I do. You have to. It's just part of the job. But as close as I can get to that, like, initial spark of inspiration to what you are actually hearing as the witnesser of the piece, that I want to retain that as much as possible.
[00:32:14] Speaker B: How do you stay near that? Like, are you lighting candles? Do you close all the shades? Like, are you waking up at three in the morning and it's like, oh,
[00:32:20] Speaker C: yeah, what's the, what's the process?
[00:32:24] Speaker A: Big incense fan.
And I, you know, I like to keep a, like a space that feels inspiring and whatnot. But at the end of the day I, you know, I, Yeah, I have a meditation practice, a daily morning meditation practice. But at the end of the day, like, you know, I do the same thing as everyone else. I'll have breakfast and drink my coffee while doom scrolling and then walk down here and, and get to work and. And you know, some days I don't want to be doing what I'm doing. I would rather be, you know, walking in a forest or making music. That is, whatever I feel like making that day as opposed to whatever the scene is telling me to make.
But I am extremely fortunate to be doing what I'm doing. So I do not take that for granted. And it's just that, you know, it's a job just like anything else. It's just a cool job.
[00:33:27] Speaker C: We interviewed a filmmaker, Jacob Hurwitz Goodman.
[00:33:31] Speaker A: I know him.
[00:33:33] Speaker C: Do you?
[00:33:33] Speaker A: Yeah, I just did a film with him. I did a.
He makes these really great, like, socio political documentaries. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I just, I just scored one of those.
[00:33:50] Speaker C: Okay, cool. My question has to do with his documentaries, actually, because he, I think briefly we talked about scoring and music in a documentary and he used the example of if, you know, the scene is people talking about AI and technology, you want to provide a sort of contrast and tension by using very naturalistic music. He was always talking about that Sense of tension in a documentary, it just like baseline keeps viewers engaged and makes things more interesting. And I was like, huh, that's such, like a fun hack. And you can apply that to so many things, right? Like, you can even apply that as like an actor, right? Like, if you're in a fucking argument scene and you're completely still, that's way more off putting than, you know, you being with the rest of the. The ensemble or whatever it is.
[00:34:39] Speaker B: Sure.
[00:34:40] Speaker C: I'm curious if there are any, like, hacks that you have found where, well, scoring having to do with maybe establishing tension or amplifying things or heightening emotion or things like that. Like, were there any times when you were like, oh, this is a breakthrough?
And it's like something that's so simple that not a lot of people would sort of understand.
[00:35:02] Speaker A: I'm a big fan of using samples. I use samples a lot.
I have a subscription to Splice, and I use it almost every single day.
And so like I said before, I'm not a person that likes to.
There. There are a lot of musicians and. And music creators that are obsessed with, like, they'll. They'll have an entire room full of decades worth of synthesizers and they. They will obsess over, like, finding that perfect sound or experimenting and finding the perfect sound and stuff like that.
And I have a. I have a very refined palette for sounds and textures and timbers, but I don't have the time or the patience in. In a lot of instances to dial that in myself. And not to say that I don't occasionally do that, but there are people out there that. That really, really love doing that. And they will make wonderful libraries for people like me to use.
And I. I utilize that a lot. And I don't, you know, I don't know whether that is. Is what you mean, but I. I kind of. You know, days when I feel a little bit less inspired or I just, like, don't.
I will go through Splice and just catalog really good sounds that I like. And.
And I'm also always keeping an ear out for virtual instruments. It's same thing. It's still. It's all still samples.
You know, you're just. You're triggering it through a MIDI keyboard and it's.
Some of them are really, really beautifully made. And I tend to gravitate towards imperfection. I want every. I want it to sound imperfect. I want it to sound human. I want. Yeah, I want you to hear the room that it was made in to a certain degree. I want you to hear the you know, the strings rattling.
So I always look for, like, the details and imperfections being left in there.
And being able to work with samples has been a huge portal for me to.
To create with better sounds than I would probably have the time or patience to create on my own here.
[00:37:45] Speaker C: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:37:46] Speaker A: And, you know, I think some people would probably look at that as maybe cheating or whatever, but we're all. If you use virtual instruments these days, you're working with samples anyway. The only difference is, like, I'm taking this and like dropping it in and then, you know, I'm pitch shifting and time stretching it and then kind of hand stitching it. It's almost like building. It's almost like making a quilt to a certain degree.
What I do is as much editing as it is sitting and writing out chords on a piano.
It's. Yeah, it's. And I. I like that aspect of it. I like music editing.
[00:38:25] Speaker B: Can we talk about common side effects and. And specifically that intro?
And I gotta say, too, my girlfriend introduced me to the show and I'm not the biggest TV guy. I'm not. Why.
[00:38:41] Speaker A: I'm not a big TV guy either.
[00:38:43] Speaker B: You're not either.
[00:38:44] Speaker A: I'm a movie man.
[00:38:45] Speaker B: Same. I'm with you, man. And she introduced me to the show.
Yeah.
[00:38:50] Speaker A: I don't need 12 hours of your.
[00:38:52] Speaker B: No worry.
[00:38:53] Speaker A: Sorry.
[00:38:53] Speaker B: No. Unless it's.
[00:38:56] Speaker C: And that's okay.
[00:38:57] Speaker A: Okay, yeah, great.
[00:38:59] Speaker B: But. But I'm saying unless it's. It's a show like what you guys made and created, and I. I'm so serious. I remember watching that intro sequence for the first time, like those title cards. And I was just like, this is fantastic.
And the score behind it too, is unbelievable. And that carries through every single episode. So congratulations to you and Joe, obviously on this. But, like, would love to kind of dig into not the entire show right now, maybe in 10 minutes, but like that actual intro sequence. And like, I guess after hearing from you, maybe it was just you woke up and you're like, cool, here's this, and I'll bounce that over to Joe. And like, that's what we're going to use. But what.
Can you talk about the process of creating that actual sound and. And piece for that?
[00:39:52] Speaker A: I mean, it was kind of bad to a certain degree.
That was the very first piece of music that I made for common side effects.
[00:40:00] Speaker B: Wow.
[00:40:01] Speaker C: Wow.
[00:40:03] Speaker A: I really like title sequences.
I think it's a lost art to a certain degree. I think they. I think it still exists in. In TVs more than it does in movies. But I. I love those old, like, Hitchcock movies where they have these long, tight, like, Saul Bass title sequences.
And so I'm always rooting for. For a good title sequence. In fact, they just announced a show and released a new title sequence for a new show that Joe and I are collaborating on called Dealies.
And it's like a workplace comedy, though, that's kind of doing it an injustice by calling it that.
[00:40:50] Speaker B: It's.
[00:40:50] Speaker A: It's very unique in its. In its ways. But he was like, yeah, I don't know. I don't think we're going to do a title sequence.
And I was like, you have to do a title sequence. Like, your title sequences are legendary.
And so I.
And I was able to convince him to do that, but.
So I like to think about it. But again, it's kind of like, I will take this again. Like, it'll be months of hearing about what this story is, but I'll still. In a lot of cases, maybe I read the pilot script or something like that, but only have a somewhat shallow understanding of what the show is and just go off of that to a certain degree.
And I don't know, that happened really fast. The common side effects track, it wasn't belabored over.
And it was.
You know, I kind of did wake up one morning, was like, you know, I'm gonna try to sit down and see if I can write some common side effects music today.
And Joe is a big. As am I, but Joe, much more so, is a big Philip Glass fan.
He. He really gravitates towards those kind of spiraling arpeggios.
And so I thought, I'm gonna try to do something like that, but I want to do it with a bunch of almost like toy flutes.
And so a lot of his, like, sampled flutes, but I also have flutes just like everywhere in my thing. There's like a stack of flutes right above my head.
[00:42:33] Speaker B: And you got to pull that out of the sleeve, dude. Like Anchorman.
[00:42:38] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, that would be cool.
[00:42:44] Speaker B: But.
[00:42:45] Speaker A: But so, yeah, I would just, you know, I. I was like, I'm just gonna. I'm gonna make some sort of a spiraling Philip Glass sounding thing, but with a bunch of dinky flutes.
And that's where that idea came from.
[00:43:02] Speaker B: You nail the tone, though. And that's. That's where I'm just so, like.
And I.
I guess naturally you'll get the tone because of. In conversation with Joe and you're talking about the show for so long and you understand it to your core. And so the tone is really there. But do you have the visuals? Like, were you cutting. Had you seen that?
[00:43:25] Speaker A: No, the other way around. Actually. The, the music came first. So that tato sequence was done by a friend of mine, Vincent Swee, and he. He lives. Actually, no, he just moved to the. The States recently, but he was living in, I think Greece at the time. He's from France, but extremely talented guy. He works with Joe a lot.
And yeah, the music came first for that.
For that one.
[00:43:56] Speaker B: That's amazing.
[00:43:57] Speaker A: It was the same with the dealy sequence that was just released where,
[00:44:02] Speaker B: dude, I saw the dealies, like stills from it and I was like, is this like a common side? Because I saw a couple familiar faces, you know.
[00:44:11] Speaker A: Oh, I think that's just the style.
[00:44:14] Speaker B: Absolutely.
[00:44:16] Speaker A: Joe's style peeking through there.
[00:44:18] Speaker B: But I'm incredibly pumped for that.
[00:44:22] Speaker A: It's gonna be a fun one. It's, it's, it's silly, but. But very much has its own flavor.
[00:44:28] Speaker B: Are you currently scoring for that or in the process of.
[00:44:32] Speaker A: Mm, I'm doing that and Common side Effects season two at the same exact time.
[00:44:37] Speaker B: Come on.
That's awesome.
[00:44:39] Speaker A: I have like spaghetti brain on the daily.
[00:44:42] Speaker C: Are you feeling swamped or where, where is your head at these days? And like, what is your. What does your day look like?
[00:44:46] Speaker A: Like, yeah, I'm feeling swamped, but it's, it's not crazy.
At least not at this moment. It may well start to feel that way if things start to pile up a little bit. I have, I. I've learned. I've also over the years learned to delegate certain things.
[00:45:07] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:45:08] Speaker A: Whenever I first started Scavengers Reign, I got about two episodes in and this was with these, you know, essentially two week deadlines.
And I didn't have the time to like, go to the grocery store or clean my apartment or, you know, it just, it was, it was a lot. And so I brought on an additional composer and that really made a big difference.
And he and I still work together. He's a sound designer on Common side Effects.
His name's Kenny Kusiak. But learning to delegate, delegate has been a big thing for me.
Learning to have a bit of a team. It is.
It sometimes results in me spending more time writing emails than making music than I would want to.
[00:46:02] Speaker B: But.
[00:46:04] Speaker A: But it's been, it's been nice to kind of take some young composers under my wing and, and, and help them find a way into making. I'm always like, like, make it feel special, make it feel unique.
You know, we don't want this to Just sound like film music.
I think there's a lot of really talented young filmmakers coming out of film school that are great at making, you know, film music, but it just sounds like everything else, and I don't want that, you know, I want it to feel like its own world.
[00:46:43] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:46:44] Speaker A: And so that's always what I'm, I'm pushing myself and them towards is, is making something feel special and unique. Give it texture, give it a sense of playfulness and imperfection.
[00:47:00] Speaker C: Yeah. And humanity, you know?
[00:47:02] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:47:03] Speaker A: Humanity. I think that's so important right now, and I think that' only going to become more important as the days go by.
[00:47:09] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:47:10] Speaker A: I want things to feel like they were glued together with, like, popsicle sticks and, and cardboard boxes, you know what I mean? But also have some real meat on the bones at the same time.
[00:47:28] Speaker C: Totally.
[00:47:29] Speaker B: You've spoken about, like, young composers coming up, advice for them. What about the flip side of the young director and, like, working with a young composer maybe for the first time, when it comes to notes, when it comes to just collaboration in general, how can a young director best approach that relationship with their composer?
[00:47:53] Speaker A: That's a really good question.
I have on so many occasions started working with young, young directors that, that weren't really certain how to tell me what they wanted. And I think that a lot of filmmakers have a real fear that, like, oh, I don't speak music language, so I don't want to, like, impose on you when I don't really even know how to ask for what I want.
And there's been a lot of instances of, like, I just want to see, like, what you come up with.
And for me, I'm it. For the first few times I've heard that, it's like, oh, great, I get to just make whatever feels good to me.
But nine times out of ten when you do that, it'll be like, oh, that wasn't really what I was thinking.
[00:48:48] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:48:48] Speaker C: There's going to be misalignment because.
[00:48:50] Speaker A: Yeah. And it's like, well, why don't you tell me what you're thinking?
[00:48:55] Speaker C: So I, I, you've already gone through too much work at that point.
[00:48:59] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:49:00] Speaker A: Don't make me play a guessing game.
[00:49:03] Speaker C: Right. Right.
[00:49:05] Speaker A: Tell me what you want. And if you can't tell me what you want, then show me what you want. Find, like, don't be afraid to put reference music in and leave it in for me to hear. I will listen to it twice, be like, okay, I get it, and, and forget about it and hope that you aren't too attached to it being exactly like that, which is the opposite end of the problem.
But, like, yeah, don't be afraid to direct me. Like, I need it. I will still have plenty of room to put my own stamp on things. But. But don't make me guess what we're doing.
Unless you truly just want me to. To, like, if it's like you give me carte blanche to do whatever I want and you're not going to give me any notes, I will take that seriously and I will would.
You know, I really like to think about what it is that I'm saying in regard to the story and what emotions need to be supported and what emotions don't need to be doubled, you know?
[00:50:15] Speaker C: Yeah, it's. It's like another character. It's like you. You're given the responsibility to create another character who's just kind of voicing it throughout, you know?
[00:50:26] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. I think of it almost like atmosphere, set dressing in a lot of ways
[00:50:31] Speaker B: as well, you know, tone, literally.
[00:50:35] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. You know, like, you could take a Wong Kar Wai movie and put it in a different setting with different lighting, and it would be a completely different thing, you know, with the same exact story, same exact actors.
But, like, because it has that mood and atmosphere, that is what really, in my opinion, makes it pop and feel special.
[00:51:04] Speaker B: The music too, man. The music.
[00:51:06] Speaker A: Right, sure, Absolutely. But. But, you know, I think. I think of music in. In those terms to a certain degree as, like, an aspect of the setting, as a place.
In a lot of ways. I love part of the mood of everything, for sure.
[00:51:22] Speaker B: Yeah. Are you. Are you still in a band?
[00:51:26] Speaker A: I. I dabble.
A friend of mine and I had kind of a band for a minute here recently under the moniker of Moon Mm o o n n. So, yeah, my friend Odayanini, who did a lot of vocals on some common side effects stuff. Whenever the pigeon first takes the mushroom and it goes into the portal and there's that, like, yeah. Sound. That's her voice.
She was on Scavengers as well, but she's a good friend of mine and we put out an album together kind of as a band just earlier this year.
[00:52:09] Speaker B: Do you love side effects? I'm sorry? Like, do you. Do you love that show? Like, when you watch it, do you watch your stuff? And you're like, man, this is amazing.
Were you like, oh, my God, this sucks. Like, I remember waking up that one morning and, like, making this.
[00:52:24] Speaker C: This.
[00:52:25] Speaker A: It's somewhere between skip intro, skip intro, skip intro, skip intro.
No, I I.
Again, one of the. One of the. This seems to be the. The recurring theme here, but one of the benefits of the first thought, best thought, no demos thing is that it happens really fast and you sometimes forget that you did something and it's like. And I found this with songwriting as well. The songs that I labored over for long periods of time tend to be the songs that were the hardest to go back to listen to.
But the songs that just kind of fell out as a fully formed thing in a matter of like, 10, 15 minutes are the ones that I can just listen to over and over again. Because it almost is like, I didn't do that. Like, it just came through me.
And I think with. With the super fast deadlines and all of that, there's a lot of stuff that, like, I would just do really fast and put it in there, and I forgot that I did that. So I typically don't have much of a desire to watch my own work or anything like that, but when I do find myself revisiting it, I am frequently like, oh, yeah, that was cool. Like, what did I do there? What was that?
[00:53:51] Speaker C: You're, like, remembering stuff.
[00:53:52] Speaker A: Yeah.
And then there's lots of. You know, I remember the first time I had a little bit of space and went back and rewatched Scavenger's Reign.
I thought I should have said no to some of the scenes. There's almost too much music. I wish I would have allowed a little bit of more space for things to just transpire.
[00:54:15] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:54:15] Speaker A: And so you do learn from. From going back and. And watching your old stuff. But I do love common side effects. I've only seen it in its entirety after it was complete. I mean, when I'm making it, I'm watching it 8 billion times, so.
But I've only seen it in its entirety once after it, you know, aired and came out. I'll watch it along with everyone else as it's. As it's popping up on HBO Max or Cartoon Network or whatever. And that tends to be how I view these things.
But, yeah, I spend a lot of time looking at it beforehand, and so I'm not super eager to revisit it until some time passes.
[00:55:02] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. And it's interesting to hear that your taste changes, you know, as. As you develop as an artist and everything. And you, you know, you go back and watch Scavengers and you're like, what? Well, I was doing way too much, you know, so it's. It's cool to hear about that. And I do want to be conscious of time because we are slowly hitting the hour mark.
So we do ask one final question for all of our guests. Sure.
And it is intentionally vague in that. And the question is, what is the dream for you?
[00:55:41] Speaker A: The dream is to do this in a. In a fulfilling, artistically fulfilling, but balanced and healthy way.
I've seen a lot of filmmakers just kind of be.
Be crushed by the impending busyness of it all and the weight of the responsibility of it all.
And
[00:56:16] Speaker B: you're.
[00:56:17] Speaker A: Dare I say, you're going to probably make your best work when you're not stressed out of your mind and you have time to live your life outside of this as well.
And so if I can, you know, I don't have the desire to be like a Hans Zimmer, where I'm working on five pictures a year. I really don't.
I would love to, you know, and he has a massive infrastructure underneath him that he needs to take care of. And I'm sure it's to the point where he has, like, a whole team that worries about those things for him and that he is maybe able to have more freedom in his life because of that.
But, you know, I. I don't desire to take over the world with what I do. I just want to make cool, beautiful work and work with great people and be able to enjoy my life as equally with. With equal vigor and. And love and. And care and not feel like I am constantly being pulled from one direction to the other. And it's not easy. I'm not saying that I have attained that yet, but that is. That is the dream, you know, to. To really find balance in all of this and not destroy my life trying to make art, which I think a lot of people do.
[00:58:00] Speaker C: Yeah, absolutely.
Beautifully said.
[00:58:03] Speaker B: So, so beautifully said. And I. It reminds me, I randomly met Vince Staples, if you know, the artist, filmmaker, he does it all.
[00:58:14] Speaker A: Yeah, I love Vince Staples.
[00:58:17] Speaker B: You probably know him, but, like, I don't know.
[00:58:19] Speaker A: I know of him. Okay, I would like to know him.
[00:58:22] Speaker B: But his philosophy on art is similar to your own, where he's like, I don't want to be Van Gogh. Like, I don't want to be the guy that, like, goes nuts, you know, like, it's. It's not worth it. Like, I understand my priorities, which are family and friends. Like, that's real love.
And I love what I do. I love rapping, I love making music.
But I'm not going to spend an exhaustive amount of time on certain projects if I don't need to, you know. And he's not a professional.
Exactly. But again, very similar to yourself where it's like, he's so intuition forward and it's just like, it's really good. Like, it's great. Like, this is fresh out of my brain. Like, let's just go with that. Let's not spend 25 hours on the same first line of the song.
[00:59:12] Speaker A: I'm all for exercising, getting, like, getting rid of preciousness. When it comes to art, you know, I think we, we have so many tools at our fingertips that can help us polish things to an absolute 110% quality level.
But I, I, again, like, I want to see, I want to see the threads fraying at the end of the fabric. I want to see, I want, I want to see that it was made by a human being.
I, I, you know, I, I have a, a love of, like, schlocky movies from the 80s and like Roger Corman movies and things like that.
And I think the thing that I gravitate to about that is that you're
[01:00:08] Speaker B: seeing
[01:00:10] Speaker A: the human imperfection of it all and that it is, it's a play of sorts. And that, you know, sometimes with your dunes and all of this sort of thing, which I love to death. Don't get me wrong, Dune is wonderful, but it's just like, it's taking itself so seriously and every, you know, like, look, like, this is supposed to be fun and let's, let's have some imperfections present and, you know, let's allow it to feel human. And I think that we're gonna gravitate toward that as the days go on.
I think people are gonna want to see things that are very human.
[01:00:52] Speaker C: I agree.
[01:00:54] Speaker B: I think it's already happening, man. I, I, it's, it seems pretty clear.
[01:00:58] Speaker C: Yeah.
[01:00:59] Speaker B: Well, thank you so much. Seriously. Yeah, like, so enlightening.
[01:01:03] Speaker C: Seriously, really grounding.
[01:01:05] Speaker B: Really grounding.
[01:01:06] Speaker A: Thanks. I appreciate you asking me on.
[01:01:16] Speaker C: And now it's 5050 after hours.
Well, this was new to, to record something during my lunch break.
[01:01:27] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, it's 10pm Here. Eleven.
[01:01:31] Speaker C: Crazy.
[01:01:32] Speaker B: Which means it's 2pm Your time, man.
[01:01:35] Speaker C: How's the family and everything? Are you with the fam?
[01:01:37] Speaker B: I'm not really out here. Yeah, My family is in Los Angeles.
[01:01:42] Speaker C: Really?
[01:01:44] Speaker B: Yes, sir.
[01:01:45] Speaker C: Look at you.
Much needed vacay.
[01:01:49] Speaker B: Yep.
[01:01:50] Speaker C: Or is it for other reasons?
[01:01:52] Speaker B: What does that even mean, dude?
[01:01:55] Speaker C: I don't know. You always have something up your sleeve.
[01:01:57] Speaker B: Oh, my God, not a flute.
[01:01:58] Speaker C: I'm going to meet with one of my favorite indie filmmakers who comes from a very Small region in France.
[01:02:06] Speaker B: You got me. You got me.
[01:02:09] Speaker C: He's also a musician and visual artist and documentarian and dancer.
[01:02:14] Speaker B: I'm happy. Yeah, no, that's, that's spot on.
I'm, I'm so pumped with that. That was an awesome conversation.
[01:02:23] Speaker C: Yeah, that was great.
I like, I kind of like, when we have a guest on that is like 75% your interests and 25% mine. You know, like a music guy, animation guy. And I get to sort of come in with, we call it, you know, the audience perspective of like, who is this guy trying to, he was using all these thread metaphors, but trying, trying to like, sew those threads of like, okay, like, I, I get how he did this and how can this connect to senses of collaboration?
And I, I, I love what he said about finding the human in stuff because I think regardless of genre of format of anything, being able to hear a little something in the background that doesn't feel like it, you know, fully would be there or hearing, I don't know, even like, I'm always like, drawn towards animation that feels like it's very, like, talky, you know, like, it's like, like for some reason I'm thinking of Bob's burgers. You know, when they're just like, they'll kind of like go on a ramble and then just like talk quieter and quieter and they'll like, argue over and, and it's just like, you can tell that people are behind it. It's real and it's in the moment and there are people in a room making it.
[01:03:40] Speaker B: You know, you gotta watch like that.
[01:03:41] Speaker C: That's so special.
[01:03:42] Speaker B: You gotta see. I know you've seen a couple episodes, but you gotta watch the entire show.
[01:03:47] Speaker C: I know. I, I, I already love it and I'm just like ready to, and I'm
[01:03:51] Speaker B: not like the, the, the opening sequence. When Nicola, my girlfriend, showed me this show, I was, yeah, my, like immediately my jaw was on the floor of
[01:04:02] Speaker C: just like, I, I can picture you.
[01:04:05] Speaker B: Yeah. And it's still, every time I hear it's not even, it sounds, I don't know. But we'll link it, we'll link it
[01:04:10] Speaker C: in the description so everybody can make sure to take a look. And season one is out on hbo. Max.
[01:04:13] Speaker B: Yeah, sounds like season two. And then dealing out dealies.
[01:04:17] Speaker C: And that's on Netflix, I think so.
[01:04:19] Speaker B: Well, they're, I think they just announced that.
[01:04:21] Speaker C: Well, we'll, we'll link it all. We'll link the announcements and everything. But it's really cool to See someone who plays such a specific role in the filmmaking process, yet such a substantial role. And I don't know of many showrunners who are so in tune with their composers in such a deep collaborative way.
[01:04:42] Speaker B: I'm sure there's so many out there.
[01:04:44] Speaker C: Yeah.
[01:04:45] Speaker B: Like, think of filmmakers.
[01:04:47] Speaker C: I think it's. Maybe it's just eye opening for me then of like seeing this, this relationship up close, you know, because it's something that you don't necessarily think about right away in tv.
[01:04:57] Speaker B: And it's so natural.
It's like, yeah, my girlfriend met him and then she was like, you would love my boyfriend. And then we went on a double date and then he showed me his short film and then, you know, and then I was.
[01:05:11] Speaker C: I didn't suggest it then, but which
[01:05:13] Speaker B: I love, by the way. Yeah, it's like, it's.
[01:05:15] Speaker C: No, totally. That's. Honestly, it's good advice because, like, it is a people centric industry, as we always talk about.
[01:05:21] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:05:22] Speaker C: You don't want to come on too strong and you want to focus, honestly, like focus on developing that friendship and collaborative dynamic before you, like, try to hop on something, you know, like develop stuff together.
[01:05:36] Speaker B: It's, it's so.
I'm so curious always of like when you meet people like that who really are so tuned in to like, their taste and like from him going from idea to like actual output and clearly not allowing himself time to second guess or to overthink things and just like send. Yes. Like, it's always, it's, it's like, how do you do that? Oh my God, how do you do that?
[01:06:04] Speaker C: You know, he works quick enough to not have to harp on mistakes. Yeah, he works.
But yet he's also a perfectionist.
As he was talking about with the demo stuff, like he wants, he wants something to feel final when he.
[01:06:19] Speaker B: Which is cool. I've never. That's an interesting. Yeah.
[01:06:22] Speaker C: And speaking of that, that, that process of figuring out in your artistic process of like, when are you individual?
What, like, and what kind of work do you get done then? And when are you showing it to other people and how are you receiving feedback and all that? Like, at what point do you bring other people into the process? And there's no wrong answer for that because I think it, it's works differently. Like even with our friends, like, we know so many people who like write with other people and there's no through line of how that process happens really in terms of are you breaking story together and then going off and writing. Are you actually both staring at final draft. Like, you know, what does that look like? It looks different for each person.
[01:07:01] Speaker B: It also sounds like he's not like, he's open to notes. Like, he made it sound like he's like, this is the product. It's done.
[01:07:08] Speaker C: He wants.
[01:07:08] Speaker B: But then he's like, when they have notes, it's like, cool, I'm working on it. I'm doing this, I'm doing that. It's just the fact that he's like a perfectionist in the way of like, I'm not going to turn in something that's a first draft. Like, it's going to be the best thing I can do for this.
[01:07:23] Speaker C: And then take direction, and then that's great. It seems like he's like, very open to feedback and like, he's like, bring, like, please, please give me direction. Like, it was like that advice with first time filmmakers, you know, of like, tell them what you want.
[01:07:36] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:07:37] Speaker C: They're gonna. If you say it's up to you, they're gonna go through it and then inevitably you're gonna be like, oh, this was not what I want. And then someone just did a bunch of extra work. Because in the beginning you didn't, you know, say exactly what you want. And even if it's embarrassing, I feel like filmmakers, because sometimes, you know, they're not score first. They're going to be like, oh, well, if I send them this thing, it's going to be like, embarrassing. Like, everybody knows the Jaws theme song or what or whatever it is that, like, is their reference so helpful? Like, send. And I feel like they won't judge you. Like, they'll be like, great. Like, this is. I'm not going to do exactly that, obviously. But this is, this is good. This is informative.
[01:08:19] Speaker B: You know, I was just thinking, we're way too pumped up right now. We got to chill out.
[01:08:24] Speaker C: I know. Why are we, like, we're completely, like,
[01:08:26] Speaker B: way too pumped up.
[01:08:29] Speaker C: We shouldn't have taken that before the podcast.
[01:08:30] Speaker B: Stop. You can't. You can't say that stuff. I think great advice for directors in general. He gave us, you know, not just toward a composer. Like, you're on set and you're working with actors, even if it's a big time actor, and you're like, oh, I can't direct them. It's a big actor.
It's like, no, your job is to be a director.
Direct.
Did you learn something? Unlike your mom? Did you learn something in this episode? I hope so. Or not. That's okay. Thanks for hanging. Make sure you follow us at the 5050 Fest on Instagram and give us five stars because. Why not? Why not subscribe? Why not? You know why not. Okay, bye.
