The best film scores are created when a composer and director trust each other early. This is a little note on how I like to work - and what, in my experience, tends to make a collaboration special.
Bring me in early
Music is often the last thing anyone thinks about in post-production, and the first thing everyone notices when it's wrong. The earlier we can talk - even just a conversation over the script or a rough cut - the more time I have to find the right sound for your film. Early conversations don't cost anything. And they mean I'm thinking about your film for longer.
Tell me how it feels, not how it sounds
The most useful thing a director can give me isn't a reference track - it's an emotion. Not "sad", though. Sad is a genre. I mean: is this the sadness of something ending, or something that never started? Is there relief in it? Anger underneath? The more specific you are about what you want the audience to feel, the more impactful the music.
References are genuinely helpful. If you send me a track you love, I want to understand why you love it. What it does to you.
My job isn't to write music I love. It's to write music that serves your vision.
On temp tracks
Temp tracks are useful and I understand why editors use them - they help picture editors feel the rhythm of a scene, and they give us a shared language early on. But they can also quietly become a ceiling. When a director falls in love with their temp, it can be hard to hear past it, even when something better is possible.
I'll always listen to your temp with genuine interest. I just ask that you listen to what I write with the same openness. Sometimes I'll land somewhere close to the reference. Sometimes I'll find something that does the same emotional work in a completely different way - and occasionally that's the version that will make the film.
The score will change. That's good.
I've had cues I loved get cut. Every composer has. When you're deep in a piece of music, it's easy to forget that the music isn't the point - the story is. If a cue isn't serving the scene, it should go, and I won't take it personally. What matters is the film.
What I ask in return is that feedback comes with feeling, not just instruction. "Can you make it bigger?" is harder to respond to than "It doesn't feel urgent enough yet." The second one tells me something about what the scene needs. The first just tells me to turn up a fader.
Trust the silence
One of the most interesting conversations in any score is about where there should be no music at all. A quiet scene with no score can be more powerful than anything I write. Part of what I do in the spotting session is argue for the silences as much as the cues - and I always want to have that conversation with you, not just fill everything in.
What I bring to the score
I'm as comfortable working alongside professional musicians in a scoring session as I am recording everything myself - and I prefer to do the latter where I can, because original recorded audio matters. The less you rely on sample libraries, the more you can actually hear. Real instruments breathe differently. They can be pushed, broken, and discovered in ways no library can replicate.
I primarily play piano, cello, and guitar, but keep a growing collection of instruments - Neapolitan mandolins, Greek bouzouki, Portuguese guitars, synthesisers, chromatic harmonicas - all in the service of finding sounds that couldn't exist any other way.
If any of this resonates, I'd love to hear about your film.
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