Song placed in Netflix's Maid - Humble Brag

seonnthaproducer

@shinyisshiny Whoa, that's sick. Awesome.

@wim said:

@shinyisshiny said:
@wim lol, deadmau5 is just an asshole by nature. he was prob an asshole in the FL forum to begin with.

Nah, he was actually a nice, and helpful, guy back then.

You get paid a sync fee, which is split into two sides, master + pub. so lets say the fee is 10k all in. thats 5k for master, 5k for pub which is then split up amongst the cowriters and your pub company. You also get streaming royalties on your PRO (BMI, ASCAP). I thiiink, but am not certain that the longer the song has actual screen time, the more royalties you get. So hoping this one will generate a decent check in the future as its by far the longest screen time ive gotten for a sync.

Another plus side, is a placement can lead to a fair amount of shazam's and then streams on spotify, youtube etc. Its not a ton, but it can add up.

Thanks for that info!

Too bad the streaming services make you actually take action to watch all the way through the credits. I like to sit through them to read the musical credits at the end, but rarely end up doing that because I forget to hit the button to watch credits before it flips me off into some trailer I didn't want to see in the first place.

Of course I don't know if sync music is listed in credits, but if it is, it seems like that would help with added pickup.

Whoa, wasn't expecting to see Deadmau5 being mentioned here. Actually got front row to see him live yesterday.

Also added a fail backflip 😂

Had a blast all the same. Best part was seeing the whole setup process, and listening to classics like Strobe, and Move for me.

Sadly, no Cardinal Sins were mentioned.

iOSTRAKON

Congrats @shinyisshiny //

BitterGums

This is great. Sync work is where it's at.

@wim said:

Too bad the streaming services make you actually take action to watch all the way through the credits. I like to sit through them to read the musical credits at the end, but rarely end up doing that because I forget to hit the button to watch credits before it flips me off into some trailer I didn't want to see in the first place.

Of course I don't know if sync music is listed in credits, but if it is, it seems like that would help with added pickup.

that's so annoying, that 'continuing to next episode in 5..4..3..'

I'v mainly only seen sync music listed in credits in films but it would be a tremendous help to see it listed in series credits as well. It's done but not widespread. Everybody has Shazam now though so I wonder how necessary.

@AudioGus said:
I have found music by pausing Amazon Prime and it lists it in the sidebar…

Yeah i've noticed that too. really great! Also, right before the music starts, it usually lists artist and song title in the subtitle/CC text if you have that turned on. Lyrics too.

Again, shazam works so well and so fast, it's still surprising every time.

espiegel123

@shinyisshiny said:
Ive gotten a fair amount of decent sync placements through the years, but this one is pretty special to me, as its a darker, more ambient piece than i usually get placed. More heartfelt and true to my self. Just sharing because it really brought me a lot of joy to get this one placed.

Excellent work! Well done.

Pandan

@shinyisshiny said:
thanks all! I made this one a few years back before I was even using iOS. its mostly just a few different kontakt pianos. some omnisphere pads, and a few other twinkly sounds. I even used a recording of my GF's cat and tweaked it out using some delays etc. Ive gotten some other smaller placements recently using iOS, mainly some hip hop using koala, but this one was all desktop.

the vocalist is Mags Duval, an awesome songwriter and amazing singer. I processed her voice using Waves plugins and Soundtoys little plate for the verb. ( would love soundtoys to port to iOS, but i think i remember reading somewhere they have no intention to)

I got this song placed through my publisher. I signed with them with the intent of delivering sync music, so basically i just cook stuff up that has certain lyrical content, arrangements, etc, across all genres, and they shop it to the music supervisors.

There are many different sync licensing companies out there if you are interested in doing sync. The major trend nowadays is syncing artist, as opposed to just catalog music, so it really helps if you have an established brand. Does not mean you must have 100K followers and getting millions of streams, just that you are an active brand who has some releases, and an active social media presence.

Its definitely a numbers game, and takes some patience. I submitted 5 or 6 songs with Mags over the past three years and this is the first placement i've landed with her, hopefully more will follow now.

Thanks for shedding some light with this. You mentioned getting some smaller placements with some hip-hop. Was that for sync too and/or is there any variation to the advice you’d give with respect to when it comes to that particular genre?

Paa89

Congratulations 🎉

shinyisshiny

@Pandan said:

Thanks for shedding some light with this. You mentioned getting some smaller placements with some hip-hop. Was that for sync too and/or is there any variation to the advice you’d give with respect to when it comes to that particular genre?

The biggest trend right now for Hip Hop placements is Run The Jewels type beats and Kanye Black Skinhead. I get those references once a week. High energy, aggressive and in your face drums and samples. Nothing too wordy or intelligent, keep it simple. The beats need a lot of movement as well, many different "peaks and valleys" a dynamic arrangement, giving the music editors a lot of different pieces to play with and cut to the film.

Lyrically songs should consist of :

kingdom
battle
throne
rivalry
wealth
war
teamwork
new king in town
change
a new world
becoming the hero
overcoming something
standing up for something
justice

steve99

@shinyisshiny said:

@Pandan said:

Thanks for shedding some light with this. You mentioned getting some smaller placements with some hip-hop. Was that for sync too and/or is there any variation to the advice you’d give with respect to when it comes to that particular genre?

The biggest trend right now for Hip Hop placements is Run The Jewels type beats and Kanye Black Skinhead. I get those references once a week. High energy, aggressive and in your face drums and samples. Nothing too wordy or intelligent, keep it simple. The beats need a lot of movement as well, many different "peaks and valleys" a dynamic arrangement, giving the music editors a lot of different pieces to play with and cut to the film.

Lyrically songs should consist of :

kingdom
battle
throne
rivalry
wealth
war
teamwork
new king in town
change
a new world
becoming the hero
overcoming something
standing up for something
justice

That list makes me laugh a lot - I'm editing a film about competing gangs of baboons, sourcing all the music from sync libraries. We are definitely not Hip Hop, but that's exactly the list of (non-lyrical) themes we are requesting, proving there are universal themes in dramatic story telling.

"Keep it simple" is definitely the best advice, I need tracks with space to let the natural sound find its place, mood and texture essential, but designed to sit in, not stand out too far, and with loopable elements and percussive hits to drive cuts and action. I can't tell you how many tracks I reject that start out well until the composer gets carried away and throws too much in, forgetting the music should serve the film and not the other way round (with rare exceptions).

Definite congratulations though @shinyisshiny. As an Editor I find we share a common language with composers, our best work done when nobody notices. Of course, it is also said that all Editors are frustrated musicians, but that can't be true as I'm hardly ever loitering around the Audiobus forum...

shinyisshiny

@steve99 great to hear from someone on the other side of things! Do you often do this kind of work?

I have to agree these are pretty universal themes, and lately they have been the keywords for Hip Hop driven stuff. They do change throughout the years.

Since the pandemic ive also been getting request for Family, togetherness, overcoming adversity, love, friendship, new horizons, traveling etc. But those are more on the pop / indie genres as opposed to hip hop.

Ive heard from other music supervisors that the Keep it simple thing is super important. Even when i get a request for a balls to the wall dubstep song, it still has to be digestible and not too chaotic. Another thing ive heard from supervisors is that if they are going through songs and see a waveform that is just one LOUD ASS waveform, they dont even bother listening to it and just move onto the next one. They always stress dynamics and having those peaks and valleys.

Blipsford_Baubie

That’s great @shinyisshiny ! I’m happy for you and I appreciate you sharing your insights with us.

My questions to you regard mastering:
The songs you submit, are they already mastered by a professional paid by you?

Or do you submit self-mastered versions and then if someone wants a song then they will ask for the stems and handle it with their engineer?

Or do you master your own work?

Or are the circumstances different every time?

steve99

@shinyisshiny said:
@steve99 great to hear from someone on the other side of things! Do you often do this kind of work?

I have to agree these are pretty universal themes, and lately they have been the keywords for Hip Hop driven stuff. They do change throughout the years.

Since the pandemic ive also been getting request for Family, togetherness, overcoming adversity, love, friendship, new horizons, traveling etc. But those are more on the pop / indie genres as opposed to hip hop.

Ive heard from other music supervisors that the Keep it simple thing is super important. Even when i get a request for a balls to the wall dubstep song, it still has to be digestible and not too chaotic. Another thing ive heard from supervisors is that if they are going through songs and see a waveform that is just one LOUD ASS waveform, they dont even bother listening to it and just move onto the next one. They always stress dynamics and having those peaks and valleys.

I make about 3 or 4 documentaries a year, but mostly wildlife, so it's very much like drama for the music - either in 3-5 minute sequences, or over the story arc of a film or both. I'd say I use about 30 cues per hour film.

It's not explicitly the Editor's responsibility to source the music, but that's pretty much how it always works out. Producer / directors tend to either have no interest or lose interest fairly quickly. In fact, when they express enthusiasm for the task it's generally quite worrying, normally the same 2 CDs (yes CDs) they listened to at University. Obviously I generalise and that's not always the case.

I have good and productive personal relationships with the sync advisers at several libraries - I used to pride myself on finding all the music I use myself, but once you establish a good dialogue with a good adviser then everyone's lives are improved. At the start of each project I will send a brief and see what comes back and evolve from there. I like to have a big sump of tracks within my editing software and then navigate from there, the last thing I want to be doing is having to keep going to the internet for single tracks. It's often a good thing if I can find a particular composer who's music resonates with the project, that gives me an anchor to build the soundtrack around. I have a personal rule of never using the same track twice.

Sometimes I get the joy of working directly with a commissioned composer throughout a project, sometimes the composer comes on after I've finished. Either way, I'll use my own scratch tracks for rough cutting. If I know it's definitely going to be replaced I can go wild with movie soundtracks and commercial cuts, if not I'll stick to production libraries. The best times though are when the composer and I are pinging stuff back and forth so at the end of the edit the music is pretty much there, even if only in demo form.

The second half of your list of themes completes the set - although its those 'happy' moments that cause me the most trouble, so tricky to avoid cliche & cheese. Miserable I can do all day long. Other descriptive words and requests come in and out of fashion - I always enjoy people asking me to make it more or less 'funky', as I once cut a film on the origin of slang, with 'funky' being 'the smell of stale sex'. Although as a musician of course I like to make it funky all the time

You're spot on about waveforms, the first thing I do is listen to the first 10 seconds of a track, then I check the waveform and skip to the interesting looking bits. It took me a long time to get good at editing tracks quickly and accurately, but quite often now I'll splice the end onto something purely by looking at the waveform (admittedly not always successfully). Each waveform tells a story, some interesting, some instantly boring and swiftly rejected.

While I'm here, these are my favourite scratch tracks that always improve any edit:

The intro to 'If Six Was Nine' by Jimi Hendrix, says "let's go" (in a film and in an edit)
'Bela Lugosi's Dead' by Bauhaus - a masterpiece of 'spaciousness', says "something's going to happen".
'Iguazo' by Gustavo Santaolalla - in just about every Editor's kit bag, you'll hear soundalikes of it in many, many films (and the real thing in at least 3 of Alejandro Inarritu's films), says more than any words ever could.

shinyisshiny

@Blipsford_Baubie said:
That’s great @shinyisshiny ! I’m happy for you and I appreciate you sharing your insights with us.

My questions to you regard mastering:
The songs you submit, are they already mastered by a professional paid by you?

Or do you submit self-mastered versions and then if someone wants a song then they will ask for the stems and handle it with their engineer?

Or do you master your own work?

Or are the circumstances different every time?

I almost always master myself. sometimes if something is done custom, the client may want to use a mastering guy they are comfortable with, but id say 90% of the time the stuff i submit is mastered by me.

Its pretty common practice to submit stems when you send something in. I usually Include a Master Mix, Instrumental, and then stems. Nothing too crazy, just basic like drums, bass, synths, fx, vocals etc.

shinyisshiny

@steve99 awesome. thanks for all of the insight and info. Seems like editing can be fun at times. I can see sifting through endless libraries as tedious, but seems like you still get some creative freedoms in there. Ill check out those tracks and add them to my list of references, thanks again for sharing!

steve99

@shinyisshiny good to connect direct across the spheres. Can I find your tracks in any particular place? I’m tied into a single library on my current project, but my ears are always open.

soundtemple

Congrats @shinyisshiny. I like these threads. It’s great to get an insight into other people on the forum.
@steve99 Never knew you were a film editor!

steve99

@soundtemple said:
Congrats @shinyisshiny. I like these threads. It’s great to get an insight into other people on the forum.
@steve99 Never knew you were a film editor!

That’s because I’d rather be Lead (or any level) UX designer on the world’s coolest next generation midi controller

soundtemple

@steve99