Music Arranging/Recording Fees for Feature Film

[dubaifox]

So what does it cost to take your electronic orchestral score to the Silver Screen??

Composing Fees Aside, what are we looking at for:

Arranging/Printing costs
Recording with Live Orchestra
Mixing/Mastering to deliver to the Dub Stage

Any other associated fees???

Paul

[mr.armadillo]

You've already seen it coming: That's impossible to answer.

- How complex is the music?
- How many minutes of music?
- How will you hand the orchestrator(s) your score? Most guys are used to working with MIDI files laid out like that: Strings sus, Strings det, Woodwinds sus, Woodwinds stacc and so on.
- How many musicians?
- Which orchestra? The City of Prague is about 30$ per musician and hour (they are excellent). Others may be a LOT more expensive.
- Which engineer will you choose?
- Will you work to picture, using clicktracks?

...

[dubaifox]

- How complex is the music?

Epic Score so quite complex

- How many minutes of music?

40 Minutes

- How will you hand the orchestrator(s) your score? Most guys are used to working with MIDI files laid out like that: Strings sus, Strings det, Woodwinds sus, Woodwinds stacc and so on.

Yes we would do it this way as well

- How many musicians?

Interested in cost difference between using a full 50 piece orchestra for the entire score, or just 20 to fill out sample libaries

- Which orchestra? The City of Prague is about 30$ per musician and hour (they are excellent). Others may be a LOT more expensive.

Interested in cost difference between say Prague and LA

- Which engineer will you choose?

Not the best in the world but a good one

- Will you work to picture, using clicktracks?

Yes



At this point I am just looking for an average. Not the most expensive, but also not the cheapest option. Just middle of the road.

Thanks for your input, and I realized after posting that there was a bit of information missing.

Cheers!

Paul

[mr.armadillo]

Originally Posted by dubaifox

Interested in cost difference between say Prague and LA.

If you're well prepared, have a skilled conductor and everything's running smoothly, you'd be fine with just two 4 hour sessions (including breaks, so actual recording time will be less) to record 40 minutes of music.

I'd calculate with 60 people (50 piece orchestra + conductor + engineers and helping hands), so that's 60 * 8 hours * 30$ = 14400 $ for Prague.
If you add travel and accomodation expenses and misc. stuff to your budget, you'll end up at around 20k.

I'm not too familiar with union rates for session musicians over at L.A., but I believe you can take that above figure and multiply it by 8 and you've got your rate.



Hope that helps!

[mr.armadillo]

Here's another figure from a German orchestra:

$30k for 40 Minutes of music, 70 piece orchestra, everything included.
(orchestration, printing of score, score prep, conductor, recording, mix).

Guess that's pretty much the lowest price you're gonna get.

[Postman]

$30k for 40 Minutes of music, 70 piece orchestra, everything included.
(orchestration, printing of score, score prep, conductor, recording, mix).

Wow, that seems really incredibly reasonable! It's been over 20 years since I've had anything to do with this end of the business but if the orchestra is good (string players know how to use an "A") then this is a good package price. Which orchestra? I have a job coming next year that might be interested in such a deal.

[mr.armadillo]

You can download some info here: www.sonicminds.net/Live_Orchestra.zip

Their concept is to book the "Brandenburgisches Staatsorchester Frankfurt" on a fixed date for a few days trying to get down as many music as possible in that time, so you're basically "sharing" the orchestra with other composers, which helps keeping costs low. You'll have to send them the music to be orchestrated, printed and recorded a month prior to recording date, which is a bit of a bummer and won't really allow for last minute changes to the score.

Here's their promo thread over at Gearslutz: http://www.gearslutz.com/board/new-p...dings-all.html