7 Tips for Thriving in the Film Industry as a Film Composer
I recently met with Irene Soriano, an award winning writer, film curator, and festival programmer (Sundance, AFI, Outfest) along with my friends at the FilAm Film Collective. Over dinner in the back of a local gastropub, I learned more about navigating and thriving in the film industry and left feeling like I went to a masterclass!
In this article I want to share my takeaways from the conversation and better internalize the advice that was swapped at the table, but from my perspective as a film composer.
*DISCLAIMER: These are my thoughts/opinions mixed in with topics we discussed and are not direct quotes.
Happy post-dinner photo!
Tip #1 - Not everyone you work with needs to be your friend.
As an introvert who prefers having a small group of close friends, I was honestly relieved to hear this one!
I’ve felt awkward in the past having so many past collaborators that I don’t know on a more personal level and it was a huge weight off my shoulders to hear that not every professional relationship has to be part of your personal life.
I know it sounds really obvious, but as someone who started this career not too long ago the lines between friend and client were very blurry.
Deciding which relationships you want to keep in your professional life and which ones you want to have in your personal life isn’t something that occurred to me.
While many people would agree that the one who gets hired is usually a friend or mutual connection, there are plenty of projects I’ve been on where I was neither a friend or mutual connection.
If I become friends with a director after working together, I’d consider it a bonus rather than a prerequisite to working together.
Tip #2 - Investing in relationships comes with risk— trust in someone should be earned over time.
This was a really intuitive piece of advice that I’d never heard phrased this way before. It reminded me of a project that I left earlier this year that I later realized I shouldn’t have taken.
Without getting into the details, this advice was a reminder for me to be more cautious of directors who make big promises and then turn out to be very challenging to work with.
I wish that I had taken the time to ask a mutual that I trust about them instead of just saying ‘yes’ and feeling invested in the relationship right away.
This advice is relevant for all film composers no matter where you are in your career, but the stakes get higher the more established you become. Treat every new professional relationship, especially ones from outside of your core circle of filmmakers, with caution!
Tip #3 - Feeling bothered by competition is a reminder of what you’re not doing.
If you follow other composers and filmmakers on social media, there’s no shortage of opportunities to compare yourself.
Maybe one of your friends scored a Netflix thing, or conducted their music at a recording session.
Maybe a composer you follow has a bigger audience than you.
A healthier way of dealing with comparison could be to see it as a chance to:
Realize whether you’ve been putting off something you want to work on.
Remind yourself to embrace your own path.
This is my favorite piece of advice shared at the dinner!
Instead of making comparison a negative thing, you can use it as an opportunity to reflect or reevaluate.
Tip #4 - Use your strengths to fill in the gaps when working with difficult people.
Sometimes you work with people that make a project more challenging and can’t avoid them.
Looking at their strengths and weaknesses in addition to your own will give you an idea for how to approach working together.
The idea is to adapt so that you use your strengths to make up for the other person’s weaknesses.
The only problem is that if you don’t already know this person and how they work, it could be difficult to adapt when working with them for the first time.
This advice came from the perspective of working in corporate television, but I think it can be applied to teams that you work regularly with!
Moving forward I definitely want to remember this to improve the collaboration experience.
Tip #5 - Pin relevant projects to the top of your feed and create a more focused bio before reaching out to key contacts on Instagram.
If you’ve been following me for a while, you’ll recognize this tip. At the dinner, we discussed how people in the film industry will make assumptions, right or wrong, based on what they see on your Instagram profile.
Let’s say you reach out to a filmmaker who is working on a documentary you’d love to score but your Instagram feed is filled with fantasy orchestral music, and another composer also reaches out but they have music for documentaries pinned and easily accessible at the top of their feed.
There’s a very high chance that the other composer will grab their attention, even if your music is better quality.
For composers who do multiple things like me, showing more focus through the bio could be helpful as well.
Instead of Film Composer, Educator, & Content Creator, I could put Composer for Film & Documentaries, but only if scoring more films, including documentaries was a focus of mine (which it’s currently not).
Just something to think about!
Tip #6 - Having an online presence is essential for up & coming filmmakers (and composers).
We spent quite a bit of time at the dinner talking about social media and the common objections filmmakers have to building an online presence, particularly on Instagram.
They’re pretty much all the same reasons a composer would object to.
I think for those who think they can succeed today without having an online presence, you’re betting on being an exception.
If it’s too difficult to find anything about you and your work online, potential collaborators and people who want to learn more about your work will move on to someone else.
I try to ingrain this in my 1:1 and Gig Hunting Kit students and hearing this come up at the table from people in the industry with more experience than me was just extra confirmation.
No one said anything about needing to be a full-blown content creator, just that people in the film industry should be able to learn about you regularly- even if you only post on Instagram 1x/month.
Tip #7 - Think globally.
The context of this tip was about not limiting our work as Filipino American/Filipinx artists to just San Diego, LA, or the US and trusting that stories about our experience can be recognized by the diaspora (all Filipinos around the world).
If you’re not Filipino and are confused by the above- this applies to composers of all backgrounds and the way we share our stories and find work as well.
No matter where you are in your career or where you are in the world…
there’s something you’ve experienced that is worth sharing that can be recognized by others on a fundamental level.
Many of you have expressed how relatable my story is even though it’s very unlikely your background is exactly the same as mine.
You don’t have to be a Filipina-American composer and former scientist to understand what it’s like to have a dream and struggle and fight your way into a difficult industry.
Lastly, there is no reason why you can’t connect with a filmmaker on the other side of the globe and do international collaborations. One of my first paid projects was with student filmmakers from Scotland!
Why limit yourself to just working on local productions when film is more international and democratized than ever?
Final Thoughts
To all the film composers reading this, I hope you found something insightful from my notes on this conversation. I’m really grateful that everyone was super encouraging and open to me sharing these ideas!
Ultimately I learned that composers and filmmakers are in the same boat when it comes to navigating the industry, and we can learn a lot from each other.
Thanks for reading and I hope this helps!
-Cheska
Cheska is a film composer, educator, and content creator based in San Diego, CA. When she’s not sharing her journey as a composer or working on films, she helps other composers connect with filmmakers online and market themselves (and their music!) authentically online.
📚 Learn how to find film scoring work yourself: https://www.cheskanavarro.com/gighunt...
📚 On a budget? Check out the Gig Hunting Kit PDF Guide: https://www.cheskanavarro.com/shop/p/...
🤝 Work w/ Me 1:1 https://www.cheskanavarro.com/coaching
☕ Say Thanks: https://buymeacoffee.com/cheska_yo/me...
📲 Instagram: @cheska_yo
🎬 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@cheska_yo
