Cutting to music

[Artie Fufkin]

just a quick query

Im about to start cutting a commercial for a client. We've shot a whole heap of behind the scenes footage of a photo shoot and are going to cut that into a 30 second comercial. This will all be cut to a music track which a composer is going to be writing. Question I had was, if your meant to be cutting to a music track and beats etc......Then would i be right in saying that the composer should have created the song before i start cutting. But this may be hard if he doesn't have an idea of the footage or mood of the clip etc. In the same way it will be hard for me to cut a clip if I have no music track. So what is a man to do? Do you sort of go half way as in I do a rough cut, show him, he writes a tune, then i try and work my cut around that? Im used to already having a song to cut too or having a composer drop in music to a vision locked film. Any tips would be handy

[Daz]

Best thing if you don't have the music is to cut to a "guide track". Either some library music or, because your music will be replaced by your composer, even a commercial track will do. You can show it to your composer with the guide track, but some composers prefer to remain "unpolluted" by preconception. In that case it is a good idea to strip the guide out.

[Matthew]

If I was in that situation I think I'd just get stuck into cutting the best TVC I possibly could, and let the composer writr ther music to go with your cut. Remember, cutting to music doesn't always mean cutting on or with the beat.

[Daz]

Gets your juices going, tho!

[Matthew]

Cor!

[JWRL]

If you have any base level music knowledge you can possibly make life easier for yourself by either specifying or obtaining a time signature, but I pretty much go with Matt's (first) posting. An experienced commercial composer will see musical punctuations in your cut that wouldn't normally occur to the average person - including you and me.

[grinner]

ya can't cut to music that isn't there. You can lay out a story board, if you will, knowing the order of the shots in order to tell the story. You won't be able to get the timing down until you lay the audio track in.