July 17, 2006
Wrong Line of Work
The Smoking Gun has the complete budget for the film, “The Village.” After flipping through over 60 pages, I finally found the music budget page. (It actually continues for a few pages past that.) Among the findings: The composer, James Newton Howard, received what I had previously heard to be the standard rate for a film: $1.3 million. I heard it was “standard” for the big guys, but never saw any proof, until I read the budget. Other tidbits: the copying fee was $52,500. The orchestrator got $64,800 — but that includes $20,000 for transcribing the MIDI files. I would have thought the orchestrator would get a much bigger chunk.
Still — it seems that I’m in the wrong line of work. Or, at least the wrong specialty.
Comments
Daniel Montoya, Jr. says
...especially for Danny Elfman's orchestrator. Since we know he does most of the work anyway...
ZING!
The Sims says
I was at a composers conference a few years ago, and Marco Beltrami was there. He said, in no uncertain terms, never to get into the film scoring business--it will suck the artistic life right out of you.
(Coupled with the sort of haunted, drained look in his eyes, I found it fairly compelling advice. Even though IANAC.)
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