RECORDING November 2024 - 20

Compositional Worlds
of
The
Michael Whalen
I worked with producers in Los Angeles
that I never met. I scored about 20 shows
for them, and I never met them in person.
We might talk on the phone or they would
send notes and offer direction, but overall,
they trusted me to do what I do and knew
I was going to deliver.
There was a real sense of mutual respect.
I respected them, and there was a real sense
that they knew I was there to take care of
an entire aspect of their production so they
wouldn't have to think about it.
What about advertising?
The advertising thing is all about competition.
The only way I can categorize it,
especially when I started in the 1980s, is:
Imagine a large concrete room shaped like
an octagon, and you've got 30 people with
knives. Someone throws a raw steak in there,
and your job is to survive in that room and
somehow get enough of that steak so you
can make it to the next time that they throw
another stake into the middle of the room.
That's advertising. I did very well for a
long time. I was doing four, five, six demos
a day, and I was very busy. People call
me for commercial work now, and they're
like, " Hey, do you wanna do something? "
I'm like, " Yeah, but I'm not competing. If
you want to give me the job based on
what you know I can do, great. "
I'm not being a diva. I've paid my dues
at this point; I've won 12 Clios and two
Emmys at this point-I'm not gonna sit there
and fight in the octagon for the steak.
And what about film?
The film thing is interesting because I have
told my film friends for at least ten years, " Hi,
streaming, it's coming, everything's gonna
change! Nobody on your side has any idea
how the mathematics or the finance works,
and everything's gonna change. "
It has taken about ten years for streaming
to take hold. On the music side, at least
there's something that's sort of trackable
regarding streaming income-it's not like
you're jumping up and down about it, but
at least it's predictable to a certain point.
In the film business it's a total disaster.
20 RECORDING November 2024
You never know from moment to moment
what is happening on the finance
side-where the money is coming from,
how much money, etc. On the TV side, in
terms of streaming shows and documentaries,
it's like someone did their homework
and figured things out.
On the film side, they are sort of trying to
force people to go to theaters or whatever,
but that economy-it's over. It's like listening
to the radio; it's just not relevant anymore.
Terrestrial
radio is
still
there, but the
audience has moved on. I think the same
thing has happened in the film business,
where the economies of scale that people
have gotten used to have completely
changed, and people are still trying to
hold onto it.
This makes having creative or musical
conversations with producers and directors
difficult because they are under
so much stress. They are under so much
pressure to deliver something, and it had
better work and be profitable-unless it's
the new Tom Cruise movie, there are a lot
of financial failures. So if they are under
that kind of stress, now you are under that
kind of stress.
What are the differences
between film, TV and commercial
work from a procedural or
workflow perspective?
In the old days, you would work on a commercial
and have 15 people from the agency
come and sit in the control room with you.
You'd play it for them; they might have one
or two changes. Having that many people
listening over your shoulder and making suggestions
might be frustrating. Still, the good
thing was that all of the decision-makers were
right there in the room, and they needed to
find a consensus quickly so they could move
on to the next thing.
This meant you needed to be able to make
those changes quickly. After they give you the
changes, you might have about three minutes
or less to fix and get everything ready to go.
Luckily, in my Synclavier days, I got really fast
and good at making changes.
Of course, it was easier on a commercial,
which has a lot fewer tracks. There
might be hundreds and hundreds of
tracks to deal with on a film score. And
the idea that you're gonna sit there and
make edits or fix stuff on the fly with so
many moving parts, even if you've laid
it out yourself and it's coming out of your
own template, can be a disaster. You
might be able to transpose a section or
take out a beat or two to offer an idea
of what their changes might sound like,
which is fine, but the idea that you're
gonna sit there and do it for real with
people standing waiting is brutal.
Boston Studio in 1999 with
Synclavier and Tons of Gear
RECORDING November 2024

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