Recording - August 2018 - 57

Continued from page 54
Audience Member: As music supervisors, are
you guys ever involved in suggesting composers
for a show, or are they usually chosen before you
get involved?
Mason: I get involved 100% in choosing composers. There are different uses of... I'm curious
about other music supervisors. But music supervisors are known as-and I see a lot of articles
where they bill themselves as-the song finders.
They don't bill themselves as that, but I read it

"I get 100% involved in researching,
curating, negotiating, spotting
with... I'm in the review sessions. I'm
kind of a crazy person that just gets
way too involved when I should be
out playing and having fun. Don't be
like me."
-Mason Cooper

this ballroom, and they just want to ask, "Hey,
I'm a composer; can I pitch my stuff to you?"
One reason your résumé matters, and it shouldn't, is because sometimes someone is really
talented, but doesn't have the credits yet. For us
to know that somebody went through the
process... That's why a lot of composers will sit
at the knee of one of the big composers and
assist, and ghostwrite, or whatever. If you've
been through the process, that lets us know
that... OK, we have a multi-million-dollar project
that's gonna be laid on your lap; how did you
put the fires out? How did you communicate?
That's important. And very often we'll go
through agents, because that's a curation
process. So, instead of us curating you... You're
talented and you're a nice guy, so we go to
agents. So it could behoove all the composers

here to find a manager or an agent-somebody
that just makes it feel like they had to vet you
somewhat. So if they're pitching you to us, at
least we can rely that there's a level of quality
and process experience.
Frank: Yeah, we want to know that you know
what the hell you're doing. Otherwise, it's gonna
make us look bad if we just bring somebody in.
Mason: I have to learn to talk like him. He just
cuts to the chase. [Audience laughs]
Moderator: He's from Jersey! Here's how it goes,
Mason. You're from Connecticut, and very polite;
Jersey folks are just more direct! [Audience laughs]
Don't miss Part 2 in next month's TAXI Insider!

and go, "So, you're song finders?" Soup to nuts,
to me, a music supervisor is the head of the
music department. Everything is my responsibility. I get yelled at by a lot my peers, like, "If you
do cue sheets, do you charge them extra? Do you
clear every song? Do charge them for a cue?" It's
like, that's my job, so I get 100% involved in
researching, curating, negotiating, spotting
with... I'm in the review sessions. I'm kind of a
crazy person that just gets way too involved
when I should be out playing and having fun.
Don't be like me.
Frank: That's great, I admire that. I'm more like
a song finder. Because on the TV side they come
to me and they're like, "Hey, so here's the music
supervisor, here's the music editor, here's the
composer; you guys make nice." And we're like,
"OK, here we go." But there are some shows
where they're like, "You know what? We had a
composer for the pilot; we don't really love what
we got. We're gonna take another crack at it,
and we need you guys to give us some ideas."
But generally, when that happens on the level
that I'm working at, I've got to go, "OK, let me
contact all of my agencies and let them send
their composers that they represent over and
then we'll demo them." We did that with the
show Barry that's gonna be on HBO. We had to
find the composer that was going to be in, and a
lot of people tested for it. We had like 10 different composers create what they thought a scene
was gonna sound like, and we went by that.
Mason: And the reason we deal with an agent...
There are a lot of composers, probably here in
57

http://www.kiqproductions.com

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Recording - August 2018