Elise Luguern, Martin Caraux, Pascal Mayer, Steve Bouyer and Raphaël Hamburger answered Libération's questions on music supervision, in an article published in 2016.
Libération survey by Jean-Stéphane Brosse
Published January 22, 2016
On the face of it, this is good news for film music in France. Music, so often neglected and relegated to the back burner of the French film industry, has seen the emergence over the past few years of a number of intermediaries who are supposed to enhance its value and elevate it to its rightful place as an essential cog in film production. Their profession, music supervisor, is a direct descendant of the Anglo-Saxon music supervisor, long established in the United States. But there, the supervisor only deals with pre-existing music - he even makes an art of it - unlike the score producer, who manages the composition of the original soundtracks, not to mention the lawyers and jurists who handle the contracts. Whereas his hexagonal cousin performs all these functions simultaneously. "It may be more artisanal, but it's also richer and sometimes more efficient", says Elise Luguern, one of the first in France to embark on this adventure in the early 2000s. At the time, there were mainly only music supervisors working for large film production companies like EuropaCorp: "The profession was still very poorly known and not at all structured. Producers or directors were looking for talent, without always being aware of what they needed."
Little by little, the supervisor has earned her stripes in the profession, a sign that the soundtrack has gained some weight. From Taxi 3 and La Vie d'Adèle to Tournée and Lucky Luke, Elise Luguern now boasts over a hundred films of all kinds on her CV. "As an independent, you're lucky to be approached by all kinds of producers, from the smallest to the biggest, and all kinds of directors, from first films to established filmmakers. I'm not limited by an editorial line the way you can be when you're dependent on a production company, no matter how big."
While Elise Luguern was one of the pioneers, the number of such film music consultants has steadily increased in recent years. In addition to their work for TV and advertising, they rarely work exclusively in this field. "There are around thirty of them who make one or two films a year, and ten or so who work regularly. And if you go down to those for whom it's 100% of the business, there must be less than five," estimates Pascal Mayer, of Noodles Supervision, a company set up in 2009, with 75 films to its name. "The problem is those who act as..., for example labels and publishers who, among three or four different activities, also work as music supervisors. As Martin Caraux, 36, who set up his own business in 2010, points out, "from the moment you are forced to choose from a catalog, you are limited and discredited".
In theory, then, the supervisor should be able to pick and choose (from composers, majors, small labels, music libraries) to create the ideal soundtrack for a given scenario. His first job is to identify the director's tastes. The first trick is to make a cultural map of the person you're talking to," says Loïk Dury, a loyal collaborator of Cédric Klapisch, who wears the hats of supervisor and composer. Very quickly, you find out what the director likes. That's what being a supervisor is all about: knowing how to speak in words, colors and emotions, whereas a musician speaks in notes or chords. As Pascal Mayer points out, the psychological dimension is essential: "Music is the only time when the director is confronted with another artist, not with specialists in this or that technical field. He's faced with something that's beyond him. It's a source of enormous anxiety."
So we have to work constantly to reassure, to connect two sensitivities. All the more so since the producer and his account book are also involved. It's a lot of diplomacy," says Martin Caraux. You're really in the middle between the producer, the director and the composer. We take on everyone's tensions, we absorb everything."
In practice, however, the music supervisor is very often called upon to manage the scarcity of time and money, to chase costs.
Negotiating downwards through his contacts at record companies, finding the cheapest recording studios and orchestras, unearthing replacement tracks because this or that hit would cost too much. "When you arrive as a fireman, you discover that you have to do everything for x thousand euros and that you'd need triple that to provide just what the film needs. So you have to make intelligent savings. It's like a building site, there are always places where you can cheat, passages where the music isn't strategic," explains Pascal Mayer, who nevertheless denies being a "music salesman": "We spend our time negotiating budgets with labels, but also persuading producers to increase the budget." Then there's the hurdle of the editing room. "What's infernal today are the temp tracks, the temporary tracks, what the editors wedge in before the definitive music," enthuses Loïk Dury. When you work in industrial cinema, artistic decisions can be completely delegated, out of recklessness. It's the editor who chooses the music, because it suits him, because it's the last track he was told about, because his daughter likes it..."
If production companies are increasingly turning to these intermediaries, it's also because they know the maze of publishing rights much better than they do, and save them precious time. For her film Eden, dedicated to the emergence of the French Touch and the electronic music scene, Mia Hansen-Løve didn't need anyone to choose the soundtrack; she had all her tracks in mind. But the intervention of the supervisor, in this case Raphaël Hamburger, was "absolutely essential", she says. He negotiated a flat fee for 34 of the film's 36 tracks, including Daft Punk. " It takes a lot of patience, a lot of breath," admits the director. In certain genres, such as house or rap, there are multiple rights holders. Steve Bouyer, Pascal Mayer's associate, remembers spending three months playing detective to validate a single hip-hop track for Gaspar Noé's Love, knowing that at any moment a single right-holder could say 'no' and everything would be on the floor.
For all these reasons, the profession of supervisor undoubtedly still has a bright future ahead of it, as evidenced by the growing number of people improvising as supervisors. French cinema produces around 250 films a year. Knowing that a supervisor's salary is highly variable, ranging from 1,500 to over 10,000 euros depending on the production, you need to make 10 to 15 films a year to make a living," calculates Martin Caraux. In general, it's a win-win situation for producers, who are relieved of a rather thankless and complex job with a budget that doesn't go into the red. The director also certainly gains in freedom of choice, if he is given new perspectives. Provided he finds the right supervisor - and there are some out there - with a thorough knowledge of music and/or cinema. The wrong supervisor can also be content to surf the current era and genres, without looking much further than his or her own network. What bothers me is the managerial side of the supervisor, when he's only there to cut expenses," concludes Loïk Dury. Things don't invent themselves. It's not enough to get people to listen to three songs on YouTube. What annoys me most is the fear and lack of risk-taking."
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