Composing Music for Film Trailers

By Brian Steckler

Though I’m generally hired to produce artists, write songs, and mix music, I’ve scored tons of commercials and have created my fair share of library film and TV music in all sorts of musical genres, from big sweeping orchestral cues to in-your-face modern rock. The library that I do most of my cue writing for focuses mainly on film trailers. Their main clientele is a group of trailer editors at the major studios.

My job is to write generic trailer music that can be used in whatever way is useful. Most often, I’m asked to write aggressive rock, hip-hop, or electronica with full orchestra on top, for action or thriller-type movie trailers. That said, I’m also frequently asked to replace a temporary cue that the editor used in an initial cut of the trailer that has the right sound or energy, but is either unavailable or too expensive to license in the end. Those cues can be any style.

Brian Steckler’s studio, The Stickhouse

Typically, I’ll write cues that are from 40 seconds to 1:15 minutes long, and rarely is the whole cue used in the final edit. My shortest placement, in The Chronicles of Riddick trailer, was something like 4 seconds pulled out of the very last big chord of a much longer cue. A recent placement took about 8 bars out of a longer cue, and the editor looped it a couple times for the scene he needed.

The usual formula for an action/adventure/thriller trailer cue goes something like this: start with a swirling pad or crazy guitar delay loop that builds until the main drum groove kicks in. This groove will have a driving bass or guitar riff, or if it’s hip-hop it’ll be a synth line or a vinyl-sounding riff. This vamps long enough that it can be lifted and used as a longer loop if the editor likes. Then the orchestra will enter. Usually I’ll start with the low strings and build for 8 bars or so, leading up to the biggest section of the entire cue.

At this point, it all hangs out…big heavy guitars rocking out, or screaming synths in an electronica cue, with the full orchestra blasting away. Blaring dissonant french horns work well here. On top of all that is the violin line, perhaps doubled with an electric guitar in a rock cue walking up the scale a note at a time, headed toward a big final tense chord where the groove stops and the big “boom” hits. That chord rings out and develops into something interesting, perhaps similar to the intro pad, an ostinato flute figure, or something soft and tense for a few seconds, so the deep-voiced voiceover can say “Coming Summer 2010.”

Brian Steckler recording piano for a record in Warsaw, Poland

Of course, all bets are off if I’m scoring to the picture. When working with picture on a film trailer, it’s much more like scoring a commercial, where you’re heightening whatever emotion is happening on-screen with the music you’re adding. But because the cuts and energy move quickly, you have to make things develop in a hurry without sounding like an old Road Runner cartoon. There will be picture cuts or visual elements that you need to “hit” with the music, but it quickly starts to look and feel like a cartoon if every! move! has! a! musical! hit! with! it!!!

There are exceptions, but almost all of the orchestral cues I’ve ever done have been created on a computer and not by a room of 70 instrumentalists. For some reason, I can’t seem to get anybody to fund that for me. (Hmmm, I wonder why that is?) So, I’m left to use virtual orchestras. The current crop of samples is quite good and, in the hands of someone who really knows what they’re doing, can be nearly indistinguishable from the real deal.

Purchasing an orchestral instrument library can cost anywhere from a few hundred dollars to many thousands. The more expensive the library, the more articulations and nuances you have at your fingertips. But since scoring isn’t my main focus, I get by with a pretty basic library. But even that can sound really convincing.

Brian Steckler in the studio

I’ve found that the trick to making a less than complete set of articulations work is to compose “to the sounds” I have available. Unlike a “real” orchestral composer, I can’t just imagine in my head what I want, write it down, and then try to recreate exactly that with the string library on the computer. Instead, I form the parts as I’m playing the sounds, so that if a melody line or string run or brass attack doesn’t sound “real” within the limits of my sounds, I can modify the writing itself until it does work. Besides, with a wall of heavy guitars rocking out, who’s going to notice if the viola glissando doesn’t sound quite like the real thing?

Well, I just got a request for a batch of orchestral “ominous/tension” trailer cues that don’t get overly dissonant or huge. I guess I better to get work!

Brian and his wife June have been married for 15 years, have two boys, Zane (8) and Nate (5), and love living in the trees.

You can find Brian Steckler at brian@thestickhouse.com, TheStickHouse.com, @stickhouse on Twitter, or on that old fashioned phone thingy: 530.401.7321.