I just stayed up all night updating my music portfolio. It’s something I should have done a long time ago. Since I first created it, you could always listen to the songs, but there weren’t any visuals. It wasn’t the best way to advertise myself as a film composer. This morning I finally added a few corporate videos, so at least there’s some proof now! :-) Ultimately, I hope to add more narrative stuff as well.
There were a lot of short films I did music for back in college, but I don’t actually have many copies of the finished works. Lots of reasons why, too. Sometimes I just didn’t ask. Sometimes they didn’t actually get finished. Believe me, I know how that is; I worked on two major film projects in college and neither of them ever got through production. Of course, you have to make some big life changes when your school suddenly closes its doors forever. Same goes for when you finally graduate. I always thought I would go back and finish them, but it was hard to stay committed. Everything happened so fast, time went by, and suddenly it was impossible.
Looking back on it, I don’t think I considered myself a serious musician for many years. It was just a hobby that I cultivated often. I always enjoyed helping other people and it was a lot of fun, not to mention a great creative outlet. Though with a few exceptions, I never took any music courses, so it never felt like composing was my profession. I was learning how to write screenplays, use cameras and edit video. That’s what my degree was in. I waffled between music and film so much that I undoubtedly missed some great opportunities.
I lost touch with so many people, too. My screenwriting teacher Hank Isaac was one of the first people to advocate that I compose music full-time. He encouraged me to look for an agent in Los Angeles, and sent many freelance job postings my way. But fear and uncertainty kept me from pursuing these things. Was I really a film composer? Or was I a director or an editor? Maybe I just wanted to be.
Even now, I’m still interested in writing and directing my own films, editing video and doing visual effects. But when I stop to look around me, I see the new MIDI controller keyboard I have standing against the wall. I see the mixer on my desk, connected to a condenser mic my friends and I bought in high school. There’s a hard drive filled with gigs and gigs of loops and samples. My desk is littered with the CD cases for several film and video game soundtracks — and just underneath, written on a legal pad, are music notes for a freelance job I’ll be finishing soon.
Now I realize what has stared me in the face all this time:
Music is my life. I am a film composer.
