Take 6 Extended Interviews

TAKE 6, POV BOX: ORCHESTRAL CONTRACTOR

FULL INTERVIEW: ISOBEL GRIFFITHS

The person in charge of putting the orchestra together that will record the score is called the orchestral contractor. Although virtually unknown to film audiences, the name of Isobel Griffiths is legendary in the film industry. After becoming one of the first women orchestral contractors in English cinema, Griffiths founded her own company in 1985, Isobel Griffiths Ltd. Orchestral Contractors, currently the main orchestral contracting firm for international blockbuster movies every year. Isobel Griffiths Ltd. employs a handful of orchestral contractors—all women, incidentally—whose names are attached to dozens of Hollywood productions every year. Recent films for which Griffith’s company has been responsible include Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children (2016), Kung Fu Panda 3 (2016), Wonder Woman (2017) and Mary Poppins Returns (2019).

JH: An orchestra contractor is sometimes called a fixer. What is it that you fix?

IG: Yes, the colloquial name for an orchestra contractor is a “fixer” in the UK. Basically, we fixers put together groups of freelance musicians for any type of recording—but mainly for film scores. However, we also work for composers, arrangers and record producers in putting together groups of musicians for albums, TV, Radio, Cinema and online commercials or jingles, production and trailer music, TV dramas as well as feature films.

JH: Where does the term “fixer” originate, do you know?

IG: In the early days, the 1950s, hiring musicians wasn’t done by phone. They just turned up at a place called Archer street, North of Soho in London, which I think was a music publishing area. Songwriters would go there and be paid by publishers to sit to write together and record demos. Well, apparently, musicians would turn up at Archers street and the fixer would go, “you, you, you, you,” and the rest of them would go home. And that, I think, is where “fixer” first came to be used.

JH: The fixer put things together at the last minute, then.

IG: That’s right. Now, when I started out in the 1970s as a fixer, there were no women in this line of work. I had been working as a secretary—or assistant, as we say nowadays—in the music and advertising businesses. In 1977, I started working for a composer from New York living in London who mainly wrote music for commercials. One day, his contractor was less than enthusiastic when my boss asked him to book a string section for the following morning. Not much notice! That was the moment I got my break. When my boss wondered if he should start a contracting division, I jumped at it. I started contracting musicians for his commercials. After eight years, I decided to leave and start my own company and I gradually accumulated more and more clients to the point where now we are eight staff, four of them being orchestral contractors.

JH: That is an amazing story! Over the course of a job, with whom does the orchestral contractor communicate the most? The composer? The film director?

IG: In our process from start to finish on, say a film score project, we hear from a client who would be one of several individuals depending on the size of the project and how many clients are involved. A client could be the composer, the orchestrator or the conductor, the music supervisor, the post-production supervisor, or the American film studio music department executive. As orchestral contractors, we are quite far down the food chain! On smaller projects we are sometimes in touch with the producer in terms of their office applying to the musicians’ union for low budget status, or if we are invoicing the film company for the musicians’ fees in advance of the recording.

JH: In other words, the composer is the one you communicate with, not the film director.

IG: Yes. In an ideal world we will be in direct touch with the composer and his or her assistant, usually the orchestrator. They will give us a session schedule with a line-up per session and we will in turn prepare a cost estimate for the musicians’ fees which is sent to either the composer if he is on a package or we will send it to the film company if they are footing our bill. As fixers, we charge a ten percent booker’s fee on the musicians’ costs at the bottom of the estimates. Quite often there will be numerous changes to the session schedule as a result of the composer’s many meetings with the director.

JH: Sounds straightforward.

IG: Not really! There can be radical changes to the film after various screenings and previews of the film which are shown to either research audiences or film studio executives. These screenings often result in the film being re-cut which in turn affects the score, and so the composer has to rewrite. The process of spotting, meetings, screenings and previews, take place over a period of weeks or even months. We often have to revise our estimates as the changes develop. This process usually involves at least one move of dates—normally a few weeks later—to accommodate rescoring the changes. Plus, sometimes release dates can move if there have been re-shoots as a result of screenings or previews.

JH: Now it’s starting to sound a little less straightforward…

IG: And we’re not done yet! Once the recording dates seem to have settled and work well with the orchestra and recording studio availability, then we then start putting the individual musicians on hold. We have a very specific team of players we work with regularly. We book predominantly freelance musicians, particularly in the strings. But, because in London we have the choice of various symphony and chamber orchestras, we are fortunate to have the pick of the best musicians in London. So, we’ll often book principal players from these orchestras, particularly in the wind and brass. The principal players in the top London orchestras have shared jobs that allows them to have a foot in the freelance world, something they really enjoy. As a result, we are in a position to book the crème-de-la-crème of the players on London orchestral scene and book a world-class, bespoke orchestra for each project.

JH: To be clear, you would not book an orchestra like the London Symphony, but you are using freelance players, some of whom may play with the London Symphony.

IG: Right, we don’t book a listed orchestra. The London Symphony Orchestra works as the London Symphony Orchestra, and I wouldn’t be involved in that at all. Some people like Alexandre Desplat have a massive loyalty the London Symphony. I have sometimes worked for Alexandre, like The King's Speech (2010), for instance, usually when the London Symphony isn’t available. Another composer who’s had a relationship with a listed orchestra like the London Philharmonic is Howard Shore has always had a relationship for the last 25 years with the London Philharmonic Orchestra. They were used for several of The Lord of the Rings films, but we were called in for Return of the King (2003), I think, since they weren’t available.

JH: OK, so you’ve hired the musicians for the gig. What happens next?

IG: Once the musicians are on hold for our project, we get first refusal if they are offered alternative work. Musicians like working on film sessions. Plus, this work is comparatively well paid compared with concert work. In fact, they will often get out of existing work to play on a film score. Needless to say, we, as fixers, tend to tie the sessions so the composer has a consistent orchestra throughout his project. Composers often have other requests other than orchestra on their projects, depending on the style of film: ethnic or specialist soloists, swing bands, rhythm sections and choirs or vocal soloists.

JH: This is starting to sound really complicated. How do all of these people get paid for their work?

IG: When we get closer to the recording dates, we will then invoice the film company 100% of the musicians’ fees in advance of the session, due to the British Musicians’ Union’s 100% cancellation fee policy. Once we have received payment, we send a booking sheet to the composer listing all the different line-ups per session—a film composer will often use an A, B and C orchestra. These are basically orchestras of different sizes. Once he approves it, we confirm all the musicians’ bookings, but only once the client is completely happy for us to confirm, since there is no going back after that.

JH: How do musicians’ fees work?

IG: Fees work on a sliding scale based on hours. Most films, particularly American films will reach—if you can get your head around this—over 801 musicians’ hours. And if you reach more than 801 musicians’ hours, which say, would be an eighty-piece orchestra at ten hours, then you go onto scale four, which is the lowest scale, and that’s 60 pounds an hour.

JH: So, after 801 hours the fee goes down?

IG: Yes. There’s a sliding scale of one to four. The client buys in bulk. The more musicians you book, the cheaper it gets.

JH: So, it depends on the number of musicians?

IG: Yes. It’s about numbers, literally. If you had an eighty-piece orchestra for three- or four-hour sessions, or two threes and a four, that’s then hours. Or you could have a ninety-piece orchestra for slightly less hours. The other way you can get to scale four, which is less expensive, is if you’re recording a low budget film. You can apply for a low budget status.

JH: Interesting. Is this base scale international or is it just English?

IG: Just English.

JH: Do you know how it works in the United States?

IG: It’s a short novel!

JH: Best to stop there, I think! So, the musicians are signed up and set to record on a particular date. Are there ever last-minute changes of recording dates?

IG: Most films move at least once. The composer or music supervisor will contact me and I will have to reshuffle everything, and often change players.

JH: This is getting exhausting. Once the orchestra is finally in the room recording, do you as the orchestral contractor do anything during the recording process?

IG: Oh yes! As fixers we attend every session, checking that all the musicians have arrived at the studio and replacing anyone who is sick or unable to turn up.

JH: Your work is far from done, then!

IG: Right. We also monitor the time and the breaks. On a three-hour session, there is a fifteen-minute tea break. If we run over the three hours, we monitor the overtime each musician has done and re-budget those costs on the spot for the producer. Then, after the sessions are completed, we generate union consent forms for the musicians to fill in and sign on the last session. This entails each musician signing the rights to their performance over to the film company to use on the specific film soundtrack, which we are recording in all media in perpetuity, plus the soundtrack album release. We then pay the musicians by bank transfer the following day and send the fee analysis to the film company accompanied by a copy of each musicians’ consent forms.

JH: That’s a lot of work.

IG: Yes, and that’s just the bare bones of what a fixer does from start to finish on a project. Touch wood, everything goes smoothly in the studio and there are no surprises. It should, with enough preparation by the composer and his team! There will always be tweaks to the cues on the scoring days and the director may still have comments and contributions, but hopefully they will be minor. Sometimes the composer will have numerous orchestrators on a film depending on the time scale for writing the music. If there are changes to the film, the composer’s writing time is cut down so much he or she has no time to orchestrate himself, particularly as the director and producers usually want to hear synth mock-ups of most or all of the cues before they sign off on them.

JH: I forgot to ask about the conductor. Tell me about that.

IG: The conductor of the score is sometimes the composer, but more often the composer will prefer to be in the studio control room during scoring sessions to field questions or changes from the film director. The orchestrator will sometimes conduct. Other times, we hire a UK-based conductor if the orchestrators are too busy writing up to the last minute. Sometimes they are still writing during scoring! The decision of who should conduct can be a toss up between the orchestrator, who is familiar with the music, or a local conductor who is familiar with the players.

JH: I’m curious about the recording process itself, specifically recording parts of the orchestra versus recording the entire orchestra at once.

IG: Yes. Recording the orchestra in parts is called “stemming.”

JH: Right. The stems are recordings of different sections of the orchestra.

IG: It must have been twenty odd years ago, I think, the first person I came across to record the orchestra separately, to separate brass from strings from winds, was Hans Zimmer. Zimmer was basically treating a film orchestra session the way we used to think about making records. You do the strings during the day, and the wind and brass in the evening.

JH: Hans Zimmer was a real visionary, it seems. This was in the late 1990s?

IG: I guess it was, I’m trying to remember. Around the time of The Gladiator (2000). After that, it became a fashion for directors to demand separation.

JH: Is that that now the most common way of recording a score?

IG: For the most part. Occasionally, Zimmer will record something without separation, The Little Prince (2015), for example, which he did with Richard Harvey. That was all live. John Powell also from time to time. He might do How to Train Your Dragon, that we’ve got coming up. Just depends on the nature of the music.

JH: That’s How to Train Your Dragon 2?

IG: No, the third film I believe (How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World, 2019).

JH: I can’t keep all of these sequels straight!

IG: Tell me about it…

JH: One last question, if I may. Given how long you’ve been working in the film industry, how would you say that your job as a fixer has changed since you started some forty years ago?

IG: The main change in my job as a fixer since the 1980s is that I am now not the only woman orchestral contractor in London! When I started fixing, all the established fixers were men and were normally the leader or concertmaster of the orchestra. The fixer playing in the orchestra, usually leading, was the norm. The other big change over four decades has been the arrival of synth mock-ups of cues which would be signed off by the director prior to scoring. This process was really introduced to the scoring world by Hans Zimmer. It changed the face of the whole process for composers.

JH: Thank you for taking the time to speak to me, Isobel.

IG: I’m glad to do it, John.