Our guest lecturer this week was Lol Hammond, Lol is a Music Supervisor at Vertigo Films he has worked on multiple productions including films such as Bronson. Lol defined a Music Supervisor as someone who is responsible for the composition, sound design and sourced music present on a film/TV production. Because of the nature of his job he has to wait for the film to be in assembly, he will then sit down with the director  and decide which scenes would benefit from music and which would not.

He described his job as “50% creative and 50% negotiation” he explained how he spends a lot of time talking to record companies/publishers trying to clear third party music for use. He went on to say how it can be very difficult sometimes trying to negotiate rights for a piece of music and sometimes the price set by the publisher/record company is out of budget, so he will have to find a similar piece of music that is easier to obtain.

To be a successful Music Supervisor Lol suggested you should have a wide range of musical knowledge in multiple genres, he also talked about how important it was to have good networking skills so you can gain more work.