Film schools and academies are graduating more and more potential auteurs, some of whom will go on to direct or produce ground-breaking projects for the theaters, for premium cable networks like HBO and Showtime, for network TV, and for streaming platforms like Netflix. And yet, many of our brightest young filmmakers will not have contact with a trained film composer—or with the extraordinary power music has to shape a narrative—until it is too late for them to prepare themselves for the real-world experience of “directing a score.”

Music can change the way an audience reads character, interprets dramatic ambiguity, or responds emotionally to the peak moments in your film. You owe it to yourself and your audience to know as much about film music as you do about cinematography, art direction, or costume design. The alternative can be creative frustration, if not disaster!

Music is the emotional script of film drama. This workshop series will help you to read and be a co-author of that script.