You Can't Break Into This Industry - Film/Television/Video Game Composing

My video game cabinet - yes, my PS3 is dusty. Not pictured: Nintendo DS, Game Cube, or the pile of games on the coffee table.

It used to be that networking was enough - but not anymore.


In most books about how to break into the film/television/video game score industry, the author will tell you to network your face off. Network until you're a pile of exhausted sludge in a dingy corner of some conference room, drooling on the 5 cases of business cards that you brought to the event.

With the advent and vast popularity of social media, we can now network from the comfort of our Wonder Woman pajamas, drinking a chamomile tea, at 2am - which is pretty great for us nervous Nellies who get anxious about social interaction with strangers. Of course, it's no substitute for getting out and shaking hands, handing out business cards like candy, and having face-to-face interaction with unfamiliar people, which sucks. Not to say that meeting people is awful - what really burns my biscuits is the high price that conventions put on networking and speakers.

Today, I came across an advertisement for the Game Music Connect event at Southbank Centre in London. They have a pretty impressive set of speakers: Jessica Curry (Dear Esther), Olivier Deriviere (Assassin's Creed: Black Flag IV), and Jason Graves (Tomb Raider), among several others. Here's the catch: this one day event will cost you £125 (that's about $212 for my American readers), though if you purchased in advance, you'd pay £90 (or $153). This event is advertised as being for "amateur, pro, or semi-pro composers," I have to say that I don't know many amateur or semi-pro composers that can drop that kind of cash on a one day event.

I understand that venues are expensive, especially in London. I understand that the speakers need to be paid! I understand that all of these things are expensive and ticket sales need to cover that. But why not try to make it at least a little more accessible? Offering an a-la-cart option for sessions is an option - I know that I would attend at least one session, even if I couldn't afford to partake in the entire conference. Many musicians would.

These kinds of pay-for-play networking and educational conferences totally alienate young composers. When you're a few years out of university, struggling to pay rent on your apartment, scrambling for gigs and projects, you don't have the money for it. It's not a matter of forgoing eating out for a weeks to save up, it's not being able to purchase a travel card for that month, or pay your car insurance, or your electricity bill, or buy ANY groceries. £125 is about 6 weeks worth of groceries for me.

Consider, for a moment, that young composers are expected to work for free and be grateful for the "exposure." (Exposure certainly has its benefits, but I don't see people offering new lawyers their cases and payment in "experience.") So, those of us who are forced to work for experience and exposure, aren't getting paid.

Which means we aren't going to have the funds to splash out on a £125 one day conference, no matter how awesome and informative it is.

When you set a high price of breaking into the industry, you absolutely ensure that the only people who continue to succeed are mostly white, middle class dudes. No wonder there is no diversity on their speaker panel (except Jessica Curry, who serves as the token woman, though she is wildly talented!).