Jeremy Borum is a film composer and well-established artist in Hollywood. Not only has he composed for dozens of major projects, he teaches seminars, performs for enormous audiences, has built multiple studios, and even co-owns ZMX Music, a digital sheet music publisher. Most recently, his accomplishments include becoming a published author. After reading his end result, Guerrilla Film Scoring, I called him to talk about his inspirations for the book, and why he saw such an inherent need for a work such as this.
Ty Johnson: Tell me a bit about you and Guerrilla Film Scoring.
Jeremy Borum: I’m a pretty busy film composer and orchestrator in Hollywood. I’ve been doing this for a while, and I’ve always focused on large ensembles. So my expertise is with large orchestras and big bands; conducting, managing the sheet music, all of these sort of live elements, which are increasingly and unfortunately rare in this industry. People don’t get big orchestras all that often. So there’s an increasing need to, with a smaller budget and with a smaller time frame, still chart out something that sounds equally good as the live orchestra you wish you had. That was kind of the feed for the idea for the book. You know, the standards are not dropping, the expectations remain the same, but budgets and schedules are shrinking constantly, and so there needed to be some sort of a guide for how to actually do that without sacrificing your art, and that didn’t exist until I made it.
TJ: Was there a particular moment or source of motivation that made you decide you wanted to write this book?
JB: It was a little bit just observation that there was a hole in the industry and a hole in the existing literature, but the moment when I wanted to write the book was absolutely practical, and the entire book is absolutely practical. You won’t learn anything about how to write music in this book, not one thing. It’s all the practical solutions to survive the industry and to grow your career and to get work and these kinds of things. And so in my case, the practical approach that I took for writing the book was that I chose not to write it until I had already sold it. So I was shopping it around to publishers and I just made a proposal, and then once I had actually sold the book and I thought, “Oh my god, that’s real. I have to write this book.” [Laughs] “I just got the check, I don’t have a book!”
TJ: Your book features notes by an impressive number of industry professionals and experts. What made you decide to feature the words of so many other people, and how did you compile all of those voices in one place?
JB: I thought it would be really, really valuable and much more interesting to the readers if there are consistent distractions and consistent insights from other people, because my career might not apply specifically to some readers, but someone else’s may, so it just made sense to have variety for that reason. And again, in a kind of practical sense, celebrity always sells, so having a bunch of names attached was good for sales [laughs]. I’d say about half of them are colleagues of mine, people I knew already, because I’m pretty ingrained here in Hollywood, in the industry. And the other half I found either through word of mouth through that community or through talking to the agents in town, or people who made me think, “Oh I love this guy’s work, I’d love to have him in my book, let’s call him up.” One thing I can say about the team is that it’s a very carefully chosen team so that everybody represents different niches. They’re all celebrities in their niches. Not necessarily celebrities in the normal sense, because nobody knows the guy who writes the trailer music, those aren’t household names. But for those of us in that world, these are some of the kings of the industry. So everyone was carefully chosen to give specialist expertise without too much overlap.
TJ: How long did it take for Guerrilla Film Scoring, from the concept stage to publication, to become a reality?
JB: There are two answers to that question. As I said, I was shopping it around and I didn’t start writing it until it was successfully sold. I wrote the proposal probably three years before it was published, and the book proposal was only about twenty pages, and then I was shopping around looking for agents, and then the agent was shopping around looking for a publisher, and basically I just didn’t do anything for a little more than two years, I just did this proposal. So the idea was there for a while, but it was just looking for a home. I got the contract, and the contract (while we were still discussing it) was going to give me a year to write the book, but by the time it actually got mailed to me, it was only nine months to the deadline, so when it actually came down to it, I had nine months to write the book. But also, it was totally sketched out. The book proposal was very detailed, the whole picture of the book was there, it’s outlined, totally structured. So if you look at the proposal and you read the book, they’re actually not very different. The whole writing process was really just a matter of executing.
TJ: Did you encounter any major challenges or roadblocks while you were trying to put the project together?
JB: For me, I’d say the biggest obstacle was just the patience. [Laughs] Because I know that it’s a good idea, I know it’s wanted, and publishers just move slowly, so I think that was the only major roadblock. And I’d also say getting the first interview done and wrapped; that was just a little bit of a turning point because that was Stewart Copeland, founder and drummer for The Police, who has been scoring film for twenty or twenty-five years, and he’s a big enough name for it all to work, and I had a publisher in my back pocket, then everybody said, “Yes, oh cool! That sounds like a great project.” It was not particularly hard to get him, but once I did, then that was a turning point that opened a lot of doors.
TJ: In the beginning of Guerrilla Film Scoring, you talk about the difficulty of finding scoring work, and you compared it to a battleground, which kind of inspired the name of the book. Could you speak to that?
JB: I think there’s no question that the hardest work of a creative, in any field, is finding the work. That’s actually harder than doing the work! And particularly in music, because music is so broadly loved and so broadly practiced, there’s just a lot of people out there. There’s a huge amount of competition. As the industry is morphing constantly, then it’s just tricky to find our way, and this struggle doesn’t change as you get deeper into the career, because your needs are greater and your expectations are greater (and your standards are greater), and maybe you’ve gotten older and you have a house and kids and a pool and who knows what. And so the same struggle is always there: How do I find the next, bigger gig? It’s kind of a fun game. But I wanted with the book, and this is kind of an important element of the book, I wanted to be optimistic, but also absolutely honest about what this career path is. Because a lot of people think it’s gonna be cool writing music for movies, and they don’t necessarily realize that they are opting to become small business owners and they have to know tax law and corporate structure and they have to wrap their heads around marketing and branding and recruitment and sales and touch campaigns and all these other things. So I wanted to have a brutal honesty about how hard it can be, although it’s totally possible. Everything’s possible.
TJ: In chapter five, you talk about battling writer’s block and trying to find your voice once you’ve started the actual creation process. What have you found personally to be most helpful in these areas?
JB: I’ve basically just decided that it’s not really a block, it’s just insecurity, and the people who can get over it, and get over themselves, and maybe throw their ego out the window for a while, they don’t have that problem. For me it’s about doing the work. You know like when we’re in school and we’re in English class and we had those free-writing exercises? Teachers are just trying to get students used to writing anything. At all. Just teaching them to get used to being productive with a pencil. Teaching people how to write anything good, you’ve got to just start by writing anything at all, right? And so you put the pencil on the paper and you just don’t stop, and if you run out of interesting things, just write whatever else is in your head, “uninteresting things,” those are core, important things. I realized when I feel like I’m out of ideas, I should not go get coffee or take a break, I should just keep writing bad ideas. Get them out. If I’m writing bad music and it bothers me, write more bad music! And write a lot of bad music! And it starts to get better. It always does. You just have to trust that it’s normal. Don’t judge it. Let it happen. Let it out.
TJ: At the end of your book, you said “developing a career as a composer is an endurance test,” and you outlined some of the most powerful qualities you’ve found to succeeding in the business. For you, which of those have been the most important and have led you the farthest in your professional career?
JB: I’d say the most valuable thing is probably the simplest thing too, and it’s just that I don’t give up on it. I work relentlessly, because I love this and I have fun doing it, and I really, really, really don’t want to do anything else. And sometimes that means I have to work really, really hard just to keep it all going or to meet the deadlines I agreed to or to do the three projects I agreed to even though they’re on top of each other. So it’s really – it’s totally boring, but it’s a very focused work ethic. I think that helps more than anything else, because everything else will sort of fall into line if you put the hours in. But it’s certainly a hustle, and I know a lot of people from school and then later professionally who have dropped out and moved on to other things because there’s a really natural pull away from the music industry. Because you could very easily find other jobs that provide more stable lifestyles and higher income. It’s not hard to find those jobs. And that’s a very naturally attractive thing to people, particularly as people are aging and they start to have children or serious relationships or whatever it is. So to stay here and to make it work – it takes effort, and it takes a big time commitment and a desire to spend the time doing this rather than all those others things. You know, Friday night, I don’t really want to go out Friday night and be out drinking every night anymore. I want to be making my music. And I always imagine every Friday night that I’m making music, I’m getting ahead of someone else who’s out drinking [laughs].
TJ: That’s a great way to think about it.
JB: Yeah! You know, the art takes care of itself. We all have our own voices. We have our own thoughts, our own life experiences, and that ends up in the art. So our voices go there, and the real struggle is getting our voice into other people’s ears. That’s it, and that’s just work. Everything else is just noise.
TJ: As a composer, you’ve worked on a large number of features and albums and television shows. What have been some of your favorite projects that you’ve worked on or the areas that you’ve enjoyed the most? And what have been your least favorite?
JB: I think all of us got into music because we love it, and so the work environments that are high-stress and over-pressured and the times that the leaders are not gracious, and everyone has had angry, demanding bosses somewhere along the line – these kinds of settings are the worst part, because it’s just not personable and it’s not fun and it’s not connected and it’s not musical. It’s just like an urgent journey of work, and if that’s all it’s gonna be, then this is the wrong career path. There are other ways to be stressed out and earn better money, so those projects, they come up occasionally, and those for me are the least interesting. I can do it, it’s fine, you know, but it’s not what we want to do. The best parts for me are the times that I get to collaborate with really brilliant musicians, and it’s really just the flipped side of that coin where the level of artistry is high and the musicality and the interpersonal connections are high. Whether that’s with an orchestra or an individual, it doesn’t really matter. But these moments of concepts coming to life, these are the highlights for me. Always. Always. And this magical moment where you put a bunch of paper on the music stand, it’s still not real, and a conductor starts to raise his hands, and eighty musicians are suddenly doing exactly what you imagined, and that moment – it never ceases to be magical for me. I really love it. And it shouldn’t work! It seems like it really shouldn’t work. You know, we’re just putting dots and lines on paper, and somehow that communicates the abstract thing of music, and the orchestra plays, and for me that’s always, always, always the highlight. I love conducting. I love being with large ensembles. I love orchestrating and, you know, there’s a warmth to that sound, and the idea of it becoming real.
TJ: What is the most important thing that you hope your readers take away from Guerrilla Film Scoring?
JB: I think there are two things that I want everyone to understand. First, it’s absolutely possible to build a career writing music for media. Totally possible. And the second thing is that it’s not for everybody. And I hope some people read this book and think, “That sounds like a lot of work, and I’m not really sure I want to enter an industry where the bottom line is getting smaller and smaller all the time.” If I can save people some trouble and they realize, “You know what? I’d rather just be a hobbyist. That sounds more like my career path. I’m going to do that other thing that I’m good at or I’m just gonna do music on the side and I don’t want all the stress that I see in that book.” That would be really valuable, too. So essentially I want people to see what a career in music might actually mean, aside from just the music. That plays to both of those points. So you see, “Yes! It is totally possible! Here are some practical ways to make it happen,” but maybe some people read and realize, “That’s not my thing. I don’t want to do all that all the time.”
TJ: Can you offer any words of advice for aspiring composers or people who might want to be where you are someday?
JB: I could offer a whole book of advice. [Laughs] – Ask a lot of questions. From everybody around. I think this is the most important thing. The thing that has helped me in my learning and in my confidence and in my career progression is that I just inquire all the time. I’ll pick up the phone or I’ll just approach someone at an event. I don’t worry about their status compared to mine. I can learn from a student as well as I can learn from a celebrity who’s twice my age. I think there’s a natural curiosity that has to be there, because curiosity is the best teaching tool and it’s the best creative tool. So somehow it’s all mixed up in that. A curious passion is the core of everything.
TJ: What’s next for you?
JB: Immediately up, an opera that I just orchestrated is playing in Chicago in February [2017] at the Chicago Opera Theatre [http://www.chicagooperatheater.org/morel], and that is written by Stewart Copeland. I was kind of orchestrating, sort of “co-orchestrating” with him. So that’s coming up, and after that I have a little bit of space and I’ll be focusing on business development plans, website design, and sort of long-term vision of where the career is going. These moments where work dries up can be scary. For any kind of artist, there’s a time where the gig is done and now you’re out of work. And this happens consistently – that you’re unemployed for a while and you don’t know where your next work is coming from. And I crave those moments. I seek those moments. Because when there are no outside requirements of me, that’s when I can focus on myself, focus on my skills, focus on my business. There’s always work to do, so when the clients are gone, it’s almost like I can finally get to the real work that’s really gonna pay off for the long-term career development. So in another few weeks I’ll be unemployed, which is to say “busier than ever” [laughs].
Author Biography
Ty Johnson graduated from the University of Oklahoma in May 2016 with a BA in Film and Media Studies. He is an aspiring writer and filmmaker, and is the current Social Media + Communications manager at TWLOHA. He is passionate about people and storytelling. He may be contacted at sjohnson.ty@gmail.com or www.tyjohnson.us.
