Framing the Sound: Images that Linger with Ian Neil

A diplomat is definitely on the list, because you’re dealing with a lot of personalities: directors, editors, producers, post-production supervisors… a lot of different voices with different backgrounds. You can influence the way that the film or the television show sounds by using your musical input — that’s obviously the best part of the job. But the reality is that everyone has an opinion on music. It’s very subjective, so you have to listen to everybody else’s opinion.

You need to understand music and how it works with pictures, and you need a broad spectrum of musical tastes. You’ll be asked to look at classical music one day and thrash metal the next. You also need to think legally because we have to understand copyright, even though we’re not lawyers. One day you’re being very creative. The next day you’re managing budgets. Ultimately, you’re a problem solver — creatively, financially, across the board — and getting the result is what you’re asked to do.

I worked in advertising before I worked in film and TV when I first started, and I don’t have one specific ad, but one specific brand for sure. Levi’s was paving the way for how music was being used in a way that hadn’t been done before, and it really did create a massive impact. Some of it was historical, think about T. Rex and The Clash. But every time they put an ad together, it was exceptionally creative.

I was lucky to work on a few of those. They did a range called “Twisted jeans” and they did a spot for that. They wanted to use a reggae-ska track from Prince Buster — one of my favorite artists at that time — but they wanted to re-record it because the version was too old. We didn’t have the technology to remaster and treat it. I was working at Island Records at the time, very famous for Bob Marley and other reggae artists, and they asked me if I could recommend some artists to re-record it. 

I said “Well, why don’t we get Prince Buster?” 

They said “Well, he’s dead, isn’t he?” 

I went “Not the last time I looked”

Within about four weeks, we flew him over, put a band together, and we re-recorded the song called Whine & Grine, and then it became a top 10 hit in the UK. 

When I first started, not many people were doing what I was doing, and in the UK it was mostly advertising. For feature films and TV shows we had the BBC, which didn’t need supervisors since they had a blanket agreement with the societies and could use whatever music they wanted. Over the years it’s obviously exploded and gone through the roof but when I started there were times when you didn’t really know what would happen. But, funnily enough, in advertising you always have to keep the momentum going.

Now technology lets us work faster and more efficiently, things like online streaming, listening to music instantly. In the old days we’d listen to CDs, record songs onto a cassette, and send them to the ad agency by bike. Now, delivering ideas and music is much quicker.

Ironically, some things have gone the other way. We’re now in a global business worth hundreds of millions, yet licensing and exchanging rights is slower than it was 30 years ago. That’s partly because there’s more being done, but also because the music industry hasn’t invested enough to handle the volume. You can end up waiting weeks or months just to get a licence signed or amended because we’re still dealing with an old, inefficient process. 

That’s the bit that hasn’t really changed, writers and artists depend on synchronisation, and many rely on that income. If their publisher or label delays the licence or invoice, it can take a year before they get their share. It’s not insignificant money, especially for smaller artists.

In terms of economic growth, I think there’s plenty of investment, opportunity, and content, and that’s also expanded into the independent world. Ten years ago I’d go constantly to Sony, Warner, and Universal – and still do – but now we deal with many independents too, because there’s so much more music out there. It’s easier for them to use their catalogues, and for us to do deals with them.

At the time, I’d been working with Polygram for two years. I wasn’t a music supervisor, I was focused on advertising but someone brought me the script. I read it and found it funny yet intricate. A couple of weeks later I went to a screening: the edit already had a bunch of songs, and a few, like Dusty Springfield, the Castaways, and the Stooges survived. I think four or five made the theatrical cut.

When Polygram came on board the project, we had access to some great artists and a strong catalog, but it was a very low-budget film, so we had to find music they could actually afford.

I spent some time with Guy and realized we had similar tastes. He clearly liked funk, punk, ska, and soul. On one occasion we had to drive up to Liverpool to see our composer, and Guy asked me to bring music. I made a cassette; seven tracks from it ended up in the film: Pete Wingfield’s “18 with a Bullet,” James Brown’s “Boss,” “Why Did You Do It” by Stretch, and a couple of others.
I remember him literally driving and saying, “Yeah, I like that one.” We later sat with him and the editor, tried different scenes, and dropped tracks into the cut. At the next screening, I saw those songs emerge from the film, and I was genuinely surprised by how easy it seemed. Sometimes it’s just about finding the right sound.

I remember when we were sending out the requests to the labels in the UK and in the U.S., we actually put on the form that this movie was like a UK Pulp Fiction. I genuinely felt that, you know.

I think with projects like that, as a supervisor, there’s only so much you can do. Giles Martin is obviously a very well established, well known music director, music producer. And obviously we knew that Taron Egerton could sing. I was mostly working behind the scenes on negotiating a deal to use the Elton John songs, which you think would just be a quick half an hour phone call, but I think it probably took the best part of six months.

I think when it comes to biopics — and I’ve done a number of them, I’ve done the John Lennon one, the Ian Curtis one — it really depends on how much involvement they want you to be around. It’s more facilitating, rather than creatively putting your stamp on it. But, as I said, it varies from project to project.

The saturation and sheer volume of materials we have today. I think the thing now is that everyone is aware of sync and everyone wants a piece of it. There’s a lot of music coming out and lots of musicians; we literally get 100-150 emails a week from people promoting their music, and it’s very hard to keep on top of. You don’t want to be rude, but if I listened to everything everyone sent me, I’d never get the day job done.

So you have to be quite selective. I’m sure some of the things people send that I don’t get to are probably quite good, but we’re always working under tight deadlines: sometimes you might have the luxury of a day or two to put ideas together; sometimes they want something that afternoon and you just have to react really quickly. 

I could go out three times a night to different gigs or events. I could listen to more music in a day than there are hours in it, but you have to sort of balance it out, and that’s not a problem. It’s just a fact of life now that we’re all available 24/7.

It’s undoubtedly important, but it’s very hard to license large numbers of micro-licences, particularly for the big music companies. For the end user it isn’t very cost effective, unless the company is big enough to have a good marketing spend. 

I think it’s a question of ensuring the right metadata and also presenting the music in an easy-to-navigate way. The one bugbear I have is companies sending the re-records they have made of  big songs, not taking into account how difficult or expensive it is to license the publishing rights.