10. What Nobody Tells You About Getting Paid (Or Not)

There is a conversation that happens far less often in film scoring circles than it should, and it is not about orchestration, mockups, or studio gear. It is about money. Specifically, it is about the first few years of your career, when you are hungry for any opportunity, and the world seems happy to take advantage of exactly that hunger.

I want to talk about it openly, because I made mistakes here that I think every composer makes, and because I believe the silence around this topic does more harm than the mistakes themselves.

The Commission I Should Not Have Taken

Early in my career, a project came my way, and I said yes almost before I had finished reading the email. The excitement of being asked, of being trusted with someone's film, completely overwhelmed any practical thinking. I did not look closely at the size of the production's budget. I did not ask what portion of it was meant for music. I simply accepted a fee that, in hindsight, had very little relationship to the actual labor the project required.

I do not regret it, not really. At that stage of my development, the project gave me something a paycheck could not: a step up, a credential, a foothold. But I also did not spend any more time agonizing over the underpayment than I needed to. I learned from it and moved forward, because dwelling on it would have cost more than the mistake itself.

A Framework for Evaluating What You're Offered

What changed after that experience was how I assess a project before saying yes. Today, when someone brings me an opportunity, I look at several things together, not in isolation:

• Who the offer is coming from, a major studio like Netflix, or a first-time director making their debut feature?

• The overall budget of the project.

• The track record of the director or producer, what budgets have their previous projects had?

• The scope of the music, how much of the runtime needs scoring?

• The timeline, how much time do I actually have?

• The instrumentation required, is this a solo piano score or a full orchestral one?

• Whether live recording is involved, which changes both the workload and the cost structure.

Taken together, these give you a rough but honest sense of how much time and intensity a project will demand, which is the only real foundation for arriving at a fee that makes sense. Money conversations feel uncomfortable when they are abstract. They feel much more reasonable once you can point to specific, concrete factors.

When to Say Yes to Unpaid Work, and When to Say No

This is probably the most important distinction I can offer to someone just starting out: the size of the budget is rarely the point. What matters is what the work will become.

Every composer beginning their journey needs a portfolio, something to point to that says this is who I am, this is what I sound like. But I do not believe rescoring existing footage is the right way to build that portfolio, even though I have recommended it elsewhere as a valuable practice exercise. There is a real difference between practicing on someone else's work and presenting your voice through your own. A portfolio needs to be built on original projects, music written specifically for a story that did not have a score before you gave it one.

The scale of that original project does not matter much in the beginning. It does not need to be well-funded, polished, or prestigious. What matters is that it is yours, written for a story you helped bring to life. Once you accumulate enough of these, once people start recognizing your style, your range, your signature, the dynamic shifts on its own. You will find it becomes natural to stop accepting unpaid work, to start negotiating fees you deserve, and to start paying real attention to rights and royalties. Experience builds that confidence; you do not need to manufacture it.

The Mistake That Costs You More Than Money: No Contract

If there is one habit I would urge every beginning composer to adopt immediately, even before their first paid job, it is this: always have a contract.

I understand why this gets skipped. You are a student, perhaps. The director is a film student too, equally inexperienced, equally unaware that contracts matter at this stage. The project is unpaid, a favor between friends, an exercise rather than a "real" job. None of that changes my advice. Write a contract anyway.

Template agreements for composer work are widely available online and can easily be adapted to your situation and the specifics of the project. The point of the contract is not really about the money, though it should certainly cover that when money is involved. Its real purpose is protecting your rights: digital distribution, performance royalties through organizations like PRS, the right to use the music in a future soundtrack release, fair limits on the number of revisions you owe, and clear delivery deadlines. If a live ensemble is recording your music, this also means securing usage clearance from every musician involved. This is a step that is easy to forget and expensive to fix later.

To be clear, this advice about writing your own contract applies when nobody hands you one, which is usually the case with smaller, independent, or first-time productions. Larger studios and established production companies are a different situation entirely. They will almost always come to you with their own agreement, prepared and updated over years by their legal teams. But having someone else's contract in hand does not mean your job is done. Take the time you need to actually read it, understand what you are agreeing to, and request revisions where your rights need better protection. Never treat that conversation as impolite or out of place. Real professionalism is not staying quiet and signing quickly. It is knowing your rights, protecting them, and asking for what you are owed.

Beyond the legal protection, there's something else a contract does: it sets a tone. It signals to a young director, who may have no idea this is standard practice, that you take your craft seriously. You become the example other beginners learn from, simply by doing things properly from the start.

If I Could Go Back

If I were starting over, looking for unpaid work to build a portfolio, I would change exactly two things. First, I would not respond to the post that says "need a composer, no budget, it's a student project." I would look for the one that says "student film project, £100 composer budget." The number itself is almost beside the point. What matters is the respect embedded in naming a number at all. A production that has thought about what your time is worth, even modestly, will likely treat you very differently than one that has not thought about it at all.

Second, I would bring my contract and my working discipline to the very first meeting, not after the fact, and I would carry that same professionalism all the way through to delivery. Reputation in this industry travels quietly but quickly. The way you handle your smallest, least glamorous project often becomes the way people remember working with you. Next Topic: "Starting From Nothing"