Uncharted Music Supervision Territory: Maggie Phillips on Clearing Homecoming’s Score of Scores

For Amazon’s latest project Homecoming, creator Sam Esmail took a rather unique musical approach. Rather than hiring a composer, he decided to use only pre-existing scores for the show’s musical accompaniment. To delve into the difficulties presented by this score of scores, we spoke to music supervisor Maggie Phillips about her work on the show and the myriad of challenges she and her team faced.

Music Supervisor Maggie Phillips

You’ve said previously that this project was “unlike anything you’ve ever done before”. Has a score of scores ever been done before?

Not to my knowledge. And the more I’ve talked about it since Homecoming has come out the more I’m hearing that it hasn’t been done. I’ve licensed pre-existing score before but it’s always been a one off, for example with Carter Burwell’s theme for Fargo.

Can you talk us through the team that had to be assembled for this huge task?

I had my team of four people, then we had two people at NBC Universal who handled the actual clearances, plus all of the paperwork and all of the union stuff. And then on top of that I worked very closely with the editors and their assistant editors. I have to give it to the editors because they did the heavy lifting trying out tons and tons of score to see what worked. It took a lot of trial and error. And Sam’s consultant, Sean Schuyler. If we hadn’t had such a great team so much stuff would have fallen through the cracks, and there’s no way we would have got it done. I don’t think any of us knew what we were getting ourselves into – it was so time intensive.

You must have really trusted in creator Sam Esmail’s vision.

Yeah, it’s such a great show and I thought what he was trying to do with the music was really effective, so I was excited.

What was the starting process from a creative standpoint?

Sam gave us a starting list and then we all went and dug around for similar scores. I went a few different routes – I looked at similar movies from the same time period, and what else the composers of those movies had done. Just like with songs, one thing leads to another and we compiled a huge list. Then it became clear what kind of stuff was working so we were able to whittle it down from there. We used a lot of Universal scores because we got a price break for those.

What were the most common challenges from a clearance perspective?

That was the part that my team really helped me with – finding out who owned what. And the team at NBC Universal tracked down a ton of it. Often there was no paper trail, and the studios didn’t even know what they had. A lot of the information we found online ended up not being correct, especially with the older scores. When I license a song it’s almost always been licensed before, so ownership has been determined, but in this case most of the score had never been licensed.

One of the scores we wanted to use was The Hitcher by Mark Isham, but no one knew who owned the publishing. We managed to speak to Mark himself and even he had no idea who it belonged to. Nowadays composers often get to keep a percentage of the publishing, but back then it was all work for hire. So we ended up not being able to use that cue.

And then you had the further tasks of finding the actual recordings and dealing with the union fees.

Yeah that was another part of the process – making sure that we had the actual physical recordings from the studio and not a copy that we couldn’t license. Some of the studios didn’t have them, and sometimes we had to beg them to go into their archives and digitize them. So tracking down the rights holders was a part of it, then finding the physical recordings, and then figuring out all of the re-use fees with the union. That became a big issue because there’s a set rate for anything under two minutes, and anything over that had to be calculated depending on the players, the instruments, and so on. It was complicated and also very pricey.

Given that a lot of this score had never been licensed before, how were the fees calculated?

That was more NBC Universal’s world, but I do think the studios dictated the price. Some of the major publishers like Warner/Chappell had a lot of the publishing so they started naming prices and then everyone sort of followed suit. And the prices were comparable to big songs – it was expensive. We had a really healthy budget, but it was still hard to stay within that and we did have to sacrifice and compromise. When a studio gives you that much money for a 30 minute show you don’t want to go over budget or take advantage, but we could have spent a lot more.

It must have been challenging to anticipate costs when a price had never been put on most of these copyrights before.

Exactly. And to their credit Amazon and NBC Universal came in and helped us out. Once we started figuring out what the re-use union fees were, we had to go back and say guys there’s no way we’re going to be able to do it with the original budget. And they gave us some breakage but it was still challenging to stay within those perimeters. But it was one of the biggest budgets I’ve ever worked with.

You mentioned in a previous interview that the John Carpenter scores ended up being the most cost effective on the union front as they are mostly sparse instrumentally.

Yes – we had to factor the union fees into every cue. There were definitely some scores that we ended up not using because we knew that the union fees would be too high. With John Carpenter the licensing fee was comparable to the other scores but on the whole a lot cheaper because the union fees weren’t high and so we ended up turning to him more. We also had to stay under 5 minutes because with the way the union fees work, if you go over five minutes the prices get significantly higher.

It sounds like a pretty stressful process!

It was so stressful. We had a call every week with my team, the NBC Universal team, and my post producer Greg and his editors, and we would go through every single cue in each episode. The calls would last 2-3 hours and we would go through every little detail to make sure nothing was falling through the cracks. It was so involved and intense.

How did you make sure the different scores blended so seamlessly with one another?

That was really the editors and our music editor because they were the ones that were in there putting it all together. Sometimes we would use the same composer throughout an episode which helped to give it some consistency. There were many times when we would get close to the mix but we still hadn’t figured it out and it was all hands on deck. The music editor was trying stuff out, I was trying stuff out, the editors were trying stuff out. It was just hard. We’d always be knocking on wood sitting there in the mix and I still can’t believe that it actually came together.

Because of the licensing difficulties, we were constantly waiting for answers. We would all be at the edge of our seats. One of the editors would be texting me the night before the mix asking, “Have you heard back yet?” Sometimes, we wouldn’t know if something had cleared or if we could afford it until the last minute, and sometimes we’d be scrambling at the mix trying to put something else in just in case. The waiting game was painful.

It’s a pretty backwards process taking existing score and crafting it to fit the show.

Yeah really backwards, and just new territory. No one knew how to do it so we were all figuring it out together. Everyone knows how to put temp score in but you always know that it’s going to get replaced. So yeah, it was really strange way of tackling it!

It really does add a lot to the show.

Yeah, it’s interesting – I was talking to one of my composer friends about it last night and we were discussing what the show would be without it. I said well you might get to see because I don’t know if they’re going to do it again for season 2. I don’t know what’s going to happen there – there’s definitely talks about not doing it again. But I feel like it’s definitely a character in the show and it makes it what it is.

It seems like a great time for a score of scores because film score and soundtracks are becoming much more popular and mainstream.

Yeah, people who are really into film scores are very excited about it. And just like with TV shows and songs, it led some people to discover new scores that they might not have known before. One of my favorite parts of this job is when someone texts me or tweets me to say that they’ve discovered a song through one of my shows. And with Homecoming it was definitely the case for me as well – we used a ton of score that I had never heard before.

What were some of your favourite musical moments in the show?

I’m definitely a song person so I loved “Genesis Ch. 1 V. 32” by The Alan Parsons Project in episode 6. We used “Tremendous Dynamite” by Eels in episode 10 and actually Mark Oliver Everett emailed me saying that he loved the use, which was AMAZING! I liked the Body Heat cues, those were some of my favourite moments. It was very satisfying to me to use the Vertigo cue in the pilot because I was such a Hitchcock fan. And, of course, the John Carpenter stuff – at first I didn’t think something from a horror film would be so effective but it worked so well. The Halloween cue at the end of episode 7 when the characters are walking back to the company and we land on the secretary – that’s one of my favourite score moments. Putting in Clint Mansell was another highlight for me because I’m a fan of his. The Vangelis cues such as “Abraham’s Theme” from Chariots Of Fire were exciting. I loved it all!

Would you work on a score-based project again?

I would, but I would ask for at least twice the money! (Laughs)

What would your advice be for people who represent film score?

Get your paper trails together. That’s the hardest part. It’s all about supply and demand – the more interest in this type of music the more rights holders will figure it out and put this music out there. I think there’s definitely enough demand, especially just seeing the interest that’s been generated by the show. People would love to get some of these old scores on vinyl.

See below for a full list of score cues in each Homecoming episode: