FEATURES
Spottingnotes: Film Music Management Goes Online
by Michael Kunkes
 James Bellamy, left, and Andy Glen of The Music Department Ltd. Courtesy of The Music Department Ltd. |
At The Music Department Ltd., a busy London music editing company, James Bellamy and Andy Glen were beset by the same problems that plague all feature music editors working on International productions across numerous time zones: lack of e-mail security, reams of paper containing confidential information that could be mislaid or seen by the wrong people, and the extreme difficulty in keeping the music supervisor, composer, orchestrator and producers updated and on the same page. All have contributed to a workflow process that is at worst, archaic, and at best, confusing
After a lot of discussion with peers, composers and music supervisors, Bellamy and Glen decided to do something about it. They created spottingnotes.com, an online database toolset that effectively acts as a complete piece of music management software. It provides authorized users with an expandable, easy-to-update log on the progress of everything from cues, source music and orchestration to costs, cue sheets, user notes and suggestion––all with fully encrypted security. It is also the first new piece of software expressly for music editors to come along since Rick Johnston’s CUE, and the first that is completely online.
 screenshot detail from spottingnotes.com. Courtesy of The Music Department Ltd. |
Spottingnotes.com was originally conceived as an in-house tool for The Music Department’s own music editors, but Glen (a veteran whose recent credits include Alien vs. Predator, Beyond the Sea and fear dot com) and Bellamy (who wrote most of the program) quickly realized that their toolset could be an immense boon to the music editing community at large. They are rolling out the website this November in a beta version that is currently being tested on several films, with major updates already in the works.
At the heart of spottingnotes.com is the infinitely expandable spotting notes page, presented in the classic format that anyone who works in film music will recognize immediately. From there, users gain access to the edit page, which provides the administrator or authorized user access to various categories of information.
“The spottingnotes page lays out all the information about every cue, and designated users are able to log on to our secure server with their own unique password and add status information, whether a cue is being written, recorded or orchestrated,” says Glen. “Information is sortable by ident, by cue or by time code. And when the user logs on again, the system will automatically update for that user and show any items that have changed since his last log-on through our ‘easyscan’ feature, which provides a unique, color-coded view.”
The database’s ability to generate instant updates is the focal point for all the creative and administrative processes attached to the program. Individual cue timings are referenced to a specified version of the film, allowing for accurate updating with each new version.
“In addition, for any given cue you can enter any number of musical options and choose one as the film goes along,” Bellamy says.
“As a music editor, you can be driven mad by the constant need to keep people informed,” adds Glen. “With spottingnotes.com, you can specify which version of the film your notes apply to, and that’s very important when you have a new version of the film arriving seemingly every day. We’ve been very careful to build in automatic markers that indicate when the notes go out of date.”
Music editors and supervisors can also build a detailed final cue sheet while a film is in progress, saving a pile of delivery work at the finish, in terms of listing all the music, for how long it runs, who publishes it, who owns the masters, etc.
“The site automates much of the documentation associated with this
process, and what we are hoping is that as a film goes along, the
music supervisor will fill in all that information as part of the
process of collecting their own notes and schedules. It will facilitate
tying up loose ends after completion of the show,” says Glen.
Also online is a cost calculator that provides on-the-fly currency conversion and, as Bellamy says, “lets you see all your pricing options in one place, as well as provides the ability to see how various combinations of cues will affect the overall needledrop music costs. Eventually, we hope to build in a module that will integrate scoring costs with studio costs,” he continues. “The main idea is to keep everyone’s information in one place to save each individual from having to retype the cue list for his or her own purposes.”
Functionality is also built in for composers, who can update start/end points and easily sort cues by a variety of criteria. Features are also being written that will enable them to do session planning and musician scheduling, attach MP3 or QuickTime demos, send automated e-mails of significant changes to other users. There is also a convenient click/SMPTE calculator. Other new features will include a cue breakdown/timing notes processor and optional shuffle conforming of start/end timings.
Also featured is a printable version of each page, support for all SMPTE formats, a notes page so that composers and producers can update start/end points and make additional comments, summary pages that show each cue in an abridged version, a printable version of each page and a visitor log.
 Music editor Dominick Certo |
Veteran music editor and current beta tester (and Guild member) Dominick Certo feels that spottingnotes.com will catch on big time. “As the music editor for a film I recently used the database on, I assigned the composer and orchestrator different administrative access levels,” he says. “The composer was in Lake Arrowhead, the orchestrator was in Oregon, the composer’s assistant was in Pasadena and I was at a studio in Burbank. During the course of many picture changes, instead of the daily calls and e-mails between us, we were able to just sign in, edit, make notes and change starts and ends––and the changes were all there for us to view in red whenever next we logged on. It’s an awesome program for that reason alone.”
Bellamy and Glen are still determining their pricing structure, which will probably be on a license-per-show basis, though they are offering a limited number of free trials to qualifying productions/editors.
“The problems addressed by spottingnotes.com have existed in film music for a long time and everyone has been wrestling with them,” Bellamy observes. “Even though we are a small community, this is something that needed to be created, and in a nice, streamlined way that saves unnecessary bureaucratic work. It’s a case of the collaborative nature of the Internet allowing people to do their jobs better than they have been able to do them before.”
Michael Kunkes is a freelance editor and writer specializing in animation, production and post-production.
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