Temp Music and the Final Score

A film is usually edited, screened, and tested long before its score is written. To make those cuts watchable, editors lay in temporary music, often from other films. The practice is so common that most cuts reach a composer already carrying music.

These eight commentaries describe what temp music does to a film and its score. Some filmmakers rely on it, some avoid it, and some keep the temporary choice in the finished film. The accounts also show what a score can do that a temp track cannot: solve a problem specific to the film.

§1 Temp music decides early

The Exotica commentary describes the main risk. Months of screenings with borrowed music make that music feel like part of the film.

Once producers and executives have watched a cut many times with an orchestral temp score, they expect an orchestral score. The Exotica score combines a shehnai, a North Indian wind instrument, with piano. No existing score could have suggested that combination, so a temp track would have pushed the film away from it.

The RoboCop 3 commentary gives an ordinary example.

Using another action film’s music for an action film is the standard choice. It makes the cut play better in screenings, and it gives the composer a model to match. That is helpful when the film should sound like its genre and limiting when it should not.

§2 Edit without music

Some filmmakers avoid temp music. The Rogue Nation commentary describes Christopher McQuarrie’s editing method.

Without music, a scene’s rhythm has to come from the cutting itself. The commentary adds that composer Joe Kraemer’s music could later be moved from one scene to another and still match the cuts, because the scenes shared a rhythm the editing had already set.

The Forrest Gump commentary describes showing the film to composer Alan Silvestri with almost no music in it.

The only music in that cut was the period songs that are part of the story. With the opening feather sequence silent, Silvestri had nothing to imitate. He went home and wrote the film’s opening theme. A silent cut gives the composer the scene without a previous answer attached to it.

§3 Temp music that stays

Sometimes the temporary choice is the right one. The Some Kind of Wonderful commentary describes a song meant only for the temp track.

Keeping a temp choice requires licensing it, which is not always possible or affordable. When it is, the decision is simple: if the music works and the rights can be obtained, there may be nothing to replace.

Barry Levinson describes a middle path on Rain Man. A song he heard became the model for the score.

The song stayed in the film, and it gave Hans Zimmer a direction to develop: a rhythmic, percussion-based sound. Temp music used this way gives the composer a direction and leaves the writing to them.

The Usual Suspects commentary describes the opposite outcome.

The scene was imagined to Tchaikovsky, but the filmmaker knew the finished score would replace it once the film had a theme for its central figure. A temp track can be a working tool that everyone knows will be removed.

§4 Ask the score to solve a specific problem

A score can fix problems that editing cannot. Test audiences told the Rogue Nation filmmakers that the film seemed to end several times, and people offered notes on how to re-edit the final stretch.

The problem was continuity across the last sequences, and the solution was a piece of music that ran through them. The edit barely changed. This only works when the filmmakers identify what the audience is reacting to. The suggested fix, re-editing, would not have addressed it.

§5 Decide where not to score

Choosing where music stops matters as much as choosing where it starts. The Dark Skies filmmakers avoided conventional dramatic scoring through almost all of the film.

Holding back emotional music for most of the film gave this one scene more weight when it arrived. The commentary describes the music as earned because of how much the characters have endured by that point. Scoring every scene would have removed that contrast.

§6 Questions for temp music and the score

These accounts suggest five questions:

1. Should this film sound like other films? Temp scores pushed RoboCop 3 toward its genre and would have kept Exotica from finding its own sound.
2. Can the cut work without music? Rogue Nation and Forrest Gump left music out so the editing and the composer worked from the scenes themselves.
3. Is the temp choice worth keeping or licensing? Some Kind of Wonderful kept its temp song, and Rain Man used one to define the score.
4. What problem should the score solve? Rogue Nation used new music to join the final sequences after a test screening.
5. Where should there be no music? Dark Skies saved dramatic scoring for one scene.

Temp music is a tool for screening an unfinished film. The risk is that it becomes the film’s sound by default. Filmmakers who decide what the score needs to do before the temp track settles the question give the composer room to do it.