How ​modern Music Supervisors ​craft the ​perfect Needle Drop

Casey Emerling (0:00)

You're listening to Twenty Thousand Hertz.

Dallas Taylor (0:04)

I'm Dallas Taylor.

Casey Emerling (0:08)

All right, so are we ready to roll?

Dallas Taylor (0:09)

I'm already rolling.

SPEAKER_3 (0:10)

Let's do it.

Dallas Taylor (0:11)

I've been rolling.

Grace East (0:12)

I'm rolling too.

Dallas Taylor (0:13)

Our last episode was a discussion between me, our supervising producer Casey, and Defacto Sound's producer Grace. In it, Casey walked Grace and I through the early history of needle drops, which are popular songs used in movies or TV shows.

Casey Emerling (0:27)

So in part one, we left off at the end of the 1980s, and that was right around the time that the job of music supervisor was starting to become more common in Hollywood. So Dallas, do you want to describe what a music supervisor is?

Dallas Taylor (0:42)

Okay. So music supervisor is the person responsible for the business and the operations of getting music into some sort of media, whether it be movies, TV, video games. They're the ones that are executing the plan.

Many of them also work heavily on actually curating that music too.

And so it's this hybrid role that sits between creative and operations, and working directly with the artist to either create music or acquire music.

Casey Emerling (1:20)

Yeah, that's a great definition. So here's a clip of music supervisor Mary Ramos. Mary has been Quentin Tarantino's music supervisor for many years, among others.

And here she is on Deadline's Crew Call podcast, describing what people with that job do.

Mary Ramos (1:37)

We are responsible for all musical aspects of a film or a television show. And every project is different, and every director or showrunner is different. And so some of them have come to the project with full on ideas about what they want.

Some you could come on and really help shape the story and help shape the world and the style and everything with suggestions about songs and about overall concept and about composers.

Casey Emerling (2:05)

So once the edit of a film or TV episode is decently far along, the music supervisor and director and composer will do something called spotting, where they go through the rough cut and they say, there should be score here, there should be a song here, let's try both a song and score music here and see what works better. It's also important to decide where there should be no music, because sometimes music can be a crutch or feel overly directive of how the audience is supposed to feel at any given time.

Dallas, I know you have strong feelings about this. Do you want to comment on that?

Dallas Taylor (2:42)

Yeah, I've worked on projects where music sometimes does more harm than good. Imagine that you're doing a documentary that has a global appeal.

We all have our unconscious bias of what types of music make us feel a certain way.

And so as filmmakers, you may want to put what you think the vibe should feel like, because that's how you would be affected by that music. But music is so unbelievably subjective that it might not come across that way at all to someone in India or Japan. And it might actually get in the way of them processing the feelings that you're trying to emote through your story. So some of the best documentaries I've ever worked on, we've pulled music in the final mix, because when you don't have music, it forces you to experience what's happening in real time without any foreshadowing, without any telling you of how you're supposed to feel. Because that constant emotional pull in telling you how to feel can also have its own subtle exhaustion.

Grace East (3:51)

I feel like that's so true in written work too, like the canonical show Don't Tell, and I feel like that's the editorial version of that.

Casey Emerling (3:59)

Right. But when filmmakers do decide to use a needle drop, sometimes there will already be a song suggested in the script, or the director will already know what song they intend to use.

For instance, in the early 90s, there was a very famous needle drop that I'm sure you'll know as soon as I play it. So go ahead and shout it out as soon as you do.

SPEAKER_6 (4:21)

I see a little silhouette of a man.

Dallas Taylor (4:26)

It's Queen and it's from the Waynes World.

You got it. Yeah.

Casey Emerling (4:34)

So that was Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen as featured in Waynes World. Grace, you want to describe what's going on in that scene?

Grace East (4:41)

Okay. I have never seen Waynes World.

Casey Emerling (4:43)