E31 - Indie Panel: Making Music Decisions For Your Series

The Catalyst Storieroad Institute proudly presents: Making Music Decisions for Your Series. Our guests are: Jason P. Schumacher - Director/Producer/Writer/Editor (Twin Cities, This Is Home); Tom Scott - Composer/Orchestrator/Producer (Time for Ilhan, Mystery Science Theater 3000); Norah Shapiro - Director/Producer (Time for Ilhan, Miss Tibet: Beauty in Exile); and Andy Thompson - Composer/Producer/Orchestrator (Dessa’s Sound the Bells with the Minnesota Orchestra, Jeremy Messersmith’s discography). Hosted by Charlie McCarron - Composer and Film Score Fest Executive Director.

*Special note: All of these incredible industry guests are Minnesota based.*

 

Topics include:

• Who do I approach first about music?
• How do I know when to use original composition vs existing music?
• What’s the best way to communicate ideas to a composer?

 

Jason P. Schumacher is a Minnesota-based narrative and experimental filmmaker, creating works primarily focused on mental health. He also keeps busy producing the work of other writers and filmmakers through his production company, GreyDuck.

 

Thomas Scott has over 20 years experience as a composer and music producer working in film and television. Recent work includes the 2017 Netflix reboot of Mystery Science Theatre 3000 – which included orchestrating and producing a theme recorded by a 65-piece orchestra. He also created the sound design for the dramatic short, New Neighbors (2017 Sundance Film Festival). Additional documentary projects include scoring War Dance (Academy Award Nominee for Best Documentary Feature and winner of a Sundance Doc Directing Award 2007), Miss Tibet: Beauty In Exile (2014) Pretty Village (2014) and Holy Wars (2010), and Battle For The Elephants (2013) for the National Geographic Network for which he arranged choral arrangements recorded by the Kenyan Boys Choir in Nairobi, Kenya.

 

Emmy Award winning filmmaker Norah Shapiro left a decade-long first career as a public defender to work in documentary filmmaking, and hasn’t looked back since. Her most recent film, Time for Ilhan, about the political rise of Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, received Catapult Film Fund development funding, was selected for the 2017 IFP Film Week, the 2017 TFI/A&E Story Lab, premiered at the 2018 Tribeca Film Festival. Time for Ilhan won multiple audience awards, was nominated for a 2018 NAACP Image Award for Best TV Documentary, and received a 2018-2019 Daytime EMMY Award for Outstanding Directing Special Class. Norah is currently producing a documentary (in post-production) about the far-reaching impact of a notorious abduction of a young boy in rural Minnesota, and is also directing/producing a short film about a young woman’s quest to create the nation’s 1st Memorial to survivors of sexual violence in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Norah is a founding member of the Minnesota Chapter of Film Fatales, and is the proud mother of 3 young adult/teens.

 

Andy Thompson's compositions and productions have been licensed by Target, Garmin (Super Bowl ad and AICP award nomination for original music), Saturday Night Live, VICE News, The Voice, Goodyear, Sprint, Best Buy, The Minnesota Twins, Coleman, Lifetime Fitness, The Climate Reality Project, Ellis Island Foundation, TLC, NBC, ABC, CW, ESPN, and Cartoon Network. He's also scored some award-winning short films along the way. Andy can be found making music with the likes of Jeremy Messersmith, BOY, Dan Wilson, Taylor Swift (including a Grammy nomination for Red), The Minnesota Orchestra, Dessa, Belle and Sebastian, Daniel Johnston, Kevin Steinman, Colbie Caillat, Atmosphere, Mike Doughty, and Puffy AmiYumi.

 

Charlie McCarron is a film composer, video producer, visual artist, and board game designer in Minnesota. He is the executive director of Film Score Fest and produced the podcast Composer Quest. Notable films Charlie has composed for are Emmy-nominated Beneath the Ink, STARZ documentary Silicone Soul, and Kare 11’s Love Them First: Lessons From Lucy Laney Elementary, the best-selling film in the history of the Minneapolis–Saint Paul International Film Festival.

 

Thank you to The Wrap, WDSE-WRPT in Duluth, and the National Academy of TV Arts & Sciences for supporting Catalyst Storieroad.