Horror film scoring FAQ: what people ask before they commit to a horror score

Original scores for psychological horror, folk horror, body horror, supernatural thrillers, cosmic horror, techno thrillers and dark science fiction, across short films, features, series episodes, games and trailers. The palette is struck strings, bowed metal, hybrid orchestration and custom synthesiser builds, written to picture rather than pulled from a library.

Comedy, romance and straight drama are outside the practice. If your film is not dark, the studio will say so at the first reply rather than three weeks into the schedule.

Yes, and they are named on the rate card for a reason: student films are scored from $75.99; micro and low-budget projects use a sliding scale tied to funding. The scope is matched to the runtime and the schedule rather than padded out, and the work is composed rather than assembled from stock cues.

Two practical limits apply. Capacity is limited, so slots are booked in the order inquiries are confirmed, and a named price is still a booked slot with a delivery date attached to it.

Send an email to [email protected] with five things: format (short, feature, series, game, trailer), scored runtime, delivery date or festival deadline, budget range, and two or three reference tracks or films for tone. A rough cut or an assembly is useful if you have one.

The reply comes within 48 hours, normally with a written quote and an available window. Nothing is booked until a deposit is received.

A small number. The studio is a single composer, and scores are written one at a time rather than farmed out to a team. That is why a deposit books a slot and why a deadline that arrives after a schedule is agreed is treated as a change of scope.

Yes. Send a link and the studio will watch it before writing the quote, because runtime alone never tells the truth about how much music a film needs. Unreleased material is treated as confidential by default, and a mutual NDA is available on request before anything is sent.

Remote by default. Spotting sessions run over video call with the cut playing in sync, revisions move by email and file link, and delivery is electronic. Clients have been scored across several continents this way.

If a production needs the composer in the room for a scoring stage, a dub stage or a session, travel and time are quoted as a separate line.

Rates scale with your project's funding. Student films start at $75.99; narrative shorts, features, series episodes, games, interactive, and fully custom scopes all fall in the few-hundred-dollar range, priced to what the production can afford.

Those are floors, not prices. The quote for your film is built from scored runtime, cue count, the production tier you choose (Lean, Standard, Signature or Orchestral+), delivery scope, and how much of the schedule is compressed.

Five things, in the order they usually bite:

• Scored runtime and cue count, which is most of it.
• Production tier. Orchestral+ means more players, more stems and more mixing time than Lean.
• Compressed schedule. A delivery date inside three weeks carries a rush fee.
• Extra deliverables: surround or immersive mixes, an album master, a soundtrack release, source cues written for the picture, sound design.
• Revisions beyond the included rounds, or a recue after picture lock.

No. The base fee covers composition, production, performance on the studio's own instruments and sampled forces, mixing and delivery. Where a project wants live soloists or an ensemble, that is budgeted as its own line with the players' fees, and it needs to be raised at quote stage so the writing can be for real instruments rather than retrofitted.

The studio default is 50 percent to book the slot and 50 percent on delivery of the final stems, invoiced in USD. The payment method is named on the invoice. A different split can be agreed in writing, and festival or grant funded productions that need a single invoice on completion should ask before the quote is issued.

Invoices are due within 14 days. Work on an overdue project pauses until the balance is settled, which is a schedule problem for everybody, so it is worth avoiding.

If a project is cancelled after work has started, the deposit is retained and any work delivered beyond what the deposit covers is invoiced at the agreed rate. Material already written stays with the studio and may be reused elsewhere unless the agreement says otherwise.

If a project is paused rather than cancelled, the slot is held for 30 days, after which the schedule is rebuilt around whatever capacity exists at that point.

Fees are quoted net, in USD. If your territory requires withholding on payments to a foreign supplier, that is the production's obligation, and the studio will complete whatever tax form your accounts department needs to avoid it. Sales tax on catalogue purchases is handled by the marketplace that processes the payment.

As a rule of thumb, a short takes two to four weeks from spotting to delivery, and a feature takes four to eight depending on runtime, cue density and tier. Games are scheduled against implementation milestones instead of a picture lock.

The date on the quote is the date that matters, and it assumes the picture does not change shape after the spotting session.

The cut plays from head to tail with the director, and every cue is marked: where music starts, where it stops, what it is doing dramatically, and where it must stay out of the way of dialogue or sound design. The output is a cue sheet with timings, a tone agreement per cue, and a delivery schedule.

Spotting is the cheapest place to change your mind. It costs nothing there and a lot later.

For internal editing, yes, and it is often useful: tell the studio which cue you cut against and why. Showreel and catalogue material is not licensed for use in a finished picture, a festival cut, a trailer or anything public. If a temp cue has to survive into the film, it is commissioned or licensed in writing.

Temp love is a normal hazard. If you want the score to sound like the temp, say so at spotting. If you want the film to sound like itself, say that instead, and the temp becomes a reference rather than a target.

The default is two revision rounds per cue during composition, plus one consolidation pass after the full score is delivered. A round means one collected set of notes: send everything you have at once rather than a note a day.

Rounds beyond that, and any recue caused by a picture change after lock, are billed as a change order at the rate in your quote. Nobody is surprised by this if it is agreed at the start.

The standard delivery is a stereo full mix, stems by instrumental family (typically four to eight), alternate and tension variant mixes where they were scoped, an MP3 reference set for editorial, and a cue sheet with titles, timings and instrumentation. Files are 24-bit WAV at 48 kHz unless the project needs another rate.

Stems are printed from the head of the picture with matching timecode so they drop straight onto the dub stage. Immersive or surround formats, an album master and a soundtrack release master are separate deliverables.

Small trims inside an existing cue are usually absorbed as a courtesy, and the studio will tell you when that is the case. Anything structural, a scene reordered, a sequence dropped, a runtime extended, is a recue and is quoted before it is done.

The fastest route is a new cut with change notes and the previous delivery date you are trying to protect.

Yes, and it is quoted separately from the score. Creature and body horror vocal design, atmospheric beds and hard effects are all within the practice, and some projects are scored and designed as one pass, which is usually cheaper than treating them as two.

Ready made libraries are also published in the catalogue, including body horror and creature vocal collections.

No. Every commissioned cue is written for your picture, and no cue is generated by a machine model. The composer warrants that the delivered music is original and does not infringe a third party's rights, and any pre existing material the studio owns, its own themes, custom instruments and sample builds, is disclosed in writing and licensed into the deliverables rather than sold.

The default grant is a buyout: on payment in full, the copyright in the commissioned score passes to the production, for the picture and its versions, in all media and territories, in perpetuity. The composer keeps the writer's share of public performance royalties and his performing rights organisation affiliation, keeps the right to be credited, and keeps the right to use excerpts in his reel, portfolio and press.

That is the studio's standard position, and it is negotiable. An exclusive licence, a non exclusive licence or a different publishing split can all be agreed before the quote is issued. A signed agreement always beats this page.

Not under the default grant. A commercial soundtrack release is a separate agreement covering the release format, distribution, royalty split and artwork, and it needs to be raised before the score is delivered so the masters are prepared for it.

Festival screenings, press use, clips, trailers and the film's own distribution are covered and need nothing extra.

End crawl: Music by Zazie Kanwar-Torge Press and festival listings: Original score by Zazie Kanwar-Torge (Zazie Productions)

Copyable wording, including IMDb and poster variants, is on the licensing page. If a credit cannot be carried in the crawl for a genuine space reason, say so and the studio will agree an alternative placement rather than fight about it.

The production or its distributor files the cue sheet with the performing rights organisations, because it goes with the picture's delivery paperwork. The composer supplies the music side: cue titles, durations, usage type, and his writer and publisher details with his PRO and IPI numbers.

Ask for that data early. It is easier to hand over at delivery than to reconstruct during a distributor's paperwork deadline.

No. The default grant does not licence the music, the stems or the session data for machine learning training, and the studio asks for that to stay in the agreement. Equally, no commissioned cue is composed by a generative model.

The music is written in layers and states rather than linear cues: exploration beds, tension layers, stingers and combat or chase material, each delivered so an audio system can crossfade, stack or branch between them. Delivery includes a state map describing how the pieces are meant to behave in play.

Implementation is done with your audio team. Middleware integration and any custom authoring are scoped per project rather than assumed, and vertical slice milestones make better checkpoints than one big delivery at the end.

The structure is the same as picture: buyout on payment by default, writer's share retained, credit agreed in writing. What changes is the scope wording, which has to cover versions, patches, ports, re releases and marketing material, plus any streaming and video content rights your players need for their own captures. Say the word if your publishing agreement already has music language and the studio will work to it.

Never on this site. Every card in the catalogue links to the marketplace that hosts the listing, and that marketplace runs the checkout, the payment and the delivery: Bandcamp and itch.io for records and libraries, Gumroad for tools and scores, eBay for physical objects. Their terms apply to the transaction, and this site stores no card data because it never sees any.

Email [email protected] with the order reference from the marketplace and what arrived. Wrong, corrupt or missing files are replaced directly. Digital goods are otherwise final sale, since a download cannot be returned, and physical objects follow the eBay listing's return terms.

Use them in your own productions, including commercial ones, without further fee. What you may not do is resell, redistribute or republish the files as a library, or pass them on as part of another sample pack. Each listing states its own licence terms and those govern the purchase; where a listing is silent, the studio will confirm in writing.

Email is the record. Notes, approvals, scope changes and delivery dates are confirmed in writing so that nobody has to remember a phone call three weeks later. The reply target is 48 hours, and it holds during a project, not just before one.

Verbal conversations happen, especially at spotting. Anything decided in one gets written back into the thread the same day.

Yes, a mutual one, and it can be signed before you send a cut. Unreleased material is treated as confidential whether or not paper exists: cuts, scripts and storyboards are not discussed, screened or reused, and project files are stored on encrypted drives and removed after the retention period set out in the privacy notice.

Please do not. An inquiry describing the project is welcome; an unsolicited screenplay, treatment or unfinished cut is not, because the studio develops its own material and cannot accept the risk of a similarity claim later.

If something arrives anyway it will not be read beyond identifying the sender, it creates no obligation and no confidentiality, and the studio remains free to develop anything it has already written or writes independently afterwards.

Most disagreements are about the film rather than the notes, and they resolve at a spotting session with the picture running. The included revision rounds exist for exactly this.

If a production decides the collaboration is not working, it can stop after any delivered stage, pay for what has been delivered, and take the material it has paid for. The terms set out how that is calculated. Nobody benefits from a score finished under protest.

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