Freelance Award Nomination Candidates / General Discussion

Site Admin Joined: 17 Jan 2007 Posts: 80

I finally got around to compiling all of the Freelance Award candidates from 2006. The total number ended up being a little over 50. I compiled an Excel spreadsheet for you to download:

http://schlockading.hostbrickmovies.com/misc/freelance.xls

Unfortunately, the majority of the files have broken links, mainly due to Postbrickfilms being wiped since the posting of the files in 2006. We could probably PM everyone who we need files from and they could re-upload them onto HBM or wherever. So download the spreadsheet, take a look at the list, and let's see if we can maybe start to come up with a system for finding the five nominations! Keep in mind that there may be a few I've missed, so if you know of any, post them here and I'll add them to the list.

Joined: 16 Feb 2007 Posts: 58

That's a nice organized spreadsheet. I'm for contacting all of the composers to get links to the files, if everyone else is. A few questions though -

I noticed that there were a few pieces that I had written that are on the spreadsheet. First of all, do we consider those as "freelance" since my film hasn't come out yet (yes, I am still working on that film, believe it or not. . . and I do plan to use those pieces. . .)? The other thing is, the pieces that I've written have been changed drastically since the time that I posted them, and there are probably other composers who have modified their pieces since they were posted as well. Do we just get the latest version of the pieces? I'm not even sure I have the old versions of mine; on the other hand, it might be unfair to judge pieces which have been improved along with pieces that have not been improved (especially if there are pieces which have been improved after the end of 2006). Comments?

Site Admin Joined: 17 Jan 2007 Posts: 80

For the criteria for the awards, any piece of music posted in the Music forum during 2006 qualifies, whether it's actually been included in a film or not.

As for the updating of the pieces, it's probably only fair to base the judgments off of what is posted originally, and not modified versions of the works. So if at all possible, we will try to get the most original version of the songs posted in the forums possible. But then there's the problem of having the newer songs available if the older version(s) are not. Should they still qualify for the awards? Well, that would probably be more unfair than to include modified works, since that would sort of be cheating them out and leaving only files that happened to have been saved by the creator to be judged.

Joined: 16 Feb 2007 Posts: 58

So. . . what should we do then? We do need a concrete policy. Maybe we should use all of the original works that exist, and use the newer revised versions where the old versions have not been saved. Then maybe if a newer version qualifies for an award, it should be labled as "modified" in the official award or something. I'm not sure there's a really good solution.

Something else - what is the difference between the freelance award and the normal award? From what you said I guess that all pieces qualify for the freelance award, whereas only pieces that have been used in released films qualify for the other type of award?

Joined: 16 Feb 2007 Posts: 58

As it turns out, I think I have all of the original pieces of mine. I just found them on a CD I had written a long time ago. . . I still can't believe my march of the smugglers sounded like that! Shocked

Listening to that sure brings back memories though.

So that won't be a problem for me. Of course none of the original versions are worthy of an award of any sort anyway. . .

Site Admin Joined: 17 Jan 2007 Posts: 80

This should be helpful in answering the definitions:

http://composersguild.10.forumer.com/viewtopic.php?t=11

Probably what will end up happening is that when we get the files from the people whose links were broken, we'll have to accept whatever they give us, new or not. We'll probably be lucky to get the song(s) in any form, let alone an "original" copy. We could ask them to provide the older version, but 9 out of 10 times they probably won't have it. So the bottom line is that we'll take what we can get.

Do you have a new version of that March of the Smugglers? I'd like to hear it now that you speak of it.

Joined: 16 Feb 2007 Posts: 58

Sure, I'll post the links here I suppose. Here's the VERY OLD march of the smugglers. I think that was the first piece I ever really made. It's the one where the bass drum was actually a firecracker. I was really tickled to find it, because I didn't think I had kept it. And here's the latest version, which is actually known as "The Capture, or, the Smuggler's Theme." I don't know why the link isn't working properly. You'll have to copy the text and paste it into the buffer I guess.

http://cproductions.hostbrickmovies.com/MTD%20Music/The%20Capture:Smuggler's%20Theme.mp3

However, the last part of the march of the smugglers is found in full force at the end of my space battle piece. So I took the original idea of "march of the smugglers" and used different parts of it in different pieces. Enjoy! (I guess. . .)

Site Admin Joined: 17 Jan 2007 Posts: 80

Nice pieces. They both sound a lot better than the first one.

Joined: 16 Feb 2007 Posts: 58

So anyway, what's the next step now that we have a list of the compositions?

Site Admin Joined: 17 Jan 2007 Posts: 80

Probably to notify those who have broken links to try to provide a working version of their song. We could probably just make some sort of "standard" letter and copy and paste it in a PM to everyone, and then list the songs that are missing. The problem is telling them what we're doing. I mean, it's going to come across sort of strange if we say "we're making awards for original music." Then people might think, "Yeah right, I'm not going to give them a link to my music." Probably the best way to word it would be that we're "compiling a list" of musical works written during 2006 and we need everyone's participation. So I could probably come up with something and then post it here to see what you think. We also need to round up everybody else and notify them that we're starting.