Scoring the Score: the Role of the Orchestrator in the Contemporary Film Industry

Congratulations to Dr Ian Sapiro on the release of his new book Scoring the Score: the Role of the Orchestrator in the Contemporary Film Industry.

Published by Routledge, Scoring the Score is the first scholarly publication on film-score orchestration and the often-overlooked role of orchestrators. The book considers aspects of the orchestrator’s role including background and training, the key processes of orchestrating and arranging, issues related to working practices and the impact of technology on film-score orchestrating and orchestration.

Drawing on interviews with American and British orchestrators such as Conrad Pope (John Williams, Alexander Desplat) and Bruce Fowler (Hans Zimmer) and composers including Oscar-winners Dario Marianelli (Atonement), Scoring the Score aims to expose this often hidden, yet vital profession. The book expands the application of Ian’s ground-breaking non-linear model of film-score production, and examines the film-music industry in both the US and the UK. The book contains the first clear definitions of ‘transcription’, ‘arrangement’ and ‘orchestration’ as they relate to film music and also features musical examples of sketch materials and full scores from Minions (Heitor Pereira), Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation (Joe Kraemer) and the final episode of Downton Abbey (John Lunn), among others.

Ian began his musical studies at Leeds in 1997 and has since gained an undergraduate degree, postgraduate qualifications in composition, and his PhD, which investigates the role of the orchestrator in the contemporary British film industry. Scoring the Score is Ian’s second book following the Scarecrow Press Film-Score Guide on Ilan Eshkeri’s score for Stardust which was published in 2013.