Composing Music for Film

MILL VALLEY FILM FESTIVAL
COMPOSING MUSIC FOR FILM PANEL

About the music in YELLOW CARD


Unfortunately, I’m not a music composer. Basically, I’m a failed musician who had to turn to filmmaking.

YELLOW CARD was conceived and designed for pan-African use (distribution), and music was integral to this design; an important element in achieving a pan-African flavor and appeal to pan-African audiences.

Music in YELLOW CARD spans the continent from Senegal to Ethiopia, former Zaire to South Africa. One of the biggest challenges that we had, was licensing of the music; not because the musicians or the publishers were reluctant or difficult, but simply because it was so difficult to find the source of ownership, so we could legitimately use the music.

I would like to very briefly put the issue of music in the broader context of the challenge of making films in Africa for Africa.

Feature film production cannot really be described as an industry in Africa, in the sense that we understand the film industry in much of the rest of the world. Very few, if any, African feature films are financed with private, profit-oriented money. The reason for this is that you would be hard pressed to find any African film that has turned a profit, or for that matter, recovered its costs. This explains why so few feature films are made in Africa.

The reason why it is virtually impossible to turn profits on African feature films is because the delivery system or distribution networks for African films are weak or dominated by the non-formal sector, better known as piracy. First of all, there are very few cinema halls in Africa. Second, television stations are mostly government owned and poor and finally video piracy is rampant.

While Africa’s music industry is a little different, African musicians too, are plagued with many of the same challenges facing filmmakers. One big difference is that musicians get paid for live performances and the fortunate ones have very busy performance schedules. While the process and costs of producing music is very different than producing films, the music industry faces the same problem of weak distribution networks; with few legitimate commercial outlets and rampant piracy.

I have a fairly substantial collection of African music; the majority of which I bought here in the United States. It is very difficult to find recorded African music in Africa, other than poor quality pirated cassettes on the streets of most capital cities.

For film work, you need a master, like a cd or dat and very little of Africa’s rich musical heritage is available on these professional formats.

While all of our films (to date) have been sponsored projects, financed primarily because of the social issues that these films address, we recognize that our work is not only about making issue films. As important, our work is about finding ways to develop African film industry, find a way to make filmmaking in Africa a commercially viable cultural activity. And we believe that music will play a very important role in this process.
Of the four feature films that we have produced in the past decade; we have released soundtracks for three (Neria 1991, Everyone’s Child 1996 and Yellow Card 2000). In some instances the music has been more commercially successful than the film and in all cases the music has been one of our most powerful promotional tools. The theme song for NERIA (1991) continues to be such a huge success that it is the music that has kept this fictional character alive. More Africans have more access to music (radio) than they do to film and television. Oliver Mtukudzi, who scored NERIA, is Zimbabwe’s biggest local and international star and plays NERIA in just about every set.

YELLOW CARD is promising to be our most commercially successful film to date, with what I believe is the most marketable soundtrack. With YELLOW CARD we have licensed the music in different territories, recognizing that we are not in a position to do the marketing of the music ourselves.

YELLOW CARD premiered in Zimbabwe five months back and has since released in three other African countries namely Kenya, Uganda and Zambia. We are premiering a Swahili dubbed version in Tanzania next month, a French version dubbed version at the FESPACO Film Festival in Burkino Faso next February with a subsequent release thereafter along with a major release for South Africa in April next year.

Steve Dyer, a South African who lived in exile in Zimbabwe and Botswana for a decade during apartheid, now lives in Johannesburg. YELLOW CARD represents Steve’s first motion picture composition. Our collaboration on the project began very early in the process. He composed music to the script, providing us with guide tracks before and during the shoot.