Benjamin Leuenberger has been working in the music department on feature films and TV shows for a few years now and is keen to talk to us about all sorts of uses of music in films. His most notable role to date, and one he appears to be most proud of, is his credit as music coordinator on Ridley Scott’s Oscar-nominated Napoleon. The music coordinator works directly under the music supervisor who is ‘in charge of all the songs in a film’. Ben is keen to clarify about what this entails; ‘on a film, everyone knows there is a composer who composes the score. But then there might be sequences where a song is used and the composer doesn’t really have anything to do with those.’
‘For example, if a song by the Beatles was used in a film. Songs like that have to be licensed. You have to ask the publisher and the record label of those songs to get a licence, which you have to pay for, and the more famous the person/band is, the more expensive the licence tends to be. So, a Beatles song would be really expensive. And the rights holders of any piece of music always have the chance to say ‘no’ to a song clearance as well. ’It’s often not feasible to get the big hit song you might want. Ben explains, ‘there are some famous artists, like Led Zeppelin or Prince, [who] usually say no. Sometimes it depends on the scene, sometimes it depends on the fee. But some just don’t want their music to be exploited or to be associated with something they don’t like - commercials, for example’. What’s even tougher for someone like Ben is that ‘every single rights holder - the label, the publishers, the writers – everyone has to say yes. If one person out of all those rights holders says no, then you can’t use that song. You have to convince all the people and you have to have the right budget to afford it.’
However, allowing your song to be used in a film can be more beneficial than it may at first seem to be. ‘Sophie Ellis-Bextor has become famous again’. And it’s true. Her 2001 song, ‘Murder on the Dancefloor’ has regained popularity and become a viral sensation, all because of its use in Emerald Fennell’s Saltburn. It’s one of those rare needle drops in a film that transcends the film itself and becomes a cultural talking point. But, as Ben points out to us, there’s an even bigger song in that film.
‘[Saltburn also features] ‘Mr Brightside’ by the Killers. They’re only in it for a few seconds, but you have to remember it’s a big song,’ Ben tells us. ‘They paid a lot of money just to use it for [those] few seconds’. It’s even likely that the production paid more to use the Killers than they did to use Sophie Ellis-Bextor, but there are different categories of cost that Ben is all too familiar with and helps break them down.‘If it’s background or instrumental, it’s less money. If it’s in the foreground and prominent, it’s more money. If it’s end credits, it’s even more expensive.’ Surprisingly to us, one of the most expensive types of music uses in film is called ‘visual vocal’ - this is when an actor sings the lyrics of a song onscreen’. Which makes you wonder exactly how much all those Saltburn karaoke scenes cost...
In a stark contrast to the poppy vibes of Bextor, one needle drop in cinema that springs to mind for Ben is from Yorgos Lanthimos’ The Lobster. There is a sequence where a group of characters are out in the woods, hunting, which plays out in slow motion. The scene is accompanied by ‘Apo Mesa Pethamenos’ by Greek singer Danai - ‘to me that song was so unexpected. Outside of Greece most people probably have never heard of it and it just works so wonderfully with the scene’. In terms of his own potential needle drops, Ben plays coy. ‘I have a huge playlist for needle drops. I hesitate to name any songs though in case people think they’re a good idea and license them first haha! What is happening more and more is that with every song I listen to I think for a few seconds, ‘hmm would this work in a scene? And how?’.
There is some workaround with this method of finding music, however. ‘There’s two sides to every recording - there’s a composition and then there’s the master recording. The composition is basically the lyrics, the melody and the chords and the master is the actual recorded piece of music. You need to clear both sides, but sometimes you might only manage to license the composition - what you do then is take the composition and record a new master, which you then own. Basically, do a cover. It could absolutely work out cheaper’. And Ben also says it’s not worth being intimidated by the unreachability of some artists, as ‘there is no rule about costs. Every publisher/label can name any price they want. When you send out a licensing request you can do it one of two ways, either, ‘look, this is the budget of the movie, we can pay X amount’, or you ask them, ‘we want this song, this is how we’re going to use it, how much would it be?’. Then, you negotiate it from there’. The costs of such music can still sound incredibly daunting for a new filmmaker with no budget. That’s why there’s something called production music. ‘Production music is music that is made to be synced. There are gigantic libraries online’. One example is a site called Extreme Music; ‘some of those sites literally have like a million songs and those songs are specifically made to be placed in Film/TV, ads, corporate videos and so on. As a young filmmaker, if you need something quickly and you don’t want to go through the whole process of sending out licence requests to the various publishers, you could go to a one-stop production music site and find something to licence for a smaller amount of money’.Ben moved to London five years ago and came into the industry by working on Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks produced Masters of the Air, the follow-up series to Band of Brothers and The Pacific. Starring upcoming heavyweights like Austin Butler, Callum Turner and Bary Keoghan, Ben actually found himself onscreen alongside some of these people.‘Right out of Covid, they were casting Masters of the Air and they were looking for an army big band. Through an extras agency that specifically casts musicians, I got the part of a piano playing soldier. I don’t have any lines, but we played and recorded 40s big band music live on set in the mornings and then mimed to our own recording during filming in the afternoon. I was always interested in the intersection between music and film and, through this incredible experience, I started working for Music In Vision, the company that cast me in Masters of the Air in the first place’.
From there, ‘that led to me assisting Music In Vision’s amazing music supervisor Kathleen Wallfisch in casting other musicians in various projects. I’ve helped cast musicians in about 15 different productions in scenes where real musicians are needed. Through that, the next step was the music coordination for Napoleon, being on set for all the scenes that included musicians on camera. The big coronation scene for example, where Napoleon is crowned, featuring a full orchestra. For that, I was there on set, coordinating the orchestra, making sure they had everything they needed and that everything looked period appropriate. I was sort of the link between the sound recordist, director Ridley Scott and the orchestra. That’s a fully different aspect of music supervision - to be on set, for scenes where music is happening on screen’.
Ben’s passions have always been both film and music. ‘I was lucky to always have a piano in my room’, he tells us. ‘As a teenager I thought more of becoming a film director, that was the big dream. But then, once I focused on that, I missed the music too much. If I tell people about my music and film obsession, the obvious thing for them to say is ‘well, you should be a film composer! That’s where music and film meet’, right? But that was never really my thing, to compose, so that’s why music supervision is the perfect in between. I have toured the world as a keyboard player for various Pop artists and listen to all kinds of music, and I’m obsessed with cinema and its history and this is where you can put them both together and you can assist directors and producers in choosing the right music that helps to elevate a film or TV series’.
Having worked on such large productions already, Ben discusses where he sees himself in the future. ‘I want to be a music supervisor full time, for sure. Through my recent experiences, I’ve kind of transitioned now into the industry and it’s definitely something I want to keep doing. Funnily enough, I used to live in North Hollywood for three years but never crossed over into the film world there. I was just a musician there - then, I come to London and it’s happening here and not in Hollywood’.
‘Statistically, the business of syncing music to picture is exploding because there’s so much content, from a Youtube video to a big blockbuster in cinema. And all of visual media needs music now - games have music supervisors now. The cost per song is going down but the field is getting bigger. What I'm trying to do and what is possible for me is to reach out to young directors because I'm still at the beginning, and vice versa I’m hoping that film makers needing help on the music side will reach out to me as well. The best and coolest way is to work with ambitious, up and coming directors and producers and grow together’.
