This comprehensive 4-hour workshop gives filmmakers everything you need to know when approaching music in your projects. Core topics include:
- Why and where do you need music, if at all?
- How do you get the music you want if you know nothing about music?
- Who do I hire? A composer? Music supervisor? Library?
- How do I budget music creatively on a tight budget?
- When do I start the music process and how to schedule?
We’ll dive into real world examples of:
- The costliest mistakes at the music stage and how to avoid them
- Music and film co-existing together
- Budgets and creative options
- Rights, contracts, and intellectual property
- Cue sheets and deliverables
At the end of this boot camp, you, the filmmaker, will have all the knowledge you need to successfully get through the music stage of your project and avoid costly mistakes.
ABOUT DAVID
David Majzlin has spent decades at the intersection of music and visual media and has worked on projects of nearly every size and scope - from independent shorts to major Hollywood studio releases. This workshop was born out of demand after designing and teaching cross-disciplinary courses for composers, music producers, and filmmakers at institutions such as New York Film Academy, UCLA Extension, Brooklyn College, and the American Film Institute.
He is an eclectic Emmy®-nominated and two-time Telly Award-winning composer and music producer known for his emotionally rich scores, clever songwriting, and unique collaborations with filmmakers and artists around the world. His score for Bel Canto (directed by Oscar nominee Paul Weitz and starring Oscar winner Julianne Moore and Ken Watanabe) featured five-time Grammy Award-winning soprano Renée Fleming and he has worked with a wide array of visionary directors including Academy Award-nominated director, Lorena Muñoz (Breaking The Silence), MacArthur Fellow Cristina Ibarra (Las Marthas), Peabody Award-winner Robert Rooy (Deej), Pulitzer Prize-winner David Turnley (Shenandoah), and Nancy Buirski whose multiple-Emmy-winning The Loving Story, was recently accepted to the permanent collection of preserved films at the Library of Congress.
Other unique projects include custom works for Amazon’s Emmy-award-winning superhero series The Boys and Golden Globe-winning series Mozart in the Jungle (Sony Classical), Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has to Travel (MGM), The Joneses (Starring Demi Moore and David Duchovny), Sunshine Cleaning (starring Emily Blunt and Amy Adams), and Roman Polanski’s The Ghost Writer (starring Pierce Brosnan and Ewan McGregor). With director Jordan Horowitz her has scored Painless, Lalito 10 (Emmy win), Jack and Sam, and multiple Award-winner, Angel of Nanjing, which was featured twice in Elle Magazine’s list of “Films Guaranteed to Make You Cry.”
An accomplished songwriter and music producer, he is the recipient (with vocalist, Ganna Sorbat) of the Lennon Award and Grand Prize for World Music in the John Lennon Songwriting Contest, is a 5-time Hollywood Independent Music Award nominee, a three-time finalist in the Great American Song Contest, and a finalist in the International Songwriting Competition. Majzlin has also collaborated with a diverse range of artists across genres – from celebrated film composers Benjamin Wallfisch (Hidden Figures, It: Welcome To Derry) and Paul Cantelon (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly) to music icons such as Lou Reed and punk legend Harley Flanagan (Cro Mags).
In the theater world, his collaboration with songwriter Juliane Jones on Valensky, an animated musical coming February of 2027, garnered over 1,000,000 streams in its 2026 sneak preview release. He also collaborated with Tony Award-winner Michael Aronov (Oslo, The Americans) on his sold-out one-man show Manigma and served as a music producer for several seasons with New York City’s Rude Mechanicals Theater Company where he produced the first original rock musical adaptation of Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale starring Omar Metwally (The Affair, Mr. Robot).
His score for Beautiful Monsters, commissioned by Helios Dance Company (Laura Gorenstein Miller, choreographer), premiered to a sold-out Royce Hall performance and he has collaborated on a number of works with choreographer Sasha Spielvogel of Labyrinth Dance Company, NYC.
An avid film enthusiast with a love of acting and process, Majzlin has lent his expertise on sets by coaching actors portraying musicians in films such as The Music Never Stopped (starring J.K. Simmons and Julia Ormond) and Greetings from Tim Buckley (starring Imogen Poots and Penn Badgley) to help deliver authentic musical performances and he is active in many educational aspects of the film music community. David holds a Master’s degree in Film and Media Literacy from New York University, where he studied under renowned media theorist Neil Postman.