‘Music is one of the best buys for the money in the entire film production process.’

Now you can’t fault a composer, any composer, for saying that, but John Welsman really, really believes it.

Welsman, who was the musical mind behind Sullivan Entertainment’s Road To Avonlea for nearly all its run, can’t remember working on a successful project that scrimped on the score.

‘You look at our favorite projects, the ones that do great with the public, whether they’re film or tv, and I don’t think you could look at any of them and say, `Oh, there’s a project with a tight music budget but it managed to succeed somehow anyway.’ There are significant losses when we try to do something musically with very little money.’

Welsman, who’s currently working on The Prisoner of Zenda, a cable feature for Showtime, says while he’s best known for the melodic, thematic ‘warm and friendly’ music that was so much a part of Avonlea, his work since then has allowed him to stretch a little more. For example, on Robin of Locksley, another Showtime feature from Larry Sugar’s Sugar Entertainment, half the score was done electronically.

Judith Gruber-Stitzer, a Montreal composer with a long list of work for the nfb under her belt, is another composer who’d like to buck typecasting.

Having started out composing for documentaries, she found she was getting hired almost exclusively by doc producers, and the same thing happened when she broke into composition and sound design for animation. Her idea of breaking loose would be an action flick: ‘Man, I’d love it!’

‘An action film would be amazing. Documentaries are a wonderful way to learn the craft, but I’d love to blast.’

Gruber-Stitzer’s cv includes two films for Robert Altman (The Room and The Dumb Waiter) and she’s currently working on an nfb animated project called Dinner For Two featuring two feuding reptiles in an allegory about conflict resolution.

Her 10-year career in film composition stemmed from her visibility in Wonderbrass, a Montreal jazz band. In fact, she was trained as an English teacher.

‘It’s funny, but I think my background in English really helps me,’ says Gruber-Stitzer. ‘Storytelling is the whole idea, and the music not only sets the stage but supports the characters and the themes.’

Gruber-Stitzer also believes it takes a unique kind of musician to compose for the screen. ‘I’ve heard wonderful musicians who make terrible film composers,’ she says. ‘The music has to serve the purpose of the film, it doesn’t exist for itself.’

Jim Guttridge, one half of Vancouver’s Ferocious Fish, a partnership between Guttridge and Daryl Bennett, agrees. He believes it takes a true sense of musical diversity to meet the project’s requirements rather than your own sensibilities.

‘Being a session musician is great training,’ says Guttridge. ‘You learn to love all the music, which is crucial. Sometimes you have to sacrifice your own personal tastes to do what’s right for the film and give it what it needs.’

The Fish have just finished work on Mortal Challenge, a Roger Korman film for Showtime. Guttridge says it was an interesting music mix, combining synch and orchestral sound to produce a lush, heavily industrial soundscape. The story takes place in Los Angeles circa 2003 after The Big One, and Guttridge calls it ‘a classic b-movie.’

The duo plans to open an office in l.a. in September with the help of ‘a friend,’ a Canadian music exec at DreamWorks.

‘We hope the move will mean bigger budget, higher profile projects,’ says Guttridge. ‘There are a lot of projects looking for Canadian composers in l.a., producers who need the Canadian content but want to post there.’

Since winning a Leo Award from the British Columbia Motion Picture Association for their work on Philip Spink’s Once In A Blue Moon and a Grammy nomination for a long-form video for the bizarre rock group Gwar, Guttridge says the company’s original goal of getting into film is being realized. ‘We’ve been able to line up feature work pretty steadily,’ he says.

The orchestral score for Once In A Blue Moon, although it was award-winning, didn’t turn a profit for the company. In fact, they took a loss on the job.

‘Having hired the orchestra, we took a loss,’ says Guttridge. ‘But we hoped it was going to open doors, specifically with our friend in l.a. helping us out, so we looked at it as an investment.’

The price of using live musicians is a common sticking point for composers. Although nearly every composer would like to use live players instead of a synch mockup when recording an orchestral score, the cost is definitely a hindrance.

‘The musicians union is the only union in the film industry that doesn’t have an indigenous low-budget agreement,’ according to Guttridge. ‘I understand the union wanting to protect income,’ he says, ‘but it’s making it too easy to go to a synch score. Producers look at an orchestra as an unnecessary luxury rather than a necessity.’

Vancouver’s Tim McCauley, composer for the cbc series North of 60, believes that, although the economic realities of production demand computerization, the human element can’t be replaced.

‘The nuances, the phrasing, the inflection, all the things that make music important to a piece are enhanced by humans,’ says McCauley. ‘Although I do what I can do efficiently and effectively on the computer, when I feel it’s appropriate to use live musicians, I do.’

Welsman, if he believes the script calls for live players, tries to earmark the money as early in the process as possible.

‘When it calls for live players, I fight pretty hard for live players,’ he says. ‘As composers, we have to keep working with producers to encourage finding extra money, where possible, to put something special on the screen. I’d have to say the strength of Avonlea and other projects I’ve done is that they were done almost exclusively with live musicians.’

Claude Desjardins, one half of the Etobicoke, Ont.-based Millennium Music duo of Desjardins and Eric Robertson, says computerization, while necessary considering the constraints, has played a part in creating a tight squeeze for composers.

‘In these economic times, for certain shows, even though it’s not the same and it’s definitely not better, midi is a godsend. But it puts a different onus on the music itself. It’s a security blanket for the producers because they know the music can come in for less at the end. Unfortunately, I know the product suffers because anyone who can’t use live musicians when they’d like to ends up compromising. The project loses in the class department.’

Desjardins and Robertson, who paired up last year after working together on a number of projects, have scored Taking The Falls for ctv and The Rez for cbc. Superstition prevented Desjardins from revealing film projects in the works (‘It’s bad luck, bad news’), but the team has recently finished the theme for tfo’s version of tvokids and three albums are in various stages of completion.

Both halves of Millennium still work independently as freelance musicians, and Desjardins can’t foresee a time when the partners will attempt to narrow their focus to one genre or medium.

‘This is Canada, and I don’t think many people can afford to do that,’ says Desjardins. ‘You still have to basically be able and willing to do everything and keep your mind open to doing anything, within reason. There are two ways of seeing it – fortunately, we get to do a lot of different things, or unfortunately, we can’t focus on one thing.’

Jack Lenz, the man behind the score for Due South and Goosebumps, looks at that dilemma in a positive light. ‘There’s room and opportunity within Canada to work with a lot of people and explore,’ he says. ‘And producers in Canada are remarkably loyal if they like your work.’

Lenz, who wrote songs for the Warner Bros. animated feature The Nutcracker Prince and created the music for the 50th anniversary D-Day and VE-Day events, also penned The Greatest Moments, which at&t picked up as its Olympic theme music. As well, he’s just finished music for 50 one-hours of a show called Go For It for Discovery Channel.

Lenz, whose success has translated into a steady demand for his work in the States, says he’s proud to be associated with the Canadian musical talent pool.

‘We’re in very good company here,’ he says. ‘We’re definitely on par with what’s being done in the u.s., and as the composing community develops here, we’ll advance even further.’