Why You’re Having Difficulty Landing Larger Gigs (And What to Do About It)

Making the transition from student films to larger budget films is HARD. There is no easy path to go from scoring films for free to making enough money to pay some of your bills each month, or even sustaining yourself full time. A lot of the traditional advice comes down to just keep at it and keep networking, and though that is good advice it can feel a little exhausting when it feels like you are repeating the same thing over and over again and barely moving the needle.

And though there is no singular path we can follow to get from point A to B, we can take some ideas from Cal Newport’s book, “So Good They Can’t Ignore You” and Joe Pulizzi’s Podcast, “Content Inc.” to discover ways we put ourselves in positions that create bigger and better opportunities for us.

Understanding Career Capital

Cal Newport’s main thesis in this book is that the best way to find happiness at your job is to become really good at what you do. He proposes the idea that “Career Capital” opens all sorts of doors for you, and by being better at what you do or working on projects that build your career capital, you can find yourself in positions that aren’t open to you when you’re first starting out in a new industry or niche. Career capital is the combination of skills, reputation, and proof that you can deliver at a professional level. It’s what makes people trust you with bigger opportunities.

The more career capital you build through experience, credibility, and results the easier it becomes to land higher-budget projects. More opportunities open up, not because of luck but because your reputation starts to precede you. We can’t jump to AAA games or massive blockbuster films until we “build up to it” or “Earn our keep”. Career Capital is the resume and reputation around you that says you are ready and you can do this.

Career Capital can be broken into 3 main categories: Creative (how good you are at your craft), Social (who trusts and recommends you) and Strategic (your online presence, public reputation, etc)

Once you understand how to build career capital, Joe Pulizzi, aka the “Godfather of Content Marketing”, has this idea that every quarter try to focus on one big tent pole project beyond your normal normal content. This can be a book release, a live event, or anything “larger scale” that helps you move the needle and they’re one of your best tools for career capital growth.

Putting it in terms of Film Composers

If we were thinking like a film composer, let’s say you just scored your first feature film and it landed an Oscar nomination. This would bring you a ton of career capital and make it far easier for you to land gigs than before this occurred.

Now obviously not every composer has the chance to get nominated for an Oscar on every project, especially those just trying to make it. But often times there are many things we can do to build our legitimacy as composers and give clients a better sense that we are noteworthy, talented, and can be trusted.

Besides just writing insanely good music, there are a few ways we can “hack the system” and make ourselves rise above the other choices your client may be considering.

Building Career Capital as an Early Stage Composer

At the very beginning of your career, before you have your first gig, there are small things you can do to get career capitol - these are the things that make you stand out amongst other first time or even hobby composers. but these will not be deciding factors in larger gigs. You can skip the following section if you’re already beyond this first time/early stage.

1. Dress for the Job you want (aka, look the part) - I am not telling you to dress up like Beethoven and go around waving your arms like a conductor humming to yourself everywhere, but I am saying that it’s not enough to just say you want to compose for a film. Having a website and an actual portfolio will get you far further than a few randomly named tracks (V2_FriendsMovie_FINALforreal.mp3) in a google drive. Not only that, but having a decent camera for zoom calls and a good looking (or strategically designed) physical background can help too. This sounds stupid, but it adds to your “image” and provides legitimacy when you have no other credits to your name.
   

When I was first starting out, I’d take all my calls using a DSLR camera as a webcam in front of a wall of guitars. I eventually moved to my studio and got LED lights set up making my desk glow while umbrella lights lit my face up perfectly. I took my calls there in front of my keyboard and large monitors. I will absolutely admit it was a “presentation” thing - but I have multiple clients who mentioned that that was a deciding factor for them as I looked professional and knew what I was doing. I wasn’t answering their zoom call in my car, I was responding to them in a professional looking environment and caring about the details of the video call.

You don’t need to go all out or over the top, but the manner and materials in which you present yourself IS important, especially in first impressions

You may have seen the viral reel about advice for college seniors that says rent one of the class rooms and take a picture in front of the projector as if you were giving a presentation and use that as your LinkedIn profile. It makes you look and feel important. It’s “fake it tilll you make it.” It’s “dress for the job you want”. It’s what you should do if you ever have time in a real recording studio or otherwise nice “musical space” as it does help early on for sure.

2. Make content around your niche - this is a strategy I employed as well, and to great results (I’m still doing it!). Making content, especially educational content, around what you do adds to your credibility and helps establish that you know what you are talking about and can be trusted. Make enough content, and you might even be considered an “expert” by some people (more on content later)
   

3. Get recommended from a friend - this is one of the BEST ways to get gigs, especially early in your career. Having someone recommend you adds so much to your “legitimacy” as a composer as someone they trust is lending you their reputation to pitch you to someone in need. This is also how I’ve gotten gigs before: my filmmaker friends and I would always recommend each other at any opportunity we could get and really helped our careers take off. They’d recommend me for composer, I’d recommend them for their on set work. It was a win-win. If you can make these sort of relationships, I highly recommend it. And the best way to make them? Start recommending people any chance you can (that you trust and know can do the work). They may love the favor and send it back your way. You never know!
   

If you’re interested in more first gig work, I have a great YouTube video on the topic as well as a free 7-day email program that takes you step by step through the process of landing your first gig from designing your portfolio to how to send cold emails and more (with a free checklist on everything you need!).

Moving from Early to Mid Career and landing larger gigs

If you already have a few gigs under your belt but want to start getting larger ones, small changes like “A better video background” aren’t going to help you as much. Your credits and work history are far more important than what your video looks like on a call (though I would never entirely count that out!). So how do we build career capital once we already started our careers but want to take on larger gigs?

Before we continue I want to very clearly state that none of this is a substitute for being a better composer and improving as much as you can. Being a great composer is the creative side of career capital. However, there are things that can be done socially and strategically to help build your career capital and grow little by little over time. Career capital essentially boils down to “why is this person worth my time?”, so even if your music is phenomenal and on the same this is what separate you out from someone like Hans Zimmer in the eyes of people like Warner Brothers.

Like before, the obvious thing to do is to list your credits on your website - especially make note if things got into festivals or won any awards. This is fantastic for your credentials: bigger festivals = more capital. Even if the music is exactly the same! I had a film get into SITGES last year, and being able to mention that I did a horror film that got into the oldest and largest horror festival, not to mention it being Oscar qualifying, certainly opened conversations for me. Take advantage of little wins like that - if it’s something you’re proud of it’s something you can use to grow your career.

If you have multiple projects with the same director, that looks amazing for your website as it shows you have an on going relationship with someone who keeps coming back to work with you. These can build a decent amount of trust with new clients, almost like a testimonial but factually able to be proven.

Likewise, I’ll even sometimes mention that I worked for XYZ composers on the music teams for so and so streaming services. Association is VERY powerful and can be something that sticks out to the client (again, at least at these early stages in your career). If you have a project or team you were a part of that is recognized, take advantage of it!

What’s really awesome about hosting the Coffee with Composers podcast is I get to meet so many awesome composers and chat with them, and then I get the added bonus of association when people see them on my instagram page and we chat about talking to “the composer from the new A24 movie” on our first call together.

One last note on credits: the first one is hardest to get, because you lack the capital. Same thing when it comes to features, however one feature on your website is worth far more than one short. I’ve taken pay cuts on features just to have them on my credit list rather than being flooded by short films. This is true outside of the composing niche too - many filmmakers will say the same thing: a feature is worth far more to their reputation than a short, and I think that is very emblematic of this idea that I’m trying to get across with this post.

By now you are probably realizing that career capital is something like a resume that you can earn, and there are ways to build a resume that aren’t just about your overall “work history”.

So this is why I highly recommend having a social media presence. A “paper trail” of your work, especially if you build a following over time, is a great way to demonstrate that what you have is valuable and high enough quality that other people are interested in it. The right kind of content will also help establish you as an expert in your particular niche, and appearing as an expert adds a ton of career capital. This falls into the category of social proof - which is surprisingly a very effective tool. You don’t need to be a full time content creator, but being somewhat active builds your reputation, as well as being a phenomenal marketing tool.

In addition, if you are trying musical experiments, doing new things, and just sharing your music you can start to be seen as a “thought leader” or an “Expert” and some people may even come to you for work directly. When I was at Berklee, my professor Michael Sweet would talk about these ideas and say things like how good it can be when you’re a student to contribute an article to a website like Gamasutra (now GameDeveloper.com). It builds your reputation, gets your name searchable online away from your website, and adds to your credibility as a composer. All things that are phenomenal for career capital.

Like film festivals, bigger content is better for your career capital. If you were to talk about music in what would be the social media equivalent of the Oscars (a Mr. Beast Video?) than that’d be far better than having the same post on a website like this or gamedeveloper.com. So getting on podcasts, YouTube videos, doing speaking engagements or webinars, or basically doing anything that sets you up to be perceived as someone who generally “people want to hear from” builds your credibility far beyond just your credits on your website.

If you’re looking for content ideas, the best thing you can do is try to help the person who is just a single step behind you. Share what you’re going through actively and how you’ve been conquering it. This has been my strategy for a while, and I believe it’s been very helpful. (Hint: this blog post was written by me. Make of that what you will :p )

Tent Pole Projects

At the very beginning of this post I mentioned Joe Pulizzi’s idea of “tent pole projects”. These are larger projects than your standard weekly music track or whatever your routine is. These sort of projects are designed to get more attention to you and build your career capital. It can be anything from hosting an event to publishing a book or so much more.

The idea of a tent pole project is to try to do something quarterly that exposes you to a whole new audience. The best way to achieve that is by creative partnerships with people outside of your niche, this is what collaborating on new projects is great for, but I’m going to suggest doing a passion project each quarter when possible. Your goal is to use these projects to break beyond steady growth

Perhaps Q1 you write a piece of music for a new ensemble, Q2 you release a book about a film scoring aimed at film students rather than composers, Q3 you host a live film and music screening, Q4 you release an original musical audio play.

All of these are achievable and can introduce you to new people outside of your niche, while also expanding your level of perceived expertise, creative ability, work experience, and more.

Remember, you are an artist first and a film composer second. The art precedes the business. The best way to be a better artist is to make cool art that you want to make, period.

Final Thoughts

Career capital isn’t about luck or connections: it’s about steadily building proof that you’re worth trusting. Every project, relationship, and piece of content adds a little more to your reputation until one day, the work starts coming to you. Keep showing up, keep improving, and keep building your capital! ScoringTech.Net is operated by Joe Chris as a means of trying to give back to the composer community. Consider joining the monthly mailing list to have these articles sent to your inbox on the first of every month! Follow me on instagram @Joe_Chris_ , youtube, or Join our free discord community where we host bi-weekly composition challenges!