The positive energy was palpable from the moment I stepped foot inside the doors of 99 Sudbury for the Music Makes It event yesterday – Ideas were being bounced around, business cards exchanged and for some, it felt as though they had just found their long lost friend.
Music Makes It’ is an initiative organized by the Ontario Media Development Corporation (OMDC) in conjunction with North by Northeast Festival and Conference (NXNE). It brings Ontario’s music industry together with screen-based media companies (Film, TV, interactive digital media etc.) in an effort to facilitate cross-industry collaborations. The initiative has been running for nearly a decade now and it has proved to be an instrumental force in driving Ontario’s music industry forward, especially at a time when the industry is facing a some what uncertain future.
“The value of traditional products is in many cases dropping,” says James Weyman, OMDC organizer of Music Makes It and Manager of Industry Initiatives.
“Music as the canary in the coal mine has been dealing with that for the most part of a decade with the loss of their traditional revenue streams from recorded music, so for them to be able to have a bunch of organized meetings with film, television, and interactive digital media producers, is a fantastic opportunity to look for ways of licensing their music into those screen- based projects.”
Over 70 companies from across Ontario’s music and screen-based industries attended the event yesterday which saw participants engage in brainstorming sessions as well as attend one-on-one meetings, all in the hope of establishing some kind of a business relationship with like-minded professionals.
“We look for producers who are actively doing stuff and may actually buy some music for projects in production and music companies who have a catalogue of artists and are able to be the supplier to that demand,” says Weyman.“The participants are companies who represent a volume of business, so it’s pretty hard to offer that service to individual artists for example.”
Among the participants in attendance was film producer Jennifer Jonas of New Real Films, and she was eager to build upon the success of previous encounters she had with musicians at past Music Makes It events.
“The first ever event like this was about six or seven years ago, and it awakened me to the fact that there were a bunch of companies of a similar size, with a similar goal, working in the music business with fabulous artists,” she says.
“At the time, I was doing a modern western and that lends itself perfectly to a particular kind of music and I ended up licensing a bunch of local tracks. Ever since then, it’s become a part of what we try to do at New Reel Films; in terms of finding a way to work with local artists either by licensing their songs or by having them do the actual score. For example, in the most recent film we did called “I’m Yours”, we worked with Ohad Benchetrit and Justin Small who are part of Do Make Say Think. In Canada, we’re so squashed by the American machine in terms of promotion and marketing, that we are stronger together than apart,” she added.
Sword and Sworcery, an award winning adventure video game produced by Capy Games with music by rock star/composer Jim Guthrie, was the case study for Music Makes It 2011 and it provided the perfect example of how the two worlds of music and screen can come together to produce something truly unique. Sword and Sworcery received worldwide acclaim for its artistic and musical approach.
It was Guthrie’s first experience producing music for a video game and he found it to be a thrilling ride; “I’m lucky because Sword and Sworcery is a video game but it’s really a lot more than that, it’s more akin to film. It’s a really different game and that’s what drew me to it. The art and the aesthetic behind it was fantastic, really engaging and beautiful to me,” he says. “I found the process super stimulating and I would love to do it again.
Also, at Music Makes It yesterday, OMDC announced the creation of a new music licensing incentive which will be exclusive to the participants of the event. The incentive will provide screen-based producers with funds to cover up to 75% of the cost of licensing music from independent Ontario-based music companies and undoubtedly, it will lead to even more inspiring collaborations across creative sectors in the province.
SÃle Cleary is a regular contributor to Toronto Standard. Follow her on Twitter at @silecleary.
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