For TV shows, the songs placed tend to be subject matters that often support scenes about love, happiness, sadness, partying, going out, having fun. The lyrics need to touch on emotions without being so specific that they won’t melt in. The music style has to fit the show, the character. Most important – what the director or producer prefer!
***Note: In films and TV the musical styles vary from show to show – Justified is overall very Black Keys, rock bluesy to Robert Johnson front porch black blues. Pretty Little Liars can have Alt-rock, pop male, female. Shameless is mostly dark, bluesy Black
Keys, but there was sorority scene we pitched on that show, needed Katy Perry. You have to study the show listen to what is in there.
* You have the scene – video or description… How do you start? How do you work music around scene editing?
We rarely get the scene to look at, just a brief or description. The Music editor will really help here in post, because — Most of our placements ARE NOT WRITTEN TO SCENE but the scene is matched by the supervisor to an already written and produced song
pitched to them. Most songs placed in TV are not written for scenes.In films, more songs tend to be written for the scene, but they’re mostly from already recorded famous and unknown songs.