Scout–which provides music licensing, supervision and production for commercial advertising, TV and film–has issued current Music Design Lab challenges which have an upcoming deadline of September 5. The challenges are:
- Challenge #1: Sung Hip Hop Earworms
- Challenge #2: Lost Jukebox Gems from the 1950s/60s
The Music Design Lab is free. Participants submit instrumentals, lyrics, hooks or complete songs. Scout then works with them to create finished tracks with involvement from clients.
Most up-and-coming musicians look for success in the music industry as we know it: radio, touring and Spotify. But in the age of Netflix Originals, Amazon Studios and YouTube ads, success often means creating the bold songs that ad agencies and music supervisors need for their projects. The Scout Music Design Lab bridges this gap with a new series of music production challenges for aspiring songwriters and producers with a focus on hard-to-find, on-trend and rare styles.
“Our clients are always looking for those few songs that really jump out. They’re hard to find unless the budget is there to license a known hit, which can often be 100k and up,” said Scout music supervisor and producer Joey Prather. “The Design Lab helps our clients get the music they need while ushering in the next generation of talented producers and writers.”
“There is a lot of talent out there,” said Prather. “But creating music for media clients requires a unique skillset and mindset. Accessing the opportunity to learn the skills is tough but worth it.”
Carrie Coon Relishes Being Part Of An Ensemble–From “The Gilded Age” To “His Three Daughters”
It can be hard to catch Carrie Coon on her own.
She is far more likely to be found in the thick of an ensemble. That could be on TV, in "The Gilded Age," for which she was just Emmy nominated, or in the upcoming season of "The White Lotus," which she recently shot in Thailand. Or it could be in films, most relevantly, Azazel Jacobs' new drama, "His Three Daughters," in which Coon stars alongside Natasha Lyonne and Elizabeth Olsen as sisters caring for their dying father.
But on a recent, bright late-summer morning, Coon is sitting on a bench in the bucolic northeast Westchester town of Pound Ridge. A few years back, she and her husband, the playwright Tracy Letts, moved near here with their two young children, drawn by the long rows of stone walls and a particularly good BLT from a nearby cafe that Letts, after biting into, declared must be within 15 miles of where they lived.
In a few days, they would both fly to Los Angeles for the Emmys (Letts was nominated for his performance in "Winning Time" ). But Coon, 43, was then largely enmeshed in the day-to-day life of raising a family, along with their nightly movie viewings, which Letts pulls from his extensive DVD collection. The previous night's choice: "Once Around," with Holly Hunter and Richard Dreyfus.
Coon met Letts during her breakthrough performance in "Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolfe?" on Broadway in 2012. She played the heavy-drinking housewife Honey. It was the first role that Coon read and knew, viscerally, she had to play. Immediately after saying this, Coon sighs.
"It sounds like something some diva would say in a movie from the '50s," Coon says. "I just walked around in my apartment in my slip and I had pearls and a little brandy. I made a grocery list and I just did... Read More