Foxedge wrote:I'm pretty confident that in the digital age it's easier than ever before, to make contacts and get attention
I think the precise opposite is true. The problem with the "digital age" is that it removes all filters. Every idiot and his dog can get in on the act, which makes it a lot more effort to sort the wheat from the chaff. In the old days you had to work your way up but now you can put something up the day after you install your first DAW software. It will probably be awful but you still have to compete with it for attention. Eventually the good stuff gets drowned in the noise.
Ghost in the shell 2017 by Lorn Balfe for instance, but of course that's a matter of personal taste and there is a lot of quiet underscore included. I wasn't referring to orchestral music only, even a sound design heavy project does require a lot of skill.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dLBYxr3SbkA
I'm not hearing much skill in that. There are two or three minute sequences that are just a held note. I've heard better demo material for $5 sample sets. Also note that he is a protege of Hans Zimmer, so we know how he got into it.
IMO game soundtracks are far superior to those for the most films. The requirements are already higher in the indie/mid- budget range and in the game industry probably has tons of more jobs for composers than the film industry has, since games can be done easier with a not so huge budget by smaller teams than films.
Maybe but who cares about game soundtracks? I have less than no interest in games.
Again, depends on what projects you work on. This might be true for a few low-mid budget indie projects, if you want to play in the higher league, it takes a bit more to convince people that you're good even if they don't feel that you're good in their view.
Yes, and you do that by working your way up to it. You start by scoring your friend's indie short film. It gets good coverage doing the rounds of the film festivals and someone asks the director about you. He organises a meeting for you and you get a job working on a one hour documentary. From there someone might offer you a job on a low budget indie film or a tele-movie or something. You do a bit of that and eventually someone puts up your name to do a proper feature. That's how it works. You establish your credentials as you go, you don't need them before you start.
Do you know who Jaz Coleman is? He is the singer for KILLING JOKE. There is a great video where he explains how he bluffed his way into conducting an orchestra, admitting that he really had no idea and was in no way prepared for it. Yet he went on to become the composer in residence for the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra and for the EU. If you read his resume on Wikipedia, it's obvious he knows what he's doing but he got into it by bullshitting his way in, not because of his skills.