ABOUT GARY YERSHON

Garyʼs career composing music for drama spans 40 years and encompasses scores for the leading UK theater companies, West End and Broadway productions, radio, television and film.
Gary was born in London in 1954. After graduating from Hull University, where he read Music and Drama, he sustained a career as an actor-musician until 1991, when he gave up the limelight to focus primarily on composing.

His theater scores include many for the Royal Shakespeare Company (where he is an Associate Artist), the National Theater, West End (including the English-language premieres of Yasmina Reza’s plays Art, The Unexpected Man, Life x 3 and God of Carnage) and Broadway (2009 Drama Desk nomination for The Norman Conquests). In 2016 he became an Associate Artist of the Old Vic Theater Company.

His is a regular collaborator of Mike Leigh. Their collaboration began with Topsy-Turvy (1999), on which Gary was musical director. Then came the scores for Happy-Go-Lucky (2008), Another Year (2010, gaining Gary a nomination as European Film Award Best Composer), the short film A Running Jump (2012), and Mr Turner (2014), for which Gary was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Score, Ivor Novello Award, and an ASCAP Composer’s Choice award. In 2018 he finished "Peterloo". He is currently working on Mr Leigh’s latest film.

Gary has written for BBC radio since 1979, his first appearances being as a singer-songwriter. Since then he has composed for many plays, including The Odyssey, Gawain and the Green Knight, The Theban Plays, The Winter’s Tale, The Eve of St Agnes, Three Men in a Boat, as well as the 2002 Sony-award winning Autumn Journal. For Radio 3 he translated and dramatised Pushkin’s Ruslan and Lyudmila, and contributed a new work, Orwell on Kipling, for the arts magazine programme The Verb.

TV work ranges from detective drama (Trial and Retribution IX & X) through theme music (The Heritage Game, The Good Neighbour Show) to children’s cartoon series (James the Cat, Painted Tails, Ebb and Flo).

For dance, his work includes Get A Move On (1994), choreographed by Jonathan Lunn at the New Performance Gallery, San Francisco; and Ma Vie En Rose (2007) choreographed by Ayse Tashkiran, directed by Pete Harris, at the Young Vic theatre, London; and The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas (2017) for Northern Ballet, choreographed by Daniel de Andrade.

Gary curates and presents OscarⓇ Scores at the Barbican Arts Centre in London. He also works as a writer, translator, musical director and teacher.

WORKSHOP DESCRIPTION
Workshop Description:

The Music Composing for Film workshop will focus on a diversity of topics of the art of composing music for a film.

You will have the chance of discussing these issues with Gary Yershon, but also to interact with up to 25 fellow participants, making it extremely practical and interactive. You will also have the opportunity to assess the issues you encountered on your work, and receiving feedback to help unblock situations in the future. The topics covered on the workshop will include:

HOW DID I BECAME A FILM COMPOSER?

Introduction to Gary and his work.
Introduction to the course participants and their work/experiences and goals.
Practical questions vs creative ones Practical questions:
How do I get into the business?
Did I need to learn it at college?
The classic catch 22 - "I know I can do it but how do I get work when I have nothing to show yet?"
Creative questions: What sort of composer are you?
How do you know what your voice is before you've had a chance to write?
Do you need your own voice?

BEING A FILM COMPOSER - WHAT DOES THAT ACTUALLY MEAN?

How I've done it.
Does this have any relevance to anyone else's career path?

WHY ARE YOU NOT TALKING ABOUT WRITING MUSIC? ARE WE EVER GOING TO GET ON TO THIS?
Is the music you write the most important part of your job?
Which is more useful - studying film scores or classical music?
Coming back to developing your own voice... Is this important or not?
Practical examples: Gary will show a few examples.
Each course member will bring one cue to play which represents them best.
Trends in film scoring. How this affects how you write. Should be take any notice of fashion? Examining some examples.

The important stuff:
Working with directors
Working with producers
Working with directors and producers who don't agree with each other.
Your team:
Contractors
Orchestrators
Programmers
Copying
Other backup

Boring stuff: Money Agents Publishing & copyright
Giving away your rights for opportunities and working for free.

Conclusion:
Spoiler alert! It's not how good you are but how good you want to be. Maybe!
You probably know more about this than you think.
Trust yourself. Be lucky. Make your own luck. Work hard. Be good. Be generous. Be better than you thought you could be. Be patient. But Don't wait for it to come to you. Being a composer isn't really a career choice. You don't pick it. It's chooses you. There is no escape. If you tick these boxes you already are a composer. The rest is just working out the details.


PROFILE OF PARTICIPANT
The workshop designed for Music composers, Musical Directors, Arrangers, Directors, Producers, or anyone interested in entering the Film Business in the music department.

LOCATION OF THE WORKSHOP
The workshop will take place online, FEST FILM LAB has always been a project of high level knowledge sharing and networking. In the next few months we will be hosting the workshops online, however we will maintain not only the standard of quality you have come to expect with the best experts available, but also the networking and interactivity of the workshops:

-The workshop group will have a limited number of participants, we will not host more than 25 participants.

- We will maintain the tailor made aspects, with the possibility of troubleshooting projects you have been involved or challenges you are facing. We will introduce new tools to enhance the interactivity between participants.

- We have rearranged the workshops' sessions, which will take place in 4 days instead of the typical 2 days, so that the workshop is less overwhelming, as the typical two full days online would impact the capacities of the participants to absorb the content.




Duration: 4 days
Dates: 24, 25th April and 1, 2nd of May 2021
2PM - 6PM GMT (London)
3PM - 7PM CET (Brussels)
9AM - 12PM EST (New York)
6AM - 10AM PST (Los Angeles)
6PM - 10PM Gulf Standard Time (Dubai)
10PM - 2AM CST (Beijing)
7:30PM - 11:30PM IST (New Delhi)
Location: Online
Price: 499EUR (299EUR with 40% Discount until the 23rd of April)
Maximum number of participants: 25
By registering to the workshop you agree with FFL terms and Conditions


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