It was about this time 5 years ago that I had been diagnosed with cancer and had started 6 months of chemotherapy treatments.
Cancer, you might imagine, is a drag. And one of the most tedious parts of the process is the boredom. Sitting around hospitals, waiting for tests to come back...I'm a guy that likes to always be busy with 10 projects at once, so 6 months stuck in chemo was just not my speed.
I made up projects and goals for myself to get through those 6 months. One of the things I decided to work on was an album. It was a difficult time for my family, my friends and myself—and I like to think that music made it easier for all of us.
The Album
At the end of the 6 months I had a short collection of recordings, just 6 songs, and I decided that would be enough. In the end it was less about creating the perfect album, and became more about sharing some hard evidence that I had triumphed over cancer.
So out Straight Ahead came, digital only, in the summer of 2006. Cameron cleverly helped me get one of the songs into a popular iMix, and I sold a very modest number of copies of the album. I never made a great deal of money, but again, there had been non-monetary and even non-musical reasons for putting the album out there. I was satisfied.
The Offer
Skip ahead to summer of 2009. I was working as a music director at a summerstock theater in upstate New York. One afternoon an email arrives from a music licensing house. The email says that Sony Pictures is interested in licensing my recording of Nearness of You for a feature film called “Takers."
I nearly deleted the email. I thought it was spam. It seemed like one of those “Nigerian businessman needs your social security number" kind of emails. And it has an attachment (always a dubious sign). Just to be safe, though, I sent the email to a cousin that works in film, asking him if it looked legit to him.
To my surprise, it turned out to be a legitimate offer from Sony Pictures. They were interested in my recording. They said that had a scene in the movie where one friend plays piano while another friend proposes to his girlfriend. They thought the recording was a good fit for the scene and they wanted to secure the rights prior to filming the scene.
The Source
My first question was: How did they find my recording? The answer: iTunes.
If you think about it, that is quite incredible. Just a few years ago, before iTunes was invented, it would have been unimaginable that a normal, non-famous musician could score a song placement in a major feature film without the help of an agent, radio play, a manager or a friend on the inside. If Sony is, in fact, combing iTunes for songs in their upcoming movies, we should sit for a moment and marvel at how resolutely iTunes has democratized our industry. You, dear reader, can get a song in a movie. Just pay CD Baby $35 and get your material into digital distribution, and you will have just as good a chance as anyone.
The Movie
I considered hiring a lawyer for the contract negotiations, but I decided to rely on the good advice of my cousin and another friend in the film business. Everyone agreed that the offer they gave me was reasonable, so I signed the contract and faxed it back.
The movie was filmed soon thereafter, and “Takers" was released a year later—just last month. In the scene, the recording is performed by Hayden Christensen's character, “AJ," as his friend Jake (Michael Ealy) proposes to his girlfriend (Zoe Saldana). They used about 1 minute of the recording.
I went to see the movie in Manhattan with Cameron and a few other friends. What a trip to hear my music on the big screen! What a thrill to sit with friends in a movie theater in New York City and see my name in the credits! How incredible is it that something that started with a cancer patient in suburban Illinois could end up in a Hollywood movie at that AMC in Manhattan?
Do Something
So how did I get my song in a movie? A little work and a lot of luck. My guess is that somebody at Sony searched iTunes for “solo piano ballad" or something similar.
Will I be able to repeat this stroke of luck? Can I give you advice on how you can do it too? I don't know. It's hard to predict what the good folks in Hollywood will be looking for in the future.
Obviously, though, none of us will have any hope at all if we don't continue to make recordings and put them into digital distribution. So keep creating, keep recording, keep releasing—and see what happens. You never know what people will be looking for.
Or, as Cameron more succinctly summed up in The Art (of Act) of Doing, the best advice I can give is this: do something.
About the author
David J. Hahn is a music director and pianist in New York City. Dave is currently the Associate Conductor for the revival of On a Clear Day You Can See Forever and the Associate Synth Programmer for Alan Menken's Leap of Faith. His recording of “Nearness of You," from his 2006 album Straight Ahead, can be heard in the 2010 feature film Takers.
Cancer, you might imagine, is a drag. And one of the most tedious parts of the process is the boredom. Sitting around hospitals, waiting for tests to come back...I'm a guy that likes to always be busy with 10 projects at once, so 6 months stuck in chemo was just not my speed.
I made up projects and goals for myself to get through those 6 months. One of the things I decided to work on was an album. It was a difficult time for my family, my friends and myself—and I like to think that music made it easier for all of us.
The Album
At the end of the 6 months I had a short collection of recordings, just 6 songs, and I decided that would be enough. In the end it was less about creating the perfect album, and became more about sharing some hard evidence that I had triumphed over cancer.
So out Straight Ahead came, digital only, in the summer of 2006. Cameron cleverly helped me get one of the songs into a popular iMix, and I sold a very modest number of copies of the album. I never made a great deal of money, but again, there had been non-monetary and even non-musical reasons for putting the album out there. I was satisfied.
The Offer
Skip ahead to summer of 2009. I was working as a music director at a summerstock theater in upstate New York. One afternoon an email arrives from a music licensing house. The email says that Sony Pictures is interested in licensing my recording of Nearness of You for a feature film called “Takers."
I nearly deleted the email. I thought it was spam. It seemed like one of those “Nigerian businessman needs your social security number" kind of emails. And it has an attachment (always a dubious sign). Just to be safe, though, I sent the email to a cousin that works in film, asking him if it looked legit to him.
To my surprise, it turned out to be a legitimate offer from Sony Pictures. They were interested in my recording. They said that had a scene in the movie where one friend plays piano while another friend proposes to his girlfriend. They thought the recording was a good fit for the scene and they wanted to secure the rights prior to filming the scene.
The Source
My first question was: How did they find my recording? The answer: iTunes.
If you think about it, that is quite incredible. Just a few years ago, before iTunes was invented, it would have been unimaginable that a normal, non-famous musician could score a song placement in a major feature film without the help of an agent, radio play, a manager or a friend on the inside. If Sony is, in fact, combing iTunes for songs in their upcoming movies, we should sit for a moment and marvel at how resolutely iTunes has democratized our industry. You, dear reader, can get a song in a movie. Just pay CD Baby $35 and get your material into digital distribution, and you will have just as good a chance as anyone.
The Movie
I considered hiring a lawyer for the contract negotiations, but I decided to rely on the good advice of my cousin and another friend in the film business. Everyone agreed that the offer they gave me was reasonable, so I signed the contract and faxed it back.
The movie was filmed soon thereafter, and “Takers" was released a year later—just last month. In the scene, the recording is performed by Hayden Christensen's character, “AJ," as his friend Jake (Michael Ealy) proposes to his girlfriend (Zoe Saldana). They used about 1 minute of the recording.
I went to see the movie in Manhattan with Cameron and a few other friends. What a trip to hear my music on the big screen! What a thrill to sit with friends in a movie theater in New York City and see my name in the credits! How incredible is it that something that started with a cancer patient in suburban Illinois could end up in a Hollywood movie at that AMC in Manhattan?
Do Something
So how did I get my song in a movie? A little work and a lot of luck. My guess is that somebody at Sony searched iTunes for “solo piano ballad" or something similar.
Will I be able to repeat this stroke of luck? Can I give you advice on how you can do it too? I don't know. It's hard to predict what the good folks in Hollywood will be looking for in the future.
Obviously, though, none of us will have any hope at all if we don't continue to make recordings and put them into digital distribution. So keep creating, keep recording, keep releasing—and see what happens. You never know what people will be looking for.
Or, as Cameron more succinctly summed up in The Art (of Act) of Doing, the best advice I can give is this: do something.
About the author
David J. Hahn is a music director and pianist in New York City. Dave is currently the Associate Conductor for the revival of On a Clear Day You Can See Forever and the Associate Synth Programmer for Alan Menken's Leap of Faith. His recording of “Nearness of You," from his 2006 album Straight Ahead, can be heard in the 2010 feature film Takers.
