2026 May 4
I’ve significantly changed my workflow as I continue to build my movie scoring and music video business. My focus is on refining techniques and processes to increase the artistic aspect of a project while reducing the time to completion with the subsequent financial savings.
3 Benefits of Simultaneous Screenplays and Soundtracks
I first read about this technique when Trent Reznor (Nine Inch Nails) and Atticus Ross scored the U.S. version of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011). While the basic screenplay had already been written, not much information was communicated to Reznor and Ross, so they decided to start writing and recording the score so that the dailies had actual music from them instead of using temporary music. This technique helped David Fincher (director) during filming, and some reports attribute adjustments to filming and editing due to the work of Reznor and Ross.
A year later (2012), Marc Streitenfeld took this further during his work on Ridley Scott’s movie Prometheus. Scott reportedly played pre-production soundtrack work from Streintenfeld into in-ear monitors while the actors were rehearsing and filming to give them a visceral sense of a particular scene.
While these two movies did not have the screenplay and soundtrack written simultaneously, they inspired me to try that technique in the upcoming movie Darker.
The three significant benefits of doing both at the same time, technically writing a section of the screenplay and then composing a section of the soundtrack immediately afterward, or vice versa, are:
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