213
A DAY IN THE LIFE
Julie Butchko beings her day handling incoming
faxes. "Normally, there are one or
two pieces of business that I'm waiting for an
urgent answer on. I like to make my
London and New York phone calls in the morning
and get those out of the way. I try
to touch base with as many people as possible.
The rest of the time is spent reading
scripts, sending out quote requests,
researching music, and doing budget estimates.
Guiding the producers and the production staff
of television shows, as far as music.
How much it's going to cost and how much time
we're going to need. What they can
and cannot do with a piece of music, and other
obligations and costs that they are
not necessarily aware of. Throughout the day we
get phone calls from our TV shows,
from our marketing staff, and from the
producers of the films we're working on as far
as new music that has come up that they want to
get cleared for their projects. We
start researching that and I start contacting
the publishers and the record labels for
clearances, and getting the quotes, clearing
the songs for sound track use, and negoti-
ating those deals. Because the world of DVD has
opened up, they put a lot of extra
bonus materials on them to make them more
consumer friendly, so you might have
outtakes from the movie, behind the scenes
footage, or interviews. This extra pro-
gramming either isn't cleared because it was
not in the film, or it was dropped out of
the film, so we didn't pay for those rights. We
work with our DVD department and
try and clear things at a reasonable rate for
them to include all these extra little
goodies."
"Getting people checks; getting people paid for
their music. Requesting licenses
and reviewing licenses that come in. Doing cue
sheets for the numerous television
shows and films, and different marketing
specials is a normal part of the day.
Working with our copyright registration people
and the score side of our business.
Reporting to Todd Homme and Mary
L.
Jacobs on the music status in the
films
that I'm working on for them.
Licensing
the film scores that DreamWorks
owns--
I don't just spend money, I make it.
E-
mail is constant."
POINTERS FOR THE
JOB SEARCH
"Don't be embarrassed to start out
as
an assistant. Soak up any possible
infor-
mation, that you can while you're at
that
desk. When you're an assistant, you
hear
a lot more about what's going on,
about
all kinds of different transactions
and
"It's important to be open and
honest." It makes it much easier
to negotiate a fair deal for a
music license if you trust and
respect the person on the other
end of the phone.
Build relationships with fellow
clearance people who you can
ask for advice and with whom
you can compare deals and
pricing.
CAREER
TIPS
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