Open call: Indie Film Music Contest 2024

This international film scoring contest seeks to give young composers an opportunity to showcase their talents. The contest will be split into two age groups and will focus on musical storytelling while ignoring sound quality to give beginners a fair chance to compete.

What makes this contest special

The judging panel will not adjudicate based on criteria like mixing and mastering or the quality of the sound. Composers who only have a piano and a phone to record their work, or a free orchestral library, stand the same chances as someone with thousands of dollars’ worth of orchestra libraries and experience in orchestrating.

The judges will only focus on the creative ideas used by composers to tell the story of this film with their music.

The Indie Film Music Contest is open worldwide to all nationalities and ages. Here are the details in a nutshell:

• Opportunity to win more than €18 000 (about $19 400) worth of prizes.
• Composers won’t be judged based on criteria like mixing and mastering or the quality of the sound.
• The judges will look only at the creative ideas used by composers to tell the story of the film.
• Any type/genre of music can be used to score the film and there are no limitations regarding the instruments or sounds used by composers.
• Composers must submit a recording of their compositions. Written scores are not accepted. An audio export from MuseScore, for example, would be more than enough.
• Composers should choose to score an award-winning live-action or animated three-minute short film or just do both by using multiple submissions (view more about the films).
• Composers should get a brief from the director describing what he is looking for in the score.
• Optional individual feedback by experienced professionals (feedback examples).
• Composers should register here to get an account to submit their compositions with a comment for the judges to explain their approach, see when the submission has been reviewed and view their feedback.
• Composers retain full ownership of their music and can share their submission(s) wherever they want as soon as they finish.

The registration deadline is 26 July 2024 while the submissions deadline is 2 August. The winners will be announced on 20 September.

“We know that most beginner composers don’t have great sample libraries or know how to orchestrate well and are therefore discouraged by most competitions to participate,” a statement reads. “However, we think there is nothing better than a competition to motivate aspiring composers to create.”

View the original call here.