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What's the Scoop on the Next Twilight Soundtrack?

Thu., Jan. 29, 2009 10:24 AM PST by Leslie Gornstein

Summit Entertainment

I am loving the Twilight soundtrack. Any scoop on the next one? And how do they find music for TV and movies, anyway?
—Jade, Perth, Western Australia

The songs for New Moon haven't been nailed down yet—the flick is still in preproduction after all—but do I have some gossip on the movie anyway? You bet.

First, some background. When it comes to Twilight's soundtrack, you may credit legendary music supervisor Alexandra Patsavas, who has also curated the music for TV shows The OC, Roswell, Chuck, Mad Men and Without a Trace. Patsavas is also on board to supervise the sound for New Moon. Now the gossip...

The new director, Chris Weitz, has been sending out signals that he may be open to a more experimental soundtrack than his predecessor. That could mean songs that sparkle even more than the movie's vampires when they get caught in the sun.

"I think that might be the way it's going," says Marisa Baldi, West Coast partner for Zync, a music brokerage that funneled two songs onto the Twilight soundtrack. "I get the vibe that the guy is a little more into being surprised...everything is really open, and he wants to hear a lot of cool music."

The process for choosing the final music list works like any movie. First, bands or their managers approach a music brokerage, such as Zync. Zync then works to place songs in films, film trailers or commercials.

In the case of a feature film, the brokerage chats with a film's music supervisor, gets a feel for the film and then sends out compilations of suggested tracks. The Twilight song "Full Moon" by the Black Ghosts was a hit with Patsavas right away.

"It was on the very first compilation I sent her for the film," Baldi recalls.

As for Patsavas, I interviewed her awhile ago about her search process. "We sort of put in one CD at a time," Patsavas explained to me at the time. "Maybe we don't play a CD all the way through, but we do give everything a try."

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