It’s been three years since “Captain Marvel,” which grossed $1.1 billion in worldwide box office revenue, became the biggest female blockbuster of all time: Pinar Toprak.
Toprak, who also scored this year’s Netflix adventure “Slumberland,” is one of four female composers talked about for the 2022 awards. Icelandic composer Hildur Gonadottir has “Tár” and “Women Talking,” American Chanda Dancy has “Devotion” and French composer Emilie Levienaise has – Farrouch “Living”.
At least nine other women scored noteworthy films this year, including Asuka Matsumiya (“After Yang”), Isabella Summers (“Lady Chatterley’s Mistress”), Amelia Warner (“Mr. Malcolm’s List”), and Sharon Farber (“Brainwashing”). : Sex-Camera-Power”), Laura Karpman (“The Tree of Life”), Amanda Jones (“Art & Krimes by Krimes”), Anna Drubich (“Navalny”), Camille (“Corsage”) and Tanerélle (” Nanny “).
For many years, film scoring was a male-only profession. Dancy, after graduating from USC’s prestigious film scoring program in 2004, couldn’t get a job as an assistant composer—and was actually told it was because she was female.
“I had a hard time early in my career just trying to find a place for myself,” says Dancy. “The expectation was, Oh, are you a songwriter? A singer? I’m an objective orchestral composer, but I don’t sound like Beethoven. Or John Williams.”
She says this is not happening now. “People hire me for big 100-piece orchestral scores. That’s really only happened in the last three or four years.”
The Academy Awards for music have been handed out since 1934, but in all that time only six women have been nominated for composing original scores. Three of them won (Rachel Portman for “Emma” in 1996, Anne Dudley for “The Full Monty” in 1997, and Gwenadottir for “Joker” in 2019).
Last year’s nomination of Jermaine Franco, the composer of “Incanto,” the first Latin composer to be recognized by the Oscar, was another breakthrough moment for women. Two — Guðnadóttir and Dancy — made this year’s Oscar shortlist of 15 composer names.
Toprak, who broke that glass ceiling with a hugely successful Marvel movie score, admits that the situation “isn’t anywhere near where it needs to be yet. But we’ve made tremendous progress. It’s just a chance. We’re in the room more, we’re in the conversations more, and that’s all.” What we can ask for.”
London-based Levienaise-Farrouch says she has seen a shift in the types of films she is shown. “Originally, I was mainly approached when they needed a ‘female touch,’ and it was mostly working with female directors. [But] Everyone’s position changes. You no longer truly experience sexism; Everything seems to be progressing.”
What I found frustrating were the stats. “It’s hard to stay completely optimistic when your bubble is bursting every time the data is released.”
The latest celluloid ceiling study, by San Diego State University’s Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film, shows that women made up just 7% of the music composers working on the top 250 films in 2021. That’s up from 5% in 2020 and from 6% in 2019 and 2018.
But a closer look reveals a more bleak case: Women made up just 3% of working composers on the 100 best films of 2021, down from 5% in 2020.
“If we compare 2013 to 2021, the percentage of female composers working in the top 250 films has increased by 5 percentage points,” says Dr. Martha Luzen, founder and executive director of the center and responsible for these statistics. Although the percentage has more than tripled, 7% is still an absurdly low number, it is roughly equivalent to the representation of women as cinematographers.
“If more women are nominated for an Academy Award this year, it may be attributed to overperformance in relation to their acting, or it may be attributed to an unusually good year for the women composing.
“Cinematographers and composers are very male defining roles,” notes Luzen. “It has taken an enormous amount of work and research over the past two decades to begin to change the image of film directors. It will take a similar amount of effort to change the images of our cinematographers and composers.”
Patty McMillan, whose Allegro Talent Group represents such iconic composers as Guðnadóttir and Natalie Holt, says pitching to her clients is much easier than it was a decade ago when she started.
“The studio’s movie scores have been stereotypically male-dominated jobs, and that really needs to change,” she says. “There were very few female leads in this area, so it wasn’t easy to get confidence from studios and filmmakers… Although the powerful director was interested in a female composer and fought for her, the way was easier.”
“That’s what happened with Helder,” she recalls. Todd Phillips heard her score on ‘Sicario: Day of the Soldado’, felt her musical style would be perfect for ‘Joker’, and gave her a chance to shine. Unbeknownst to him, he was paving the way for more women to achieve what has become all too natural for male composers: a seat at the table. “.
Macmillan believes that Gunadóttir’s Oscar win made a difference. Calls began to come in specifically to the ladies. Holt became the first woman to score the Star Wars project (“Obi-Wan Kenobi”); Nate Shyamalan heard Herdes Stefansdottir’s reel and hired it for his upcoming film, Knock in the Cabin. Tamar-kali (“Mudbound”) is now recording “Flint Strong” for MGM.
Female filmmakers are more likely to hire women composers, she says, “because they can identify with the struggle to achieve recognition and really want to support other women.” Likewise, younger filmmakers are less likely to discriminate against women “because they were brought up in a more open and inclusive environment without the dogma of the older filmmakers”.
The Coalition of Women Film Authors, founded in 2014, has an estimated 600 members from around the world. Chair Katherine Joy is pleased with the number of female composers cited for awards this season, and says, “We’re seeing a lot of breakthroughs in the world of documentaries, independent films, and certainly television this year,” including Holt’s “Obi-Wan Kenobi” and Laura Karpman’s “Ms. marvel.”
But she agrees with Lusine that the representation of female composers among the top-grossing films is disappointingly low. “There has to be a consistent push to continue to open doors for more people, and really change that landscape.”
The AWFC talks with studio executives as well as independent filmmakers about improving opportunities for female composers. “So progress should be celebrated, sure, but the job isn’t done yet, either in the area of gender parity or in the area of inclusivity in general,” Joy says. “There is a lot of work to be done.”
Adds Levienaise-Farrouch: “I hope with a new generation, the mindset will change, and as the years go by, we’ll see more women scoring movies — the same people who go and see movies and live out the stories we talk about in those movies.”
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