Building Skills, Relationships, and Weathering Industry Storms | with Shie Rozow

About Episode

My guest today is composer and music editor Shie Rozow whose lifelong passion for music and storytelling led him to work on over 150 feature films including The Flash, The Lost City, Guardians of the Galaxy and Hustle & Flow. Shie has earned 17 Golden Reel Award Nominations, winning for his work on Chicago (as assistant music editor), IMAX: Deep Sea, and Wu Tang: An American Saga along with 4 Telly Awards for his scores to Matt and Maya, Lost Time, One Day You’ll Go Blind, and Body Language: Bill Shannon.

But here’s the thing: Shie’s journey isn’t your typical award-winning musician, child prodigy story. In fact, Shie shares that he couldn’t even read music when he applied to music school. You’ll learn how his passion and determination have allowed him to grow and thrive as a creative professional despite the ups and downs of the volatile entertainment industry. Shie has discovered how to diversify his skills, interests, and passions in order to make himself irreplaceable.

In addition to diversifying his skills, Shie has made it a point to build meaningful, genuine relationships. He generously shares the strategies he uses to maintain them and these are some of the best warm outreach strategies I’ve ever heard!

Key Takeaways

How to respond to rejections without the negative impact

Transcript

Zack Arnold: I'm here today with Shie Rozow, who is a composer, music editor, you've worked on over 150 feature films that is not a typo. By the way, we're going to talk a lot more about that you've done hundreds of hours of TV, you're equally comfortable in video games, very, very short list of just a few titles, because if I were to list all of them, we wouldn't have a chance to talk. We're talking about the flash Lost City, Guardians of the Galaxy Hustle and Flow, Desperate Housewives arrows, CW Star Girl, I've got 17 Golden real Award nominations. And this is actually the thing that I'm the most interested in talking about. We're not going to get there yet, but you just wrote your first book. And in a year, it is already required reading at the Berklee College of Music film scoring program. Needless to say, Shie I think you and I have a lot to talk about in your career journey today. But I want to start by just thanking you for taking the time.

Shie Rozow: Thanks for having me.

Zack Arnold: I would guess the you probably suffer from a similar affliction as me where whenever you go to whether it's an industry event, or even to some event where you're just meeting people, and they asked you the question, what do you do? And your responses? How much time do you have, you've got quite the varied resume of a lot of different things that you've done throughout your career.

Shie Rozow: Well, I generally just say I'm a musician, which seems to cover it all. And

Zack Arnold: that's, that's one of the things that I really want to talk about, is how you've done so many different things with so many job titles, but you still stand by one identity. I'm a musician. That's my specialization. And I've diversified in about 150 different ways, which I love. So what I want to talk more about today is understanding all the different things that you've done, how you've really kind of become you built an entire career as a generalist. And I say that in the best way possible. But it's really all about that unique specialization that you have as a musician. So where I want to start is kind of the beginning of whatever you think would be the origin story of where you decided I am a musician, and I want to build a career in the entertainment industry.

Shie Rozow: But I guess, when it gelled for me that I want to pursue this for a living I was I was 21. I was serving in the Israeli Defense Forces, I grew up in Israel. And from there, I was reaching the end of my mandatory service. And so of course, next would be school. And I was like, What am I going to study. And I had been playing music and messing around with music and writing music. For as long as I can remember myself pretty much. But I never really studied it. I couldn't read or write music notation at the time. My dad thought I should go into computers and computer programming, because that was, you know, the features in computer programming. And I used to do a little bit of that, and then I done some work for him. And I had a bit of a knack for that. But I really didn't like it. I also used to work part time as a veterinary assistant, I love animals. So my mom was like, go be a vet. And I'm like, Yeah, but I don't like, like, poking them and cutting them and stuff. It's like I'd be fascinated by surgery. I've held instruments, I've literally had my hands inside of animals to help the doctor doing stuff, but I'm like, I don't think I could actually make the incision. It just, you know, it wasn't for me. Plus when you start getting into the minutia, like I love understanding that if there's a high white blood cells count that's indicative of an infection. Knowing what the exact numbers are, my eyes would roll in the back of my head, and I would just not for me. And so I was like, well, I should study music and see if I can make a go of it. I initially thought I would go and be a singer songwriter. I somehow got accepted to music school in Israel. I went in thinking I'd be a singer songwriter. I think my second semester I took an orchestration class and I'm like, ooh, orchestra. I like this. So then I was like, I'm just going to be the cord composer of the Archbishop of Bavaria, realized I'm not a child prodigy, and a couple 100 years too late. So how do I work with orchestras in you know, the mid 1990s And I went well films use orchestra. Maybe I can write music for film. So I started paying attention to music for films and completely fell in love with using music to help tell the story. And writing narrative music just clicked for me. and I was hooked. So I switched to film scoring. Which is a good thing because I'm not a very good singer and I have terrible stage fright. So being a singer songwriter was a terrible idea. Some representatives from Berklee College of Music came to our school to do auditions for scholarships. I was like, guys, I don't play very well I write. They're like, Okay, well in the BIOS, something you wrote. And I'm like, no, no, you don't understand. I can't write this. I can't play the stuff that I write. And I nag them for a while. And eventually, the day before they left, they gave me a seemingly impossible task of coming up with this portfolio, which included writing an orchestral piece, which at that time, I had never done so. I pulled an all nighter, skipped school that day, wrote my first orchestral piece collected other stuff that I had made lead sheets made everything they needed, showed up at school around quarter to 5pm literally caught them as they were leaving as they were heading for their car. And went, here you go, guys. And about a month later, I got a partial scholarship to Berkeley. And once I went to Berkeley and spoke to people and God, they, they basically said, your stuff was okay. It was some of it was good. Some of it, the orchestral stuff was terrible. I mean, I remember to this day, the very first note in the piece was a low A on an oboe, which doesn't exist on the instrument. So, but there were so impressed that I pulled the all nighter and just pulled it together and did it that they're like, Okay, they recognize there's something there. And they saw how hungry I was. So I got the partial scholarship, went to Berkeley realized that can't possibly afford to spend four years getting a degree there. I started going to Harvard Extension by me to three times a week for a couple of semesters to do general education type stuff. And I would take private lessons with instructors in music classes that I really didn't want to take, but were required. And at Berkeley, they have this policy where if you can take the final, I think you needed to get like an ad or an ad five or better than you would just get the credit and get a pass by going to two schools at once. Doing all of these things and testing out and taking a summer semester, I did the entire program in five semesters to two years. Then I got my butt on a plane out here. figured we'll see how long that lasts. And here I am. Three years later. Don't worry, I haven't been kicked out yet. So wow. That's how I got into it.

Zack Arnold: I love that story, then the pieces that I love so much about it are that number one, no real formal training up until that point, couldn't even really read music, but you knew that you had the passion for it and the passion for figuring it out. And you even found out after the fact or like, yeah, it wasn't even really any good. However, we see the potential, we see that you're hungry, we see that you have the passion, and we want to mold that raw material into something more. So I love these non traditional stories where it's not a matter of well, you know, I went to, you know, all these various schools, I started when I was four years old and learn this and that in the other thing, you kind of go in that that highly specialized path, you're able to carve your own path and just kind of grit your way through it and show them that I've got the character traits that are necessary. Even if maybe the you know, the experience on the resume up until this point doesn't make me the traditional Berkeley student. So I have a lot of respect for that. Yeah,

Shie Rozow: I was very lucky that I bumped into people that recognize that and were willing to take a chance and invest. I mean, when I applied for music school in Israel, it was the same thing. They had various auditions to test musical aptitude. And a guess they did very, very well on those. But then they had a theory test. There's a booklet that you and I literally returned it back empty. I did not know a single thing. I just gave it back empty. And they said you didn't answer anything. I said Yeah, I don't know any of it. But teachers recognize some sort of an aptitude there and said, yeah, we'll give this guy a chance. I think they also probably felt sorry for me because I was on crutches post surgery. So they're like, Oh, poor guy on crutches and surgery. I actually by the time I started school, I had had another surgery. So my first semester in school, I was in a wheelchair. So I think the combination of pity aptitude and good People who are willing to look past the deficits and see the potential, sometimes potential I didn't even know was there.

Zack Arnold: So the formula then is essentially you have to have the aptitude you need to get lucky and run into the right people and there has to be a good dose of pity. That's gonna be my new formula for success in any industry. Right? They

Shie Rozow: imagine the pity didn't hurt.

Zack Arnold: Well, that's that's a repeatable formula for everybody out there. You heard first right, have an aptitude bump into the right people haphazardly and make sure they take pity on you. That's my new formula. Do whatever you need. There you go wear an eyepatch, have a crutch, whatever it takes. Yeah, exactly. So the what I find so fascinating, one of the main reasons that when Debbie and I talked, I said that you'd be a great person to be on the show, and a great person to share their story is that I love people, when you look at their resumes or look at their IMDB page. The first reaction is, well, this makes no sense. Like, what what happened here? That was a piece of feedback that I used to get all the time when I first moved into TV, and people would interview me and they're like, I don't get it. Your resume is so scattershot, and all over the place. How did you end up here? And I feel like so many people get stuck in this idea of I'm supposed to do it this way. There's one path with point a point B, C, D, E and E. And I missed a couple of those. So therefore, I failed. And I didn't go the right way. And you just said no, I'm, I've got my own path. So if I just do like a quick scan of your IMDb Pro page, I see music editor. I see composer, I see score Wrangler. I don't know what the heck that is. I see there's, like technical score producer. And then I know you've also worked in features, you've worked in TV, you've worked in video games, here's Pro Tools, scoring session assembly. I mean, there, there's so many different things that you've done for so many different projects. Where does all that come from?

Shie Rozow: I think first of all, curiosity. So when I started out, I worked at this post sound facility, they did sound and music. Now, obviously, my interest was music. And my interest was composing. But when they hired me, they were looking for somebody who can compose music, supervise and music edit. I knew how to use Pro Tools. So I said, I know how to music edit. kinda, you know, if you consider straight out of college, knowing sure I knew how to learn how to music edit. I mean, honestly, college prepares you an education. A good education means you're ready to go into the real world and start learning for real, in my opinion. I was composing music. So I could say I'm a composer. I had no idea what a music supervisor was. But of course, I said, Yeah, no problem. I got hired, and I just learned on the job. And then there were people who were cutting sound who were cutting dialogue who were mixing. And if I wasn't at work, getting paid to work, I was pretty much at work, doing other things. So I learned to cut sound I learned to cut dialogue. I learned to music supervise I learned about licensing, I arranged, I did everything because I did music prep. Like if it has anything to do with music or sound, I did it more than anything out of curiosity. And what I quickly realized is the more you know about other disciplines and other things that are related to what you do, the better you can be at what you do. And when it comes to music and sound, for example, music and sound are all frequencies. If I'm writing music, or editing music, and I'm aware of how sound work and how frequencies work on a mix, I'll know to either do certain things or avoid certain things so that music and sound play hand in hand rather than getting to the dub stage. And now they're fighting. So I love that curiosity. And anytime time a new opportunity came along, say, hey, we need somebody that can do this. And I'm like, I think I can figure this out. And it was it's just curiosity. It's just that I'm easily bored. So I love to try new things. There's no like, thought process of, I'm gonna do all these different things and become this jack of all trades or whatever. I'm like, I'm gonna master this because this is what interests me. And then somebody wouldn't said, Oh, we've got this thing. I'm like, Oh, that's cool. And if I really liked it, I'm like, Okay, well, now I want to master that as well. So I think I'm a jack of all trades, but I wouldn't say I'm a master of none, I think of a master of two or three Would I hope that doesn't sound too full of myself, but

Zack Arnold: I don't think it does at all. And it's so funny, you brought that up because I was gonna bring that up anyways, because this is a concept I talked about all the time, especially over the last a year or a year and a half, both with just all the changes and all the realignment in the entertainment industry, but also with the advent of artificial intelligence. It's very clear to me, and it's now becoming very clear to everybody else, even though I was, you know, basically, you know, scared away by the torch and pitchfork mob now they're like, oh, maybe you had maybe this actually made sense, I was saying that we're gonna see the rise of the generalist, because AI is going to take over a lot of the very specific specialties, but you need a generalist that knows how to bring it all together and knows how to problem solve, and how to communicate between these different departments and different technologies. So I'm a big believer in this idea of the value and being a jack of all trades. But also, I believe that whether it's a master of two or three specialties, we've also realized that your your mastery of one is in understanding music and sound because like you said, I've done 100 different things, but I still consider myself a musician. It's understanding the power of music and sound to convey a specific feeling or emotion. That's what I believe your true mastery is. And you diversify that whether it's music editing, or score wrangling or music, supervising, it's all about, I'm using what you're hearing to create an emotion that to me is your one true mastery and specialty.

Shie Rozow: No, thank you. It's funny, you brought up AI taking over things this morning, I had my first actual practical use of AI ever. And you know, I've been messing around with chat GPT. I've been talking to it just because I'm curious. But basically, it's Google search. It's not it's a it's a more conversational Google search. But it's Google search. But I have this Google Sheet template that I use for keeping track of my projects, which I share freely with other people. And Google apparently upgraded the engine behind it or something. And it broke the function that I was using to calculate timecode. I was like, Well, this is a problem. And then I wonder if Chat GPT could help. I literally went to went to Chat GPT. And I was like, Can you update a script for me to whatever the version was, I forget, I copy pasted it from Google said Yeah, but in the script below, I copy pasted the script. And it gave me a new script. I copy pasted it into Google, it works. Amazing. And that's that's the tip of the iceberg. Yeah, but that's amazing. To me, I think that's where, like you said about specialists versus generalists or whatever. If you look at coding, people who are excellent at coding, I think are going to be in trouble because you're not going to need coders because all code is a syntax. The people who have the vision of what to code, how to go about it that have the vision to design the code, not necessarily write, you know, the actual, but say, it needs to do this and it needs to do it in this way. Those people are always going to be needed, I think. But the first people to Gargan the people that are just like, give me your specs. And I'll just type in the the syntax, I think those people are going to become more replaceable, I think the same as in music, in sound and everything. The people that are more technical, are going to be the first people to be negatively affected. The people that are more creative and have the better like overall vision of it's not just how you do it, but it's knowing what to do, when to do it when not to do it. All of those things, I think those are the people that will actually do very well. Because of that we will now have tools that make what we do or make it possible for us to do more to make what we do easier. You know, you're hearing things with voice replacement now and deep fakes and stuff. And I'm like, okay, that's terrifying, because it could be used in a bad way. But imagine watching a foreign film, which is dubbed and today they all look like Bruce Lee movies because you've got a different language in somebody's mouth. Now imagine that technology where Robert De Niro actually sounds like Robert De Niro speaking French and the lip sync is perfect. It makes for a much more enjoyable film that's going to be possible thanks to AI, it's going to suck for all those international voiceover artists that do localization. It's going to be amazing for the people that supervise. And currently they help find the talent overseas and do it, they're going to start working with AI and stuff to make things even better. And they're going to be the ones watching it go, you didn't quite get it right here or all. So those guys I think are going to do great and have amazing tools, which will make a better product for the end user. I think there's also potential here, not just in entertainment. But imagine being at the UN. And instead of hearing an interpreter interpreting somebody's speech, or getting in real time in the voice of a world leader, the speech that they're saying, but by AI in their voice, with their accent, with their inflection, and probably less human error in translation. And so I think there's a lot of potential for good things. But then again, if you're the translator, you're not going to be needed for that much longer. Sucks to be a translator. But great to be an ambassador.

Zack Arnold: Hmm. And I'm glad that you pointed that out. Because most people and I've heard this happen on a multitude of panels, even one that I was on, I think it was last fall, where it was all editors that were really concerned about artificial intelligence taking over the editing craft. But then somebody mentioned, yeah, but imagine all the time we can save if we have this tool that can do our music editing for us, or help us kind of create this like score bridge and like, now, how many composers and music editors do we have in the audience that heard you want to take my jobs? So with AI, it's all based on context. It's somebody's superpower. It's another person's kryptonite. So yeah, but

Shie Rozow: even then, so when I started out, assistants, and second assistants, and even picture editors were weren't cutting music much, if at all, many hated it, many refuse to do it, they weren't that good at it. They didn't like it. Whatever the case, you brought in a music editor. Well, guess what we're also cuttin, on mag and on, and film and work prints and stuff. Then avid came along, and suddenly everything's digital, and everything's faster and easier. Like when I first started working, even in the digital world. If I wanted to get a track into Pro Tools, I had to connect my CD player or my dat player, physical outputs into physical inputs into my sound card, hit record, hit play, wait three minutes for the entire song to play. Label it well today, just grab it, drag it, I download it from the internet, it used to be from iTunes, I can rip it for you too. But I can I can call the record label and say, Hey, I need the instrumental for such and such whatever. This is another place where AI is starting to get amazing where you can say instead of I need the instrumental AI will just take out the vocals from but anyway, the point is the technology has always changed and made it easier. So a lot of editors and assistants started cutting music as part of their process. Then depending on the level of the production, and by that I mean budget, what's the audience like how big or smaller production this is, etc, etc. And that everything's going to be Chris Nolan or Tim Burton, or Guillermo del Toro level movie, there's tons of content. So those guys, the picture editor or the assistant or whatever, make cut attempt score, they're still going to bring in a music editor. And okay, we did this as a starting point. Now, do what you do to make it an awesome temp score, which creates a much better blueprint for the composer. So if you're one of those people, neither AI will replace you just like editors didn't replace you. Did they partially replace me? Sure. Are there projects where I no longer get called to temp? Yeah, there are, are other projects where I may be brought in a little bit later have been be given less time than they used to because of how technology has changed? Yes. But I also used to only be able to work on three, maybe four projects a year and today I can work on 12. So you know and there used to be X amount of content. Now there's X to the power of infinity. I mean, so yes, there's the downside to it, which is terrifying. And it is and it's scary. But there's also the upside Do it. And if you make sure you're one of those people that has really has something to offer. The other thing about all of this is we're creative people. We like working with other creative people. And one thing that we all learn from the pandemic, from working from home. There's a lot of magic that can happen when two or three or four people are in a room together and have a conversation. And you never know what triggers what that gets lost over zoom, or when you're all working separately. That doesn't make it better or worse. It just makes it different. But I don't know a single person in this industry. That's going, Yeah, I work from home forever. Now, I've been working mostly from home for 20 years. So for me, the pandemic was like, Yep, I do this anyway, already. The biggest difference was I don't have to drive in for spotting sessions, we can do them with clear view and stuff like that. But presentations sent like I've worked some tight, like I worked on Tim Burton movies, where he's in England, Danny often was here in the States, we'd make quick times, send them to him, get feedback and stuff. It's never the same as when we're in the room together. And there's a conversation and suddenly new ideas spark. So my point is, if you're one of those people that people want to be in the room with, you will always be fine. There will be other people who want to be in the room with you. And you're going to want to be in the room with them. And these tools are going to make our life easier and better. If you're one of those people who is, you know, just a technician who doesn't have anything to offer other than I know how to push the buttons really well, then yeah, I understand the fear. That's a very real fear. And so my advice is, don't be that guy be the person that has something to offer.

Zack Arnold: Right. So I want to dig deeper into that. Because what I find really interesting, and the question I would be asking is, well, how do I define the criteria, so I can be the person that's great in the room. And I want to do so by going back to something you said a little bit earlier, where I agree to what you said with a caveat. You had said that, for example, coding is just a matter of syntax and AI will replace coders and I agree to a certain extent, but with a qualifier, the qualifier is it will replace mediocre coders. And I think you can take the word coder out and you can put editor, composer, writer, designer, illustrator animator where AI is gonna get it to a certain extent, but there's always that human element of understanding the nuance of notes of feedback of creative collaboration. And I think any, any craft is going to get to a point where that gap to get it to so it's all right, it's done the heavy lifting, that's going to be the AI but it's still gonna need the live Korea, it's to get it across the finish line. But

Shie Rozow: okay, but that, to use that same analogy, the project director or project manager is the person that supervises all the coders who are doing the groundwork, and looking at their code and going, this isn't working for me, it needs to be this it needs to be that they're not just a coder. They're the director or they're the manager that there's always those people in the team. So I could see a world in which those people are mostly relying on AI rather than human beings. That's what I meant. So I think we're actually on the shirt. On the same, I think you you might have clarified it, I might not have been as clear, but I think we're saying the exact same thing. Yeah. So

Zack Arnold: I could show an example, let's use this coding example, because it's just so clean, is that I don't think AI is going to replace the need for humans that know how to code. Correct, it's gonna replace the need for that team of coders that are getting you from a blank page to a bunch of code that needs nuance and collaboration and fixing and all that syntax doesn't make sense in the logic of this isn't connecting, and anybody that's a coder, it's like clearly it's actually not a coder because these are not the words that we use. And they're not because I don't understand coding at all. But it's the same thing in the creative space where there are going to be a lot of really simple tasks. An example would be that in the picture editing world let's say you have a live event and you've got six cameras, and it's just people that are sitting at a roundtable AI is going to get you a line cut like that this person is talking on camera this wasn't talking on camera this was like that can now be done automated, you could literally click the Edit button, your line edit is done. It doesn't mean that it's making the best emotionally engaging choices where that one person for three seconds an hour before the actual conversation was looking at the camera and tearing up well I can steal that and I can put it somewhere else to create an emotion. That element is not going to be replaced ever or at least I think anytime soon at all

Shie Rozow: correct. I I feel the same way

Zack Arnold: I would have guessed it in the music world. It's the same thing. Well, look,

Shie Rozow: I just did you know, not too long ago, I recorded a piece I was videoed conducting and stuff. Picture editor, cut it together. For me, I heard a wonderful young woman to shoot it and cut it together for me. So I have a little piece. And there's a flute solo. And when the flute solo starts, she's not on the flute. And I went, I want to be on the flute when the flutes are sorry. She said, Well, I don't have I never caught the beginning of the flute solo, there's, you know, we did it in like four or five takes, she was different. So I'm like, well just take that shot from here and put it there. It will look like the flute solo. Nobody will ever know that it's achieved. She's like, Oh, really? Like, yeah, you she's and I told her specifically shot because of the way the fingering looked, and the phrasing and the mouth. She wasn't playing what we are hearing, but I knew it would work. So here's an example with two human beings where you needed me in this case to tell her Oh, you can do this cheat to make it work. Imagine if instead of hiring her there was an AI editor, which one they day, there probably will be, you would still need me to tell the AI editor Wait a second. Take that cheat and do it. And then people say, Well, eventually AI will learn how to cheat. But will AI know if the cheats is really working or not? You are always going to need I think a human being to look at the result. And and there is just open AI just announced this new video creation AI is it? Yeah, we've been talking about it. Yep, there's a shot of this. It looks like it's in like in Hong Kong or something this woman walking towards camera. And it looks amazing. Until you look closely at her legs. And suddenly it's an Escher video for legs suddenly switch like it's wrong. It's not right. And you look at it and like it looks amazing. But something's not quite right yet. And again, this is early days, this stuff is improving exponentially. I find it very exciting. And I think generally, I've had to pivot and adjust because of technology repeatedly. I was an assistant music editor. I would spend a day dealing with turnovers and VHS tapes and labeling, then we got into quick times, but I would still have to actually record them from the VHS. And now we just get a quick time via Spera. That days of work that used to be part of my job doesn't exist anymore. So I had two choices, be threatened by it and go Well shit, I can't be moved. Am I allowed to say?

Zack Arnold: Sorry, be real? No.

Shie Rozow: It says I could be either like, well, crap, there goes my job. Or it could be like, Okay, it's time to pivot and what? what still needs to be done. That still needs me in the mix. Because now I'm just getting a quick time in a spare. I don't have to spend a day preparing a turnover once I receive it from editorial for the composer, do you know what I mean? So I think if you look at the technology and go, instead of this is scary, this is going to hurt me find how can I use it? How can I master it? How can I make it work for me? Those who pivot and are able to figure that out, are going to do better than they've ever done. And I look at my career. Every time I've had a lull, it's because I was stuck. Somewhere. I did not see something else. I was stuck in place. And work stop things didn't go well. Whatever. The second, I was like, Wait, keep going. I found something and my career got better my income got better. life got better, more interesting. And like I said, I'm easily bored. So I love doing different types of things, different types of projects, telling different types of stories, trying new things. But I think the guiding quote of my life, which I heard it when I was going through some really hard times so apparently during World War Two, Churchill said if you're going through hell keep going. That's

Zack Arnold: one of my favorite quotes to probably top three all time on a daily basis.

Shie Rozow: And to me it's like whether you're going through hell or not just keep going. Like yeah, definitely if you're going through hell keep going. But even if you're not going through help Keep going. It makes life so fun and exciting and sometimes terrifying. I've walked into situations going, Oh, boy. This is scary, or, you know, am I going to be able to you know, did I buy more than I can chew. I've also turned down opportunities sometimes because I recognized, I would be biting off more than I could chew. A huge one was early in my career, I was offered Six Feet Under, I had meetings. And as I got into the details of what was required, and where I was, in my level of experience and ability, the gear I had or didn't have, versus would have to rent etc. I turned it down. Now at the time, I was working construction from 5am to 3pm, and then hustling the rest of the afternoon and evening, making barely 400 bucks a week, like nothing, it was terrible. And I turned down, I think it was 3500 bucks, either a week or per episode, or I forget, it was a ton of money. And this was for music editing, or music editing. But at the time, most of my experience was either in low budget TV, or a little bit of assisting. And as like, I don't think I'm ready for the hot seat. And all the needs have this level of shadow. I think if I take it, I'll get fired. And that'll be a bad thing. And I turned it down. And like a week or two later, I got an opportunity to be the assistant music editor on training day, which was my first big union gig and launched my career. And I remember I had a partial week and construction, I made $248 that week, because I quit halfway through the week to go join the union and jump onto Training Day. And the next week, I was making 1600 bucks as an assistant, which was less than I would have made on six feet under but I think I think six feet under was hurt. I think they were still trying to do per episode back then before union, you know, put its foot down and said guys, you can't do per episode. So I think overall, I may have even made more money on that film than I would have had anything six feet better. So, you know, I try to bite off. Like, it might be a mouthful, but I'm pretty sure I can chew and swallow verses more than I can chew. You gotta know when to say no, which is the scariest thing in the world. But I think it's just as important as saying yes. And

Zack Arnold: I agree with all that. And I think that the reason that this works so well both for you, but for I've have a similar philosophy. And it's also what I teach in my coaching program is that when you're putting yourself up for an opportunity, it's not about you. And it's not about your hopes and dreams. It's about their needs. And you recognize like, if this is about me, and my hopes and dreams, six feet under, that's amazing. $3,500 That's amazing. But you realized it was about them, and you couldn't meet their needs. And it was probably going to set you up for failure and not success. And you took a quote unquote, you know, a lower step with the assistant music editor. But that's what launched you because you were prepared for it. I think that is so key for people to understand, especially with this concept of pivoting because pivot has been like the big like buzzword and keyword that I've been sharing with my students for frankly, about a year now. And now they're really starting to realize that maybe I don't have a whole lot of choice right now. Because with the with kind of the tumultuous pneus before the strikes, and then the strikes hit, it was this mentality of Well, I just I gotta keep waiting. And then when all this is over, everything's going to come back to normal, but it's not. And I don't think it's going to anytime soon. And there's a period at which you have to choose to pivot. And one of the scary things about the pivoting, which I'm sure you recognize so well is that it is scary. And you have to learn new things. And you have to put yourself out there in a different way. But I think one of the one of the common threads that I'm seeing between all of the different things that you've done, including writing a book, which I want to talk about that as well as that at some point, you have to realize I have the confidence to try these new things as opposed to who am I to think that as somebody that was in construction, who am I to think I could be an assistant music editor who am I to think I could be a composer or who am I to think I could write a book and it's now curriculum at the Berklee School of Music When they told me my music sucked, right? How do you overcome that?

Shie Rozow: It cracks me up because I now speak or mentor or whatever in various programs for which I applied and never got into distinction. But when you were talking a minute ago about also, knowing when to say no, or when to backup like retana, it brought me up to another thing. Sometimes you try for something and you're told no. And you're like, Ah, crap. The way I look at No, is no doesn't mean No, it means not right now under the current circumstances. That's all it means to me. And to give you an example, I just signed my contract. I'm about to start. Next. Let's Yeah. Next week, I'm about to start scoring this documentary miniseries with a filmmaker that I first approached, I think it's nine years ago now about another project, and was told no. And then we lost touch for a while, and then we're able to reconnect and I work the relationship and work the relationship. And then this project came along, and I get a phone call, Hey, I want you to score this. So what did that? If I had looked at that? No, nine years ago, whatever is okay, no, forget it moving on. I wouldn't have this project today. I went okay, no, not right now. Not under the current circumstances. Stay in touch, work the relationship. Worst case scenario, it does become a no, you can't work the relationship you don't stay in. It just doesn't happen. Okay. Next case scenario, you make a friend or an interesting acquaintance, you stay in touch, you have interesting conversations, you go out to lunch every once in a while, whatever. It never leads to work. But there's another person that out in the world, especially if it's in the industry in the creative world that knows you and likes you. And probably whether you know it or not, it's helping you because at some point, if your name comes up, they'll go Oh, yeah, I know such and such, they're great. And you never know when that offhand comment makes that third person go, Okay, then I'll call them. And you did get a job based on that offhanded thing, because you kept a relationship going. Best case scenario, eventually, sometimes quickly, sometimes it can take nine years, it leads to a job. I mean, I'm here talking to you right now, because Debbie, and I hit it off on American saga, and we stay in touch with occasional emails or updates. Right. And here I am talking to you wouldn't have happened if at the end of American saga, I never once checked in with Debbie again. So no just means not right now, under the current circumstances.

Zack Arnold: I love that I want to dig into this even deeper, because this is such an important insight. When most people, the vast majority of them hear no, they think it's an attack on their identity. No, there's something wrong with you, or you don't have the abilities or the skills and you're looking at it as No, I wasn't prepared for the current opportunity. So let me take what's within my control. And let me be better prepared to create and be ready for the next opportunity. So you're not seeing it as an attack on, you're not good enough, or there's something faulty it's, I wasn't in the right time at the right place prepared with the right skills or knowledge. But I can change that. Yeah,

Shie Rozow: or sometimes there's nothing you can do to change it quite honestly, sometimes. You are prepared, you have the skills, you have the everything, but it just wasn't the right fit. Right. So you met with them. And you just didn't click. You know, there is a reason that you know, for those of us who are married or have a boyfriend or a girlfriend or a partner or whatever their reason were with them and not with any one of the other almost 8 billion people on the planet. Because a we have the you know, the good fortune to meet in the first place. And be we clicked you're not going to click with every but generic. There's this thing I remember when I was younger, especially and I hear it with a lot of young people. They want everybody to like them. And that is insane. It is unreasonable. I don't like everybody. Why the hell should everybody like me? That's just not human nature. There are people I don't like there are people who disliked me. I think I'm pretty likable, but they don't. Okay, then it's not a good fit. And here's something else that I wonder over the years I've worked sometimes on crappy projects with great people. And those relationships has led us has have led to better opportunities and better projects. I've worked with people where we didn't click, we didn't get along well on amazing projects never led to anything, because I don't care how good a job I did. And I'm pretty sure I did a great job. We weren't a great fit. So why in the hell would they call me again, why, like, we all not just want to do a good job, we want to have fun doing our job, we want to work with people that we like, with people that we get along with. You know, if you work with somebody, and you go, you know, there are really great, PA, they're a really great editor. They're a really great producer. They're a really great director, they're a great actor, they're a great whatever. But my God, they're a pain in the ass to deal with. Chances are you're they're not going to be your first call on the next project. There are plenty of other people who can do what you do, and do amazingly well. And they will be a good fit. So to me if it's not a good fit, okay? It just that's that that's that wrongs. Under the current circumstances. It's just the wrong circumstance. These people and I are not a good fit. Okay, moving on. And by the way, I stay in touch with them too, because we're trying to, because it never hurts. It never hurts to keep relationships alive. I had a project that fell apart. I really wanted to do it didn't work out. I stayed in touch with the showrunner. Years later, like three, four years later, I was doing a fundraiser I reached out, he gave me my biggest donation. We still haven't worked together. Since that one thing where we met, still have an org together. Right? When I wrote my book, I reached out to him. I've written two books, actually. But when I wrote my big book, I reached out to him for some stuff. And maybe he'll respond, maybe he won't. Suddenly my phone rings. It's him. Were on the phone for like 45 minutes talking about it. And he was giving me feedback and stuff. Still haven't worked together since I'm still in touch with him. I have a friend now or you know, an acquaintance, a friendly acquaintance. I'm not sure you know what the correct nomenclature is, but do you know what

Zack Arnold: I mean? I do know what you mean? Yes. So

Shie Rozow: that's how I view it. And so to me, whether it directly leads to work or not, doesn't matter. My life is so much richer, for having all these people in it either directly or peripherally. And I get to see stuff. And when I see something cool happening, I can reach out and say, Hey, I just saw this. That is so cool. And I've had times where I've reached out. Just you know, Oh, I saw such and such in the trades. Congratulations. That's so awesome. That ugly. Oh, yeah, shit, I need a music editor Are you available, and it's directly led to work and I wasn't calling them looking for work. I might not have even been looking for work at the time, I might have been busy already. So just staying in touch, keeping up the relationships and making it about relationships, not about networking, not about just knowing a lot of people make it honest to goodness, real relationships, and not every relationship is the closest, but if it's real, if it's genuine, you never know what comes out of it. This

Zack Arnold: is the heart of hearts, the epicenter of everything that I talked about in this program is that it's about building long standing genuine, meaningful relationships as opposed to finding the next gig. Because guess what, you build these relationships, the next gig will probably find you and what you're talking about. You'd mentioned this a little bit earlier that I wanted to point out because it's it's something I talk about incessantly with the students that are in my networking classes, that networking and dating are almost identical. Like you said, if you were to go out in the dating circle, if you meet 10 people, and none of them are the right fit. My hope is you're not thinking, well, it just It must be me. There's something wrong with me. Not every relationship works. And professional relationships are the same with slightly different benefits if it works out well. Right. Yeah. And it's understanding that yeah, not everybody is going to fit. But what I'm curious about next that I want to dig deeper into because you seem to have a high level of expertise in so many different nuanced tools and skill sets. Looking at your credit list, knowing how many projects that you've worked on how many different types of projects and saying, Well, I kept up with Debbie because we hit it off on I still stay in touch with her Debbie's like one of 1000 people you've probably collaborated with. So what is your system for actually reaching out and quote unquote, staying in touch because there's no way you could just do this, by memory, you must have some form of assistance to be able to do this consistently.

Shie Rozow: So, a couple of things. One is I have a very extensive, I send out holiday holiday cards at the end of every year. And I have a pretty huge list of people that get cards that grows every year. So at the bare minimum, it's getting a physical holiday card. And it's expensive. Because, you know, as the list grows, it becomes more and more pricey. And it takes time, because when we send them, it's like, you know, your write a little something, or even just my wife and I will sit there and she'll get little like snowflake stickers and whatever. So you're not just putting them in the envelopes and closing them, but you're making them nicely. There's a real effort. So at a bare minimum. There's the people that get those cards from me, because we stay in touch like that. I so that's one thing I do. The other thing I do is as I have conversations, I'll give you an example I was I met somebody at some event, and we were talking and I said, Oh, you know, I'd love to take you out to lunch sometimes like, oh, I can't my son's having surgery. I'm like, Oh, no. Is he okay? Oh, yeah, no, it's this minor thing, blah, blah, blah, but he's having surgery on such and such date, blah, blah, blah. Okay. As soon as I walked away from him, I went in my phone and put in my calendar, such as such as son surgery, and I like three or four days after I said, check in with. And they sent him an email like, Hey, how's your son, how was surgery few days ago, and I just do that, I just put reminders in my calendar, follow up with such and such. And sometimes a reminder can be in six months in eight months, and whatever. But anytime I hear anything, I just put it in. If I know people's birthdays, anniversaries, put it in, reach out. That's it. But Google Alerts on people's names. So when when alerts come up, and you see out something really cool happened with such and such person. text them, email them, say something on Facebook, if they're on Facebook, when I say just these mentions, you know, it's little things like that. It doesn't take a ton of effort, quite frankly. And it's kind of fun, because I feel like I'm keeping in touch with a lot, a lot more people than I really am. And you never know what it leads to. I've gotten calls all of a sudden were like, oh, yeah, I got your name from such and such. I'm like, oh my god, I haven't spoken to them and forever. But then I realized, Oh, I just made a mention of something else they had going on on Facebook. And they liked it. And now they're recommending me to somebody else, even though we haven't spoken in months. You just never know what does it. The secret is it has to be genuine. Right? So don't just put it in technically to be technical. Like, it has to be real. Because if it's not real people sense it from a mile away. And I joke is I call my aunt every year for her birthday. I still can't remember her birthday. It's sometime in October. I don't remember exactly when in October. But I have a reminder in every year I call her on her birthday. And every year she's like, how do you always remember my birthday? And I'm like, it's in my calendar. It's you know, I know it's in my calendar. But I make sure to call. And it doesn't matter how you remember, it doesn't matter how you follow up how you do these things. It matters that you do them. Doesn't matter that I'm using help to remember these things because my brain can't possibly contain all of these things. Or it doesn't matter that I reach out to people on their birthdays and wish them a happy birthday or happy anniversary. Or hey, your isn't your son gret. Like when I know people have kids. I'll make a note of their age. I have kids too. So when we comes to the end of the school year, I'll reach out and I'll go isn't your son graduating elementary school? Or are they starting high school my boy just started this but just these little touches? Because these are the things that I care about. So find what you care about. Find what speaks to you. It has to be genuine but you reach out to people. And people are always like, wow, how did you remember that? How did you think of that? Like I didn't remember it. I made a note for myself to bring it up when the time comes. So I've got people where I've literally I you know they have a five year old and I'm like Okay, put it now In 2027, or whatever, that they're graduating from elementary school, I'm not going to remember that. But one day on my calendar there, it'll be and I'll reach out and I'll go, Hey, your kid isn't your kid graduating this year?

Zack Arnold: That's how I do. I've been teaching networking for years, how to draft the message, the follow up all the various timing schedules, templates. In five minutes, you just steamrolled everything that I've ever talked about the art of the follow up, that was a masterclass and how to maintain relationships and keep them warm. All the things you're doing are like to three levels above even the stuff that I teach that I consider more advanced level strategies to maintain relationships. So that five minutes alone like that, that was a masterclass I have, you have no idea how much of that I'm probably going to be sharing with my students for years. The key piece of all of it, is that it's got to be genuine. That's where you and I are in perfect alignment. I tell everybody, that whatever it is, you share in the very first few sentences have an opening cold message. If you don't mean it, don't bother sending it. Oh, hey, I saw such and such show. Great job. So here's what I needed, my resume is attached. Nobody cares that you gotta mean it. And sometimes meaning those few sentences can take weeks or months of doing your homework. And for you, the follow up has to be meaningful and genuine. Well,

Shie Rozow: I'll tell you to this day, I've never landed a job from a cold call. I don't think though I have some times. Months later, years later gotten the job from the person with which I started a relationship on a cold call. And when my messages when I started out, first of all, I'd write emails that were way too long. And they would be emails that anybody could write, they sucked. And I'd never get a response. And when I learned to keep it short, keep it real. My response rate just exploded. And just a couple of years ago, I reached out I was I was trying to reach through a cold, I didn't know anybody. I reached out to a friend who's an agent. I said, Hey, and you try to reach Do you know how to raise like, well, I can reach out to such and such an agent, I wrote a short little email. Can you pass this along? Two days later? Oh, thank you so much. We're so flattered that you're interesting. We already have somebody but thanks. And I think the reason there was a recent response, and there's my Hey, we're so flattered, is because of the way I wrote the email, which was real and genuine. Now that project might not work. But that filmmaker has now heard my name, and has a good association with it, presumably, there might be a project down the road where I cold call again, or try to do something and go, Hey, remember, I reached out to you on such and such never worked out, I see, now you're working on this. I love it, because blah, blah, blah, would love to have a conversation. If there's an opening, I can almost guarantee you, they'll at least take the meeting.

Zack Arnold: I love all of that. And I want to make sure that, again, anybody that's listening, I want you to rewind about seven minutes. And I want you to listen to it again two or three times. Because just this alone may have changed the game and the way that I teach how to maintain warm relationships. The only thing that's I think very different, just about our histories is that every single game changing career opportunity I got was through cold outreach that led directly to the job. But I think that you have a much higher success rate in maintaining relationships over very long periods of time. That's an area where I struggle, that's an area where I think that I can I can learn a lot from the way that you do it. But cold outreach is essentially how I built the majority of my resume saying this is the next opportunity for me, who are the people that are hiring, let me put myself in front of them. I gotta take some classes from you. And I think that you and I need to do a mutual class where I'm Teacher, your student, and then your teacher, I'm student, I think that there's there's a lot of mutual benefit there. And the one other thing that I want to make sure we cover before we go that's kind of part of this whole larger landscape of all the various skills abilities, the areas of the industry, we've talked about the music side of things, we've talked about the music editing the composing. I didn't even know that we were going to be talking about networking strategy, but you blew my mind today, which I appreciate. The other area that I want to talk about, though, that's just me selfishly curious, but I think a lot of other people might be as well. Given how slow the industry is, and people are trying to figure out, are there other ways that I can provide value to the world? A book would be one of those ways where I can share my expertise. So I want to I want to learn a little bit more about the path to not just write a book but now two books, or I want to start it with where so many people get stuck myself include it, who am I, to think that I'm the person that can write the book on this thing. So talk to me about the journey to to now be an author, starting from that perspective, and then learning more about how all that came about.

Shie Rozow: So I published two books last year. The first one is actually my second book, if that makes sense. So I had an idea for, or what I realized is that there's not a lot out there about film music that's directed at filmmakers, right? There's most books or resources that I see on film scoring, the target audience are composers, and how to be a film composer, right. And they get into a lot of them get into technical musical things. How do I how do I do sad for how do I do happy? How do I do tense? How do I do? Scary? How do I do action? There's lots of that kind of stuff out there. But what I realized there isn't as much of and almost none aimed at filmmakers is how do I know what the music should do in a given scene because I can take any scene and score it 100 different ways you can take an action scene and score it like action, you could turn it into a comedy, I mean, take any action scene in Mission Impossible and put the Benny Hill music behind it. And it's completely free to sing. You know what I mean? But the French cancan behind it, it's a completely different scene that becomes silly, right? You can play the tension rather than the action. And it gives it a different intensity at a different layer. There's a million things you can do so and there wasn't much that talks about that. And that's storytelling, and how do you tell your story? So I thought, as somebody who's got a ton of temp scores in his life? And these are the questions that I asked myself when I do attempt scores like well, how do I approach the scene? Am I taking the character's perspective? Am I taking the viewers perspective? Am I taking the protagonist perspective, the antagonist perspective? Am I scoring the action? And my scoring? Something that's off screen? Am I like? These are all the questions that come up whenever we tempt? These are the questions that editors ask themselves when cutting a scene, like, when do I go to this close up? Or when do I cut away when when when they rely on the person who's talking versus on the person who's reacting? It's the same types of questions like how do I build this scene? Where do I want to put the focus? Because that's what musics doing. It's where is it putting the focus emotionally. And so I thought this could be interesting to talk about. And so I started jotting out some ideas, and they're all just one liners sitting really simple. And as often happens with me, once I get an idea, I kind of go down this rabbit hole and get obsessed with it. And so I spent a few days and I had like, I don't know, 100 201 liners of concept. And I was like I could do like, maybe a Facebook group and talk about it. And that's a way of people getting to know who I am a little bit and also a little bit of Pay It Forward giving back to the world, offering a way to have discussions. But then I realized, having a Facebook group means I have to administer it and means I have to moderate it. It's a lot of work.

And I in there, and I don't always

have the time for it. Nor do I, I don't really want to play arbiter between people when because sometimes some people are going to be assholes. And I'm like, I don't want to deal with this. So then I thought, well, I have a blog, which is a very sporadic blog, I only add stuff when I feel like it. There's no consistency to the schedule of when a new blog post comes up or anything. So I thought, Okay, well, I could do a bunch of blog posts about these different things. But then I'm like, but again, once you start a series of posts, you gotta keep up with it. So then I thought, well, I could pre write a whole bunch of them and then pre schedule them and then have a year's worth of blog posts. And I was talking to director friend of mine and I was mentioning this to him. He goes, dude should write a book. I'm like, I'm not an author. He's like, you've already written part of it. I'm like, What do you mean is these wild posts just flesh them out a little bit? And there is a chapter there's a chapter and I'm like, And then it was I'm not an author, writing a book seems like an impossible task to me. Am I capable of doing the impossible. And I'm one of those idiots that you tell them, you can't do something and they're like, Oh, I'm going to show you and do and in my head. For some reason being an author. Nobody external told me I can't. But internally, when I'm a very slow reader, I'm dyslexic. So I read really slowly, I get caught up on lines, and I'll start looping a line and stuff. So I mostly do audio books, it just seems like writing a book is a superhuman thing to me, I have a lot of respect for authors. I'm like, wow, that's, I could never do that. I still feel that even though I've done two, which is strangely, but then I had this thing, like somebody told me, I can't do it, even though that somebody was me. So I'm going to prove that somebody wrong and do it. And that's how that came about. And I reached out to some publishers to see if there's interest and there was interest, but they wanted to make it an academic book, which meant going through a whole academic process, which tied my hands, it wasn't at all the style in which I wanted to write. And I wanted something that is accessible to as many people as possible, rather than if you go to USC, this is now mandatory, whatever, and you have to buy this $80 book or whatever. I wanted to make it as cheap as I could make it and as accessible as I can make it to anybody. So I said, No, thank you to three different publishers, and went down the rabbit hole of self publishing. And I was working on this book for about four years, I actually hired my own editor, I intentionally hired somebody who knows nothing about music or film TV, because I figured if she can understand it, and if it makes sense to her, than anybody can understand it. And ultimately, once it once I went into book mode, I was like, I want this to be first and foremost for filmmakers. So directors, aspiring directors, editors, producers. That's, that's my primary target audience. But then what I'm talking about is also extremely important for composers, or actually anybody in the music, business, music editors, music supervisors, in terms of how do you tell the story with music. And again, there's not a ton out there about that part of it. So I thought, okay, it could be useful for them. So I want to write it in a way that it would work for both. And then just because maybe feelings of, you know, grandeur that are completely undeserved, but like, I want to write a book that anybody might be interested in. So I figured it has to also be written in such a way that I'm not dumbing anything down for the professionals or the aspiring professionals. But it's clear enough that if you don't know anything, it'll make sense. So if you're just an Uber fan, you could still pick up this book and enjoy it. As I was getting close to publication date, it occurred to me I'd never published a book before, this is a big deal. And I've made plenty of mistakes on the way as with editing with all these different things, layout, etc. So I thought, Well, what do I do, and I was having some conversations with the Academy of scoring Arts, which is a wonderful organization, and they do all these seminars and stuff for their membership. And they we agreed to do a seminar that I would give about preparing for scoring sessions. So in preparation for the seminar, which was like three, four weeks away or something, I started with an outline, and then I flushed it out. And then I flushed it out some more. And I was like, I'm going to have a blog post to go hand in hand with my seminar. So because there's a lot of info here, and then people can go to the blog post and have it handy. I've done that before. Except that it was about 100 pages.

Zack Arnold: You and I have so much in common and

Shie Rozow: then I'm like oh wow. There's a lot that goes into it that I didn't like I forgot how much I put into it because so much of it is automatic for me by now. Just like any of us you know if you work avid do whatever. There's a gazillion things that we do that we forgot or don't even realize we do because it's just automatic, you know? And then I was like, Well, I'm about to publish a significant book, I can quickly publish this as a book, 100 pages is respected. That's a small book, I'll do it, I'll make it really cheap. It's a test run. So that went from outline to publication was 10 days was insanely fast. And that was scoring or preparing for scoring sessions, which is basically a guide for how to prepare for recording sessions. And that came out in March, just in time, so that by the time the seminar happened, the book already existed, people can get it. It's super cheap, it's like 15 bucks for the paperback and even cheaper if you get the ebook. And then one of my former professors at Berklee College of Music, he's like, this is great. We don't have anything like this, the books that we are using are really old. I've sent it up the chain, you know, to get looked at. And starting this spring semester, it became required reading at Berklee College of Music. And it's probably the cheapest textbook in the history of Berklee College of Music.

Zack Arnold: So just to clarify same Berklee College of Music That said, we don't think you're any good, but we'd like your hustle kid.

Shie Rozow: Yeah, I don't know if they said I'm not any good. But I don't think my music or my was exceptional. I think, again, they saw the potential and they liked hustle. Yeah. But I did apply for lots of, you know, for other scholarships for other things. For other programs within the school. I'd never once got selected, actually not true. There was once a string of visiting String Quartet that came in to school. And they said, you know, write a piece, we'll look at them, and we'll pick a few to play. I didn't get picked for that. But I later found out that they had so few submissions that everybody that submitted, got picked. But other than that, one thing, I never once got selected for any, you know, when they're like, top 10, blah, blah, blah, we'll get a never once made it. Not once, I was not a top student. You know, I mean, I graduated magna Laude, I had good grades. But I was not at the top of the class I was I was like, I'd say at Berkeley, there's roughly two types of students, there's the students that, you know, have rich parents, and they think music is fun. And they kind of phone it in. And then there's the teachers, then there's the people who, whether they have the money or not, they find a way to make it work. And they really invest. I was amongst those, I didn't have the money, but I really invested amongst those people, I was very mediocre was not exceptional.

Zack Arnold: So I want to be very, very conscious of your time because we're winding down. But there's there's a really, really key takeaway and key point that I want to dig a little bit deeper into that I don't know how conscious it was of you doing it. But it was a brilliant way to approach this. And I want to break it down for everybody that's listening. If we if we go through and we kind of break into a series of steps, the logic or the heuristic for I'm going to write a book, first of all, it was, well, nobody external is telling me it's impossible, and I can't do it. But I think you're like me. And then when anybody says that can't be done, it's impossible. My response is always hold my beer, one second, right? Like, that's my risk. And I've kind of the relationships that I built in the industry, I always get the call of nobody can figure out how to solve the story problem, or this montage, or whatever it is. Nobody can figure it out. Can you take a look at it? I'm like, yep, hold my beer. No problem. That's kind of become my thing. Right? So we've gotten past that barrier. But I think the next barrier, which is where so many people are, at least in my community right now is I know I have this knowledge. But who am I to think that I can be the one to write about this topic? I barely have any experience? And if you were to say, I'm going to write the book on film composing, well, you're not Hans Zimmer, who do you think you are to write the book on film composing? But you said it's a very subset of an intersection of a multitude of things? Right? It's from the angle of it's about film composing, but it's about understanding how music can shape a scene or shape a genre. So there's that intersection where you have a lot of expertise. But it's also not for composers. That to me was the genius decision. Now to say, I'm not writing it for composers, I'm writing for the editors that don't understand how to shape temp score, or the indie director that's working with an editor that's working with a music editor that's working with a composer to develop that language. It was that unique intersection, where my guess is based on all the experience and skills that you have. I bet there's maybe a handful less than five people on the planet. Maybe they could write the book that you did from your perspective.

Shie Rozow: I don't know about that. But maybe, but my point is, I mean, I do think composers could benefit from the book, but I wasn't trying to tell you how to do what Hans Zimmer does, I was trying to explain. This is why what Hans Zimmer did in this scene, for example, works so well. And here's how in a different scene in a different movie, Thomas Newman does the exact same thing in a completely different way. Right, I don't need to be Hans Zimmer, or Thomas Newman, or Danny Elfman, or any of these incredible composers who know how to do it. In order to be able to because of my years of telling stories with music and cutting their music for temps, I don't need to I might, like if I wasn't a composer, I still I think I could still write this book, because it's not about composition. It's about how the music is working. And I understand how the music's working. Do you see what I mean? So, yes, that's the heart of the book. Then I also get into who does what so there's a primer on what a music supervisor is, what a music editor is, how licensing work, there's two chapters that are just terminology Glossary of both music, language, and then film related language. And like something I argued with with publishers that they only wanted the proper language. And so to give you an example, where I kind of butted heads, when we're on a debate stage, you'll hear Hey, can we advance this? Or can we retired this, but you also hear, can this go to the left or to the right, or towards breakfast or towards dinner? And I was like, that's going in my book. They're like, you know, on an academic thing, it's only advance and retard, and I'm like, but that's not how people talk. And I've

Zack Arnold: never heard those terms. I've been on mixed ages for 20 years, I've never heard advance and retard what I've heard is kind of can you go a few frames towards breakfast? And it's like, yeah, what? It's correct. That's how everybody talks. That's the real leverage, but advanced

Shie Rozow: and retard is the correct quote, unquote, to say, take it to the left, or take it to the right. And so it to me, it was important to make it very accessible and very real. That's not the academic way, which I think is part of the problem with academic books, frankly. Yep, that

Zack Arnold: could be a whole other podcast. I agree with that. And I'm

Shie Rozow: kind of blown away that Berkeley looked at my preparing for scoring sessions, which again, it's very practical, very real world. And one of the things I love about Berkeley is that they do like to be very real world. And they went, Yeah, we don't care if it's academic or not. Now, had I published it through Berkeley press, I'm sure I would have had to go through a whole academic process. But the fact that I just did it, and they like it. And now it's, you know, it's mind boggling. Yeah.

Zack Arnold: Well, the thing that I just want to hammer this point home, because it's so important for so many people, especially right now with how challenging it is to find opportunities, that if the this idea of making a career pivot is causing this impostor syndrome, or lack of confidence, or who am I to think that I could be doing this, what I've learned so much from you today, is that number one, you just like you said, you just keep going. But I think the the other thing that's so important is you can reduce that fear that imposter syndrome, when you realize I am one of the only people that's uniquely positioned to do this. So I don't really have that much competition, because this is something I feel like I'm equipped to do and equipped to do well, because it is really genuine and it comes from me. Yeah.

Shie Rozow: And there's another aspect to it, which is who am I? Who are you? Who's anybody who's Chris Nolan? To be Chris Nolan, whose gear with deltora to be gear who's timber? They're just guys who did it, you know, who's maybe leader who's whoever you think of? They're just people that went? Why not me? You know, and I'm sure for every one person that went, why not me and became, you know, Kathleen Kennedy on the producing side or whatever. There's 1000 That never made it that far. So what? None of them are going to make it anywhere if they don't try. Like I'm not a sports guy. But Wayne Gretzky once said, you miss 100% of the shots you don't take. Take the shot. what's the worst that's gonna happen? You're gonna say no, it's, you know what? It's the dating advice my dad gave me when I was the zit faced kid and terrified of asking girls out. He said just by asking you have a 75% chance of success. When What are you talking about? He goes, Look, anything in life if you want it to happen, and you need to ask somebody else, it's a 5050 proposition because you own 50% of it. They own 50% of it, right? You want it, they need to agree. That's 5050. And I'm like, okay, it goes, Great. Now, when you've asked, you've gotten your 50% of the remaining 50%, they'll either say yes, or they'll say no. So just by trying, just by asking, you're 75% of the way there. It's terrible math. But

Zack Arnold: I think it's a great way to live. I wasn't gonna point out the math part of it, but I love the idea. But, and

Shie Rozow: seriously, this is how my dad tried to get me to date. You know, it's like, he's like, You have a 75% chance to success. I'm like, and it's a good thing. You don't do math for a living. But it's that way of thinking. And I've just, you know, a no or a failure to me is neither, like we talked about a no just means not right now under these circumstances. But if you look at it as a no, because it is also know if my odds of succeeding are one in 100. And I'm one of those guys where that one is going to be the last one. It means I need 99 noes before I get the Yes. So every now but to be one step closer to it. Yes. And if I look at it like that, okay, so I got to know great. I'm one step closer to a yes, I'm making progress. And some of the knows sting more than others. Sometimes you're like, oh, you know, sometimes there's cussing, and you're in a bad mood for a few days, and it sucks. Okay, and then you kind of go okay, well, boop, next, and you just move on, just keep going. Because if you stay stuck in it, then you're stuck, you're not going anywhere, you're not going to get the next thing if you don't keep going.

Zack Arnold: I don't think if I try it, I could wrap this up any better than you just wrapped it up. Now. I think our alternate title for this is going to be numerous mic drop moments. Because I just I've I don't even know what the count is probably 300 350 Plus podcast conversations. Do this almost every day all day long talk to hundreds of students all over the world. And I just feel like I got a master class and at least two if not three completely different subjects. So I'm immensely immensely grateful for you being here today immensely grateful that you have a follow up process to make sure that you stay on top of Debbie's mind and my Podcast Producer and fellow coach, and she decided to have you on the show. And for the remainder of today's conversation, I want to make sure that if you've inspired others, and they've decided you know what Shie? Seems like somebody that I maybe want to connect with and stay in touch with and build a genuine relationship. How can we connect you with those you've inspired today?

Shie Rozow: You can just go to my website, shareaza.com. There's contact information there. You can find me on Facebook or an Instagram, I think those are the only social medias I do and you can reach out. If you reach out, I will respond. If I don't respond in a timely manner, it means I didn't see it. I once found that I had a bunch of messages on Instagram that I didn't know about. Some of them were six, seven months old. Soon as I realized it, I wrote everybody back. If you just send me a friend request, I may not get to it for a really long time, because I have no idea who you are. But if you actually send me a message, and I don't respond, send another because I will respond.

Zack Arnold: Well, I admire that very much that you take the time to not only find the messages that are buried in the deep recesses of the alternate spam of the alternate messages of the one, there's so many tears of it. So I

Shie Rozow: discovered there's a whole there's a whole like, there's your primary mailbox or something. And then there's this general mailbox and never even realized or looked at suddenly, like, Oh, crap, I have all these messages.

Zack Arnold: That's happened to me more than once to but I admire the fact that you dig in all those you respond to all of them. It says a lot about your character. And it says a lot about why Debbie wanted to have you on the show and why I'm so grateful that you are here. So on that note, I can't thank you enough. And I appreciate you taking the time to to share your years and years of experience and expertise with us. So

Shie Rozow: thank you. Well, it's my pleasure. Thank you for the kind words and thank you for having me.

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Zack Arnold

Building Skills, Relationships, and Weathering Industry Storms | with Shie Rozow

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