Xander,

(I am having trouble hearing your music on your website, I would like to hear them by the way!)

Well I have heard different composers get into it in different ways. I am not speaking from personal experience, but I have read some good books with interviews with some of the bigger film composers. Film score composers (like other artists in the film industry) tend to have a pretty close network - a lot of composers turn down projects and recommend other composers that they know, and this is how some of the upstart composers get started. This is why it pays to live in the major metropolitan area where it takes place (I'm talking about LA LA Land baby) and meet people, and network, network, network, especially with directors and producers but people who know them as well.

Some of the composers worked on promising projects with up and coming students (which you mentioned you were doing already). Later when these people came up in the film industry to bigger projects, the composers were asked to do the scores.

In other interviews I have read, some composers admitted that they were not looking to get into film scoring work at all, that they were just putting out CDs of their instrumental work (in ambient / new age / pop / jazz genres for example) and they got noticed.

I hear stories of a lot of people just moving to Los Angeles with the hope of becoming a film composer, but not having done much commercial music work at all. I think a lot of them end up as assistants and getting into it that way.

Again I am not speaking from experience, just articles and books I have read.

Best

-jason