Why are there so few female film composers?

Music is a vital ingre­di­ent when it comes to the pro­duc­tion of a film. It can some­times be hard to ful­ly appre­ci­ate the effort that goes into cre­at­ing instru­men­tal tracks that help to height­en the emo­tions of what you’r see­ing. If you think about super­hero films, or some hard-strick­en dra­ma, the inten­si­ty of the score is always used to enhance what we see.

When we think of the great movie com­posers, these are the names that come to mind: Hans Zim­mer; John Williams; Nino Rota; Dan­ny Elf­man; John Bar­ry; James Horner and Alan Sil­vestri. All men. Most peo­ple can name one female film com­pos­er, but can you name two?

Zim­mer, known for his work on block­busters such as The Dark Knight Tril­o­gy and Inter­stel­lar, has recent­ly been hired for Pat­ty Jenk­ins’ Won­der Woman 1984. This isn’t just a missed oppor­tu­ni­ty for a female ori­ent­ed film to also employs a female for the sound­track, but it’s also the lat­est exam­ple of women being large­ly unheard in the world of film com­pos­ing. A study by the Uni­ver­si­ty of South­ern Cal­i­for­nia in 2018 found that, of the top 100 fic­tion films at the box office every year from 2007 to 2017, only 16 female com­posers were hired, in com­par­i­son to 1,218 men.

Addi­tion­al­ly, a sup­port­ing report from the Cen­ter for the Study of Women in Tele­vi­sion and Film revealed that 94 per cent of the top 250 films at the domes­tic box office in 2018 used male com­posers. In an era of Time’s Up, an organ­i­sa­tion set up in sup­port for equal pay and oppor­tu­ni­ties, female com­posers are still lin­ger­ing in the shad­ows behind the men who hold dom­i­na­tion in this indus­try. In cel­e­bra­tion of women in film and music, here are a few com­posers we think you should know about:

1. Mica Levi

The British-born singer isn’t the first musi­cian to take on the world of cin­e­ma. How­ev­er, Mica Levi is cer­tain­ly one of the first to dis­rupt ortho­dox film music tra­di­tions. Hav­ing first unset­tled audi­ences with her trip­py, idio­syn­crat­ic score for Jonathan Glazer’s 2014 unearth­ly sci-fi para­ble, Under the Skin, Levi then went on to receive an Acad­e­my Award nom­i­na­tion for Pablo Larrain’s Jack­ie. For the Jack­ie sound­track she employed a small flute ensem­ble to emo­tive effect. Her style often leans on dra­mat­ic glis­san­dos (the eerie slide upward or down­ward between note) and she rarely gen­er­ates sound­tracks act as a com­pan­ion to a film but almost as a char­ac­ter with­in the narrative.

2. Hildur Guðnadóttir

Known for her col­lab­o­ra­tions with the late, very grate Jóhann Jóhanns­son, Hildur Guð­nadót­tir has quite the back cat­a­logue when it comes to con­tribut­ing to films. An exam­ple is her solo cel­lo work can be heard in Denis Villeneuve’s Pris­on­ers, Sicario and Arrival. Guon­adot­tir also went on to co-com­pose the score for Garth Davis’ Mary Mag­da­lene with Johanns­son. ​“Peo­ple approach me look­ing for a spe­cif­ic type of sound, or feel­ing,” she told The New York Times. ​“They don’t come knock­ing on my door for, like, a John Williams score. So that also puts me in a real­ly good posi­tion, because I’m nor­mal­ly allowed to be myself.” The Ice­landic musi­cian is set to be pushed towards main­stream fame as she recent­ly used her mod­ernist style of com­bin­ing acoustic instru­ments with an elec­tro edge for the mini-series Cher­nobyl, and her score for Todd Phillips’ Jok­er is soon to be heard across the globe.

3. Pinar Toprak

Pinar Toprak came to Amer­i­ca from Istan­bul at the age of 17 and she new lit­tle Eng­lish. She had one goal: to com­pose music for film. She cement­ed that dream and became the first woman in his­to­ry to write and com­pose a score in the Mar­vel Cin­e­mat­ic Uni­verse. More specif­i­cal­ly, she cre­at­ed the music for Cap­tain Mar­vel, the film studio’s first female led film. To make sure Mar­vel pro­duc­ers could see her full poten­tial, Toprak hired a 70-piece orches­tra just to audi­tion for the job. ​“I made my inten­tions clear, and when the oppor­tu­ni­ty to demo came, I want­ed to mark sure that I made the best impres­sion,” she told Vul­ture. Before the gig, the Turk­ish-born scor­er worked with The Simpson’s com­pos­er Dan­ny Elf­man on the score for Jus­tice League, and was the lead com­pos­er for Pixar’s short film Purl.

4. Les­ley Bar­ber

The Hol­ly­wood Reporter’s famous com­pos­er Round­table which occurs around award sea­son has always been pret­ty male dom­i­nat­ed over the years, but back in 2016 Les­ley Bar­ber broke that tra­di­tion by being the first female com­pos­er to join the fray, in cel­e­bra­tion of her mourn­ful score to Ken­neth Lonergan’s Man­ches­ter by the Sea. The Cana­di­an mul­ti-instru­men­tal­ist is known for her con­tem­po­rary clas­si­cal scores hav­ing pre­vi­ous­ly worked on the music for films such as Mans­field Park, Irre­place­able You and also com­posed music for the ani­mat­ed tele­vi­sion series Lit­tle Bear. Her inti­mate tal­ent lies in a tra­di­tion­al style of mix­ing piano with strings, but you’ll also find that her scores include a dash of mod­ern colour thanks to sub­tle elec­tron­ics used to draw out the emo­tion­al themes. Her most recent work can be heard in Mindy Kaling’s com­e­dy-dra­ma Late-Night, break­ing out from her clas­sic traits for some­thing a lit­tle more jazzy.

5. Anne Dudley

Known for her pop roots, and being a mem­ber of the band Art of Noise, Anne Dud­ley is no stranger to the film music world. Her discog­ra­phy in film is impres­sive, hav­ing scored for movies such as Amer­i­can His­to­ry X and Paul Verhoeven’s bizarre anti-revenge film, Elle. One of Dudley’s com­pos­ing high­lights is her work on The Full Mon­ty, in which she received the Acad­e­my Award for Best Orig­i­nal Musi­cal or Com­e­dy score. She is some­one who is able to alter her style to con­nect to the mate­r­i­al, but she main­ly sits in a firm­ly tra­di­tion­al camp. ​“I’m also a piano play­er, so I like to com­pose at the piano, and the piano becomes my orches­tra,” Dud­ley told Arts­ma­nia. Her most recent work includes work­ing on BBC’s pop­u­lar peri­od dra­ma Poldark.

6. Tamar-Kali

Work­ing with writer and direc­tor Dee Rees was one of those right-place-right-time moments for Tamar-Kali. She was a singer-song­writer, who har­boured no inten­tion of get­ting into film com­po­si­tion until meet­ing Rees. Hav­ing pre­vi­ous­ly worked on a few songs for the director’s excel­lent debut film, Pari­ah, she was com­mis­sioned to take on the music for Netflix’s hit Mud­bound. ​“She (Rees) already had an aes­thet­ic that she was mar­ried to, and that was strings,” Kali told Score It. ​“My work with strings is what made her choose me for the job because she want­ed some­thing that was inti­mate, maybe a bit omi­nous and melan­cholic in sec­tions, and that’s def­i­nite­ly in my wheel­house.” The direc­tion giv­en by her third col­lab­o­ra­tion helped the musi­cian to cre­ate an arguably uncon­ven­tion­al score that sub­verts tra­di­tion­al south­ern music to meet the rad­i­cal themes of the film. She has since scored for films such as Come Sun­day and Veena Sud’s The Lie. And we imag­ine there’s lots more to come from this tal­ent­ed musician.