Today we’d like to introduce you to Shie Rozow.
So, before we jump into specific questions, why don’t you give us some details about you and your story.
When I was very young, my parents forced me to take piano lessons and I hated it. As a kindergartner classical music didn’t appeal to me at all. So I made sure my piano teachers hated me and eventually they would tell my parents they can’t work with me anymore. This happened over and over until after about two years and I don’t know how many teachers my parents finally gave up. From that time on, our piano was just collecting dust.
I think it was in 3rd or 4th grade, maybe 5th grade when a classmate of mine lost his dad to a sudden heart attack. I remember hearing the news at school and it shook me, as I’m sure it shook all of my classmates. When I got home that afternoon, I went to the piano, started noodling and wrote my first song. It was my way of dealing with the emotions I was experiencing. My way of processing it all. From then on, I kept playing and writing. My parents kept pushing me to take lessons and I kept refusing. I insisted on teaching myself and doing it my way. It was the early 80s and I was really into pop music of the time, which was dominated by synths, so I begged my parents to buy me a synth.
Eventually, in 6th grade I got my very first synthesizer, a Roland JX3P. I was in heaven. Of-course I immediately wanted more gear (I still do, it never ends). Over the years, I taught myself to use different synths, drum machines, and other gear. While all my friends were out playing soccer or doing whatever, I was mostly in my room making music. I would get completely lost in the music and lose track of time (not helpful when dating – I would sit down for 5 minutes before going on a date, next thing I knew it was 4 hours later and I stood up my date. Oops.)
When I was 16, my parents sent me to boarding school in Jacksonville, Florida, where I joined the school band. My band teacher, Mr. Thomas Stone, took a special interest in me and encouraged me to keep writing and expand from just doing my own synth work to writing for our high school band, which was my first experience writing for live musicians. When I graduated, I went back home to Israel, where I grew up, and joined the Israeli Defense Force, as all eligible high school graduates do.
I spent three years in service, and following the end of my service, I applied for and was accepted into Rimon School of Jazz & Contemporary Music. I spent the next two years catching up on all the theory and music history I never bothered to learn over the years when I refused music lessons. During my second year I applied for a scholarship to Berklee College of Music. I was granted a partial scholarship and moved to Boston to study at Berklee in the summer of 1995.
Since I was putting myself through school, there was no way I could afford to spend four years getting my degree, even with the partial scholarships, so I went to Harvard Extension School in the evenings to take care of many of my general education requirements and took private lessons with various teachers so I could then test-out of certain classes. This allowed me to complete the four year degree in just two years, and in 1997 I received my BM in Film Scoring.
I purchased a round trip ticket to Los Angeles because it was the cheapest ticket I could get, flew to LA and never left. Within a few short weeks, I landed my first job as music librarian at DreamWorks SKG, where I lasted about six weeks before being fired, which was quite a shock. I managed to land a new job just two days later, where I spent two years working on over 600 hours of TV programming and a few low-budget indie films. After two years, I decided it was time to go freelance, which was a challenging transition. For a time, I worked construction from 5:00 am to 3:00 pm to help pay my bills and hustled from 3:00 pm to midnight or later, taking on any other jobs I could possibly find, especially film/TV music work.
Two years after venturing out on my own, I landed my first major feature film. I was hired at the assistant music editor on Training Day. That led to the next job, which led to the next and the next and in the blink of an eye a decade had passed and I had worked as music editor on about 50 films including Chicago, 2 Fast 2 Furious, Hulk, Big Fish, Spider-Man 2 & 3, Hustle & Flow and TV Series like Desperate Housewives and more. I had made a name for myself as a music editor and things were going well. But I realized I wasn’t composing nearly as much as I wanted.
So over the past few years, I’ve made more of an effort to find scoring work in addition to the music editing work. I got to write additional music for the likes of Danny Elfman and John Ottman, as well as score short films, indie features and some TV shows like BET’s Rebel, all while still music editing on films and TV shows like Stargirl, Wu-Tang: An American Saga, Krypton, Arrow and more.
When the shutdown hit, work came to a standstill. I created a Mashup video of Bridge Over Troubled Water & What a Wonderful World, recording over 80 musicians and singers remotely. The video was released in late April to raise money for the Motion Picture & Television Foundation Emergency COVID 19 Relief Fund. Since then I’ve scored three short films, a feature documentary, music edited 3 films in Amazon’s recently announced anthology Welcome to the Blumhouse, and I’m currently writing additional score on a Netflix documentary. I’m very grateful to remain busy during this challenging time.
Has it been a smooth road?
I don’t think I know anyone who hasn’t had struggles along the way, whatever their journey. I’ve certainly had my fair share. Being an immigrant, having to deal with that aspect of things was an added challenge. I was able to get several visas, and after 11 years, a Green Card and five years later, I became a citizen. It’s not been a smooth road with some denials along the way, appeals and no small expense, but I’m proud to be a citizen now.
Being a freelancer is always challenging. There is no job security, you’re always going from one gig to the next, always looking for the next job. It seems like often it’s feast or famine. When you’re working and busy, you can get extremely busy, putting in 100+ hour weeks sometimes, and having no life. It takes its toll on the family. Then there are times when it seems impossible to find work and things are extremely slow. It’s a bit of a roller coaster ride.
Right now, we’re all living through the challenge of the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. Production has come to a standstill along with so many other industries, and it’s not clear when or how things will come back. Trying to figure out how to keep busy and relevant, so that I can make the most of this unprecedented time and position myself to still be relevant and in demand when things start coming back again is quite the puzzle.
And then there’s life. There are all the challenges we all have within our own lives. Juggling a family while pursuing a career in the entertainment industry isn’t easy. I’m so fortunate to have a wife that is so understanding and supportive. But life doesn’t care about our careers. I’ve had lots of instances when life and work clashed. For example, a year and a half ago, my mom passed away while I was in the middle of working on Krypton. I got the call just before midnight and was on a plane back to Israel for her funeral about 7 hours later. When I arrived in Israel, the first thing I did was connect my computer to the internet and downloaded materials from my composer for the mix, which was scheduled for the following day. Then I went to the funeral, and after the funeral I had to do a bunch of work and then send everything to the mix stage. I then had to stay up overnight and be available remotely during the mix since LA is 10 hours behind Israel, so my days were completely upside down all while dealing with family and grief.
We’d love to hear more about your work and what you are currently focused on. What else should we know?
I provide music for film & TV. I primarily work as a composer, creating original music for shows, and as a music editor. I’m better known as a music editor, but continue and enjoy doing both.
I seem to have gotten a lot of calls as a “fix it” person. I’ve had quite a few situations where I’m replacing someone else (sometimes I’m replacing someone who was brought in as a replacement). So those are challenging situations because it means there are serious problems that have so far gone unsolved, and I’m expected to take over and shepherd things to the finish line. So I think I’m known for being able to work on tricky projects.
Because I’m both a composer and music editor, and also have done many other music-related jobs, I’m often called when what’s needed is a Jack of all trades that can step in and just figure things out. I just got one of those calls to work on an upcoming Netflix music documentary where I’m music editing a very challenging show, as well as composing additional score, all under an extremely tight deadline. My career has provided me with ample challenging opportunities and I think that sets me apart from others.
As a composer, I think that my strong background as a music editor whose work spans everything from micro-budget indies to tentpole blockbusters sets me apart because it gives me experience and insights that few others have. And conversely as a music editor, being a composer really helps me understand the composer’s needs and challenges, as well as anticipate his/her needs exceptionally well.
I think what I’m most proud of is repeat customers. I think the greatest testament to my success is that clients come back and re-hire me, and recommend me to their friends and colleagues. It’s the greatest compliment to know that they want to work with me again and/or recommend me to others. For example, I worked with John Singleton for 15 years until he passed away. So I’m very proud of that.
In terms of specific projects, I’m particularly proud of my work on Hustle & Flow, and more recently on Wu-Tang: An American Saga. Both were very challenging in different ways and I’m really proud of how they came out. I’m also very proud of my score to the indie feature Jasmine for writer/director Dax Phelan, and for my first album of concert music, Musical Fantasy, which I released five years ago.
How do you think the industry will change over the next decade?
Since I started over 20 years ago, I’ve watched the industry undergo some mammoth changes. Technology has driven many of these changes. Whether it’s switching from working with physical analog media to digital, or the introduction of streaming services that has changed how we consume content, technology seems to be the biggest driver of change.
With the recent shutdown due to COVID-19, technology is allowing us to do a lot of work remotely. Many people, especially in post-production, can work from home. This is great and a life-saver for many. But unfortunately, we still can’t shoot virtually. Actors and crews still need to show up on set to shoot the content we all love and want, and technology has yet to offer a solution for that. Movie theaters are shut down and more people are consuming entertainment on streaming services. I think the pandemic is accelerating a consumption change that was already happening.
Looking forward, I think in-home consumption will grow even more, and theatrical releases will become less critical to the success of a film. In the TV world, I think things like pilot season and TV seasons will eventually completely disappear, and content will just be released online and on cable year-round. I think distributors and marketers will find innovative ways to get their content out and monetize it using approaches we haven’t even thought of yet.
I think how long the pandemic lasts will significantly affect what things look like over the next few years. If socially we’re able to get back to pre-pandemic standards, things won’t change nearly as fast much. But the longer it drags on, not only will theatrical releases become less important, but also the type of content created will change. I think right now there are some great opportunities for animation, which does not rely on physical contact. I could see an explosion in animated projects, and a lot of innovation in that world, trying out different types of animation, and also different types of storytelling in animation. Some will be great, some will fail, but I think this is an area that has a lot of potential. I also think indie filmmaking and documentary filmmaking has an opportunity to thrive right now because they typically require much smaller crews and are easier to shoot in a socially distant safe way. So we may see more independent filmmaking rather than big tentpole studio films.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.shierozow.com
- Email: [email protected]
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/shierozow/
- Facebook: https://facebook.com/ShieRozow
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/ShieRozow
Suggest a story: VoyageLA is built on recommendations from the community; it’s how we uncover hidden gems, so if you or someone you know deserves recognition please let us know here.
