By Lynn Kaiser Conrad
Contributing Writer
Mark Kueffner and his wife Diane have been married for 18 years. They have lived in Pickens County since 2018.
Mark is a musician and a composer, and Diane is the business manager and used to be Mark’s agent when he launched his film and television musical score career.
How old were you when you became interested in music?
I was six years old when a door-to-door salesman came to our house. The accordion salesman said I would be good at it, and I wanted to play the accordion. My mom played the piano professionally in the 1940s on the radio in Hot Springs, Arkansas.
She agreed that I could get the accordion if I practiced two hours a day. And so, it began.
How did your music practice progress?
Within a few years, I graduated from the accordion academy and went into private lessons for both classical and traditional accordion music. My brother was six and I was nine years old, and we did gigs. My brother played percussion. We were on the Pat Boone television program twice. We were on the Gypsy Rose Lee TV show, and as kids, we were the opening act for Liberace in Anaheim, California. Then our manager suddenly died, and our performing career came to a halt.
When did you switch from performing to composing?
I started writing and producing music in the early 1990s. I got the bug for film composing in 2013. I started reading about the industry and how to make contacts. Then I began working on student films where I found opportunities online. One of my first projects was a film being produced in England. Then, I created a website. I took stock film and wrote music for the clips and made my own reel that became my promotional piece. In 2020, I went to Berklee College of Music which is in Boston and attended classes virtually. I completed a certificate program for orchestration for film and television.
Has there been any fame attached to your composing career?
Mostly, I supply music to production companies who then take that music and apply it to projects. I am also associated with a company that acts as an agent for talent, has its own music library, and more. I was nominated for a PMA (Production Music Association) award for my work on a full-length documentary film about the Holocaust.
I have some other nominations, too. I have about 90 credits on IMDb (IMDb is the Internet Movie Database where curious minds can find out myriad details relating to all things movies.) I have worked on NCIS New Orleans, American Greed, Fear Factor, The Bachelor and The Bachelorette, Snapped-Killer Couples, and many more across genres.
Of all your projects, which stands out?
One of the best projects I worked on was a play called Go. It is now going to be adapted into a film. I wrote the music which was sent to the Budapest Symphony Orchestra who performed and recorded the music for the play. Interestingly, it is a silent play, so the music is instrumental in conveying the story and eliciting the mood and feelings.
What are your current projects?
Right now, I am working on a documentary film with actor Joe Mantegna as the narrator. The film is about PTSD. It focuses on veterans and first responders. It’s being made in a studio in Atlanta. It may even turn into a series.
I’m also working on another project called Cowboy and Indian. This is another feature film. It’s a feel-good movie. It can bring people together. The cowboy leans right politically and the Indian, from the country of India, leans politically left. The cast and crew are very diverse and from all over the globe, and then there’s me, a guy from Jasper, Georgia.
How do you write?
I
play the piano and then my software transcribes my compositions while I’m playing. I play the piano, accordion, and percussion. I’m a member of BMI, (Broadcast Music, Inc is a warehouse in the U.S. for music and a place to register music rights.) BMI is ideal for underscore musicians. When I write a feature song, I copyright that to protect my work, but when I’m hired to compose for a movie or television, the film production company owns the music.
What do you like best about the process?
After a film is spotted, this is a meeting with the director and the producer about the mood of the film, then I am free to create. Sometimes I work six hours a day, but I can easily spend 12-15 hours in the studio when I’m in the middle of it. A rule of thumb is one hour to create one minute of finished music, so a lot of time is devoted to the final product. I love to be creative. I get up at 3 a.m., get coffee, and go to my studio. I watch the scene, and then I get into it. In film, there is a thing called Picture lock. This means no more time changes to edits, the clip is 15 seconds long or 2 minutes long, whatever it happens to be. If you make changes after the Time lock, then it adversely impacts the music overlay, and you make a mess.
