Atlanta has the movie studios. Now, it needs the music composers.

When the cameras wrap and the cast has left town, and that long and challenging phase of filmmaking known as post-production begins, the action often moves elsewhere.

Music is the invisible architecture of storytelling

Credit: Handout

Credit: Handout

The crowning chapter of post-production is music, and though Atlanta is a city with music in its very soul, there has been, until now, no center of gravity for screen music. No “scene.” No scoring stages occupy the big lots at Trilith or Tyler Perry Productions.

James Gunn’s recent “Superman” took flight at Trilith Studios, and its D.C. Studios has deep ties to Atlanta, but the music flew off to London.

Would it have stayed here if there’d been a home for it? Nashville does not see even a whisper of the film production activity Atlanta does, and yet its studios host frequent sessions by one of Tyler Perry’s go-to composers, Aaron Zigman (see the “Madea” films for examples).

Music is not a finishing touch. It is the invisible architecture of storytelling, a little like “emotional subtitles.” It tells us when to feel afraid, when to exhale, when to cry.

Right now, for screen music, that’s largely Los Angeles, London, Nashville and a handful of European cities. It doesn’t have to stay that way. Atlanta is calling. And with the arrival of a world-class screen scoring program right in its Midtown heart, Atlanta may be ready for its cine-musical close-up.

Education is the anchor for building a new industry

I’ve spent more than two decades building graduate programs in film music — in Chicago, in Valencia, in Sofia, and most recently here in Atlanta at Strayer University’s Media Design School, developing its program offerings in screen scoring and music design — and what I’ve seen in each city is the same: when serious music education takes root, a creative ecosystem follows.

Students become collaborators. Collaborators become colleagues. A scene becomes more than the sum of its parts. The city gains something it didn’t have before.

Atlanta already has extraordinary musical DNA. It has the infrastructure, and a creative community that is vibrant and eager. What it has lacked is a hub for screen music specifically — a place where the craft of composing for film, television, games, and immersive media is taught at the highest level, in direct dialogue with the industry that surrounds it.

Education is the anchor. When a region invests in rigorous training programs and creates direct pathways between the classroom and industry, it signals something crucial: This is a place where your craft matters, where you can build a career, where your work will be taken seriously. That’s what attracts talent and keeps it there. That’s what builds ecosystems that endure.

No city becomes a true film capital on stages and tax incentives alone. It becomes one when the full constellation of filmmaking talent, including the musicians who give those films their emotional undercurrent, chooses to be there.

Georgia has brought Hollywood to the Southeast. The next step is making sure the music comes along with it.

Andy Hill is a Grammy-winning producer, former vice president of music production at Walt Disney Studios, and executive dean of the forthcoming Screen Scoring & Music Design MFA at Media Design School at Strayer University in Atlanta.

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