What does Temp Track mean?
Temp Track is a temporary music track — typically existing commercially recorded music — placed in a film or television cut during editing to give the director, producers, and editor a sense of the emotional quality and pacing that the final original score will provide. Temp tracks are used throughout the editing process before the original composer has completed the score. The danger of the temp track is that it can become so embedded in the creative team’s expectations that the composer feels pressure to closely imitate it rather than create something genuinely new.
Example:The director had been editing to Hans Zimmer’s Interstellar score as a temp track for months — when the film’s actual composer delivered his original music, the director found it difficult to accept because he had become so accustomed to the temp track’s specific emotional quality.
Example: The editor placed an emotional piano piece as a temp track under the child actor’s key scene before the composer had written anything — a practical tool that helped the director articulate the emotional intention of the scene to the composer.
Did you know?
The phenomenon of directors becoming attached to temp tracks — sometimes called ‘temp love’ — has significantly influenced Hollywood film scoring. Hans Zimmer’s recognizable sound has been so widely used as a temp track that his compositional approach has become one of the most frequently imitated styles in contemporary film scoring, creating a self-reinforcing cycle that shapes the sonic landscape of Hollywood cinema.
You can also find “Temp Track” and related terms in this category: Planning and Pre-Production.
