We're all here for the greater good. Music heals the world. It really does, and it's a common language.

Carolyn

Today we're talking with Julia Michaels, IU alum, Emmy and Grammy winning music supervisor whose work on films like Pitch Perfect, A Star Is Born, and the Devil Wears Prada has defined how we experience story through music. Julia is a returning trustee on the Grammy board and passionate advocate for mentoring the next generation of music industry talent. Welcome to the show, Julia.

Julia:

Thank you so much. Honored to be here.

Carolyn

You attended college at IU. You've walked the steps on this campus that these guys are walking, you've been in their position, and your journey has been pretty non-linear going from what you went to school for to what you did to where you are now. Talk about what happens when your whole life completely changes and you have to shift identity at a pretty early age and how that got you to where you are today.

Julia

Yes. Well, as you probably know, I was a competitive gymnast my whole life and was training to make the Olympic team. That was my dream as every young athlete that puts as much time into it as I did. I got injured at some point in my career and had to pivot to ask myself, what am I going to do with my life? My identity really was all wrapped up in gymnastics. It was a pretty substantial emotional shift in my life that happened kind of early that, of course, looking back, I'm so grateful for, but it's hard to have that perspective when you're in high school. During college, I thought, what do I want to major in? My whole life had been the sports world and I had obviously had injuries. I'd been to physical therapy so I thought I'm going to major in sports science, which was really interesting to me. That was the first year of the major at IU ever so I was in the indoctrinating class. I have a BS in science in the sports science field. And I loved it. It was great. I thought I'd be an exercise physiologist or an athletic trainer.

And then after college, I randomly got a call from USA Gymnastics whose headquarters were in Indianapolis. It was a really cool atmosphere. I got a job as the production coordinator for USA Gymnastics, which was called USGF at the time. I produced all the competitions you see on television, which in my early 20s was a massive job. It was super stressful but it prepared me for my life now. In a nutshell, I was in charge of the arena and everything that happened in the arena, including the playing the music. And so I got very organized. I learned how to work under pressure because I was doing live television. I had always been a music buff. I was always putting music to everything we did in my life, road trips, dances, high school events. I was always making mix tapes. After doing that, which looking back, thank goodness I got indoctrinated into that crazy life of production. I thought, I want to live somewhere where I can expand my music horizons beyond Indianapolis. I'm going to go to New York or LA. I packed up my little car with all my CD's and I drove to Los Angeles.

I thought I'm going to get into the music business but I didn't even know what that meant. Because to me, music was records and radio and record labels. That's all I knew. I did not know about this career. So that's how I got to LA. I went on a whim. I followed my dreams. A part of my dream was I also wanted to dance in music videos. I thought, oh, I could try my hand at dancing, dancing with Michael Jackson and Paul Abdul and Madonna and all those great music video makers at the time. And I did it for a little bit. Then I got injured again. And I was like, okay, let's hang up this career and follow the music path.

Carolyn

Wow. That is quite a path. But I think it is also really affirming for you guys to hear, giving yourself permission to know that you have to give yourself space to figure out where you're going from here.

Julia

Right, I didn't have goals. I just kind of followed my heart. I didn't have a plan. I loved music. I loved dancing. And I had faith that things were going to work out. It was easier to get a job out of college at the time. I know it's a little bit more challenging today. It wasn't a digital age. We didn't have access to everything. So you sort of had to follow your instincts a little bit more. There wasn't as much research to do. You just had to jump and I jumped.

Max

Julia, a lot from what I'm hearing, so much your early career was about saying yes before you knew how. Was there a moment where you suddenly realized you were, or may have thought that you were in over your head just a bit?

Julia

Oh, millions of times. In fact, I will answer that question, but to cut to current day, one of the things, since I've been doing this for a very long time, if somebody calls me and asks me to do something and it's totally outside of my comfort zone, I say yes, because I know there's a growth moment there because it's happened over the last couple years of my life. It's a sign that this is scary to me and I don't know how to do it, but I'm going to say yes and figure it out because it's always behooved me to do that. When I moved to LA, I was just trying to get a job. I was teaching aerobics. I was teaching gymnastics. I was valet parking cars. I was doing everything. They used to have these agencies that placed you in entertainment back then. And I went to this agency and I said, "I want to get into the music business." And one day gave me a piece of paper and said, "Go to this interview." And I went to this interview and it happened to be a film music agent who represents composers who create the background score for films, which I never paid attention to, which a lot of people don't pay attention to, but it is a 50% or more of the musical process of a movie. I wound up getting a job with this wonderful man and he became my first mentor in the business and I was his assistant for four years. And we represented very big composers, Jerry Goldsmith, Howard Shore, Basil Polydorus, Danny Elfman on and on and on to name a few. And I learned how to score a film. That was instrumental in my career because a lot of people say they want to be a music supervisor and they think it's all about knowing cool music and bands. And we'll get to that, but it's not. It's part of it, but understanding the film music process was crucial for my career because people hired me based on my knowledge of that world. So that was my first job. Then after that job, I wound up working for one of those composers, a wonderful man who's passed away named Basil Pollodors, who did legendary scores like Conan the Barbarian and Lonesome Dove and Starship Troopers, big beautiful scores. I was his studio manager so I learned from the studio side, the composer process. That gave me a great insight into the whole process.

And then I got a call from Capital Records, going back to your question that said, "I hear you know how to do soundtracks." I was like, "I don't know how to do soundtracks. What are you talking about? " We need someone to come in because our soundtrack executive left. We have a deal with Miramax and we have to do this Scream 2 movie. I'm like, "I'll be right there. I walked into Capital Records, had a big huge office, had no idea what I was doing, figured it out, and turned that one moment into the Director of soundtracks for Capital Records job. I was there for a couple of years creating the soundtracks from the label side. So now I have label experience. I've been inside of the label. And I got to walk into legendary capital records every day.

At that time it was the late '90s and physical records were a big deal. Everybody bought CDs and physical media. There was no streaming. And so every movie had a soundtrack that you wanted to purchase because you didn't have iTunes, your live music library and you couldn't access any music in the world. So it was a big business. I wound up doing a lot of movies with 20th Century Fox. So after a couple years at Capital, 20 Century Fox called me and said, "We want to hire you as the vice president of music." And I was like, "I'll be right there." I walked into...This is the part where I felt like I was in over my head. I walked into 20th Century Fox. I have this big office. I'm a vice president and I don't know what pre-production is. I don't know what post-production is. All I know is how to make a record and I figured it out. I'll never forget the first day of my job. The person who hired me walked me into this room and said, "This is your movie." And I sat there with the filmmakers and the film post executives. I remember not sleeping for three months because I was so anxious about it because I had no idea what I was doing, but there were people that were gracious and mentors and I wound up being there for four years. I say that I grew up at Fox because there were four divisions of films. There was Fox Searchlight, which is still around. There was Fox 2000, which was more the mid-level Devil Wears Prada and Marley and Me, which I did as well, those movies. And then there was Big Fox. And then there was Fox Animation. So I oversaw all those movies and I would hire supervisors like me on the very intensive music projects and there were other executives, but that's kind of where I grew up. Wow. So that's the theme. Say yes and figure it out. Yeah.

Max

When you started stepping into these larger roles, did you feel like there was any fear in saying no, less of a fear of what's to come?

Julia

You mean was I afraid if I said no, would I regret my no?

Max

Yes.

Julia

Yes. I think that's part of it. It was kind of like the stepping stones led to growth for me. Sometimes people make side moves. I feel like all my moves were an upward trajectory. Some were luck. Some were just because I kept my head down and did my work well and I learned and I listened. If I didn't know something, I pick up the phone and figure it out. That's my panel speak. Say yes. If you don't know it, there's so many people doing it already. And a lot of people like me want to help young professionals, young up and comers. It's just, we're a very generous community and I think that I've been the beneficiary of that generosity.

Max

Do you feel like you had a lot of support on your upcoming?

Julia

I did. I had a lot of support. I had mentors in every single one of those jobs. As you get farther along, people get busier and busier and sometimes you can't get their attention. And so that's a little nerve wracking in the job. My boss at Capital used to call me her attachment because I'd follow her everywhere. She was one of my favorite people in the business, still is. I'd say, "I get the elevator meeting." It's like the Devil Wears Prada. I'd run into the elevator after and say, "No one else can have this meeting." And now from floor 11 to floor one, I got her and got my questions answered. It was that kind of job.

Carolyn

That's good advice though. You said something in an earlier interview that I really liked. You said you figured it out by calling someone you know that has expertise in the issue. We've been talking a lot about the value of building community when you don't need anything. It's the face-to-face time, it's the phone calls. That's when you also make a personal connection. I mean, that's what I feel like our business is lost.

Julia

Well, it's lost in our world, the personal connection. I just went to speak at Berkeley, the Berkeley College of Music. And I said, "Anytime that you are in LA to all these young upcoming professionals, come to my office. They come, they sit in my office. I ask them "what do you want to do? " And then I just sort of open my Rolodex and say, "Okay, who do you need to meet?"

Angela:

I wanted to talk to you about craft. I agree that a lot of people don't actually know what a music supervisor does. I was wondering if you could tell us a little bit about the typical duties of a music supervisor.

Julia:

Good. That's a loaded question, but yes, that's why I'm here. So I always start high level, which is a music supervisor is in charge of all the music in a motion picture or a television show or an advertising campaign. I personally work in film. I grew up at Fox, like I said, so I chose film, but there's many careers in our business. I oversee the scoring process as far as hiring the composer and then all the on camera music, if someone's singing on camera, dancing on camera, all that has to be chosen, recorded and cleared before you get to set. And then of course all the background music. If you're in a coffee shop and music's playing or someone's walking down the street, there's a big montage. That's the creative part, but then budgetarily, that's also my job. I am given a music budget. You have $500,000 or a million dollars to make the music work. And it's my job to decide what we're going to offer the composer, the songwriter, the producer, how we're going to make the clearances work based on what the director wants. It is a job of moving chess pieces around to make it all work in the budget as well as creatively help the director realize their vision while making the studio happy. So there's the creative and then there's the politics and then there's the finances.

Angela

It sounds like you're pretty much involved from the very start basically.

Julia

Yes, from script phase, definitely from script phase.

Angela

Okay. I would say Pitch Perfect is a good example. There's a song from the Breakfast Club that seems very built into the script. Was that always the intention or did that come later on?

Julia

Good question. So PitchPerfect is an anomaly, as you know. That movie was unbelievably wonderful and I have such great relationships because of that film. Let me just back up. I was always an independent supervisor working on my own. On PitchPerfect, I actually teamed up with one of my dearest friends who we still work together. Her name is Julianne Jordan. It's kind of a funny story. We both got called individually to meet on the movie as well as another person. And I called her the night before the interview and I was like, "Did you read this script? What is this movie? Acapella what? There's like 800 songs in here." I said, "Do you want to team up?" She's like, "Sure." So she goes, "Okay, come to your interview early." So she was in the interview with the filmmakers and I was in the waiting room and she pitched the idea that we were a team and then she's like, "They bought it, come to the door." And that's how this whole team thing started.

So Julianne and I sat with Jason Moore, our director and our wonderful producers, Elizabeth Banks and her husband. And we literally had a Beats pill because it was a while ago and we went through the script and most of that music that we wound up using was not scripted, it was driven by story. We went through the script and asked ourselves what do we want the treblemakers to be? Are they nerds? Should they be singing something from the '70s? Are they contemporary? We wound up going with the Breakfast Club because the studio might've owned that movie. Something else interesting about that film is when they sang in the shower, Titanium That came about because we were looking for a song that could be breaking when the movie came out. We wound up getting lightning in a bottle because when we pitched Titanium Jason loved it and it worked. That became a pivotal moment.

Angela

Well, that's really awesome. Do you have a specific favorite project of yours that you've worked on? Maybe it's something right now or something in the past?

Julia

I have so many favorites. I mean, it's really hard, but I will say, I think one of the movies that put me on the map as an independent is The Devil Wears Prada. I'm working on The Devil Wears Prada 2 now and the director is one of my favorite people. It's my seventh movie with him. So I'm lucky enough to have done all his movies since, but there's so many others. I mean, I don't know. A Star Is Born is kind of a zeitgeist experience.

Carolyn

I actually do want to ask about A Star Is Born because I know that put you on the map in several ways. I mean Bradley Cooper had never sung before. What made that movie such a standout, different experience for you?

Julia

I mean, it was so different from the very beginning. First of all, I got to go to Lady Gaga's house to interview for the job, and that was a whole thing. Whoa. I mean, I meet a lot of celebrities and stars and everyone's lovely. And she's probably one of the loveliest creative, down to earth, smart, intelligent women I've ever met in my life or worked with. Such an honor to work with her. And going to hear her and Bradley's vision for what they wanted was amazing. Bradley had already been taking singing lessons when we met. Obviously, the other thing about these, what we call on camera movies is that the rule kind of before this was you don't ever sing live on set ever. And the reason is, let's say you're outside and you're doing a live take and a plane flies over, you don't have a clean take or somebody drops a cup of water. You're not getting clean takes to edit your film. But Lady Gaga's Lady Gaga and she's an unbelievable singer. And when she said she wanted to sing live, we said, "Okay." And the credit of capturing her live goes to our sound mixer who's really musical. He had done LaLa Land and subsequently Maestro. He figured out how to mic her and mic the room and make it sound like she was in the room. So that experience was one of really having to be on your game because it's like doing a live concert. Things can go wrong, but luckily she's so amazing and Bradley was amazing. I mean, Bradley wrote the opening song the night before we shot it. We didn't even know he was writing it. So it was a surprise when we got to set the first day and it was that song Black Eyes that opened the movie and it was amazing.

So kind of like also being ready for curve balls, I will say. A lot of curve balls because they're super creative and he was directing and writing and we'd show up to set and like something changed, keeping yourself calm and not getting people upset. And that's another skill you have to have when you're on set.

Carolyn

Part of what I like to explore on this podcast is challenging circumstances and things that you didn't think you were going to be able to turn around. Do you have any anecdotes you'd be willing to share on that?

Julia

What comes to mind are songs that directors have fallen in love with that are not clearable. Either the artist says no or there's disputes within the writers and the song is not clearable. I will tell you two very nerve-wracking things. One is Pitch Perfect 1. In the first riff off, Anna Kendrick's character ends with No Diggity. And did that not make the whole thing? We were going to shoot that and there was 1% of the song that wasn't cleared. 1% of the writers was in a little tiff with some of the other writers and we were sweating it because everything was prepped and recorded and we didn't have 1%. What that meant was if that one person held out, we would have had to reshoot the whole thing. We wouldn't be able to use it. And the day we were shooting it as we were walking on set it cleared, but it was really nerve-wracking.

Carolyn

Well, before we rotate off craft, I'm curious. When you were at Capital Records, one of your jobs was to find roles and placements for your artists.

Julia

Exactly.

Carolyn

With streaming and so much new music coming out every day, how do you stay on top of it?

Julia

That's a really good question. When streaming first came in, it used to make me anxious like, "Oh, I don't know everything out there." Before I would look at the Billboard 200 and think, "Oh, at least I know who the bands are. " You just can't keep up now. The nice thing about being the buyer instead of the seller is everyone pitches to us. It's a lot. Also, my coordinator weeds out a lot of things for me. I'm doing a film right now and we are looking for something for a bicycle montage scene. So we'll send out a search that says, "Here's the scene, here's what we're looking for. I need a female vocal and I needed to come in for this amount of money." I give a range. And then we get pitched music for that specific scene.

Sometimes all the other noise has to fall away and as much as I want to listen to all the music, I really have to pay attention to the music I'm looking for for a specific film. I have to have tunnel vision. Also, I go to songwriters and I work with a lot of producers. I go to their studios and they play me music. It's hard to get out of the office all the time when you're busy, but tomorrow I'm going to do that. I know there's a songwriter that has some unreleased songs. I'm always looking for unreleased music, something that's not out yet, that either I can help break in my film.

Jen

How do you foster such a collaborative culture within such a competitive industry?

Julia

That's a very good question. Okay. So you know what I always say? There's enough work for everybody and the chips fall where they may. I've been in meetings where I haven't gotten movies. I've gotten fired off of a few movies and it's never your fault when you get fired. It's never a composer's fault when they get fired. It's something that's happened on a film and it's happened to me. And sometimes it's heartbreaking when you go in for a film you think you really want, you don't get it. And when your friends get it and you go, "Okay, they're great too." That person knows just as much as I do and maybe it's a personality fit. I really try to live by everything happens for a reason as cliche as that sounds because look, I got hurt in gymnastics and didn't continue, but look where I am now. If that wouldn't have happened, I would've been on a totally different path. Who knows what my career would've been? It could have been amazing, but I would've been sad to miss this. So I do try to operate through the lens that we just want to lift each other up. Our community, music supervision is very small and somehow we just all support each other. And the mentorship, bringing up the next generation really binds us as well because it's harder now and we want to see this craft live on and thrive.

Jen

You've been working for the Grammy Board for over 10 years. How do you think the Grammy board can encourage more cooperation across genres, generations, and the industry roles?

Julia

So the Recording Academy, which is the Grammys, really is rooted in advocacy, which spends a lot of time advocating for music creators. And even though I'm not a creator of music, I advocate for creators because I hire creators. The Grammys also are very big in inclusivity. There's something called the Dream Network, which is new, and it fosters inclusivity for all genres, crafts, nationalities of music makers coming up. So being on the board to help foster the community, the music community in general, the music supervisors is a small part, but there's producers, songwriters, engineers, there's professionals that are part of the Grammys, right? We're all here for the greater good. Music heals the world. It really does. It's a common language. And so we're all here for that, I guess is what it is. I can't do it in my music supervision chair, but I can help do it on the Grammy board. Whether it's throughout chapters in Los Angeles or globally, it's just something I really feel passionate about. And there's so many people that feel that way.

Max:

You've shared so many amazing stories and so many great experiences. At this stage in your career, after everything you've built, what craving drives you through your career and to be the best music supervisor you can possibly be? Is it more challenging? Is it more freedom? Is it new voices?

Julia

My husband's like, why are you so driven? I think it started with gymnastics, but it's a good question. One of the things really is the community. I mean, I get to work with my friends. My dinners are colleagues, but they're my friends. And this community is so strong and so supportive. There's my love of music, obviously. I'm also at a point in my career where I'm developing projects. I have an animated series in development. I'm casting a film right now. I've associate produced two movies. People have brought scripts to me and said, I know you know a lot of filmmakers, could you bring a director into this project? " I was like, "Well, I like the script, so let me send it to people that I think might like it." I just brought a director on board on one of our projects.

There's something to be said for having respect goes both ways.The filmmakers respect me as their colleagues so they trust me. That's kind of the next step in my career, which I've definitely dipped my toe in the water while I'm still doing music supervision and we'll see where that goes. But I think the opportunity to build and create on another level or something different with people that I respect also is a craving I have.

Carolyn

My last question for you, Julia, would be, if I had told you back when you were at IU that you would be where you are today, what would you have said?

Julia

Oh my God, I wouldn't have believed you. I mean, I know that people say that. I think I would've believed I would've been happy and working in a business that I'd love, but I could have never imagined this because I didn't know this was a career.

I followed my heart most of my life and had a great work ethic and stayed graceful and gracious. And if you can be resourceful and figure things out on your own or know who to go, that's one part of it. If you can be resilient because you're going to get fired, people are going to tell you no, and that has to roll off or you're going to not get jobs if you're young and you're interviewing for an assistant job. And if you can be respectful through all of it, you're going to be successful.

Carolyn

That's it. Excellent place to end. Thank you so much for your time, Julia.

Jullia

Of course. Thanks for being interested and I can't wait to hear the episode.

Carolyn

Thank you so much for listening to this episode. This episode was created and produced at the IU Media School as part of the Beautiful Thinkers Podcast, IU edition. To follow along this season, check out the beautiful thinkers on Instagram and LinkedIn. Special thanks to Angela Karaher for our music and all the students who researched and recorded this episode. Max Kirsch, Jen Wang, Angela Karaher, and Maiza Munn.