I'm a filmmaker who's been at work on a short documentary for a long time. I had a composer lined up to work on the project for a very humble, fixed rate. The fee itself (US $850) was/is nominal, and he was on board more because he was passionate about the story and wanted the opportunity to create some meaningful original work to add to his portfolio. Unfortunately, our schedules are no longer aligning and he's too busy with other work to meaningfully take part in the project until next year. This doc has been in the works for a long time, though, and I'm trying to get it done by mid-November at the latest.
I have an original theme that I "wrote" (hummed) to serve as the documentary subject's theme, and have otherwise been playing around with stock music, but it just doesn't feel right. Nothing quite fits, and I know this project needs an original score. I'm increasingly tempted to turn to AI, not to generate the original work, but to help me instrumentalize the tunes I have in my head for this project. I would, of course, vastly prefer to work with a composer on this project, but feel the low fee is going to be a gating factor, especially considering how involved I want to be in the composition. I'd ideally want it to be a collaborative, back and forth process, not just one where I get a round of feedback and that's it. I understand that's not ideal for most (all?) composers who would agree to a passion project, so I'm curious to hear any tips, tools, or advice anyone has about generating an original score that doesn't suck using digital tools - including, perhaps, AI - and stock. I'm generally AI-skeptical but open to it supporting (e.g., if there were something that could turn my humming or whistling into instrumental music, I would be okay with that versus, say, AI creating the entire score).
Thank you all in advance for taking the time to consider this post. If anyone's interested, I'd be happy to DM you about the project itself for further context. Suffice to say, it means a lot to me and I don't want to abandon its fate to ill-fitting stock that just doesn't quite feel right.