An actress sits on stage. In front of her, an artificial crowd of several dozen extras. The camera pushes in on her hands, because the director wants that one striking shot - fingers on the instrument, sweat, focus. The problem is that three weeks earlier, this woman couldn't even sit at the instrument properly. And in a moment, a million viewers have to believe she's been doing this for years.
This is exactly the moment a music consultant exists for. And it's also the moment that shows whether someone did the work long before this shooting day - or whether they're only now starting to pray.
I ran a job like this for one of the biggest broadcasters in the country. But this isn't about the name or the size of the station. It's about what this work actually is, because almost nobody writes about it - and it's one of the most complex creative operations I know. I'll save the title of the series for the end.
What music consultation actually is
Most people think it means "someone picks songs for scenes." That's music supervision - it's often part of the consultation, but it's a different job. The music consultation I'm talking about is something much deeper: building the musical truth of the world on screen, from zero.
If a series is about musicians, every detail has to hold up. How the band sounds. What they'd realistically play at that budget and at that stage of their career. How the players hold their instruments, how they move on stage, what their rehearsal looks like versus their concert. What songs they would have written, if they existed. And whether a viewer who's a musician themselves switches the TV off after ten seconds because "that's not how you play that."
The music consultant is responsible for making that whole illusion hold together - from the first line of the script to the last shot. It's a role that sits at the intersection of musical craft, directing, coaching, and logistics. And that constant task-switching is the hardest part of it.
Stage one: the script. This is where you win or lose
The cheapest moment to fix a mistake is the script. The most expensive is the set, where every minute costs a fortune and a lot of people are waiting on it.
So the real work starts at a desk, long before the cameras roll. I read the script not as a viewer, but as someone hunting for musical false notes. A scene where the hero writes a hit song in ten minutes - that's not how it works, it has to be reworked or justified within the story. A band playing a genre that doesn't exist in the reality the story is set in. A song that's supposed to be a hit in the plot, but whose lyrics can't carry that role.
At this stage I also design the production's music bible: who these musicians are, what they play, what their history is, how they sound at different points in the story. It's a document the whole crew keeps coming back to - the director, costumes, set design, editing. Because musical truth isn't only in the sound. It's in which guitar the character holds, and what sticker is on the case.
Decisions made here cost pennies. The same decisions made on set cost a shooting day.
Stage two: the set. This is where you defend what you designed
The set is a completely different mode. There's no time to think here - everything has to be planned in advance, and on the day you defend it under fire, between one take and the next.
On set, I watch that the performance reads as real in the frame. That doesn't mean the actor has to actually play - it means it has to look real from that specific camera angle. Finger placement, breathing, how the microphone is held, the moment a musician closes their eyes. Playback sync down to the frame. These are two different crafts: designing in calm and saving the take live. I learned both of them not on a film set - I learned them earlier, running clubs, where everything also happened at once and there were no retakes.
Original music: writing a hit for someone who doesn't exist
The most interesting part of this job. The characters need their own songs - the ones they would have written, in their sound, at their stage. This isn't "let's throw in a nice song." It's composing inside someone else's, invented, skin.
A track has to do two things at once. First, sound credible as that character's music - their genre, their level, their era. Second, serve the plot: a song that's meant to be a turning point in the script actually has to sound like one. A hit has to sound like a hit the viewer believes made the charts. And the song from the character's breakup has to hurt.
On top of that comes production in multiple versions: a demo for rehearsals, a "raw" version for the character's early career, a "polished" version for the finale, stems for playback on set, instrumental versions. One song is often a dozen-plus files, each for a different scene and a different stage.
I could never have done this without Michał (known as Anioł), who always handles production on my work. Doesn't matter if we're talking about a simple ringtone, raw post-punk, or a production straight out of the world's biggest philharmonics - he'll handle it.
Song lyrics: when the chorus has to carry the plot
A separate craft. An original song's lyrics in a series aren't just a nice text. They have to match the character's voice - their age, their language, their world. Sometimes they have to carry a specific plot point, so the viewer catches the meaning without the song turning into a lecture. And sometimes they just have to be a catchy chorus you believe half the country is humming.
Writing lyrics that are both good lyrics and a good narrative tool is a constant balancing act. Too much plot = it turns artificial. Too little = the scene loses its point. That trade-off gets negotiated word by word, with the director and the screenwriter.
A shoutout here to my close friend Grzesiek, known as CatchUp - I don't know anyone else who can step into the shoes of characters from any era and genre, write the perfect lyrics for them, and then sing it flawlessly for reference on top of that.
Actor training: turning someone into a musician who isn't one
This can be the most demanding part, and the most rewarding. An actor has to look like a musician with years of experience, with only weeks to get there. It's not about actually learning to play - it's about making believable whatever the camera will see.
With actors who aren't musicians, I start from zero and break everything down into small, learnable pieces. Not "learn the instrument," but "master exactly these movements, the ones that'll be in these shots." I build muscle memory for specific frames. I pick the shortcuts the camera won't give away. I work on posture, on stage presence, on that elusive way someone moves after five hundred concerts. The hardest thing to teach isn't technique - it's ease. Because ease shows, and its absence shows even more.
I'll be honest: you can't bring everyone to the same level, and it doesn't go smoothly with everyone. Part of this job is a sober judgment call on where to set the bar for a given actor, and how to set up scenes and shots so they play to their strengths and hide their weaknesses. That's a form of consultation too - telling the production straight what won't work, before everyone loses a day trying to rehearse it anyway.
Extras: the crowd as an instrument
Hardly anyone thinks about this, and it can make or break a concert scene. A few hundred extras who have to pass as a real audience. If they stand there like they're at a bus stop, the whole credibility of the performance collapses - even if the actor on stage is perfect.
So the crowd gets directed like an instrument too. You have to cue them when to react, how to sway, how to fake feeling the climax of a track they're only hearing a snippet of, looped on a speaker. The energy that real music creates at a real concert has to be directed on set - because extras react to a cue, not to emotion. It's exactly the same job I did years earlier on the dancefloor: making a room feel the moment. Except here you do it cold, take after take.
And the hardest part: wiring it all into one machine
Because now look at how many things I've just listed. The script. The set. Composition. Lyrics. Actor training. Directing extras. And on top of that, the entire rest of the production running on its own rhythm: the director, the music department, sound, the second unit director, costumes, choreography, editing. Each with its own calendar, its own deadlines, and its own version of the truth.
The real value of a music consultant isn't in any single one of these things. It's in wiring them into one working machine that plugs into the production without slowing it down. That means: one single point through which the entire musical reality of the series passes. Clear file versions, and who gets what and when. A training schedule locked to the shooting schedule, not running alongside it. A demo ready before it's needed on set, not a day after. Decisions made at the script stage so they don't blow up in front of the camera.
This is exactly the same kind of work we do today at NICE, in completely different industries: we take the chaos of complex, moving parts and build them into a system that just works and plugs into a larger whole. Here the raw material happened to be music and a film set. The mechanics of the thinking are identical - first understand what actually has to land, then design the machine that will deliver it under time pressure.
Because the viewer will never see that machine. They'll see the actor on stage, a crowd that sways, and a song they believe. And the fact that behind that shot stood months of wiring dozens of moving parts into one organism - that's meant to stay invisible. That's the whole job.
The series is BUNT!, and you can watch the first episode for free right here:
