Success is all about genuine passion and, of course, who you know.  New York/Portland, OR-based Search Party Films’ Creative Director Randall Poster started working as a film music supervisor on the Larry Clark phenomena “Kids” and his relationships with such top filmmakers as Wes Anderson and Jason Reitman have afforded him opportunities to serve as the audible creative viewpoint on such top feature films as “Dogma,” “Boys Don’t Cry,” “School of Rock,” “Revolutionary Road” and “Rushmore.”

Poster often becomes involved in the process at very early stages, sometimes even before the concept of the film has been fully developed.  As the phases of production progress, he finds, “The movie will let you know what it requires of the music and I focus on finding the sound of the film as well as the musical context that will help to move the story along.”  The musical score can often even solve problems that are on a larger scope in the production process, compensating for moments that are not quite connecting in the film.

Although Poster is nearly always challenged in terms of budgets, he feels strongly that, “If you believe in the value of the work at hand, you can be extremely convincing.”  Having become an expert on navigating his way through even some of the most unique licensing issues, Poster has only hit a musical dead end once in working on the off-beat Wes Anderson comedy, “The Royal Tenenbaums”.  Unable to acquire the rights to the Beatles’ recording of “Hey Jude,” he instead used a cover performed by The Mutato Muzika Orchestra, which despite the forced circumstances ended up lending itself extremely well to the voice of the film.

Recent work out of Search Party Music includes work for “The Christmas Gig” campaign for Target out of Weiden + Kennedy, Portland and the Budweiser “Wild West” Super Bowl spot out of Anomaly, NYC.  Search Party EPs Stephanie Diaz-Matos and Sara Matarazzo also recently finished their second year music supervising the DVP Presents Proud to be Woman Vol. 2 CD series and performances centered around International Women’s Day. 100% of the proceeds go to the organization Vital Voices, one of the top NGOs in the world that educates, trains and empowers women around the globe.