Painkillers Instead of Diagnosis … The Evils of Temp Music

For decades, temp music tracks have been defended as a “necessary evil” in film editing. A shortcut to convey emotional tone and pacing before a composer enters. But this supposed necessity crumbles under scrutiny. The editors of Vince Gilligan’s Pluribus recently demonstrated an alternative: cutting the entire series without any temporary score. Their process, discussed in the Art of the Cut interview with Steve Hullfish, exposes temp music for what it often is: a crutch that conceals storytelling wounds that deserve early treatment. Composers and sound designers have long hated temp tracks; now, a growing body of editorial practice suggests the loathing is entirely justified.

The core problem with temp music is its anesthetic effect. A rough cut flooded with Hans Zimmer or Thomas Newman borrows emotional credibility it hasn’t earned. The editor of Pluribus, Skip Macdonald, and his colleagues chose to work dry… no temp score, no placeholder swells, no borrowed gravity. By forcing themselves and the directors to feel the raw rhythm of performance, sound effects, and silence, they uncovered storytelling problems early. A scene that dragged without music had to be tightened. A beat that rang false could not hide behind a violin melody. Every structural flaw was exposed.

This approach reverses the industry norm. Most editing rooms succumb to “temp love”: the slow, creeping attachment to a piece of existing music that no original score can replace. By the time a composer is hired, they face an impossible brief: “Make it feel exactly like this temp track, but don’t copy it.” Composers from Carter Burwell to Danny Elfman have described the frustration of writing against a ghost they are forbidden to reproduce. Sound designers suffer too, as dense temp scores leave no room for ambient and tonal texture, foley nuance, or diegetic reality. The Pluribus team sidestepped this entirely. Without a temp track, there was nothing to fall in love with, and nothing to mourn when the real score arrived.

More fundamentally, temp-free cutting forces honest collaboration. When Macdonald, McCaleb, and Liew screened scenes for Gilligan, the conversation centered on performance, pacing, and visual storytelling, not on whether a placeholder cue felt “epic enough.” Problems that might have been masked by borrowed orchestration: a limp reaction shot, a misjudged pause, a missing transition… were addressed immediately, through editing or reshoots. This isn’t merely efficient; it is ethically superior to the alternative. To hide a structural flaw with a temp track is to delay a wound’s treatment until it becomes a scar.

Opponents might argue that temp music helps directors and editors “hear” a scene’s potential. But the Pluribus case suggests that potential should be found within the cut itself. Silence is not emptiness; it is possibility. Sound designers in particular thrive when given sonic space to build worlds from the ground up. A temp track occupies that space like a squatter, leaving little room for original atmospheres or rhythmic breath. Removing it doesn’t create a void, it creates an invitation.

Of course, the temp track is not inherently evil. Used sparingly, as a brief reference, swiftly surrendered, it can help identify a scene’s emotional target. But the term “necessary evil” implies inevitability. The editors of Pluribus disprove that claim. Their discipline required courage: the courage to sit with rawness, to trust that real feeling does not need borrowed music, and to confront problems early rather than bury them under another composer’s triumph. Musical score is one of the most powerful and efficient tools a filmmaker has, but like any extremely powerful tool, it needs to be used carefully, because it can do more damage than one less powerful.

In the end, every temp track asks a dangerous question: “Isn’t this good enough?” The better question, the one asked by Macdonald, McCaleb, and Liew, is “What does this scene actually need?” Until more editing rooms follow their lead, temp music will remain what it has always been: the ghost of a solution, haunting a problem no one dared to solve.