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Diana Lee Inosanto, the writer, director, actress and fight choreographer, has signed with Gersh.

Inosanto is the goddaughter of the revered martial arts master and actor Bruce Lee and the daughter of martial arts authority Dan Inosanto. On the acting front, Inosanto will appear in Disney+’s Star Wars spinoff Ahsoka TV series, where she will play Magistrate Morgan Elsbeth and reprise her role in The Mandalorian.

Inosanto was a stuntwoman for movies like Face/Off, Hulk and served as a martial arts trainer for Rosa Salazar in Alita: Battle Angel and Melissa McCarthy as she played CIA analyst Susan Cooper in Spy.

Inosanto will also have a supporting lead role in Paramount’s animated feature Tiger’s Apprentice, for which she and her husband Ron Balicki of Mars Action Group choreographed the fight designs.

She also wrote, directed and starred in the indie film The Sensei, and along with The...

Ka-li (noun): 1) One of the manifestations and cult titles of the wife of Shiva and mother goddess Devi, especially in her malevolent role as a goddess of death and destruction, depicted as black, red-eyed, blood-stained, and wearing a necklace of skulls...

2) Eskrima, Arnis and Kali are umbrella terms for the traditional martial arts of the Philippines ("Filipino Martial Arts," or Fma) that emphasize weapon-based fighting with sticks, knives and other bladed weapons, and various improvised weapons.

It also includes hand-to-hand combat, joint locks, grappling and weapon disarming techniques.

More and more, martial arts action sequences are becoming integral to genre filmmaking. From the "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" series (1997) and Blade (1998) to The Hulk (2003) and Resident Evil: Apocalypse (2004), we’re seeing more and more cinematic heroes who are kickin’ ass. One commonality in all of the aforementioned films are the action choreographers/stunt people: Ron Balicki and Diana Lee Inosanto.

I always get a little bit reflective and introspective during the end of each year, and particularly during the holidays. I’ve spent a lot of time this week looking back at what we’ve accomplished together with this amazing global community of post-production professionals, and I’ve realized something: Since we are all in the thick of projects most of the time, it’s easy to overlook and forget about obvious blessings.

As we close out an incredible 2010 here at SCOREcast, I wanted to make good use of the rare downtime I have at the moment to update you all on a few great things that are happening around here, many of which were designed with You in mind for the upcoming year. I think these things are huge victories for the SCOREcast community that are worth celebrating and memorializing as we launch into what looks like a promising year for our industry overall.

As editor-in-chief of SCOREcastOnline.com, I get a Ton of email and communication from people wanting to help us do what we do even better. These people are often folks I do not know personally but most of them are self-proclaimed online blogging “experts” who are peddling a variety of different products guaranteed to keep SCOREcast stay chocolaty in milk. Recently, I received one such email (most of these could more accurately be describe as “spam”) that was an advertisement for a WordPress plugin which enables you to generate a content-specific headline based off of key words obtained from crawling your previous content.

Sounds like a Great deal, right? I’m a busy guy, our contributor staff are all busy people… wouldn’t it be great to be able to just punch up a quick headline that is more or less relevant based on which posts have historically been the most viewed?...

I’m continuing today with my “Caveats of Convenient Film Composing” series. While we often love to talk about what we do right most of the time, these few posts speak instead to some things that I’ve observed film composers doing wrong lately. Of course, that statement in and of itself is highly subjective, but I think there are some habits that are starting to trend that, while possibly not evident right away, will prove down the line to be detrimental to doing business as a film composer in our continually evolving market. I see this list of choices as “temptations of convenience”, and this series might also be called “The Seduction of the Easy Way Out”. In this economy and composing climate, I see a lot of composers taking these routes and while none of them are necessarily “bad”, I’ll try to make the case as to...

Well… can you tell we’ve all been slammed around here? July was a quiet month at SCOREcast due to all of us regular contributors being tied up on beefy projects that have required our 1000% attention. For August, however, we’ll be offering you all some surprises in the way of new content. Watch for some interesting new features coming in the weeks ahead!

For my part (and I’m writing this very far in advance of the publishing date… it’s July 18th!), I’m going to stray from our August focus on “Working as a Team” and devote a few posts to some of the things I’ve observed film composers doing wrong lately. Of course, that statement in and of itself is highly subjective, but I think there are some habits that are starting to trend that, while possibly not evident right away, will prove down the...

I’m going a little off-topic here, but bear with me…

If you are anything like I am, you have many different ways in which you create. I think it is safe to say that we are all musically creative. We write, arrange, sketch, play, edit, perform, design, distort, and produce audio for various formats and productions. In my own career, however, I also like to work on my website, which I take care of myself. I love to take certain segments of our podcasts and edit/tweak them as a temporary (and I let me stress the word temporary!) tangent from my current scoring assignment. Though I am in no way, shape, or form a graphic designer, I have a fairly evolved sense of design aesthetic, and I very much enjoyed creating my own logo for my company. I design and create my own demo materials, promotional literature, and to a more limited degree,...

Can you believe that July is already upon us? What happened to the first half of 2010?

This month at SCOREcastOnline.com, we are focusing on “Marketing and Branding.”

I’m excited about finally bringing this topic to the forefront of our discussions at Sco, as many of you have been asking us to cover this topic for a long time.

As a possible timely stroke of genius(!), we are hosting our first-ever Official SCOREcast Mixer here in Los Angeles on July 18th. We will release details on how you can be involved before the weekend, so stay tuned for more on this special event.

To kick off the month, we’ve already read two Killer articles on the subject. Last week, Heather Fenoughty weighed in with an incredible article about Personality Branding, where she essentially lays out how to best promote yourself and run your business through understanding your personality type.

I received this question from a composer in Amsterdam who reads Sco. Instead of emailing my answer, I thought it would be a great topic to bring up here at SCOREcast:

“With all of the commitments you have pulling at you, how do you decide which projects to work on and which to leave on the table?”

Great question. Not an easy one to answer—because everyone is different—but an important one to answer, nonetheless. I’ll give it a shot.

We are all busy people. Some of us have two, three, four, ten, thirty things going at once. I’m scoring three movies simultaneously right now, I oversee SCOREcastOnline.com, I lead a successful, healthy, and happy team at Deane Ogden Music, my home life kicks ass, I rarely miss lunch with the woman of my dreams, and I still have plenty of time to play drums on people’s records.

My assistant and I had a great discussion over an 11pm Taco Bell dinner last night (isn’t composing for Hollywood films just the most glamorous thing ever?). Our topic? Rules. We were talking, specifically, about the boxes we paint ourselves into as composers—those ways of doing that are now go-to methods for us. You know… methods and devices that have worked project after project, over and over, again and again.

At first, our conversation was about identifying these rules. Certain progressions that are used as devices for a particular filmic motion. Certain instrument choices that we might prefer over others. Particular ways of writing or orchestrating that we subconsciously move straight to without regard to how we might approach it differently this time around.

Next, we questioned, “Why do we enforce these rules on ourselves?” Is it laziness? Habit? Insecurity? Maybe it is based on historical success. Or...

Looking over this past month of articles about “Going Pro”, our SCOREcast contributors have pointed out some very interesting definitions of what it means to be professional in this business. Some have explained that professionalism is a state of mind — that one must think constantly about being professional in all situations, whether in business, personal life, or public life. Others have suggested that to truly be a professional, one must earn a living at what it is they profess to do. For example, you can’t really call yourself a professional composer if you’re not making money “composing”. If all you’re doing is sitting around and talking about “composing”, then you might be able to say your professional talker, but not necessarily a professional composer.

Ever have a season in your life where it just seems like everything has been a lesson? Maybe you look back and realize...

Welcome to the new and improved SCOREcastOnline.com!

Our inaugural year has been a total blast! I knew that if we could do something to more carefully connect our professional film music community, amazing things would happen. What I didn’t count on was this community getting behind SCOREcast in the way that it has. Kudos to each and every one of you for building this community and really making this professional film music family an amazing group to be a part of. This website is for You!

Our first year online has been spent on Google’s awesome Blogger platform. However, with the expanding number of community-members posting relevant commentary and rich content, our daily readership is reaching into the 40,000′s, and we needed to make a change… badly.

We are now self-hosting the site on our own servers and have migrated to the more robust WordPress platform. For the last six days,...

As the first full year of SCOREcastOnline.com (Sco) draws to a close, I’ve found myself reflecting on all of the great things that makes our community of film music professionals shine. Much of it can be found in the hundreds of pages of articles, podcasts and tips that make up this online forum, but even more of it shows in the hearts and minds of You—the composers, orchestrators, writers, lyricists, executives, programmers, mixers, editors—all of you that work so hard to make this business a joy to be a part of and Sco the rich resource that it has become.

My goal in starting this website and podcast has always been to make our professional film music community “smaller” as we naturally grow “larger”. Over the past year, our website has undergone many alterations and we’ve experimented with various ways to communicate and interact as a community.

As the first full year of SCOREcastOnline.com (Sco) draws to a close, I’ve found myself reflecting on all of the great things that makes our community of film music professionals shine. Much of it can be found in the hundreds of pages of articles, podcasts and tips that make up this online forum, but even more of it shows in the hearts and minds of You—the composers, orchestrators, writers, lyricists, executives, programmers, mixers, editors—all of you that work so hard to make this business a joy to be a part of and Sco the rich resource that it has become.

My goal in starting this website and podcast has always been to make our professional film music community “smaller” as we naturally grow “larger”. Over the past year, our website has undergone many alterations and we've experimented with various ways to communicate and interact as a community.

Lee usually occupies this weekly space with some incredible tips to keep you rethinking your method of madness, but this week I begged him to let me have a crack at it. Luckily for me, he obliged.

There are so many things to be thought through when you are delivering a project. The importance of solid organization at the dub sort of goes without saying. Thankfully, there are many automated procedures one can put into place to insure that very little goes wrong—OMFs, ProTools sessions, hard drive backups, laptops with mirrored contents of the entire score, massive amounts of Xanex, etc. (Just kidding on that last one!)

On the other hand, many of you are working on independent projects, and there isn't always a "dub stage"... at least, not in the traditional sense. On small to medium-sized projects, the "dub stage" is somebody's home, maybe their garage or converted den.

What a terrific month at Sco! With so many perspectives and so many amazing discussions about "spotting a film", there is a veritable masterclass swimming around in these pages. (Hmmm… Sco online classes. Hmmmmmm!!!!!!!)

I'll admit, this month I fell a little behind on reading the articles everyday. Usually, I get up early, get ready for the day, and then settle into the Musicave to check my email and peruse all of my morning news sites to get my bearings for the day. However, this last week has seen a ton of meetings about projects and upcoming speaking engagements (good problems to have, mind you!), and so I've been running since the second my feet stepped out of the shower every morning. I'm just now finishing reading this month… and boy, was it a doozie!

Obviously, the common denominator in "spotting" is knowing when to musically shut up or speak up.

Your first meetings were all raging successes. The call has come in. They like your stuff, they like you. You've been hired.

You watch the film, make your notes, and prepare to meet with the filmmakers for the first time to spot the film that will occupy your creative headspace for the next several weeks. You pack your creative notes, maybe your laptop, and for sure your initial spotting sheet which contains your knee-jerk reactions to multiple viewings of the film into your bag... and you are on your way.

Up to this point, you have presented the strongest case as to why you would be the perfect person to score this director's film. And it worked — you are the composer now. At this juncture, however, the next step is absolutely crucial. It is a step that will either set you up for a month of victories with this director...

And the Oscar goes to....

Michael Giacchino for "Up!".

Even though Jennifer Lopez and Sam Worthington butchered his name many times during their presentation for "Best Original Score" at the Academy Awards on Sunday night, there was no denying who won the award once Michael Giacchino got up and took the statue in his hands. With a simple speech about how kids who have dreams of entering into the entertainment industry should never listen to those who say it is "a waste of time", Giacchino accepted his award with grace and respect, and then went and sat back down in his seat for the rest of the show.

With a contentious race in many categories, including Best Original Score, it didn't take long before I was seeing people on Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, and Tumblr light into Giacchino, assessing his win as a "fraud", a "mistake", a "travesty", "non-deserving", and even "political" (Political?...

This month, as we open up a can of worms about "spotting" films, it is going to be an interesting topic of conversation. As evidenced by our ongoing Poll over there to the right of where you are reading this, composers in general feel that they have a pretty decent handle on the art and skill of spotting their films, and therefore probably don't need too comprehensive a treatise on how to go about doing it. And of course, since by now you know me well, you know what I'm going to say to that...

Most people don't get it.

Spotting is hard. It's not an easy task to undertake and it is not a common skill to possess. In fact, I would say that it is one of the most difficult aspects of scoring a film, yet it is responsible for much of what makes for a brilliant score.

I think that this has been one of my favorite topics we've discussed so far. The truth is that there is so much to the topic of "competition" that pertains to this gig, we could probably have taken two months to examine it all. Maybe we'll come back and revisit it again soon. Kudos to everyone on our editorial staff for bringing their A-game this month and kicking in the doors of this topic with both feet.

As we wind down February and head into another month, and with that a new focus, here are some final thoughts I have about this month's theme of "Competition"....

In his book The Reel World, film composer Jeff Rona illustrates the importance of speed and accuracy in our trade by summing, "It's not what you can do — it's what you can do in five minutes." This couldn't be closer to the truth, and...

I cherish "verbal economy". Getting to the bottom of something — to the core level of it — while utilizing the smallest amount of verbiage possible is something that I am profoundly fascinated with. It drives me crazy when someone is trying to make a point, and instead of stating the main crux of their position, they wax on with twenty minutes of preamble.

So, I'll try my damnedest to make this intro quick and to the point.

I am supposed to talk to you today about "competition", but I don't want to, so I'm not going to. Instead, let's talk about what the very core of the word "competition" boils down to: winning and losing. And there's a lot to talk about.

Here's the deal: Right this very second, as you sit wherever you are and read this post, one of two things is taking place in your life. You are...

I have dinner every couple of months with a great group of working television composers. Part strategic network, part support group, our times together are always amazing and I've never not come away with either some juicy info on a cool new compositional technique or a great new way to implement some sort of hardware or software tool. Composers often get pegged for some of our antisocial behavior, but when these 20 or so composers get together, the discussion and conversation flow can be endless, and these social gatherings often drag into the wee hours of the next morning.

At the latest of these dinners this last weekend, I became engaged in a conversation about this month's topic of "Getting the Gig". It seems several of my composer pals are also heavy-duty SCOREcast readers and have been chomping at the bit to take me to task on some of our opined viewpoints on the subject.

Tell me if this scenario sounds familiar to you.

A filmmaker approaches you about a gig, and really wants you for the job. In your excitement, you talk through the particulars and get all of the information that you can... except for the money part. The conversation continues until, finally, there is nothing left to talk about Except for the money part, and now you are in that awkward position of doing the asking... since nobody is freely offering.

We've all heard the old saying in our profession, usually in the context of speaking to someone about a possible project: "Fast, cheap, or good. Pick two!"

To be honest, I'm not sure where this adage came from. The first time I remember hearing it was in high school when someone wanted to hire a friend of mine to paint their house. After they haggled back and forth for what seemed like 45 minutes,...

It's no secret that 2009 was a slow year for a ton of people. Coming off the slump that the world economy has been in for the last two years, for many facets of the entertainment biz, things couldn't get much worse. As we’ve wrapped up this last year, I have heard numerous sighs of relief, seen many puffed up cheeks of exhaustion, and felt the overwhelming dark cloud of “what now?” on Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter. Generally, it seems that most of us are perfectly happy to blow a kiss goodbye to the last decade and get on with this new one that, just like that, is suddenly upon us.

As we focus on this new year, and with that, the new topic here at Sco of “Getting the Gig”, I’d like to encourage you and your business by suggesting something to you that you may not appreciate.

Editor's Note: In the spirit of December's theme (Gear and Software), we asked our contributors to weigh in with their Top 3 gear finds and why they like them, and we are bringing them to you in a series that we are calling "My Perfect 3". Here are the three that Deane Ogden chose, and a short rundown on why he picked them.

I have enjoyed reading everyone's Top 3 gear picks so much that I almost forgot to submit my own! It's interesting to read what people like and what they do not like, and I have been pleasantly surprised to discover that, when you read between the challenge and response codes, people's software and hardware choices more or less line up with their specific musical focus.

My passions fall somewhere between rhythmic creation and audio manipulation. I love to bend audio to My own will, and particularly, rhythmic audio. Being a percussionist,...