Chapter 18
The Music Composer
Audio Collaboration or Mud and Destruction
“Music is nothing more than organized sound effects, and sound
effects are nothing more than disorganized music.”
I remember, growing up, going to the local cinema to see the week's double feature. I sat transfixed, totally in awe of the epic spectacle of Charlton Heston dividing the Red Sea, painting the Sistine Chapel, driving the Moors out of Spain, protecting the foggy Norman bogs from raiders of the north lands, or defending the walls of Peking from the Boxer Rebellion. The musical scores raised me to a new level of inspiration and majesty. Who are these musical dreamers that reach into my very soul and manipulate my emotions?
Names like Erich Wolfgang Korngold (The Sea Hawk, Of Human Bondage, The Adventures of Robin Hood, Deception, Captain Blood); Miklós Rózsa (El Cid, Ben-Hur, Ivanhoe, Men of the Fighting Lady, The Asphalt Jungle); Dimitri Tiomkin (Duel in the Sun, 55 Days in Peking, Giant, Big Country, The Guns of Navarone, Dial “M” for Murder); Jerry Goldsmith (Lilies of the Field, The Sand Pebbles, Planet of the Apes, Patton, Chinatown); Elmer Bernstein (To Kill a Mockingbird, The Hallelujah Trail, Hawaii, The Magnificent Seven, The Great Escape); Alfred Newman (The Robe, How the West Was Won, Airport, Demetrius and the Gladiators); Maurice Jarre (Lawrence of Arabia, Doctor Zhivago, The Train, Grand Prix) thrilled me, lifted up and inspired me, made me want to come back and see it all over again and be bathed in the lush glory of it all.
There was Bernard Herrmann, a category unto himself. No one else had a style like him. Who would soon forget the haunting scores to pictures like Citizen Kane, Jane Eyre, The Naked and the Dead, and The Day the Earth Stood Still? Sometimes I wonder how successful Alfred Hitchcock films would have been without Bernard handling the musical scores for North by Northwest, Vertigo, The Man Who Knew Too Much, and Psycho—and he even got to show off his flair for instrumental humor in The Trouble with Harry.
Other contemporaries wrote their own great works: Ennio Morricone, Brian May, Bill Conti, Lalo Schifrin, and Henry Mancini are just a few of the great music composers who added musical magic to dozens of major and well-loved motion pictures.
The filmography of music composers is truly a bookshelf unto itself. Music is the most powerful and manipulative art form. It does not require translation for foreign sales; it does not require subtitles to explain itself or establishing shots to orient the listener. With a single note, music can reach into the heart and soul of the audience to set the mood, telegraph danger, or evoke romantic passions. Music whips up our emotions; reveals the guilty; sweeps us into the complex whirlpools of love, pain, anger, fear, patriotism, and joy, often at the same time.
So, if music is so powerful and omnipotent in films, why do we need dialog and sound effects? Many composers have asked that very question. Some would be perfectly content to return to the days of flickering images on the wall with insert cards for bits of dialog and story exposition while the only audio track would be their music.
CHALLENGES OF WRITING FOR THE SCREEN
An important lesson a music composer learns is that writing music for the screen is very different from writing music that is a total performance unto itself. When writing for the screen, the composer must understand that he or she is sharing the audio track with two other major concerns—spoken dialog and sound effects. These factors are now working together as part of a collaborative trio, rather than each singing its own aria.
When I was preparing a film for the Sundance Film Festival and the director was scrambling to complete his project with the few dollars left, he could not afford an established music composer but found a promising new music group who wanted to break into writing for the movies. The musicians delivered their music cues in 2-channel stereo on DAT. They were so interested in the opportunity that they personally brought the tape to me.
I loaded the cues into the Pro Tools session and laced them up into sync, according to the director's notes. It was immediately evident that the music cues were unacceptable. From a technical point of view, the recordings had been over-loaded—a common mistake of rock groups who think that volume is achieved by crashing the upper limits of the digital peak meter. At the very least, the cues needed to be transferred from the master and lowered –6 dB.
The lead guitarist informed me they had no master; they performed straight to a DAT tape. I explained the virtues of recording to a multichannel master first, where one can record each element of the music group onto its own stereo pair of channels and then control the mixdown later. They were faced with having to reperform the cues. It was just as well, as I showed them where the levels had flattened out in what I call the “aircraft carrier effect,” where they had run out of digital 0s and 1s. Surely they did not want their music to suffer dynamic flatness and distortion.
That was only a technical problem, however. A deeper, more important issue was at hand. They had written the music as if they were performing a solo act at a rock concert, full out, with no regard for anything else happening on the screen. What did they expect would happen to their music when dialog was spoken? What did they expect would happen to their music when the comic and raucous car sound effects were played? They had not considered that.
I took a piece of paper and drew a giant circle. I told them to think of this as the total amount of audio energy that can play on the screen at any given moment. It was like that peak meter where their music clashed. There just wasn't any more level to be had—the digital 1s and Os were all used up. That is the same principle by which we mix a motion picture—whether in analog or digital, it does not matter.
I drew pie slices out of the circle. In one pie slice, I wrote “Music,” in another I wrote “Sound Effects,” in the last I wrote “Dialog.” Remember, the dialog track will always and must always play. On rare occasions, the filmmaker may decide to stylize particular moments of the film, in which case the dialog track shuts down, and either a combination of conceptual sound effects and music or simply music alone plays out. Such scenes can be extremely effective, but an entire motion picture cannot be made this way. Such moments are the exceptions, not the rule. For the majority of a film's soundtrack, the dialog track is dominant; therefore any music score that steps on a dialog line or makes it unintelligible is likely to be dropped or lowered so much that the composer will surely rewrite it rather than have it sound so squashed.
The smart composer knows this and carefully writes the music so it can expand, stretch, or envelop when not in competition with dialog cues; the composer also pulls back and writes music that compliments or enhances the dialog in a collaborative fashion.
The same is true when it comes to sound effects, only with a different and competitive edge. Unlike the dialog track, which always plays, the sound effects track is not constantly heard. For decades, sound effects editors and music composers have been clashing and competing for dominance. Those on both sides have healthy creative egos and know their contribution is vital to a film's successful soundtrack. Some individual artists, however, such as the rock group mentioned above who had never written for the screen, are beset by ignorance. Almost all these difficulties can be eliminated by a collaborative effort between music and sound editorial far in advance of the rerecording stage. As discussed later, this process seems obvious, but is very seldom practiced, for a number of reasons.
One of the most common errors music composers make is that they often “sting” sound effect moments, probably the greatest contributor to sound effects and music colliding in competition on the dubbing stage. Stinging sound effect cues is what is done for silent movies, where no other soundtrack elements exists other than music. In the silent days, some of the major movie theaters had custom Wurlitzer organs with the capacity to generate a whole array of sound effects in addition to music. The organ could produce gunshots, booms, pealing bells, and even horse hooves for the inevitable chase.
Another sting effect conflict occurs when explosions are planned in a sequence. Often, the temptation for the music composer is to sting the explosions. This obviously leads to a clash between sound effects and music as they simultaneously attempt to share the same slice of that energy pie. Either music or sound effects, or both, suffer. The smart music composer recognizes that sound effects must work in sync with the event on the screen. On the other hand, music does not need to be frame accurate. Knowing this, the composer may write a stinger that hits just prior to, or just after, leaving a “hole,” where the sound effect can properly live and play fully. This technique enhances not only the effect but also the musical emotion of the moment. The intelligent composer also chooses the instruments according to what kind of timbre and frequency textures the sound effects possess. It makes no sense to compose a musical passage using bass violas with low-end dominance to play against the thunderous cascade of a volcanic eruption where rock and lava are flowing. Sound effects must work with low-end and midrange as a foundation. Wise instrument choices are those that get up out of the competitive regions—instruments that “cut” through the wall of sound effects surely produced by sound editorial, instruments that allow the music to survive and live alongside its sound effect track comrades.
Study the work of John Williams. He can write big lush scores that still compete with big sound effects. This is accomplished not just because of his intelligent selection of when to push big and when to retract selective pieces but also because of his experienced picks of which instruments fulfill the musical moment and best survive the rerecording mix without needing pullback and emasculation.
Some modern composers use their own brand of sound effects, working them into the very musical score itself. Nagging incidents do occur when a music composer actually scores the picture in a deliberate attempt to torpedo the sound effects track, sometimes out of ego, other times out of ignorance or fear of collaboration. Some of these basic competitions are never overcome entirely. Nonetheless, we must continue to focus on what is good for the film, what serves the need of the film's soundtrack at each moment in time.
SET THE MUSIC COMPOSER EARLY
The smart producer sets a music composer far in advance of the actual work. This accomplishes two things. First, it assures the producer of the desired composer, rather than using one hired at the last minute because the initial choice was booked up and unavailable. Second, the producer can use what I call the “Debra Hill logic.” In the early 1980s, I was contracted to supervise the sound for The Dead Zone, directed by David Cronenberg and produced by Debra Hill. I had supervised the sound on several other projects Debra produced, and she knew how I worked. I received a call from her, to fly me to Toronto and look at the director's cut of the picture. At the time, I thought it was a waste of money. The film would be coming down to my shop in just over a month anyway, so why spend the dollars?
Debra matter-of-factly replied that creativity does not happen instantly, that it takes time to ferment and percolate. Since she had a fixed and finite budget, she could put my subconscious to work, problem solving and creating at no cost until the film was turned over to me several weeks later. I never forgot that or how true it is. By the time The Dead Zone was turned over, I was ready to hit the Moviola designing.
Setting the music composer as far in advance as possible, and submitting work-in-progress videotapes, allows the composer the same advantages to write a far more creative score than having to deliver the score overnight. A person asked to create instantaneously does not have time to develop new ideas; he or she simply falls back on the experiences of what was done before and creates variations to make it work. Hence, sometimes you hear a score written by a particular music composer with strains and elements that sound much like something written by the same person for a previous picture or sounding incomplete since the full time was not able to be allotted to the details of instrument usage.
Listen to several of James Horner's scores. Though I enjoy the style of his music, you will quickly see how he recycles his own material. I often hear strains and/or passages of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan in many other scores he has written since. Listen to the opening music to Bicentennial Man and then play the opening score to A Beautiful Mind. It is the same music, simply remassaged. There are so many others who are guilty of it as well; it's just that these examples are so obvious.
BASIC MECHANICS
During the picture editing process, temp music is pulled from audio CDs or other tape sources to be cut in along the cut picture, to relate a scene's intent or a mood set by music. If a music composer is already set for a film, he or she is included in the preliminary process, discussing styles and possible temp pieces. During this time, the composer already draws certain concepts and ideas to ultimately yield an interesting and successful musical score.
Most composers have a music editor with whom they are accustomed to working, and, in turn, the music editor is set for a film project as soon as the music composer is committed. The music editor handles and takes care of the management of the score, freeing the composer to focus on the singular and crucial task of creating the music itself.
One famous composer cannot even read music. He also is incapable of personally setting his themes to paper. As creative and wonderfully rich as his scores are, he either whistles or hums his creation to the orchestrator, who, in turn, sets it to paper. This is not to imply that his work is not good or that he is incompetent. On the contrary, his work is delightful and always in demand. It is just an additional hurdle he must overcome, along with the usual daily requirements that haunt all composers.
When the picture is locked and ready for turnover, the music composer and music editor have one or more music spotting sessions. The picture editor, director, and producer sit with the composer and music editor and run the film, discussing the kind of music required, the intent of the score, and its desired effect on the audience. Most music editors use a stopwatch to time the start and end points, making careful notes for the composer to review later. Other music editors take advantage of the computer that drives the Final Cut Pro or Avid, having the counter set to zero at the beginning of each cue point. Instead of feet and frames, the calibration is set for minutes and seconds. At the end of the session, the music editor has compiled the list of music cues and their running times. This immediately assists the composer in scheduling musicians and a scoring stage.
Sometimes the music composer is involved in writing special cues for “source music” (music that comes from practical props in the film, such as radio, jukebox, TV, or Muzak in an elevator or waiting room). Such music often is licensed and broken down into a few parts based on how many seconds the piece is played in the film. Obviously, the cost of licensed music differs wildly, depending on the fame and importance of the piece or artist. We often heard “Bad to the Bone” used as temp music in a film, but rarely do we see it licensed for the actual soundtrack.
On major pictures, a composer may be contracted to produce a score electronically first (known as a “synth” score) so that studio executives can get a feel for the music and screen it with test audiences. With motion-picture budgets soaring high for the mega-blockbusters, and with the knowledge that a music score can make or break a picture, it does not seem unreasonable to have an electronic version produced first, as long as it is paid for in the budget. With digital emulators and synthesizers today, music scores sound extremely “real,” and although they do not have the timbre and depth of a full orchestra, they bring the intent of the composer's design into a crisp focus. Once the studio approves and signs off on the synth score, arrangements are made for a scoring stage and musicians for a series of scoring sessions, where the music is rehearsed and recorded for final mastering.
Although music cues have nicknames or pet designations, for organizational reasons, music cues are generally referred to by reel and position. Therefore the fourth music cue in reel 5 will be listed as 5-M-4.
BASIL POLEDOURIS
Basil Poledouris first trained to be a concert pianist and then studied opera because of its theatrical drama. He eventually discovered this thing called “film,” which had all the theatricality of opera—the staging, the drama—and close-ups! Two of his most formative musical influences were Miklós Rózsa and Alfred Newman. He explained:
It really excited me. I like the spectacle of it, the largeness—the scope. The sound of an acoustical orchestra, it is very thrilling!
All I've ever wanted to do is write film scores, and to this day that's all I have done. Oh, I've taken a couple of excursions outside of film, like the opening ceremonies for the Olympics, which is more like a ballet. It was really a dance with ancient Greek athletes sort of portraying it. The other outing was the Conan: Sword and Sorcerer Show that was at Universal Studios for years.
Figure 18.1 Music composer, the late Basil Poledouris, in his studio in Venice, California, transposed his new theme concepts via emulators and synthesizers into his HD Pro Tools workstation for audition purposes. Photo by David Yewdall.
As only fitting, Basil had written the score for both Conan the Barbarian in 1980 and Conan the Destroyer in 1983. Some composers write a film score for the album and not for the movie, Basil considers his work of writing music for film an end unto itself.”
There's no guarantee that you'll get an album out of the movie. You have to write for the film, otherwise you are not doing justice to the picture. The key to composing good music for the screen is to focus on the dramatic reinterpretation of the film itself. When I work on a picture, I try to interpret the story musically. By definition, I have to follow what is there, up on the screen. You can't tell a different story. Oh, you can tell it from a slightly different point of view, and that's often what I will end up doing, especially if the director has that intention, but you are still telling the same story.
Basil's personal style served him well. He wrote scores for The Hunt for Red October, Free Willy, Les Misérables, Under Siege 2, RoboCop, Wind, Big Wednesday, Quigley Down Under, Breakdown, Red Dawn, Starship Troopers, Cecil B. Demented, For the Love of the Game, and Bunyan and Babe, to name just a few. Each one dictated a different style, demanding a fresh approach and precise awareness of the subject on screen.
There is a very fine line between being aware of your work, without being self-conscious. We all walk that thin line when we're in it. You don't want to be too aware of what you are doing, because then it becomes too intellectualized. You can overthink the process to the point that it becomes truly manipulative, because then you're thinking about how it's going to affect the audience, as opposed to how it affects you, as an artist, and then you are just retelling that effect.
Collaboration between the music composer and the sound effects team truly improves the final effort.
Of all the films to which we give the lip service—“Oh, yeah, we're gonna work closely with the sound effect editors, ”—Wind is the only picture that we really did. It takes two things to truly bring a music and effects collaborative effort together.
First, it takes the willingness of both the music composer and the sound effects editing team to want to do this. To set up the communication lines, asking what the other side is doing in a particular sequence or even to ask if it might be possible to get a DAT layback of some of the key sounds that the sound effects editors are using so that a composer can listen to the frequencies and harmonics. It makes a tremendous difference in how I might handle a particular music cue, as well as what instruments I choose to use.
Secondly, it takes time to collaborate. It was always difficult to encourage real collaboration when we worked back on film, let alone today with nonlinear technology and highly compressed postproduction schedules. The lightning speed delivery expectations have completely spun out of control.
It is not unusual for the producer to call me up before breakfast, telling me they have a problem. Another cue, either rewritten or new, is necessary and, by the way, they need it on the stage to mix into the film just after lunch. How can one possibly hope to exercise collaboration with sound effects like that? You can't. What has to happen is the producer and director have to continually be brought into equation. They have to be made cognizant that they are the key to really encouraging and making intercollaboration work. If they understood how much positive impact it has on their soundtrack, and therefore on their film, then more producers and directors would be making the collaboration concept a much higher priority.
After being contracted to score a new film, the music composer first must determine what it is about not just as a filmmatic story but also as it translates to the needs of the music composition.
Sometimes it is very obvious. When I write a score, I usually try to make a metaphor out of the movie. That is where I really start my work. Then I will sit and think it through, saying “What if it were this, instead of that? What if it were about something completely different? What if it were me in that situation? How would I feel or respond?” It's just a way to trigger, emotionally in me, something in my own experience that I relate to, such as bugs, from Starship Troopers. Bugs, in and of themselves, do not scare me, so I have to sit and transpose. What really terrifies me, is something like the Orwellian rats in 1984. Whatever it is, I find something within me from a personal experience.
The very next step I will do is to sit at the piano and just free-associate, to think about a character, an event, or a philosophical concept in the film, and I then just start improvising. I don't even want to be held up by writing it down on paper or recording my improvisational sessions. Then there comes a time when I will know it is time to set it down, whether on tape or just start writing. It may come to me at two or three in the morning, and when it comes I have to get up and start working. Sometimes I will have fuller orchestration ideas, and I will fill it out earlier on with synthesizers.
Many times I find that I am actually scoring the director, when I am writing the music. I have worked for the same director on more than one film, and I find that their personal themes and styles remain consistent. The material that they are attracted to is something that lives within them. I know what Paul Verhoeven's mind is like, I know his approach and take on how a particular scene will be, for the most part. That's not to say that sometimes he throws up some startling aspects, but Paul will usually go for the throat. You never need to be embarrassed about going over the top with Verhoeven. Rarely has he ever said that something is too much.
Randal Kleiser (Blue Lagoon), on the other hand, wants a sort of gestalt between the audience and the film. Things are left open. Not neutral, exactly. Just not so reinforced, musically, that the audience can only perceive it as one thing or the other.
John Milius is another director who is very clear. He wants the music to speak very directly, mostly melodic. John is a romantic at heart. Bille August is another romantic director; it's just that he achieves his romanticism by keeping a restraint on it, a restraint that creates this kind of tension. On the other hand, Milius does not hold back, he just goes for it.
John McTiernan is more interested in tension, on keeping the camera moving constantly, never letting the audience rest. On The Hunt for Red October, it was more than just developing a tension. John wanted the music to represent a culture. The whole Russian state was sort of poured into the building of the submarine Red October, which was the ultimate machine that they had been produced at that time.
During the filming of The Hunt for Red October, the Soviet Union collapsed, which could not help but cause a change in inflection, a spin different than if that country had held her hard-line existence when the film was released to theaters. Basil remembered the effect these historical developments had on his music for the film.
The Soviet Union's collapse did have an influence, how could it not have? I think it caused the producers to turn the film more into a mystery, rather than a straight-ahead defection. The book was very clear about the captain's actions in turning the submarine over to the Americans, and that, of course, is still there. But as the Soviet Union collapsed so suddenly, the producers wanted to slant it as more of a sympathetic mystery. The film had already been shot. We were deep in postproduction when the Soviet Union ceased to exist politically. It was not a matter of reshooting anything, but through the editing and how the music would be scored, we could give the story a different slant, a different reality.
Early on, we thought that the music would be more confrontational—there were the Russians, and there were the Americans. If I were to use role models of style, there would be Prokofiev and Aaron Copland. Early on, Coplandesque parts went by the board, as it was really Ramius's story, and the action music was sort of rhythmic with a Russian choir. From the beginning, McTiernan had Russian choir elements in mind. He built it into his temp music tracks. Since the beginning of the film is rather lengthy, from the time that Red October leaves port to the time we go to Washington and set up Jack Ryan and the metal fatigue issues, McTiernan did not want the audience to forget that there is a Russian submarine out there.
Basil asked McTiernan about Red October’s Russian translation, which proved to have a tremendous influence on how Basil wrote the theme. The very lilt of the pronunciation of the words in Russian gave Basil the famous emphasis that underlined the theme.
Latin does the same thing to me. We used a lot of Latin in Conan the Barbarian, which greatly influenced how I wrote it. The stress and the syllables. It scans differently than English, and it gives songs a melodic feel that says French, Italian, or Russian. It cannot help but influence how I write.
For acoustic instruments, nothing sounds better than recording analog at 15 ips with Dolby SR. The richness of basses, cellos, the horns—there is a lushness that comes from saturation of the tape.
On November 8, 2006, the entertainment industry lost a great and inspiring talent when Basil Poledouris passed away from cancer. He will live on through his exceptional achievements, which include his music for RoboCop, Conan the Barbarian, The Hunt for Red October, and Starship Troopers.
PHILOSOPHY OF FILM SCORING
Mel Lewis graduated from the North Carolina School of the Arts—School of Filmmaking in 2001 and since then has rapidly built up a portfolio of feature film scores. Working in Los Angeles, Mel not only is prolific but also has the ability to tune in to the vision of the director with a clarity of interpretation. Mel admits:
It allows me to hit the pavement running. Instead of wasting time with a preconception before the director has a chance to share how he hears the film, I let my inner voice imprint my interpretation of what the director imparts to me and then I get my mind around the sound experience as whole, not just music as one of the elements.
A soundtrack is often referred to as the commercial recording of music of a movie. However, the primary and often ignored definition of soundtrack is the complete audio components—dialog, sound effects, and music. These elements I propose to be viewed as Plato's three sources of human behavior—knowledge, instinct, and emotion. Knowledge as dialog gives the apprehender information to reason in the head. Sound effects as instinct is the impulse or appetite found in the gut. Music as emotion instills the spirit found in the heart.
Figure 18.2 Mel Lewis, one of today's more prolific film composers, works a lot of sound effect elements and primal sounds into his work.
Music's primary function is therefore emotional, not thoughtful or instinctual. In other words, music communicates through melody, harmony, and rhythm to suggest a feeling. So often I hear amateur composers scoring the other elements (FX and dialog) of the soundtrack or literally reinforcing the visual picture. Music should not tell you what is happening or what title a person has, but what they are feeling or what we should be feeling about the person. This emotion approach can be either subjective or objective.
A subjective example is in The Silence of the Lambs where Hannibal Lecter is in a cell listening to Bach's Goldberg Variations reflecting his sophisticated yet serene state. As he proceeds to murder a guard, the Bach music continues, representing the subjective aspect of Hannibal's emotional state despite the demonic act. Remember it? Of course not. The producers had it removed for fear of the act being literally interpreted as elaborate and as beautiful as Bach's music. The solution was to put in “horror” music to objectify the act as evil rather than risk the misinterpretation of the music's intention. The producers don't want us to become Hannibal Lecter, but for us to realize he is bad.
A Personal Contemporary View of Film Scoring
A perspective from composer Mel Lewis:
Hollywood film music began with Western classical music traditions. Due to the exciting innovations in mass media, I find film music taking on an evolution incorporating electronic sounds and capabilities as well as addressing non-Western cultural music. The electronic palette, African rhythms, and world instruments are just some of the new sources for my inspiration.
The advent of electronics in music has brought as many opportunities as well as disastrous misuses. “Drum machines have no soul” is one of my favorite quotes in regards to electronics as having no emotion. This opinion presupposes using programmed and dull repetitive “presets” rather than utilizing the novel sound and parameters in a musical context. Computers as drum machines are not an end in themselves but a means, or more specifically, a tool, for composition. Preconceived perceptions of instrumental sounds can now be manipulated to yield novel colors from traditional sounds. A few examples include reversing the sound wave of a violin, effecting the sound by the addition of delay or sampling one specific element of the sound which creates a new-sounding instrument once divorced from its previously conceived context.
Although there is a lot of trial and error in making electronics work successfully to create an emotion, the end result is a more singular refined piece.
African rhythms, more than bringing a new feel to film music, give a new approach to music conception. The Western music that we are used to follows a linear progression much like a book. When you write, there are words (notes) arranged into coherent sentences (melodies with harmonic structure) which are then divided into paragraphs (themes). Contrary to this logical or intellectual progression emphasizing melody and harmony, African music takes a more circular or instinctual approach rooted in rhythm. Percussion instruments with different timbres perform specific rhythmic patterns or motives that interact to form a detailed fabric. Since the motives remain constant, these rhythmic building blocks are no longer linear or directional as melodies and harmony as in Western music but can be viewed instead as past and present material that coexists in an environment that is circular.
With this approach to writing, focus is placed on the interaction of ideas rather than on directional anticipation of what is to come. We experience or feel the music that changes due to the ebb and flow of the patterns rather than think about what is coming next. Changes in volume as well as removal or addition of instruments highlight particular motives and give the fabric a variety. What is so fascinating to me is the simplicity of this construction, yet how complex and rhythmically advanced the music can become due to the interaction of patterns.
It is as if I was told to remove the intellectual process of writing and instead feel the tendencies in the patterns and what aspects highlight emotional shifts. Maybe African music is a signal to get back to emotional basics.
World instruments also give a more singular emotional response for the listener. What has continued to surprise me is the emotional weight that an instrument sound choice can have before even using melody, harmony, or rhythm. It is as if the sound wave itself presents a character. The sounds of Western music have evolved into a universally accepted orchestra. World instruments are unique from this universal orchestra presenting nationalistic sounds particular to a culture. Where the orchestra instruments are more perfect in their note performance, world instruments offer unique nuances which give character that can be interpreted as more real. For example, the Japanese shakuhachi is performed and looks similar to a flute but has a vast array of performance techniques that vary the attack or sustain and well as the color of the sound.
Exposure to these as instruments as well as the African music techniques have given me the task I believe I need to capture this whole stylistic kaleidoscope and reflect the new collective reality of the world.
THE MUSIC EDITOR
After cutting music for the past 36 years, Ken Hall knows a thing or two about film music, whether for the big screen or for television. Ken's original training was responsible for the foundation of his professionalism. Ken explains:
I was extremely lucky to break into music by learning my craft with the legendary music director Lionel Newman. It was the greatest training ground in all of music editorial. You learned how to do bar breakdowns, how to do tie-ins and tie-outs. You learned cueing the Newman system. This kind of training was just unheard of in those days. You were taught how to subdivide bars. A guy could be in 7/8 or 5/8 flip-flop patterns. For instance, if you are in a 7/8 bar, there are 7 eighth notes, but the composer may have written it in a quarter and a quarter and three eighths—“daa, daa, da-da-da.” Or he might have written it “da-da-da, daa, daa”—three eighths and two quarters, and so forth. You had to prepare the groundwork for the composer before we got to the scoring stage. That was the job of a music editor, and this kind of training was invaluable to anyone who expected to excel in this field.
Ken cut television music until theatrical composers became aware of his personal style and abilities. Shortly thereafter, Ken broke into working on theatrical films. Just prior to leaving 20th Century Fox, Ken handled the music cutting chores on the Swiss Family Robinson television series, as well as cutting theatrical work, such as Silver Streak with Henry Mancini, and bringing Dino De Laurentiis's remake of King Kong into the studio with composer John Barry. Over the years, Ken has worked with top film music composers, including Lalo Schifrin, Jerry Goldsmith, John Williams, Bill Conti, and Henry Mancini—all people at that time who led Ken to believe he could break out on his own, offering his own independent music editorial service. It was a big gamble, but he knew he had to try. He sold his house to finance his independent music editorial service. The business succeeded, and he developed a reputation for excellence and dependable service. Years later, Kenny met with Jerry Goldsmith about handling the music editing for Poltergeist. Near the end of the picture, John Williams called Kenny Hall, informing him that Spielberg had another picture: E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial. Ken continues:
Steven Spielberg is probably one of the most articulative directors that I have ever worked with. He knows exactly what he wants, and, more importantly, he knows exactly how to communicate with his craftsmen the way he wants to achieve it. Those two pictures changed my career forever.
As for Jerry Goldsmith, a composer Ken Hall worked with on more than 70 pictures, his output had anything but slowed down up until the time of his passing in 2004, with over 250 film scores to his credit—film scores to pictures like The Omen (which earned Jerry an Academy Award), Alien, Outland, First Blood, Explorers, Twilight Zone: The Movie, The Ghost and the Darkness, L.A. Confidential, Air Force One, and Mulan. Goldsmith was fearless when it came to working with unusual instruments, even going so far as to use bits of props in conjunction with traditional instruments, as well as fixing pieces of wood and plastic chips to the strings of a piano to give an eerie and unusual sound.
Ken Hall knows that thorough note taking is vital to successful, efficient development of a musical score. Several years ago, before the composer's death, he explained his collaboration with Jerry Goldsmith:
After the spotting session, Jerry and I will talk briefly about the movie and a few preliminary ideas. I will write up formal notes based on the notes that I took during the spotting session. I will list the start and stop times of each cue throughout the picture, making any subnotes that the director has talked about—his intentions and personal thoughts. Jerry gives me a lot of latitude, allowing me to speak out during the spotting sessions. I try to give a tiny synopsis of the action of each scene alongside the notes for each particular music cue. Then I time the picture, using the cue system. We use video now—it's faster than film—but I time the cues to a hundredth of a second. I list the cues in footage, not in timecode.
So many composers will get in and just start writing music. Jerry doesn't do that. He doesn't start writing cues until he is satisfied with the material. Jerry has banks of keyboards in his studio in Beverly Hills—he can create an entire orchestra. He'll have the director come over and run various cues. They always love it. Many times I'll get lucky and be invited over to experience the first musical themes or sometimes I'll just hear cues over the phone.
Preparations are crucial. The hourly cost of a scoring stage adds up and the cost of the musicians per session multiplies, said Ken:
Jerry cannot be distracted by those kinds of things. I not only attend the recording sessions on the scoring stage, but I am present at the mix-down sessions later. Jerry might want to add something through the Auricle, so I'm still hooked up with the mixing board. Then we mix down to whatever format the producer requires from our 48 channels of digital.
We usually mix down to 5 channels—1, 2, 3 across the front, and split surround. The rerecording mixer will often add a boom channel during the final mixing process. Jerry rarely shows up for the final rerecording process. It's my job to supervise the music mixing process during the final mix.
During the final mix of Twilight Zone: The Motion Picture, Ken and I had a heated discussion; although I can't remember exactly which particular segment of film was in dispute, it certainly related to the theoretical dominance of music over sound effects, or of sound effects over music. Kenny Hall turned and snapped at all of us, “Well, when the audience leaves the theater, they certainly aren't whistling the sound effects, now are they?”
That statement upset me for years, yet the more I wrestle with it, the more I have come to side with Kenny. That's not to say that music and sound effects should not work harder to collaborate, instead of creating mud and destruction. The rerecording stage becomes a highly charged emotional battlefield. All parties present have spent weeks, some months, and a few even years, working on a project that is now focused to this final creative process, and motivations and protective instincts are in play.
THE DELICATE GAME OF INSIGHT
Often, the composer finds that he or she must be especially insightful when scoring a picture. Sometimes the director tells the composer exactly what to do, and then, when the composer actually does the work as instructed, it gets rejected and thrown out. This sounds like an oxymoron, but many who have worked as supervising sound editors have seen this strange phenomenon. The composer and supervising sound editor must develop a sixth sense when working with a director, understanding that the director often gets scored, not the film. Sometimes you must listen to the director's requests, agree completely with no hesitation or doubt, and then write (or design) what you know they really need, not what they articulated.
For some reason, regardless of whether directors and producers know it, an unconscious atmosphere of misspeak develops. Many of us talk about it, but no one fully understands why it happens. When you realize it is present, trust your inner instincts and tastes, all the while with the complete outward appearance of following the director's or producer's request to the letter.
I have been on projects where the director made a very big deal about a particular item. He harped on it all through the spotting sessions, all through the weeks of cutting. We got to the dubbing stage, and suddenly he said, “Why'd you do that?”
“Because you asked for it,” I insisted.
“That's not what I meant!” he defiantly exclaimed.
What do you do? In the case of one film I was working on, the producer fired the picture editor, and the director “retired” from the project. The producer hired a film doctor editor to complete the picture successfully. Usually, this does not happen. Usually, you are the one left holding the bag, working late into the nights, back-pedaling to make the changes.
SIMILAR ISSUES AFFECTING THE CREATIVE EFFORT
One problem plaguing the postproduction industry is the false notion that a shortened and accelerated schedule saves money. So many times we are presented with a postproduction schedule and budget that looks good on paper (i.e., it appeals to business affairs at the studio or to the independent film company), but in application it falls apart. This truncated philosophy mostly stems from ignorance of how the process really works, not from the perception of how it works.
I became involved with several completion bond companies. My sound editorial firm had contracted to handle the post-sound services for film projects that were already over budget, with complete decision making and financial dealings taken over by the completion bond company. More than once, a bond executive took me aside after a roundtable discussion with the producer(s) and director, to ask what I really thought. Could I live up to a chiseled-in-stone contract now controlled by the completion bond company? Not one extra penny would be spent for creative achievement, although they expected that with the price tag they would authorize. I found it very interesting that, before bonding a picture, many completion bond executives flipped to the postproduction part of a film budget to see how realistic the producer had been about allocated monies. If completion bond companies know what is realistic, though, why do we still have so many pictures run way over budget?
Resource assets of both sound editorial time and budget monies are diffused by the production of the plethora of temp material. Motion pictures have grown so expensive to make, the financial gamble so intense, that studios and executives want to take every possible step to ensure they make films with an eye focused on the audience, doing everything they can to broaden box office appeal.
This double-edged sword often spells doom for the outcome of the final soundtrack. Without anyone noticing, monies are drained by the development of temp music and sound effects for the temp dubs needed for test screenings—especially screenings for studio executives and distributors. Emphasis has shifted from making temp dubs in order to test the picture for an objective audience to selling the director's work to the studio to secure the next project. Many of us have worked on pictures that exhausted their assets even before the real turnover for final preparation occurred.
Composer Basil Poledouris knows the scenario all too well:
Aside from the syndrome of this false sense of savings from compressed schedules, one of the biggest problems that we often face is a director who cannot make up his or her mind, and the process just goes on and on and on, and there is a release date fast approaching. I think that digital technology has made a false promise that it will be quicker as well as cheaper. I have it here in my own studio. My place is loaded with digital equipment. It changes every two or three months. There is the latest this and the newest that, but when it comes down to it, the most important piece of equipment in my studio is me. Without a musical idea, the million dollar's worth of stuff in here to produce music is not worth a penny.
INDEX-LINKING FOREIGN SALES
With today's motion pictures costing nearly nine times the average budget of films made when I started in the industry, the studios understandably are concerned about making a profit. An important and proven way for them to hedge their bets is to develop ancillary sales through music. Music publication rights, sales of music scores on audiotape or CD, and licensing fees make a major contribution toward recouping a picture's budget.
No studio executive openly admits it. Many are not even aware of it. However, with the foreign box-office share rising from 40 percent 20 years ago, to well past 60 percent by the mid-1990s, a quiet understanding has arisen that the value of the licensing fee of a motion picture in foreign markets is directly index-linked to how much music is in the movie.
George Lucas made it fashionable to fit as many licensed songs into a film soundtrack as possible with his 1973 hit American Graffiti. Others did the same with their coming-of-age films such as Rob Reiner's Stand by Me or other popular trash-the-dormitory films. It seems a movie cannot be made unless it has at least a dozen songs, either custom-written for the film (which the studio hopes become hit singles in their own right) or oldies-but-goodies licensed to spruce it up and flavor it.
Music composers are pressured to write increasingly more music for a picture than traditional artistic requirements anticipated. I know composers who felt that a music cue was not only unnecessary in a particular sequence but actually inappropriate. The executives’ insistence was allowed to stand, and the composer had to write the music cue(s) anyway.
In one case a few years ago, I supervised the sound on a film that had 105 minutes of music in it. The film only ran 95 minutes in length! The producer and I had worked together on several previous pictures, so when I asked him why so much music, he was surprisingly open and candid with me. He admitted that in serving the index-linked issue for foreign territory sales, he feared the picture was too weak to make its money back on a domestic release alone.
Regardless of the reasons why so much music is in motion pictures today, whether the driving force is creative or purely related to dollars and cents, music is without question the greatest audio force that issues from the silver screen. It necessarily tells a story as much as breathing sustains life. Embrace it with a passion, as the art form itself can create great passions.