Process, Process, Process

Any creative endeavour is affected by the process. Change the process and you change the results.

When painter Jackson Pollock started to use a dripped paint technique he stole from some Mexican artists, his results were far different than anything seen before - freed from the confines of the borders of a canvas and capturing the energies of free jazz, the Heisenberg principles of physics and the post-war boom of the 50's.

When a young NYU film student started applying editing room thinking to the recording studio - the modern day version of "post-production" rap was born with classics from Run DMC, LL Cool J and The Beastie Boys still selling today.

When the young American revolutionaries stood up to the British redcoats by figthing from the brush and not standing in clear formation (with the color red and a white cross on their chests!) the small ragtag army of General Washington defeated the mighty British Empire.

Change the process and you change the results.

I'm always interested in process of creation. For it's in the process that you can see the genius and perhaps borrow a little.

Last Sunday's NY Times (Business section) had a great article about Pixar's process.

"The problem with the Hollywood model is that it's generally the day you wrap production that you realize you've finally figured out how to work together," Mr. Nelson said. "We've made the leap from an idea-centered business to a people-centered business. Instead of developing ideas, we develop people. Instead of investing in ideas, we invest in people. We're trying to create a culture of learning, filled with lifelong learners. It's no trick for talented people to be interesting, but it's a gift to be interested. We want an organization filled with interested people."

The article goes on to say how all Pixar employees are expected to take 4 hours of classes every week at "Pixar University." How cool is that?!

In my time as a VP, Creative Director at a major advertising agency, I pushed for this kind of bonding, unity and creative fueling for my team. Unfortunately, we didn't have the clear-eyed vision of leaders like Steve Jobs and John Lasseter.
...And...their stock price shows it.

Sell plush toys to pay for your production costs

In Friday Jan 27th's Wall Street Journal there's a cover story (upper left lead article) about how television shows for tots rely on merchandising to pay for their production costs. With that age group, advertising is ineffective, so sell plush toys, backpacks etc. Get ready for this. Dora the Explorer sold over US $1.4 billion in merchandising last year!

This actually occurs on the music side of filmmaking where sister record companies to the distributor insist on pushing their latest act by placing a song in the soundtrack. This movie extra, the soundtrack album usually has very little to do with the film except in earning extra merchandising dollars. But why stop there? Why not special limited edition iPods that are engraved with the signature of the lead actor in your film? And why not load that iPod up with special edition music cues from the film along with commentary from the composer? If you can get name talent, you may be able to sell their likenesses before you even start shooting thereby paying for the shoot. You may notice I'm being a little bit cheeky here. But not really that much.

My time in advertising/marketing has twisted my brain to see "brand extensions" everywhere. Is that like hair extensions?

Big Idea - crew your film with student filmmakers

I've been working on this wonderful little movie about a sweet little lady named Betty Gunness who goes to church everyday, bakes everyone apple pies, looks after shut-ins and...well there's a darker side - but you need to see the film to see what happens.

Filmmaker Eric Maconaghie Rogers has got a big idea in how to crew his films. Students. He happens to teach film at a very cool sounding progressive trade school.

Here's an article

Entrances and Exits for music in film

I'm currently re-spotting a film I'm working on as the edit has changed the film significantly. This got me thinking of best points for starting and stopping music in the film. (See my previous post on what a spotting session is).

Entrances
1) change in emotion or dialog
2) change in camera emphasis or camera moves
3) new actions - character leaves/enters
4) response or reaction by a character
5) Edit points - this may not always work - but definitely useful for cartoony or hard starts

Exits
Pretty much same as above or just dissipating into the ether as it becomes no longer necessary to be there.
It can also be effective to trail off to provide a silent buffer for another entrance coming up.

The use of music in a scene serves to highlight an emotion onscreen - often inside a character's head - or can also connect scenes or give foreshadowing of what's to come. By the same token, the use of silence right after music serves to highlight the new silent texture and whatever dialog is being said. Interesting to note that some highly climactic moments work best with no music at all. For example, the murder scene in American Beauty (score by Thomas Newman) is completely silent.

The Age-ability of Film and Film Music

I recently saw a bit of the 1992 Rob Reiner film "A Few Good Men" the other night on cable. While the writing still seemed to hold and the acting was believable, especially Jack Nicholson, the music score by Marc Shaiman was very dated. What must have sounded very hip and current at the time, now sounds "so yesterday."

What makes this score sound out-of-date? Choices. Mainly choices in instrumentation but also harmony, melody, texture. The "latest" synth sounds and electronic drum machines may make you seems so current when you release it, it's also what's going to relegate you to the 99 cents bin at the video store within a few years.

So how does one walk this fine line? Just being conscious is a huge part of it. Musician/composers Pat Metheny and Lyle Mays spend a lot of time thinking about this for their Pat Metheny Group releases. Whilst using the latest synths and sampling technologies, their music retains a kind of "timelessness." Listening to symphonic orchestral pieces from over a hundred years ago by Sibelius, Beethoven, Dvorak, Rimsky-Korsakov, one is astounded by how current they still seem. Perhaps this is due to the cultural common vocabulary of the symphony orchestra. It's been part of western culture for hundreds of years and is now a standard "vocabulary."

Have a quick listen:
Marc Shaiman's 1992 Code Red/Semper Fidelis
and
here's Jean Sibelius in the summer of 1899 with "Finlandia" .
Is it just me or do I detect a strong inspirational force for Howard Shore's "Lord of the Rings," parts of it at least.

All this talk of aging well got me thinking about wines. We opened a bottle of a 1992 Pauillac recently and it was just like...eh! Something happened to the bottle - it wasn't exactly bad but not great. But that's the story for another blog.

If you were around in the 1970's did you remember Orson Welles reduced to selling Gallo wine? Poor Orson - what a fantastic director...

Looking Good, Sounding Good

There's a lot of talk about split second decisions nowadays. Malcolm Gladwell (who wrote the thoroughly engaging "Tipping Point" has another bestseller with Blink. This article from Nature talks about the 50 millisecond gut decision that web users make when viewing a site.

It's the same in filmmaking. Obviously, the quality of your "look" speaks loudly. It's what researchers call "cognitive bias." People like to be right - so if their first impression is good, they want to continue in the process. One of the fastest ways to take advantage of this cognitive bias is to improve your audio.

The area where most filmmakers suffer is in audio - dialog, sound effects and music. Yes you can mix your audio directly in FinalCutPro these days and even manipulate it well in SoundtrackPro. But if this is an area you have no interest/expertise or time to put your attention to, I highly recommend outsourcing it to a mixdown engineer. As a Composer, it's amazing to me how sound design artists can spend just as much time as I do working out themes and motives. A great Sound Designer often recreates all environmental sounds in a shot. From the crunch of the gravel underfoot to the "just right" car door slam to the wind blowing in the background. These little details add so much realism to any work and therefore believability, investment in the storyline and genuine caring and interest in what comes next.

On a recent animated short(Award-winning "Coqui" by Nelson Diaz), I asked my mix engineer David Huston to fix up a botched final mix as the original done by a to be unnamed post-production facility. What I expected to be a 2 hour fix turned into a 3 day reworking of sound design, dialog and a final master mix. The results? Fabulous.

What looks good actually sounds good first.

All Your Promos... We Have Monetized...

For a long, long time, trailers and music videos were considered a promotional device - an add on - not the real content. In fact, MTV Networks was created when Bob Pittman realized that he could take all this "free" content and put all in one place, thereby attracting lots of eyeballs and then advertising - lots of advertising dollars.

The recording artists were the ones who paid for it all, including the stretch limos and shrimp cocktails for the A&R Reps and the coke in the back room.

And now iTunes has come to monetize the promotional stuff. Music videos, shorts, and perhaps one day...even movie trailers. I think there are lot of people who would collect great old movie trailers the way they do classic posters. For a $1.99 a download, that comes to a lot of money. In fact Apple's iTunes (needs a new name) reached 1 million video downloads in 20 days. And why stop there. I could see putting up classic commercials that are just sitting around. In fact, Universal has a CD called As Seen On Tv: Songs From Commercials. Pretty soon, it will be best commercials on DVD. Advertising geeks and insiders already pay up to $500 for a Superbowl DVD (all the spots shown each year.)

And just as the musicians (and composers) get screwed, the directors of these videos and trailers don't receive anything.
Yeah, I know this blog is supposed to be focused on music to picture issues, but I had to get this out. Our world has turned into intellectual property. Your DNA is even being copywritten (as this lasts longer than patenting - thanks Disney!) as we speak.

Here's a director-centric article at Boards magazine.

Have a nice day - now back to our regular programming.

Ang Lee - Best Director

You already know he won at last night's Golden Globes. From the outside looking in, Ang's process seems quite different than a lot of other working directors. For one thing, he seems to surround himself with entirely new production crews on each film depending on the project. While Hollywood is known for this great model of creating entirely new teams on every film, the reality is that much of the time, the core crews remain the same. Take Spielberg who's collaborated with Composer John Williams for over 30 years now. And Martin Scorsese with his Editor Thelma Schoonmaker (she's introducing a screening of Kundun at the Museum of the Moving Image on Jan 21). The list can go on and on Carter Burwell with The Coen Brothers and Spike Jonze. Actors and Directors often pair up for multiple films with the classic team of Scorsese and DeNiro, Akira Kurosawa and Toshiro Mifune, and Woody Allen and whomever he has an infatuation with at the moment.

Lee does have a solid partner in writer/producer James Schamus whom he met back in 1985 while still at NYU Film School after he had just won a grant from the Taiwan government to produce Pushing Hands.
"I didn't want to make a flop. Anyway, I took the money and I was looking for a line producer, and through a friend of mine I knew Ted. And then there was Ted and James at the new-found Good Machine. They shared two tables with another company, I think. So I did my pitch. And they did their pitch. They told me that they were the kings of no-budget film-making in New York. James looked like a used-car salesman and a professor. . . And they said, 'Pay attention. We said 'no-budget' not 'low-budget'. Your money, about $400,000. . ." Guardian UK Nov 2000)

Anyway since those days, he's collaborated with a variety of people. From a Composer standpoint, he's used Mychael Danna 3 or 4 times, Patrick Doyle for "Sense and Sensibility", Danny Elfman for "the Hulk", Tan Dun for "Crouching Tiger..." and now Gustavo Santaolalla for "Brokeback Mountain."
I wonder if this introduction came from his DP on this Rodrigo Prieto who also worked with Santaolalla on the fabulous films "Amorres Perros" and "21 Grams" by Alejandro Gonzalez Innaritu.

The process is use whomever's right for the story you're telling.
And you know what? I haven't even seen it yet. The lines were around the block...

John Williams on his process of film composing

Williams: Melodies or melodic identification are, for me, the hardest things to do, and I spend a lot of time on those melodies that will sound very simple or inevitable when they're heard. In a case like this, it's weeks of tinkering around with various approaches and different ideas and trying to manipulate one or the other to make it feel like it lives or wants to belong in the film in a very natural way. It's not easy for me, and I spend more time doing that than orchestrating or developing or doing contrapuntal workouts of the material -- once I have the material, all those other things are relatively easy. Beyond that, it's always hard to say. If we talk about the genesis of these things, a lot of it has to do with the way you feel and how you respond to the material. - excerpt from Hollywood Reporter, January 10, 2006 interview with Jeff Bond

Apple and Video Content

Well...there was hardly anything mentioned at yesterday's MacWorld keynote that we didn't already know about. So I guess we'll have to look into our crystal ball and see where is Apple leading the way with video on demand.

It is interesting to see how the Pixar shorts are now being sold - something that was never meant to be a money maker. These shorts, from what I understand, are usually test projects to work out new software and new talent and teams. They use to include these for free at the beginning of other Pixar DVDs or as bonuses. Now you can buy them for $1.99.

Anger Management

A great short has come to my attention. It's called Anger Management and was directed by Jane Selle Morgan for Aquafina.com. They produced 10 shorts for 10 New Year's resolutions. Oh...and the music is by yours truly and was licensed through our online royalty free store.

The "Long Tail" and Film

The music industry has been gutted in the last 15 years. Much talk of the "Long Tail" has mostly centered around the music industry.

What's the Long Tail?
Forget squeezing millions from a few megahits at the top of the charts. The future of entertainment is in the millions of niche markets at the shallow end of the bitstream. Read the Wired article that started it all.

So what about film? It seems there is room for a "Long-Tail" approach to indie film. Perhaps with the recent announcements of video content from Google at CES and whatever is being announced this minute in San Francisco by Apple's CEO Steven P. Jobs will show the way. There's an awful lot of expectation from today's keynote presentation at MacWorld. I can't imagine anything can live up to the hype. But we'll see...

Multi-threaded stories

I saw the riveting film "Crash" the other day. Being part of the nominating committee for the Independent Spirit Awards, I'm racing through this years indie nominees. The writing is so well done connecting several threads effortlessly without any feeling of manipulation. The cast is superb and most playing against type. Sandra Bullock is angry the entire film which was for the most part believable. I still had a hard time with Brendan Fraser as the District Attorney. He carries all this character baggage with him and I kept expecting him to say a silly line.

The film is one of these multi-thread stories where everything's related and yet not. I think of it as the film equivalent of magic realism, that literary genre made famous by South Americans Jorge Luis Borges, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Isabel Allende, the Italian Italo Calvino and even some of Salman Rushdie. Filmmaker Alejandro Gonzalez Innaritu is famous for this technique best seen in his debut (!) "Amorres Perros" and then the Stateside produced "21 Grams." "9 Lives" by Rodrigo Garcia, (Garcia-Marquez' son), which is also nominated for an award, also plays with this world of magical connections.

Crash's score by Mark Isham feels like cool, papery, texture - like powder under your feet. It's like frost hanging in the air - which actually works well as the storyline involves Los Angeles on a day when it feels like snow. It never really moves much, but is perfect for what's happening on screen. Incidentally, it's all composed, performed and arranged by Isham whose previous work include's "Little Man Tate" and "Point Break."

And then I started to think about this word independent film. With such a mega-cast, special effects which include car chases, explosions and helicopter camera shots, how does the other independent filmmaker compete? Yes I know independent film means independent of the old studio system of Hollywood. But when many or most of these studios are just fully owned subsidiaries of the major studios, or have the same kind of muscle, then what's the difference?

Mozart's Skull

There was some hoopla on television last night with a live unveiling of results of a DNA test on the skull purported to be from that wunderkind. Turns out they were trying to match DNA with bones thought to be from his grandmother and niece. Turns out none of the bones are related in the family grave.

Sundance Grows in Brooklyn

Our home borough of the city of New York is in quite a renaissance period. Not only is there a boom going on in real estate, we've also got the best 5 star restaurants all on our own restaurant row of 5th Avenue. And... the Brooklyn Navy Yard's conversion into Hollywood East is really official now that the Mel Brooks remake of his own "The Producers" is out - having been shot at the new facilities.

And now, Robert Redford has come. Says Redford, "I love Manhattan, but Brooklyn has an edgier image that seemed very right for us in what we were doing and how we were developing." He announced a collaboration between Sundance Institute and the Brooklyn Academy of Music called "The Creative Latitude: Sundance Institute at BAM."
From Variety, Friday January 6, 2005.

None More Black.

"...how much more black could this be? and the answer is none. None more black." - Nigel Tufnel, Spinal Tap

Yes, it has come. The none more black official 300 Monks Black Tee Shirt. Black is the new black and everyone who is powerful wears it. Now...you can too.

Amelie script

Today's Shooting People listed a link to a Amelie site complete with a transcript of the entire film by Jean-Pierre Jeunet.

We'll talk specifically about the great music by Yann Tiersen in a future post.

And if you don't know about Shooting People, it's a great networking, information, help site for UK and NY filmmakers and screenwriters.

Analyzing Scores- Sweet Hereafter

I recently watched Atom Egoyan's haunting and achingly beautiful film "The Sweet Hereafter" with music by Mychael Danna.
Ever since becoming a father 3 years ago, I've had a hard time watching films where children get hurt or die. Yet, I still have to say this film is so well done, you must see it - and hear it. The score is great.

As an exercise, I often will analyze the music cues of a film to see the greater structure. Here's the first 12 cues and how I think it's being structured. The DVD is wonderful in that it has a separate music only soundtrack.






# Title/Type Description/Notes
1 Theme Opening titles to car wash
2 Daughter source phone booth urban
3 Theme Back in car wash
4 Daughter source phone booth urban
5 Sarah Polley's song County fair
6 Bus theme Persian, No one at the car wash, the bus Spooky/haunted
7 The town's theme Bear's family flashback Mournful, old World
8 Sarah Polley song 2 Sarah Polley on the bus, father following Youthful, hopeful, optimistic
9 Sarah Polley song 3 Following the bus - almost like it's on the radio
10 Bus Theme Foreshadowing Haunted
11 Town theme Lawyer comes to visit Bear's family Old world- the way it was
12 Bus theme/haunted theme Lawyer gets his way - runs to the car for contract/things are set in motion spooky/haunted

From the above, you start to see that there is a structure. Anytime the bus is shown or memories of the kids on the bus, you hear the haunting persian oboe theme. I feel the townspeople had a sort of theme that was very old world to show the clash of their values with the modern ruthless lawyer(Ian Holm) coming to "save" them. Anyway, if you have the DVD, check it out and let me know if you agree. I returned my Netflix copy before I had a chance to post any musical excerpts. So the music clips are courtesy of allmp3.com. Check out a trailer at FineLine's site.