Jazz-based Film Scores

Otto Preminger's 1955 film, The Man With the Golden Arm is one of those works that has been at the convergence of my worlds as a Composer and a Visual Designer (worlds colliding!) I had never seen the film until last week though was thoroughly familiar with the opening credit sequence or white lines on black background and the unforgettable crooked arm logo design by Saul Bass. Bass is also known for his design of the shower scene in Psycho which Hitchcock handed completely over to him.
View opening credit sequence.

Elmer Bernstein's music is one of the first jazz-influenced scores and makes sense to the story. Frank Sinatra's drug addicted Frankie Machine, the man with the golden arm, so named for his golden touch as a card dealer for an illegal poker club is back from rehab and has learned to play the drums. He wants to change his life and join a big band.

Elia Kazan's 1951 film Streetcar Named Desire with score by Alex North may be the first score to use jazz. But the Man with the Golden Arm comes up again and again as such an influential film. The confluence of forces of being in the right place at the right time, the perfect graphic design, a big named star and of course the powerful and unforgettable motif in Bernstein's score. Bernstein often called himself Bernstein West to differentiate from the other Bernstein, the New York-based Leonard who also contributed some great film scores including "On The Waterfront" and of course, "West Side Story" based on the play for which he also wrote with Stephen Sondheim.
One of my favorite soundtracks of recent past is Michael Giacchino's for "The Incredibles" with Grammy award-winning big band arrangements by Gordon Goodwin.

More evoking film tension through music

As we started to discuss evoking tension on screen in a previous post on Blood Simple, let's turn to another Coen brothers film which shared some of the same ironic black comedy.

It's a delicate thing to add music to a scene. This is a short clip of the first killing in Fargo. Less is more and the mounting tension is so delicately evoked with high strings/electonic textures. As the situation starts to build low horns/strings creep in. The decision to kill quickly moves to a fast crescendo of drum rolls, screaming brass and cymbal rolls among other things. Also note the stunned silence after the climax.

It's effective and well within the harmonic language of modern film scores. Fargo was made 9 years after the Coen brother's debut with Blood Simple in 1985. Obviously having a string of hits enabled them to have a larger budget and Carter Burwell's orchestral score reflects that. No cheesy synth sounds here. Carter is in the enviable position of being the "go-to" Composer for not only the prolific Coen's but also the gifted (and busy) director Spike Jonze.

Disney starts to transform

Some new changes are starting to appear at Disney now that the Pixar thing has happened. Composer-Songwriter Alan Menken (of Pocahontas, Little Mermaid fame) is signed to a non-exclusive multi-year, multi-picture deal. Perhaps the Pixar process of keeping it all in house is starting to spread in the new Disney. Also major animation directors are starting to return.

I grew up listening to and loving the work of the Sherman brothers with their amazing work in Jungle Book, Winnie the Pooh, the Aristocats, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, Mary Poppins, the mega hit "It's a Small World" among many, many others...it's truly amazing how much great work they did.

Interview with Rachel Portman

Studio 360 did a piece on Film Composer Rachel Portman (Cider House Rules, Manchurian Candidate, Chocolat, Emma, Joy Luck Club) this past weekend. She just finished the score for Roman Polanski's Oliver Twist coming soon.

12 Tone Music

Artwork by Doctor S.

While 12 tone music has never really taken off among the listening public, it became the academic approach to composition at the ivory towers. For film music, the 12 tone system can come in quite handy giving one a planned method for achieving a certain amount of dissonance. This is especially useful for tense, horrific, or macabre moments. It also can be used to evoke jazz as David Shire did in his beautiful score to the Joseph Sargent's 1974 "The Taking of Pelham, One, Two, Three," starring Walter Mathau. Take a listen to a moment from the film here.

Nice article in the Boston Globe on the father of 12 tone music, Arnold Schoenberg.
"Schoenberg was 18 years younger than Freud, who put names on recognizable emotional conditions no one had described openly before. What makes Schoenberg's music essential is that he precisely delineated recognizable and sometimes disquieting emotional states that music had not recorded before. Some of his work remains disturbing not because it is incoherent, shrill, and ear-splitting but because it unflinchingly faces difficult truths." - the Boston Globe.

Evoking Tension in Film

This is one of those emotions that is almost singlehandedly carried by the music in a film. Try watching any tense moment on film with the sound turned off and it's completely lost. I tried to watch the beginning of Monsters, Inc. with my 3 year old son recently. I had forgotten how scary the opening moments were - and my son has never seen anything scarier than Dora the Explorer or Maisy or Miffy. (Noggin is big in our house.) And as my son started to slink down into the couch, I reached for the volume to erase the scariness.

John Williams' 2 note motif for the shark in Jaws still brings back terror to many. Flicking through the channels the other night, I stumbled on a film noir moment and the soundtrack was just chilling.

The Coen brothers' first film Blood Simple, scored by Carter Burwell, is one of my personal favorites. In re-watching it this week, I noticed how cheesy the synth sounds used were. Most of the first scenes of tension used these synth patches which have been relegated to the discount bins now. The main theme of the film really holds up well with it's minimalist piano and moodiness. Then again, they made the entire film for $1.5 million with funds invested mostly from small business people and nobodies far, far away from Hollywood.

I also noticed how some of the main tense moments utilized diagetic music (see my previous post on Diagetic vs Non-Diagetic) as the score and it worked quite well.
Take a look at this short clip. In this final moment of the film (don't look if you haven't seen the film, you'll know too much)
Frances McDormand's character is being hunted and is desperately trying to save herself. The music in the moments before this seem to be coming from her Portugese neighbor's window echoing through the courtyard. The diagetic music then rushes up to the forefront building on the final moments. (M. Emmet Walsh is fabulous btw. Remember him in Blade Runner?)

Blood Simple won the Grand Jury Prize at the 1985 Sundance Film Festival

The Beautiful Country

This is a beautiful, yet heartwrenching story. Norwegian Director Hans Petter Moland has shined the light on some pretty horrific things that happen everyday to illegal immigrants. The story follows a half-Caucasian/half-Vietnamese young man from his home to his search for his real mother and then his father in the USA. The score by Zbigniew Preisner (Three Colors Red, and all of those great Polish films) is haunting and delicate. The early scenes in Vietnam felt a little trying too hard to capture Vietnamese exoticism, but as soon as we move in to the modern film harmonic language, Preisner's score is very effective.

Nick Nolte's performance is just spot on perfect.

What made it even more hard to watch was the fact that we used to live in Hong Kong and have seen the camps set up for the Vietnamese. Set in the most beautiful green hills in a remote area, the walls were 20 feet high blocking any view of anything except for the sky. My wife went to the camps to run some HIV workshops and the people were just so appreciative to have anyone from the outside actually thinking about their well-being. Some of those kids then took part in the summer school program (Summerbridge Hong Kong) she directed.

The magic of film has made us all feel the pain and suffering in a way like no other.

----
I went to Vietnam in 1993 to headline a concert on China Beach at an international surf competition. We stayed a night in Ho Chi Minh City and played an impromptu gig at a club/restaurant where we were eating dinner. There was a wedding going on and the bride and groom and all their guests gave us a standing ovation. Flying in, we saw hundreds of "crater lakes" which covered the country. We played a gig at the Da Nang city hall with amps that looked like were from pre-war Soviets. I lost my electronic tuner that night. There were hordes of very enthusiastic young Vietnamese men hanging around us everywhere. One night at a club where we were honored guests watching some great music, I expressed my admiration for the Vietnamese instrument called the dan bau. It's a single string wooden instrument that sits on a table and the tension of the string is changed with a flexible plastic or wooden "bow". The player, usually women, can express so much by also using harmonics created by touching the side of the hand to the string. The band we saw were fully amplified and the player, a man, was doing Jimi Hendrix plays the dan bau. Awesome! The next night, standing on the beach playing our concert, a man came up to us and said he had heard I was interested in the dan bau and had driven 40 miles with his. I bought it and have since not been able to get it to sound anything close to what I heard that night.
We drove motorcycle across the rice paddies on the mud walls that line them. Stopped and had a slow drip coffee and baguette - best in Asia. And those beautiful school uniforms, flowing white as the girls rode home for lunch on their bicycles...Vietnam was/is so magical. It truly is a beautiful country.

Junebug - silence as score

I saw the lovely movie Junebug (director Phil Morrison) last night. Wonderful film with great acting, direction, editing, writing. The music credit reads "original music by Yo La Tengo", the indie group. And there was a song of theirs in the opening credits and at the end credits and then maybe 2 other music cues, which actually sounded like something out of a stock library. And then...silence.

The story is of a Chicago art dealer (played by Embeth Davidtz) who goes to a little town to sign an outsider artist and meets her new in-laws. There are these great shots of the neighborhood in a semi-rural location somewhere outside Chicago. And they are shown in complete silence. There are several sequences using this silent "score" to convey the emptiness in the neighborhood, the house of where her husband grew up and the community.

In many indie films, I usually feel like the dramatic action could have used some underscoring. Or worse, the song choices used instead of an original score take too much attention away from the story.

Here, the silence was so loud. Stunning and effective. Sort of like a John Cage score...Silence by Yo La Tengo.

Paperwork, Contracts, Licenses

To make sure you have the right to put music in your film whether you hire a Composer or license a work from a Publisher and record label, you need to have the right paperwork.

We talked about the 2 basics before: A Synchronization License (sometimes called a Sync License) and a Master Use License. The sync license, from the publisher, allows you to put it to your picture and the master use is from the record label or whomever owns the "master recordings."

Here's a good place to look at sample contracts.

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.

The Study of Film Music

Peter Kaye, a composer and Phd candidate at Kingston University sent me the above chart.

He has also put together an excellent bibliography of books regarding our secret black art.

Munich

Went and saw Steven Spielberg's Munich last night. What an amazing film. John Williams score is dark, edgy and extremely effective. The masters are at work and deserves to be seen and discussed.

The film tells the story based on the real events of the terrorists kidnapping and killing of 11 Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympics in Munich, Germany. Avner, the lead character played by Eric Bana is given a mission he cannot refuse even though he seems most unlikely to be successful at it. He's a sentimental family man with a baby on the way. His theme is stated in a solo acoustic guitar.

Throughout the film, Williams' score is poignant, stirring and even features an original arrangement of the Israeli national anthem. He uses some electronic drum loops as well which add dramatically to the tension in a key moment.
There are vocals by Lisbeth Scott which are very haunting, mournful and wailing as if keening.

The entire cast is great. It feels real and Geoffrey Rush is just great (as always) in his role at Bana's superior officer. Spielberg talks about this film as starting a dialog on the war on terror and not necessarily taking sides. There's an electrifying moment in the film where Avner, an Israeli and undercover, is speaking with a Palestinian in a stairwell. It's a private moment that really humanizes both sides of the conflict in the Middle East and perhaps all the conflicts in the world. There's no place like home.

Importance of Music in Film (more)

"I believe that music does more for your experience of the movie than we have any inkling [of]. It creates the atmosphere. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that in a novel, the atmosphere is created by narrative, by the narrative voice, and in film, the music is doing that. The voice of the director or the voice of the filmmakers comes out through the music. The music is telling you whether to find this happy, sad, neutral. The music is telling you what to feel. And if it’s out of sync, if it’s telling you, “Oh, this is a big, emotional moment,” and you’re looking at it and saying, “Yeah, I don’t buy this,” then it’s infuriating, and the audience is removed from the experience of the movie.

It’s such a fine-tuning of playing a dramatic moment. So, yeah, the process is just a lot, a lot of back-and-forth. And that’s an ongoing process—”How much do I leave her alone to come up with her own thing?” Because if I’m right in there in every little phase, then it kind of hampers her creativity. That’s the biggest decision for the director in relation to any other creative person: how much freedom do you give them so that they can really make it theirs? And then how much do you trample all over them?"
Patricia Rozema, Nov 8, 1999.

Sorry for the break

I've had some severe difficulties with my current internet provider (Time Warner Cable) so haven't been able to post lately.
It seems the more we become dependent on broadband for internet, telephone and entertainment, the worse the service.

Argh!

Importance of Music in Film

"Oh, it’s [music is] vital. If it’s right, it can do so many things for a film. And, and if it’s wrong, it can absolutely destroy a film. I’m sure we’ve all seen films where the music just kept you out of the movie, and—or made you feel that you were being manipulated so obviously that you refused to respond. And, and if that happens, you’re dead. Music...it’s a very...there really are no rules, in fact. But—and you can make up your use of music as you go along, or film by film. Even scene by scene, you know. Is the music there to accentuate something that’s already in the scene, or is it there to work in counterpoint against that? Or is it there to suggest something that’s going to happen that you wouldn’t know just from what’s on the screen? I mean, there are many, many things that you can do with music." - David Cronenberg

From a lecture at the Museum of the Moving Image in 1992.

Music Themes: Leitmotifs or One to Rule Them All?

In composing a film score, the composer needs to decide a conceptual and strategic approach. Should there be a musical theme for each main character or one theme for the entire piece?

Opera is the grand art that defined approaches of synchronization of music to image (and text and special effects and so much more). Richard Wagner's massive operatic works are most closely associated with this approach. His friend Hans von Wolzogen coined the phrase "Leitmotiv" (German: leading motive) to describe Wagner's approach.

Leitmotivs can be melodic, harmonic or rhythmic and are an emotional shorthand to the audience to signify or connect various scenes or characters in the picture.

Howard Shore's score to "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy follows in this Wagnerian tradition and Shore composed 40-50 themes to be called upon again and again over the course of the 3 films.

Here's three examples of how the Shire theme is used in different ways. Notice how it always evokes the homeyness and longing for the place they call home:
The Shire
Bilbo
Frodo and Gandalf
Eric Rawlins has put together a comprehensive site on the Lord of the Ring's Score.

John William's has also effectively used this Wagnerian approach with the entire Star Wars franchise.

Contrast this approach with Tan Dun's hauntingly beautiful score to "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon." Virtually every cue features the same main theme presented in different clothes depending on the scene. It's incredibly effective and the listener/viewer never seems to tire of it. This can be quite effective in shorts or one hour documentaries and the like where there is just not enough time to support a larger structure of themes.

Last chance to Party on the Cape

Just a reminder that our film "Mrs. Worthington's Party" is in it's final weekend of sneak previews on Cape Cod. It's getting amazing reviews and turnouts. In fact it's grossing higher than any other film in the country right now (if you count it on a per screen basis.) It's definitely family-friendly and a Christmas movie - so very appropriate for the season.

Here's a link to an article.
And to purchase tickets.

The James Bond Theme: Pure Bollywood?

This came from the New Kerala newspaper (yes India!)

James Bond music was originally composed for a Bollywood film
Composer Monty Norman revealed that he had composed the tune for a musical version of VS Naipauls novel ‘A House for Mr. Biswas, but the project fell through and he was hired to compose the music for 1961 bond film Dr. No.

"When I was approached to write the music to DR NO, I split up the notes and the tune took on a more sinister sound. The rest of the melody followed almost naturally,”

Like all artists, Composers borrow from everywhere - influences, temp tracks, rivals and even themselves.

And BTW, Kerala is a lovely place! Mmmm masala dosa...

Technology and Music for Film

Ooh...a sexy box of....software?


The onward march of technology continues with the new release of the Vienna Symphonic Library virtual instrument. One of the best sample libraries for orchestra, they've now made it easier to manage all the thousands of different articulations of each instrument by creating a software plug-in instrument. And it's only $11,000. Who needs an orchestra anymore? Well, not so fast.

For Independent Film, where budgets make an orchestra out of the question, this is wonderful.
Having this wonderful technology does enable a composer to work up excellent, final quality soundtracks.

However this does shift the time spent instead of composing to actually recording and producing these scores.

It's why a lot of the older generation of composers (before sequencers and computers and MIDI) have retained armies of orchestrators AND computer savvy tech guys who actually do the mock-ups before the final recording session with a real orchestra.

My process requires an upfront "creative, go in the cave time" where I spend time researching, wrestling with characters and concepts and strategies and then a demo period of writing quickly. The recording/production/mixing time gets very elongated the more complicated and bigger the sound palette as I have to play each part separately into the machine. However, having these excellent samples make it so much easier to convey to the director/producer what the intent is and whether it will work to picture.

And then we can either polish it for final or take it to the orchestra recording session.

Sound in the Picture - Actual Vs Commentary

The Greek word "Diegesis" means a recounted story. Oxford's English dictionary states "The narrative presented by a cinematographic film or literary work; the fictional time, place, characters, and events which constitute the universe of the narrative."

In other worlds, the world of your film. And in your world there are sounds of two types:

1. Diegetic
2. Non-Diegetic.

Diegetic is the sound that is meant to be from the actual scene happening on screen like character voices, elements in the picture (cars, traffic, birds, etc) and music from instruments played on screen or from a radio or television (also known as "source music"). This diegetic sound can be on or off screen though it is always meant to be actual sound. Of course, nowadays in post-production, most of this is either created entirely by a sound designer and or sweetened by the mixer.

Non-Diegetic is the sound of artistic license. It's the sounds of commentary, narration, sound effects and the music soundtrack. This is where many purists have claimed that the use of such non-diegetic sound is articifial and contrived. Danish filmmakers Lars Von Trier and Thomas Vinterburg's Dogma 95 states "The sound must never be produced apart from the images or vice versa. (Music must not be used unless it occurs where the scene is being shot). " Of course Von Trier's Dancer in the Dark breaks these rules. Dogma 95 may be more of a publicity stunt like nailing your manifesto to the church doors. There is no question that music can heighten the mood, project emotions and stay ringing in your head as your leave the darkened theater to return to the reel, I mean real world. How effectively you use the music determines the level of "realism" and whether you even remember there was music in the scene.

What's a Cue Sheet?

Definition: Cue Sheet

A cue sheet is basically a list of all the music "cues" in a film along with their timings, their usage as in background, on-camera performance, etc and who are the creators and publishers and their affiliations with performing right organizations(PRO's). See here for more on PRO's.

Why is this so important?
This little piece of paper (or Excel document) basically ensures that the composer and publisher will get their share of royalties if the film is broadcast on television. In the US, it's mainly television. In other countries, composers and publishers do get paid for showings in cinemas as well.

Where does the money come from?
This money has been collected from all the broadcasters usually in the form of a blanket license.

It can be a very crucial income stream for your composer, so please do file these properly and timely if your project ever gets on air. Or ask your composer to do it for you - he or she will be happy to help.

More musicals on screen

Another musical has come to the screen by the hands of Chris Columbus, most known for Harry Potter 1 and 2 and Home Alone. I haven't seen RENT yet though am curious - especially since I hit the streets of New York City in the 80's as a young NYU student and Alphabet City was really scary then. Really! They filmed most of it in the Lower East Side though had to recreate one number in Oakland. Oakland as the East Village? Geez...

The soaring costs of music licensing

From yesterday's Hollywood Reporter.

"Fees for song usage range from $1,500-$15,000, with superstar tracks reaching up to $20,000-$25,000. That amount usually includes master rights for broadcast and most other media rights, with a time frame ranging from three years to perpetuity."

and

"Tracks by the Who and the O'Jays, used in the opening credits of CBS' "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation" and NBC's "The Apprentice," respectively, generate six-figure deals annually."

Musical Movies

I grew up in a house of music. My parents loved music - my mother opera and my father Broadway musicals. In the second grade I was the Artful Dodger in Oliver Twist. Having heard the soundtrack in the house since birth, I felt I knew the part already!

Richard Rogers and Oscar Hammerstein wrote 9 musicals together of which 5 have become classic smash hits. The songs and score of the Sound of Music are indelibly linked to my childhood and one of my earliest memories is singing "Do Re Mi" with my mother. I still have "tea" associated to "...a drink with jam and bread." Today is the release of the 40 anniversary DVD.

Baz Luhrmann's astonishing "Moulin Rouge" (2001) is probably the most interesting "musical" in years (and a music supervisor's nightmare!). They licensed 50 classic amazing tracks for $1.5 million.

I would love to work on a musical movie though it would have to be very very different. No bursting into song mid-sentence. It would have to be cool, dark and contemporary. MTV edits though without the tired rapdog yelling at the camera and crotch-grabbing. Any takers?

Monk Wisdom: Greater than the sum of it's parts

"Precision instruments are designed to achieve an idea, dimensional precision, where perfection is impossible. There is no perfectly shaped part of the motorcycle and never will be, but when you come as close as these instruments take you, remarkable things happen, and you go flying across the countryside under a power that would be called magic if it were not so completely rational in every way." – Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcyle Maintenance

We're all spokes on the wheel of your film, Herr Direktor.

Party on the Cape

Just got word that our film Mrs. Worthington's Party( formerly titled Creche - which I thought was very cool and arty) will be having a sneak preview on Cape Cod the week of November 25 to December 3rd. If you're in the area, you can see our work before the world does. We'll also soon know whether we're in at Sundance. Keep your fingers crossed!

You can see/hear the opening scene in the work tape version here. Note these colors are not corrected and it's low resolution.

Congruence Vs. Dissonance

When putting music to picture, you can either be congruent or incongrous. The music can be either in agreement with the visual emotion or against the grain. The score is the carrier of emotional subtext and can make connections which were not evident by image alone. How much is communicated is based on taste and talent of the composer and director.

Merriam Webster defines congruous as: being in agreement, harmony, or correspondence.
I sometimes refer to "against the grainness" as dissonance:
lack of agreement; especially : inconsistency between the beliefs one holds or between one's actions and one's beliefs. Going further you can compare this with the term COGNITIVE DISSONANCE which means: psychological conflict resulting from incongruous beliefs and attitudes held simultaneously. This cognitive dissonance can be played to great effect in filmmaking.

In the Stanley Kubrick classic "A Clockwork Orange", horrible violence is accompanied by incredibly beautiful Beethoven music. This juxtaposition of gruesome visual with beautiful music creates a third space that is unique, memorable and scarily powerful. You truly enter the psyche of the thugs.

In the other direction, SONY's Bravia commercial exudes a warm, floating feeling with a visual of 250,000 superballs released on the streets of San Francisco. The use of the song "Heartbeats" by Jose Gonzalez is a great congruent choice. The pacing, intimacy and quiet texture of Gonzalez' voice and minimal guitar gives a great floating with motion quality to the piece.

Counting the Edit Points in a Film/Commercial

Ethan Bull posted an interesting idea to study filmmaking. Count the edit points in a commercial. It gives you a glimpse of how much decision-making, and thought (and caffeine!) goes on in making a film. I agree. Having scored a fair share of spots, a 30 second commercial can take several demos and weeks of revision to come up with that final. A feature film is exponentially more work.

However, if anyone has seen Rodrigo Garcia's film Nine Lives can attest, one long shot can be highly effective. Each of the nine vignettes in this film is filmed in a single continuous take. It's not meant to be flashy or show-off, and the story soon pulls you in, you forget about the gimmick. What it does allow for is live theater type performances yet with incredible intimacy that only the camera can capture. Truly impressive and awe-inspiring is the writing. The cast is stellar with notable performances by Robin Wright Penn and Jason Isaacs, Glenn Close and Dakota Fanning. It's so magically deliciously real it's no wonder that Rodrigo is the son of Nobel laureate for Literature Gabriel Garcia Marquez (viva Colombia!). The film premiered at the IFP Market in New York. If it's still playing by you - run and see this!

Filmmaker Allergies + Intense Dislikes

Here's something I discovered mainly through my experience as a Creative Director in advertising: Always ask the director/producer/powers that be, "do you have any intense dislikes or allergies?" It's the same question I ask whenever I invite anyone over for one of my home-cooked meals.

In advertising, I realized that the presentation of the work is often more important than the actual execution. We may have hit the ball out of the park and yet if the client can't get past his own personal dislike of say, the color chartreuse, then the whole idea may be canned.

It's the same thing with music. If you as director/producer of this film say to me I just can't stand "Hollywood strings," then I have a clue that this may be an item that kills anything I present. I would first need to understand what you mean by that term, which in this case was a director telling me he hated the sound of sustaining violins. Maybe it was the frequency that bugged him or maybe it was indelibly intertwined with some bad B movies of the 1940's, whatever it is, I had to tread carefully whenever I used any violins.

What I'm getting at here is clearing the lines of communication between creative departments visual and audio. If there's a sound or instrument or color that's interfering with "getting the picture" then it's an obstacle. Tell your Composer up front if you just can't stand to hear trumpets that "sound like mariachi." I'm sure he/she will not hold it against you.

Value of Genius dropping to half

When I was an actor (among many things) I had a great director Dianne Houston (first Academy Award for a black woman writer) who told us how it was. "You need to develop the person, to develop the artist to develop the writer/actor/sculptor, painter, whatever it is you are doing."

In this age where we so readily celebrate the achievements of this week's genius, we need to step back and realize this is a life-long process. There is no difference between the great artists of any medium - whether it be film, music, painting, writing or (insert your favorite here). At a recent film symposium, directors were complaining about the quality of films being entered as being "stories about what they've seen in everyone else's movies." How can you go make a masterwork when you haven't ever had a valid passport? As Salman Rushdie once said.."he had pre-travelled eyes." Or something like that.

Trailers

Every film needs a trailer and what's a trailer without music? Well did you know that most of the time, trailers do not feature any music from the film. Why's that? Well, in this world of corporate quarterly earnings results being micromanaged, the marketing machines require the trailer while the director is still in post-production- sometimes even in the midst of the shoot. And since most Composers aren't even hired until post-production starts, where does the music come from?

Well there's a bunch of music houses that specialize only in trailers. And after a while they all start sounding alike. What's the difference between The Mummy and Batman Begins? There's still going to be some flash frames and some brooding menacing sequence and...

Well it doesn't have to be this way. If you think of the audio as an essential identity piece for your film in the same way that logos and color palettes and graphic treatments are, then you can vastly improve the marketing and branding of your film. By including your Composer way early in the process, (how about in the pre-production phase?) and then let him/her start working parallel to the shoot, you stand a great chance of having some excellent material for your film AND the marketing materials.

I don't know the entire story behind Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, but I do know that Tan Dun had already completed parts of the score whilst the post-production computer graphics folks were creating certain shots of the Forbidden City. They had the luxury of working to the music score. Pretty inspiring.

Oh and check out the new King Kong trailer. Howard Shore was replaced as Composer by James Newton Howard. They're still in post-production. Did it change the trailer? Not at all.

The Music Budget

You, the director, have decided on the Composer you want to write the great timeless score to your great timeless film. And now the big question: How much will it cost?

There are no standard union rates for Composers as there are with editors, DPs, actors, set designers or just about anyone else. Somewhere I’ve seen a range of 5 to 10 percent of the overall budget(For a $250,000 film, this is $12,000 to $25,000). Of course, if this film requires a soundtrack of epic proportions with the London Symphonic Orchestra, this won’t even cover the orchestra salaries, let alone the recording sessions and Composer’s fee. Or if this film was made for $5000, this may not work. On most independent films, the budgets are barely enough to cover a Composer’s fee and live musicians (besides the Composer) are a luxury.

What usually happens is a combination of cash and a structure for back-end payments should the film actually make some money. This could be structured on a sliding (“step”) scale where as certain levels of success occur, the rates of payments change accordingly.

Your agreement should make clear whether the Composer is doing a “package deal,” where all costs for creating the soundtrack are covered by the Composer, or whether you are paying a fee for just Composing and then additional for musicians, recording, copyists, union fees, etc. Package deals are quite the norm in low budget films and television. On larger projects, the studio often has relationships and the clout to command better rates and access on recording studios, with orchestras, etc.

On major studio productions, the Composer will be hired on a “work for hire” basis which means the studio will own all of the work. Major studio budgets are usually pretty large and the marketing push given these films means Composers will do just fine on the money end. Composers still retain their writer’s share of their copyright, but the publishing portion is owned and controlled by the studio. Example: If John Williams wants to perform or record some of his classic movie scores, he needs to ask for permission from the studio who controls it.

On independent films, the Composer will usually retain all publishing and rights to release the music independently. This allows for an income stream to make up for lower fees.

The Film Music Network publishes an annual salary survey of Composers that makes for interesting reading. It provides general ranges based on interviews with working Composers. For more information also, check out the excellent Film Budgeting group on Yahoo.

Musician Unions

Unions seem to be an antiquated notion in the information age. What started out as protecting drones on the factory line has become a bureaucratic mess for "knowledge workers." But they have achieved amazing standards for many including actors, film crew and auto workers. Musicians never seem to get much out of them except on Broadway.

Radio City seems to be winning this one.

The Death of Original Film Music?

Cameron Crowe's Elizabethtown (which I haven't seen) is the latest film to declare the death of original film music. Crowe is a former music journalist with an encyclopedic knowledge of popular music. He's been highly praised not for this film, but for the soundtrack which features an eclectic mix of old and new singer songwriters and pop artists.

The matching of the right song to film is undeniably powerful. Martin Scorsese has done it numerous times utilizing songs from the period of his films that capture a moment. Saturday Night Fever hit it out of the park. However, with any popular song, the filmmaker runs the risk of pulling the viewer out of the picture to the associated memories already existing around that song. Instead of following the plot line, you start to think of where you were and what you were doing when you first experienced that song. Or you start to say I really like that song and want to buy that album - again pullling you out of the picture.

I've been asked to replace songs in score many times. Recently, Jeff Buckley's rendition of the Leonard Cohen song "Hallelujah" was slated for a film. The song definitely added a lot of the right emotional tones and haunting quality to the film, AND it also became so foreground and present that it was distracting and overpowering to the picture.

So, there are times for songs and times for score and I feel there will always be a place for the two

NPR's Morning Edition ran an excellent overview last week on The Evolution of the Movie Soundtrack..

Definition: Temp Tracks

Temp tracks are the music that directors or editor put into a film on a temporary basis to help convey the sense of what the final music will be. Temp tracks can be very helpful at times as music is the most abstract of arts. We can talk all we want but sometimes it's just easier to say listen to this. We want it to sound similar to this.

At other times, this can be very frustrating as directors or producers often get "temp love." This is when they fall in love with the temp track so much, nothing else can live up to it.

In my own experience, I've found temp tracks to be quite useful as indicators of texture, palette, size, and shape. For directors who don't do well on my 20 questions exercise, sometimes there's no way around them.

Monk Wisdom: The Ten Thousand Things

"Once you uncover the Ten Thousand Things, then there will be a lot more shit you don't understand. Ignore the Ten Thousand Things and just focus on one or two."

Thanks to filmmaker Eric Maconaghie Rogers for this precious insight.

Process: The Sound Palette

Part of the Composer’s job is deciding what sounds to use. This palette is a consistent group of instruments or sounds. For the film Mrs. Worthington’s Party (former title Creche), I used an eclectic palette of Pizzicato bassi and celli, celesta, glockenspiel, tubular bells, gong, harp, piano, acoustic guitar, accordion, boys choir and a solo male voice in falsetto. By having a consistent sound palette, we bring a commonality to the project and yet, by making it unique to this project, it becomes a proprietary audio mnemonic to the film. In short, we create an unique and identifiable audio branding for the film.

Consistency is a huge part of the success of the score. It needs to envelop the film, create the subtext and world of these characters and never call attention to itself or get in the way of the story.

After viewing and discussing the film with the director/producer(s) and after our 20 questions exercise, there needs to be a decision on the size of the sound of this film. Is it huge and epic? Intimate and close? A mix?
Lord of the Rings has a different sense of size than say Sliding Doors. Budget also plays a factor in this decision and whether we can afford to hire the London Symphonic Orchestra on this one or the local chamber group or the excellent sample sound library in the Composer’s collection.

20 Questions (Nailing the Emotional Tone)

Film Directors working with Composers often have a challenge describing the music they want for their film. One is a Visual and the other an Aural-centered person. How to cross this divide?

I often use an exercise I call 20 questions.

By asking questions that make us feel with the other senses (especially not aural) we can get a better idea of what emotional qualities we are seeking. I usually do a list of opposites like this:

Hot --- Cool
Deep --- Shallow
Smooth ---Jagged
Glossy --- Matte
Organic --- Synthetic
Stoic --- Flowing
Dangerous --- Sheltered
Textured --- Fine
Pungent --- Fragrant
Bright --- Dark
Hard --- Soft
Scratchy --- Clear
Grainy --- Lucid
Spicy --- Soothing
Solid --- Liquid
Understated --- In Your Face
Background --- Foreground
Frenetic --- Calming
Subtle --- Overt
Curvy --- Straight

This can be harder for some than others. The idea is to get a common ground that avoids the misunderstandings brought about by descriptors like “very hip, current and cool music.”

I then ask what do you want the audience to feel? Jealousy, anger, regret, pain, triumph, etc which further specifies the exact tone and feel.

And sometimes I ask what colors would be best describe your project? Again, sometimes this draws blanks, but I had a director tell me “burnt sienna and cyan.” This specificity was extremely helpful in achieving the exact tone.

Director + Composer

Steven Spielberg/John Williams. Alfred Hitchcock/Bernard Herrmann. Tim Burton/Danny Elfman.
There are many examples of great serial collaborations between directors and composers. And when you think about it, it makes perfect sense. If your storytelling partner is working why change? In fact, many directors work with the same crews over and over again.

John Williams is at it again with... Spielberg.

Who needs a record label - get me a spot!

This is the new mantra of all bands, musicians and singer-songwriters. With the crashing of the record label structures, bands have realized they can make much more money and get more airtime via an ad. Witness iTunes ads with Jet, Ozomatli, etc. Or Mitsubishi who singlehandedly created Dirty Vegas as a number 1 hit a few years back.

This week's Crains New York business has an article about this. 2 telling quotes.

"My quest is to create a hit record through an ad, with no middleman," says Josh Rabinowitz, director of music for Grey Worldwide.

"More than 30% of music used in commercials today is licensed, compared with 5% just five years ago," says JSM Music's Joel Simon.

Needless to say, this has made the environment much more open to film licensing as well.

Orchestras and Film Music

Why are so many film scores done with orchestras? Well, having a 100 piece sound palette at your disposal is quite versatile in communicating virtually any emotion - without getting in the way of the story. Film music has been driving a lot of so-called "serious" music for quite a while now. Orchestras can only play so many from the repertoire of 300 year dead white Europeans. Now, any time film scores are added to the concert bill, a much younger crowd can be seen. In fact, many orchestras around the world are now going out of their way to entice film composers to record with them offering package deals, translators, copyists and waiving all kinds of union fees. One can record in the former Czechoslavakia with 3 to 5 different orchestras starting at $10,000 US. And...many indie films (and some Hollywood ones) are done this way. I haven't had the opportunity yet, though I know it's only a matter of time that I'm on the other side of the planet with an outsourced orchestra.

Animation is one genre of film that reallly appreciates the composer for without the soundtrack, much of the life of the story, the world - the magic- is gone.

In Japan, animation is appreciated on such a different level than here. Can you imagine a composer for cartoons being appointed music director of a leading symphony orchestra in the States? The composer for Hayao Miyazaki's Spirited Away and other great modern classics performs live in Korea next week...and yes, he's the musical director of the New Japan Philharmonic Orchestra.

Copyrights and Royalties

As a filmmaker, you know a bit about intellectual property. According to Don Passman's excellent book All You Need To Know About the Music Business,

Copyright is a "limited duration monopoly."
You as a creator of original content have the EXCLUSIVE right to

1) reproduce the work
2) distribute it
3) perform it publicly
4) make a derivative work
5) to display it publicly.

Royalties are the payments the creator receives for one of the 5 rights described above. For any creator of intellectual property, royalties are an important source of revenue. For songwriters/ composers, there are basically two kinds of royalties.
Mechanical royalties and performing rights royalties. Mechanical royalties are misnamed but come from the time when you mechanically reproduced the music . It refers to sales of records and a percentage of each sale goes back to the owner of the copyright (a writer and a publisher). In the case of royalty-free music libraries, this is the royalty that is no longer paid in exchange for an upfront payment and the non-exclusive use of the music. It can be sold over and over again to recoup it's investment and expense.

Performance royalties are monies paid to the creator/copyright owner when the music is performed in public. In the United States, there are three Performing Rights Societies (ASCAP, BMI, and SESAC) that handle the licensing and collection of fees for the right to perform music in public. These are the royalties that broadcasters pay and you as the film producer do not have to worry about. You do have to sign off on and provide a "cue sheet" for your film. More on this later.

Secrets of The Final Mixdown - (and what's a Stem?)

At the Boards Summit's Director's Chair panel yesterday, we got to hear some of the biggest frustrations of the top commercial directors. Number one? Not being included at the edit.
This may be a bit shocking to those outside of the commercial production process, but directors are more often than not, not invited to the edit session. Now making a commercial is not unlike making a full length feature. Can you imagine the film producer taking your dailies and then saying "thank you very much, go on to your next project we'll take it from here."
This is the same way Composers feel when they're not invited to the final mixdown. On most of the independent films I work on, I make it a point to be at the final mix. There will always be a minor issue that can be clarified instantaneously in the room. For example, an effect I used on a hybrid hip-hop/orchestral track that made things sound low fidelity was throwing the engineers into a huff. They were furiously trying to correct it. When I told them that was intended, they were sort of incredulous and then moved on.

I usually provide splits (also known as stems) for the final mixdown. This is in addition to a standard 2 track stereo final mix. The stems are basically submixes. For an orchestral score, this would normally be broken down as Strings, Woodwinds, Brass, and Percussion. For a pop soundtrack, this might look like this: Drums, Bass, Keys and Pads, Lead Vocals, Backing Vocals. Why would we need submixes? Dialog is the most important audio element in a film. If you can't hear it or if it starts to get muddled underneath the sound effects and music, something's got to go. Usually that means the music get pulled back. But, sometimes, the music needs to drive the scene. Solution? Take the competing audio frequencies down in volume and leave everything else up. For example, for a pop soundtrack, the electric guitar sits in a tonal spectrum that is very close to the human voice. If the lead guitar part is smoking out the dialog, perhaps just pulling it back would allow the scene to work whilst still having massive "balls" in the sound.
So why not bring all the separate tracks to the final mixdown? Post-audio engineers absolutely do not want to remix the entire music portion of the project AND the sound effects and the dialog. Giving them stems allows for some flexibility without a huge extra workload. By the way, 95% of the time, we never use them as the 2 track mix is just fine.

By the way, learned another interesting thing. Commercial directors charge by the amount of shoot days - generally starting at $10,000 (US) per day. So they're not even getting paid to go to the edit and want to be there. It's the same with Composers. It's not about the money - it's about following through on your work and ensuring a quality final product - the film.

Here's an interesting article about perhaps the greatest commercial director in the world, Joe Pytka. Ciao.

Placing Songs in Commercials/ Films

Spent today at the excellent Boards Summit, an advertising industry conference in NYC.

It used to be that putting your song in an ad was sellling out.
In the old days, you used to start bidding at $1 million dollars and go way up to get any song of note from a well-known recording artist into a commercial. Nowadays, new bands are giving free access to advertisers to get the free media blitz and the resultant number one record.
Mitsubishi did this several years ago with a little known electronica band called Dirty Vegas which launched on the back of a car commercial. Then they went on to sell 2 million records, win a Grammy and then return to complete obscurity. All because some Agency creative chose them for inclusion in their spot. It could have been just about any track!

Possibly the only recording artist left in the world who doesn't want to sell out is John Densmore (the drummer) of the Doors.
Even with $15 millionbeing offered from Cadillac (For Break on Through) and reportedly up to $4 Million from Apple, he voted no to the anguish of the other 2 surviving members.

Filmmakers take note: you can get a big song in your film, if you can bring exposure, marketing and tie-ins to the table. More on this later.

Live Musicians Versus Samples

In talking with a choreographer the other day - I realize there may be some confusion over samples.

Samples are short recordings of live music that can be triggered to play using a device called a sampler. In the early days of sampling, it was DJ's taking short snips from existing records and mixing that together or looping it into new music. Most of you know that this world has been almost crushed out of existence by the threat and reality of the lawsuits from record labels.

Current State of the Sample and Sampler
Over the past 2 to 5 years, technology has improved so fast that most of today's recording studios are moving "inside the box." Meaning, everything is done inside the computer. Instead of a wall of machines, my Macintosh does it all with software versions of all that stuff.

And samples are no longer little snippets of pre-existing music or just loops (though they still exist). Samples have become extremely sophisticated and have turned into complete soundset libraries for the Composer. No longer are Composers forced to just use a pre-existing phrase or loop but can write pretty much anything they hear and make the samples perform it in a way that is extremely realistic - in fact, no one can tell the difference.

These sample libraries are being created where every note of every instrument of an orchestra is being recorded at multiple dynamics (soft, medium, loud, very loud) at multiple velocities (slow, medium, fast, very fast) and every nuance in between each note. This makes for a very large amount of gigabytes of information! In fact the Vienna Symphonic Library boasts over 238 GB for the Complete Orchestral Edition which comes to 385,586 samples! That is staggering. I remember when I was loading my samples by hand off a floppy disk onto my Ensoniq EPS16+ in 1991. I could fit 8MB and that was great! The East-West Quantum Leap Symphonic library has 68 GB and a slightly more big-Hollywood sound.

Thus Spake is a piece I wrote utilizing the massive sounds from my sample libraries. Sounds pretty real doesn't it? Here's one that is more subtle and mixes some real instruments together: Pomegranates.

Today, every Composer/Producer (as they've merged into one job- more on this later!) uses a software environment to compose. The top 3 Composing packages are - LogicPro, Digital Performer, Cubase. What about ProTools you say? Well, yes, there are quite a few who do use ProTools - though the interface and the workflow of it are much more geared to an Engineer and most definitely suitable for the final mixdown. I use LogicPro which is a fantastic tool (as they all are) and it allows me to compose music to picture and have the use of "virtual instruments", access to sample libraries and amazing effects. This is a screenshot from my work environment in LogicPro for the feature film "Creche" by David Wall.

But all this is really besides the point. What sounds better?
In the end, the answer is does it support the picture and does it sound good? Sometimes that's a completely sampled production, othertimes it's completely acoustic and other times a hybrid.

Secret 101: " The Spotting Session"

The meeting between the Director and Composer, (and sometimes Music Supervisor, Music Editor, Writers, Producers) where the film is watched and discussed as to where music is and more importantly, where it is not. This meeting can be in person, or in our digital age, over the phone with the various parties watching the same time-coded tape or DVD.

For video conferences and phone calls, I suggest this "work tape" to have a burned-in timecode in the image which allows everyone to literally be on the same frame. Each instance of music is called a "cue." Out of this meeting (or meetings), a "cue sheet" is developed where in and out points of various music cues are notated along with a description of what's happening in the scene. My cue sheets are done in Excel and I always feature a column where I write "Emotional" notes about what the director has told me s/he wants to be communicated in the scene. And I add notes about specific instruments in a column entitled "Palette. You can download a sample cue sheet I did for a feature film entitled "Creche" (coming Christmas 2006) here.

The Cue Sheet becomes a very important document and needs to be agreed upon by Director and Composer and other stakeholders. It is where much discussion can take place and keep everyone on the same page.

Here's how Alf Clausen scores the Simpsons each week. Mind you, he has a mega budget, a live orchestra and a lot of help and resources. Still 30 cues a week is tremendous!!!

Public Domain

So many times I see people posting asking for public domain music. Here's a handy chart created by Cornell University that lists when works pass into the public domain. (US-centric)

The Shining Redux

Our friends at PS260 have created a memorable trailer that reinvents the original. Jack never looked happier. Great work!
BTW, PS260 cut the Timberland Wild spot we scored.

Secret Cost of Documentaries

Sunday's New York Times had a great article on the cost of clearing music in documentaries. It's a very changed landscape and highly recommend reading this prior to shooting ANYTHING!

"Clearance costs - licensing fees paid to copyright holders for permission to use material like music, archival photographs and film and news clips - can send expenses for filmmakers soaring into the hundreds of thousands of dollars. Jonathan Caouette's "Tarnation," for instance - a portrait of a young man's relationship with his mentally ill mother that Mr. Caouette edited at home, on a laptop computer - was widely reported to have cost $218. In fact, after a distributor picked up "Tarnation," improved the quality with post-production editing and cleared music rights, the real cost came to more than $460,000. Clearance expenses were about half the total."

Surround mixes from your camcorder

Another SONY link today. They've announced the ability to create 5.1 surround mixes from the built in microphone on a selection of new DVD-camcorders. I don't know how good it will sound and if it makes it harder to clean up your audio for post, but that's pretty nifty!
"The DCR-DVD403 Handycam model has a built-in mic to record in 5.1 channel surround
sound, while the DCR-DVD103 and DCR-DVD203 Handycam models offer the ability
to record in rich, surround sound with an optional accessory microphone.
The pinnacle of the DVD lineup, the DCR-DVD403 Handycam camcorder unit is
the first consumer camcorder to include Dolby(R) Digital 5.1 Creator. This
unique technology incorporates built-in, multichannel microphones, so you can
record your home movies in dramatic 5.1 channel digital surround sound for an
immersive audio experience."

Movies in your pocket

Sony announces that they're going to have the ability to play movies on their coming PSPortable. It's interesting how many resolutions and formats you will now be able to consumer your media content. This of course makes it another variable when preparing for mixes. From pristine HD surround mixes to stereo to mono to computer crappy speakers mixes to celphone and PSP super crappy mixes. Someone should come up with a chart checklist that has all the formats and all the resolutions and file formats. One day when I get a minute...