@mverta said:
The OP asked about representation for composers of film music, and named several film composers specifically. This is a thread about film music and the film "industry/business."_Mike
thanks for the clarification mike. I'm out of here.
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Well of course I'm not saying for one instant that musicians like yourself should even worry about whether or not a film is either made with the highest ideals of film making behind it (and probably won't make money) - or whether it's maybe a load of rubbish and makes fortunes. You have to work and get paid. You, as a writer of film music, regardless of how wonderful your score is going to be, cannot polish a turd.
I didn't mention the independents, because I knew you would bring it up - and quite rightly too.
One (or two) of the best known independents are probably the Coen Brothers. I only mention them really because their cinematographer Roger Deakins, on just about all their films comes from my town and I just like to see what's going on when they bring out a film - like say, Fargo or No Country (which I didn't like much).
But when you check out their independent films through time, they don't always get it right, and without anything against the music in their films at all, generally it's all pretty sparse. And a lot of the time these big independent films they make, or anyone else for that matter - don't actually work at all.
Being independent doesn't guarantee anything. A film with a budget of 80 million could just as easily be a great or as poor as anything else in this world.
There's a lot to be said for the old studio system.
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@PaulR said:
You have to work and get paid. You, as a writer of film music, regardless of how wonderful your score is going to be, cannot polish a turd. .No, you can't, but that's part of why I say you have to try and leverage yourself. If you "have to work and get paid," and you end up on a crappy film, they still put your name 12 feet across the screen on a single card in bold type. Plus, you feel like you just wasted X weeks of your life. Plus, because it was a crappy film, it was 10 times harder to write the score for. I just went through this in January, when I did the score for a Sci-Fi Channel movie. If you've seen those, you know how bad they are. But this one was being produced by a friend of mine, who produced the series Farscape, and he's a great writer, plus a friend, plus my girlfriend ended up being in the movie, so I figured it would be the exception.
Wrong.
It was a nightmare; the director walked off the picture the second they wrapped, and the movie was just atrocious. I had 5 weeks to write 80 minutes of "try and save this crapcan movie" alien music, with nobody clear on the drama. The cue sheet read like, "01:05:00:09 - Marines arrive. Marine music here. 01:05:04:15 - girls get scared. Girls-are-scared-music here. 01:05:14:23 - Alien pops out. Alien popping out music here." It was from hell. Plus, I didn't sleep, hated my life, and at the end, hated every note of music. So even here, when I didn't take the gig for the money, and it seemed like everything would be cool about it, it was just horrific. And my name's on it, tweleve feet across on a single card at the top. I'm just glad amongst the godawful reviews, nobody's taken particular notice of the music at all. Fine by me. Just walk away and let's pretend it never happened, shall we?
So I'm saying that since it can always go south, for the "best" of reasons, it's usually better to give yourself the best odds you can first, by truly seeking out people who tell the kind of stories you like, and envision using the music the way you do, and like the music you do. Hard to find, but totally worth it. And if you can do other music gigs to ease the money pressure and allow you to be more selective, so much the better. And yes, the Coen brothers either totally hit it or totally veer left, but however sparse the Carter Burwell score, I always hear something cool I wish I'd thought of.
_Mike
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Hahahahahahahah - that's absolutely great!!!!!
You should definitely write a book sometime in the future after you've picked up your Oscars (don't get me started). Ha - I love that. Marines arrive and then scared girl music. Brilliant stuff. Actually, that sounds like a great movie. :)))))))) Looking at the timecode - all very quickly too. HAHAHAHaaaaaaaa...
One of the things a lot of people tend to forget about the filmscore writer, all joking aside, is that they are faced with silence - disregarding dialogue of course. Or the moments of silence when there is no dialogue and the music may well have to replace the unsaid things. Good writing can do that and signal to an audience how they should be feeling and indeed, anticipating.
Yes - if actors or directors are involved with one too many crappy films - or indeed films that fail to make money - then things can quickly become terminal. Sometimes that's the way it probably should be - sometimes, history shows us that it's a terrible shame.
For instance, a film made in the 50's that went about $150k over it's $600k budget - Night of the Hunter. Charles Laughton, an actor by trade directed the film and because of the money trauma and the fact the audiences in America stayed away in droves - never directed another film. Great shame in my view. So it can happen that things can go awry from an artistic viewpoint simply based on the money.
Even things like Farscape can only work on some level or other if you have character development. Not my scene but then again I get bogged down remembering the stuff I liked in the 60's that was of a sci-fi nature and of course you have to move on for the younger generations. Most things on film or tv are generally a reflection of the times you live in at that moment - in one way or another.
Being the composer on a dud film is probably less important to future chances of being hired again provided the people hiring are intelligent enough to understand it wasn't the music that bombed.
Yes- I think Carter is OK too as a matter of fact. Sometimes very very good. He can get a bad review from silly people that have no understanding of what it's like to have to sit there and deal with pressure.
I suppose if I was to really get down to explaining the way I think about filmscore music - I would say to myself and anyone else just this. - You're looking at a women in a shower. Another 'women' enters, or what you think is a woman with a very big knife and proceeds to attack and kill the other woman in the shower. There are approximately 180 edits in this one scene.
Would any of us been capable of coming up with the score that finally went with that? Doubtful.
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I have a lot of respect for mverta for doing that score. Far more than Hans Zimmer getting a good film to ruin with his lousy block chords or James Horner getting Aliens 2 to plaster a John Williams rip-off all over. The reverse is usually the case - it is the great problem that a film composer faces - being given shit and trying to write music for it. How can you find inspiration?
In that case of Herrmann of course, he didn't need to search for inspiration.
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What is with the incessant Hermann worship here? I rather listen to Zimmer's lousy block chords than Hermann's cacophonous noise that he attempts to pass off as "music" LOL!
But that was a great comment though about Zimmer's block chords, so true lol, he is not a true composer he is only a pop rock melodist and wouldn't survive a day without his trusty 30 gigastudios/keyboards/libraries assembly.
William, I often see you barking around about other's works, I am curious to hear or at least know what sort of works it is that you yourself compose? Are you a professional 'in the industry', a bitter hobbyist, underpaid orchestrator, or perhaps just a programmer that got lost and ended up on the wrong forum? Just curious what sort of brilliantly artistic, inspiring, idealistic, divine music it is that you write. Could you share a sample perhaps or at least describe to us mortals what ineffable aural pleasures stream forth from the sumptuous fruits of your indefatigable labours?
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Just a small point of clarification, here - Hans Zimmer only writes a small percentage of "his" music. Most of it is done by a stable of ghost writers. He makes no attempt to hide this. He will openly say to a director, "Oh for this romantic scene let's use my guy so-and-so, he's great at the romantic stuff," etc. There's actually quite a lot of that in town. A few of the "big composers" are just name brands.
_Mike
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Mike that seems to be very common at the "top" of every field. In fact last year I met a professional artist who told me that EVERY major player in the 'art scene' (sculpture/painting and the like) has a stable of proteges that produces 75-85% of their work which they just sort of stamp with their name at the end. I mean hell, to this day there's many paintings that are attributed to Rembrandt and the like that have been found to be made by his students and passed off as his, because thus was their skill and technique, equal to his own, although in someone like Zimmer's case the proteges' skill and technique probably far surpasses his own considering he has zero musical training and is nothing more than a rock keyboardist with no theory knowledge and probably a poor ability to read music.
Paul to answer your question yes I am relatively young, 26 to be exact. But don't let that be too much of a moral victory for your theories because I happen to like Korngold and place the 'greats' of yore on the highest pedestal, I just never liked Hermann because I'm not a fan of that school of music.
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Mverta - That is interesting to hear about Zimmer. Just like Nancy Drew. I suspected as much.
Requiem - You are quite correct in appreciating Korngold. I applaud you for that. Also - you may have problems with Herrmann because you were born into the Leitmotif school along with Korngold, Steiner, Rosza, Shore, etc. If that is the case, I appreciate you and have no argument. It is, as a matter of fact, part of one's genetic makeup to be part of the Leitmotif School, or part of the Non-Leitmotif School.
However...
if you EVER, EVER insult Herrmann again, I will find out where you live...
...come there....
...and force you to listen to my music for several hours straight.
Consider yourself warned...
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Interesting because almost all of these big guys in interviews EXPRESSLY and specifically state that they do not use orchestrators. I know for a fact Hans Zimmer has stated "I don't often use them, because I like to do all that stuff my self" and I seen a interview recently on youtube of James Horner who also said he only seldom uses orchestrators etc.
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Okay, well that is absolutely untrue. Logistically, they'd never have TIME to orchestrate all the cues by hand, even if they had the ability. 99% of cues are given to orchestrators as sketches. What varies is how detailed the sketches are. John Williams' 12-line (approx.) sketches are extremely precise and detailed, and don't truly require a lot of "orchestration" skill, whereas some composers literally give a melody (maybe) and some chords (maybe) and some notes ("Real scary!"). Truth. The average level of composing and orchestrating ability out there is laughably low. On one of my first sessions, the orchestra began the downbeat of cue 1 with a horrific cacophany. We quickly learned the copyists had put all the transposed instruments in the wrong keys: apparently, nobody even writes transposed scores anymore, so they took my masters as concert pitch. The young guys can't even read and write native tranpositions!
_Mike
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@requiem_aeternam7 said:
Interesting because almost all of these big guys in interviews EXPRESSLY and specifically state that they do not use orchestrators.
I knew you were just a kid from minute one. :))))))))))))))))
That's OK though. Now you run along and go and check out Bernard Herrmann for 6 months and then come back. I love these kids mind you - they're not frightened of making complete a$$holes of themselves when it comes to the art of filmscoring and orchestration - and even arranging. :))))))))
Leitmotif versus non leitmotif. Go and figure that one out and come back. :))))))))))
And you'd better not be from England. What an embarrassment that would be in front of my Yank, Canadian and Indian friends. I may have to come and beat you over the head with a Herrmann score if this is the case. ;)
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Regarding Elfman, yes, Bartek does all the orchestrations, and more. That's no secret at all. Elfman focuses on the 70 layers of synth stuff he brings in to go with it. You know who else is like that? Thomas Newman. Thomas is all about the synth stuff, pads and sounds and stuff, and he spends forever getting all that right, and THEN he has the strings play whole notes for 3 days. At least, that's what the string players tell me.
By the way, curious little thing... I saw a concert celebrating the film music of Bernard Herrmann and John Williams, conducted by John Williams, hosted by Spielberg and Scorsese. The Herrmann stuff sounded better live than the Williams stuff did. Orchestrationally, it was like JW's cues work fantastically on a recording, but the Herrmann stuff was more impressive in the room. Really struck me, cue after cue, all that night.
_Mike
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Interesting.@mverta said:
I saw a concert celebrating the film music of Bernard Herrmann and John Williams, conducted by John Williams, hosted by Spielberg and Scorsese. The Herrmann stuff sounded better live than the Williams stuff did. Orchestrationally, it was like JW's cues work fantastically on a recording, but the Herrmann stuff was more impressive in the room. Really struck me, cue after cue, all that night._Mike
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I would have loved to hear that concert. I think one reason that Herrmann was so impressive live might have been his unique concentration upon pure timbral constructions, as opposed to traditional orchestration. He approached the orchestra in the most original way of any orchestrator since Ravel.
Many people think that Herrmann's music, because it is so absolutely perfect for the films it scores, can't be played in concert. But suites from his scores are as good to listen to as pure music as Tchaikovsky's ballets are in suite form. Such as Vertigo, North by Northwest, Seventh Voyage of Sinbad, Jason and the Argonauts, On Dangerous Ground, King of the Khyber Rifles (huge amount of percussion in that), Day the Earth Stood Still, Trouble with Harry, Sisters, Obsession, to name a few off the top of my head. They are fascinating and beautiful as concert music.
The most striking thing about Herrmann is that he, more than anyone else, turned film music into a personal art form. His style uses a particular, highly distinctive motival approach, rather than the more common leitmotif in modified symphonic development, that was absolutely original with him and is instanly recognizable. In fact, his musical style is as recognizable as Beethoven or Mahler. But on top of that, this personally distinctive style was absolutely suited to the medium of film scoring. No one else had really done that prior to him. They had basically modified the opera and operetta styles of form and development, ala Korngold's "Operas without words" and Steiner, et. al.