Herb,

I agree with your statement about Carpenter. In fact, there is only one other prominent director in history - Chaplin - who was a composer that did really significant music for his films. Chaplin's music is beautiful, though as you know he did not orchestrate it. There have been a few others but they are always amateurish in one field or the other.

I have always been impressed by Carpenter because he is a real filmmaker and his music for Halloween was extremely effective and completely original. It has been imitated endlessly, as was the film. Dark Star is one of the most original independent science fiction films, and Assault on Precinct 13 is a great low budget film with another minimal but strong score by Carpenter. I am extremely interested in this subject since I believe that cinema and music are exactly the same thing in their most basic nature. Film has more to do with music than it does with literature, though most people assume the reverse.

I am trying to find a common inspiration with the impetus of a film's themes and the music that goes with them. It is possible for one to inspire the other, though it has to be a film you are completely involved with. I've done it once on my feature "Remember Tomorrow" - that is, acheive a working method that used both film and music creation simultaneously - though unfortunately the film I made was bad. One of the drawbacks of working in two extremely difficult media.

Magic from the book (and screenplay) by William Goldman. Starring Anthony Hopkins, Ann Margret, and Burgess Meredith.

Great book, great film, and great score by JG.

Dave Connor

@herb said:

in "association with Alan Howarth".

Interesting. I know Alan Howarth as a sound designer. (And I own a fx library created by him.) A look in imdb showed me he´s made an impressive list of composing gigs as well. Very rare and amazing.
Maybe he´ll be my model...

@William said:

Chaplin - who was a composer that did really significant music for his films. Chaplin's music is beautiful, though as you know he did not orchestrate it. There have been a few others but they are always amateurish in one field or the other.

I have a couple Cds of Chaplin's music and I did not think it was that great. He had lots of help from legit composers who would transcribe and orchestrate what he sang. What is truly his own contribution is somewhat nebulous. Nevertheless I guess the music suited his movies but nothing that noteworthy as stand alone music in my opinion.

(edited by author)

I have no idea of what is on those cds. I suggest you watch City Lights, Modern Times or The Gold Rush which all have scores by Chaplin arranged by others which is what I am refering to - not miscellaneous CDs. If you think the actual film scores are god-awful -

I have no comment. That's the nice way of putting it.

BTW he didn't just think he could, he DID do everything brilliantly - writing/conception, acting, directing and music.

Sorry William, my comment was hasty. I did manage to find one of my Cds.
"The music of Charles Chaplin Vol. 1 The silent movies". Blue Moon record.
A CD I bought about 10 years ago and somehow I remember being dissapointed by it. I think I was expecting piano music at the time. More like the Buster Keaton music. Anyway it has music for the movies "A day's pleasure", "Pay Day", "The Gold rush" and "The Circus". After a quick listen definitely not god-awful, so I'm taking my comment back and I'll go hide for a while [:O]ops:

yeah maybe instead of God awful it's really only just "not that great"?

Love putting words in other peoples mouths. let's see if I can get him in trouble...

[:)]

Evan Evans

I had the good fortune of watching Modern Times in David Raksin's film class at USC (Raksin scored the film with Chaplin.) The tune "Smile" is from that film, which to my ears is pure David Raksin. I tried to pin him down as to who was primarily responsible for that great, great, tune (which I've been playing on piano recently, curiously.) I was rewarded with a curt reply that is was a mutual effort (accompanied by a nasty glare.) Shame on me really - but I was young.

Dave Connor

Astonishing film btw, with wonderful, beautiful music. The genius moniker was never better bestowed. Chaplin really did do everything.

PaulR and William,

Got some more done on FEAR OF CLOWNS. Here are bars 1 through 22 as they stand now. There is still some missing Cello stuff, and ContraBass Trombone, as well as some unvoiced harmonies.

FEAR OF CLOWNS - 1M1 Main Titles "Clown Macabre" (Bars 1 - 22; 70%)

Evan Evans

@evanevans said:

PaulR and William,

Got some more done on FEAR OF CLOWNS. Here are bars 1 through 22 as they stand now. There is still some missing Cello stuff, and ContraBass Trombone, as well as some unvoiced harmonies.

FEAR OF CLOWNS - 1M1 Main Titles "Clown Macabre" (Bars 1 - 22; 70%)

Evan Evans

Sounds nice Evan, kind of reminded me of a cross between psycho and the Sandcrawler cues from starwars.

Evan,
Sounds bizarre and really good - disjointed, insane. Just what a horror film called "Fear of Clowns" needs. What the hell is that about anyway?

Marc,
I am an extreme Chaplin admirer, so I get defensive very easily. Maybe he didn't do so much on the actual composition of the music - according to Dave it sounds like some was ghost written. It is probably impossible to tell for certain at this time. But I really like the melodies he was at least partly responsible for, especially in City Lights.

@evanevans said:

PaulR and William,
Got some more done on FEAR OF CLOWNS. Here are bars 1 through 22 as they stand now. There is still some missing Cello stuff, and ContraBass Trombone, as well as some unvoiced harmonies.Evan Evans

Hehe Evan. Thats very good. Very good. And it sounds good. I can see what you mean about cellos and the trom the coming in there somewhere. Doesn't remind me of anything actually. Unvoiced harmonies at the end of these bars presumably. Your'e working too slowly my friend. Quicker, please, quicker.

Bill, I think it's about head-chopping and horror genre stuff like that. We had all that here in the sixteenth century, only for real. Got quite expert at it actually. Herrrummmph!

Evan, I must share this. Today, I went to see a guy. A client. I get into his house and sit down. There is music playing on the stereo. I say, 'thats good playing'. He replies, ' Yeah, it's called Undercurrent by Bill Evans. I say, mater-of-factly, Oh yeah, I know his boy. After that, I get the royal treatment, you know, lunch, the whole thing. I'm thinking, good 'ol Evan. Anyway, I leave 2 hours later and am driving through very narrow country lanes. I stop suddenly at a sort of crossroads, via some kind of esp thing, and a second later, a huge great coach goes goes hairing by with the word CARMEL on it's side. Must have beee the name of the coach company. Weird! Dave and Bill will tell you, I'm pretty down to earth and not given to weirdness, but f**k me. [[:|]] Not the place to write this, so appologies in advance.

Later

Paul

Thanks James and William,

Although most people will want to say it's another cool movie about a killer clown, it really is much more than that, even though that really is enough for it to be great anyway! I'll do anything to watch a killer clown movie!

A psychologist plots to have his soon to be divorced from wife murdered to cash out a life insurance policy he took out on her, by cohersing and convincing one of this most deranged patients that doing so will make him "BETTER". Lynn, the wife, suffered the loss of her parents in a traumatic accident coming back home from a Carnival in her early repressed youth. Ever since she exorcises her inner demons by painting extraordinary abstract art with scary clowns and circus themes. Little did the psychologist realize exactly HOW deranged this patient was as he takes the instruction to scare her at first by dressing up as a scary clown. He winds up going on a rampage, with the Husband getting more and more backed into his own criminal corner as the murder spree escalates. Trying to make things right, the husband hires another contract killer, but things just get even worse. To top it all off Lynn gets her first commission order to paint this old man's father who was a clown, but she is being traumatized but needs the money to pay for the representation to get custody of her kid before her husband does. Somewhere in there her assistant late at night finds out something dastardly about this old man, and perhaps his SON?, on the internet, and emails the gallery curator in her last heroic effort .... with her head on her shoulders .... LITERALLY!

The clown wields a medieval axe and generally takes over the movie with his unnerving presence and deadly insanity.

It's also a special ode to 80s horror films like NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET, HALLOWEEN, and FRIDAY THE 13th, but luckily it is more 2000-esque and only pokes fun at that sub-genre. It is smart, and well done, but ... let's be honest, it's also not a Warner Bros. film. But neither was Halloween. It's a good film.

The director's first film was HUNTING HUMANS, regarded as my best score, which I agree on. This is his second film, and I am loving the direction the score is going. I just hope HE LIKES IT!!!

Not gonna show it to him until my main title cue is complete.

[:)]

Evan Evans

Evans, Your excerpt was done entirely with VSL ?

Which vsl samples you used for the brass part at the beginning ?

@PaulR said:

Your'e working too slowly my friend. Quicker, please, quicker.

I totally agree. Quicker, please! I want to hear the whole thing.

@Carter said:

Evans, Your excerpt was done entirely with VSL ?

Which vsl samples you used for the brass part at the beginning ?

Pretty much. i have programmed them a little differently to do more.

However, the brass at the beginning is Dan Dean Ambient Horns, but I layered all 8 velocity layers into a mod wheel controlled crossfading patch. I worked those curves to death. I even got them sounding better since then.

Everything else is VSL.

Believe it or not, the orchestration is what's really making things sound great here. I am only using a single Piccolo, Bass Clarinet, Contrabassoon, those horns, and Strings.

Oh, and I think I am using a Ultimate Percussion timpani, but I am about to change that to VSL anyway. it doesn't matter. it's just a timpani.

AND the Horns are both VSl and Dan Dean. I am writing for a double horn ensemble AS I ALWAYS DO. 12 Horns. 6 open, 6 muted. my trademark.

[:)]

Evan Evans

@Another User said:

Anyway, I leave 2 hours later and am driving through very narrow country lanes. I stop suddenly at a sort of crossroads, via some kind of esp thing, and a second later, a huge great coach goes goes hairing by with the word CARMEL on it's side. ... but f**k me. [[:|]]

Ha ha. That's great. And also I dine frequently in a part of Carmel here called, THE CROSSROADS!

[:)]

Evan Evans

Updated, more complete PDF of FEAR OF CLOWNS - Score Concept:
FEAR OF CLOWNS - Score Concept

Evan Evans

One thing I noticed on Evan's score here and the Hunting Humans was the care taken to get a lot of smaller cresc/dim changes, just for phrasing rather than obvious big crescendos, etc. Like at the end of a phrase, or the beginning, that doesn't use a notated crescendo but the line benefits immensely from those small dynamic changes. You almost never hear that with sampler performances. That kind of detail creates more expression as well as realism than maybe anything else (aside from basic good samples).