Lost Issue: The Composer Guy

John Ottman Interview Part 4 of 4

by Mike Shapiro

Mike Shapiro: So what's Incognito about?

John Ottman: It's really a good story about an art forger who is not at peace with what he does. And he's just about to call it quits when he's hired by some multimillionaire art dealers to forge a Rembrandt, to create a Rembrandt that never existed. So they give him money to create this masterpiece that is supposedly found in a farmer's old attic...they pay the farmer $40 so he can just say yes this was found in his attic, etc. So now they have this new masterpiece, but the twist comes in when the forger (Jason Patric) wants out of the deal, wants to take his painting back and ends up being chased by the police. He ends up in a courtroom situation, and no one believes that it's not a real Rembrandt, because he's gone through all this painstaking effort to make it look authentic. He used real paints from the past, and melted down lead to make a certain blue...so the irony is that no one believes him.

It was a composer's dream project, and that's why I was just adamant about doing it because there are long sequences of almost five minutes in length with no dialogue and literally no sound design and just music. There are scenes like that throughout the film, so it gave me a huge opportunity to just do something different for me completely, and show off. So it's sort of a blend between Bach and Suspects. They'd temp-scored the film with the Suspects theme, which drove me insane. I tried to come up with something similar yet new, and I think I did; I sort of created a blend between Europe and New York -- because he's from NY but goes to Europe -- and there's a whole separate theme for the painting itself, and the intrigue behind that. And there are these long sequences I mentioned where he's crafting this masterpiece. They had temp-scored it with some horrible rendition of some Bach piece, this organ fugue, it was just hideously bad -- not the fugue itself, but the way it functioned as temp score. It really slowed the film down, and made the scene very passive. So my goal was to bring in the theme that I had established for this character, and still be able to again let my hair down in a classical way, with scales and so forth. It was a rush for me.

The funny thing is that big painting scene and one other were originally not supposed to be scored, where they just threw in some Beethoven and Bach. And I was so feverishly trying to finish the rest of the score that I was like, "Okay, I guess that stuff will work." But in the back of my mind I knew I should score this stuff, and never really admitted it since everyone seemed to like the Bach. But then in the eleventh hour I was asked to score the scenes. So I had three days to score the actual masterpiece section of the film -- the five minute section -- and another three and a half minute section where he goes and collects the materials for the painting. And the funny thing is those two scenes ended up being two of the best cues in the film...(Slyly) Cues 2 and 4 on the CD! Which we'll talk about later!

MS: How did you do it?

JO: I don't know...When you have to do something, and there's seemingly no human way to do it, you just do it and somehow something just comes out. That IS film scoring. And you don't have the luxury to think about it or even rationalize what you're doing. It's almost like a subliminal flow coming out, so maybe it's a good thing.

MS: So rumor has it that you had a lot of technical trials when recording.

JO: Where did you hear such a thing? (laughs) Yeah...I have this reputation for having this aura around me in which electronic things break, or technical phenomena occur that have "never happened before". This was one of those things. But before all that happened, the first cue we had to perform was one of the most complicated cues in the film...and to my dismay many players in the orchestra couldn't play it. There were some "less expensive" players in the orchestra, who I'd never seen before. When I did Snow White up there (with a different contractor and remote crew) it was a fabulous-sounding score, and everything went so right with no effort. So this time I was expecting the exact same thing...yet it was like a high school orchestra had just started playing my piece of music. It was a disaster...the brass was clamping, the strings were all over the place, and it was just a mess. I was wondering, "Am I on drugs? Is it just me?" And Tim Boyle looked at me with those eyes and said "I don't know who these people are, but it's not the people who played before." So in a rare moment of outward anger for me (it's usually well-bottled up), I went to the contractor and said, "Who are these people? They can't even play!" So we lost an entire half a day of recording, but when the players were promptly replaced, it was night and day. The next day the replacements played beautifully...BUT...

MS: Did that compact the recording schedule?

JO: It compacted it like crazy, so we had even a SHORTER amount of time to record a difficult score. We thought we were over that hurdle, and then IT happened: Tim takes me aside in the lunchroom with this look of death on his face, and he says: "I think we have to cancel this entire recording session." And I go "Wha wha what are you talking about?" And he goes, "Well, I'm hearing all these pops and crackles on the tracks." And I asked, "Well, is it certain tracks we can eliminate in the mix?" And he said, "Well, I think so, but I'm not sure." We ended up thinking we had solved the problem, and went on recording the score. I may have been in denial. All I saw was Apt Pupil film piling up in my house, and if there was any delay in recording this score I was going to be dead meat. I just knew we had to finish recording the score, so we did and as it turned out almost every cue had a snap, crackle, and pop to it. The noise eluded us, because it kept traveling from track to track!

So when we came back to LA at Blowtorch, a mix that should have taken three days took about a week and a half of 12 hour days, trying to get this stuff out. Meanwhile, Apt Pupil dailies were being sent to me on video to watch at Blowtorch! The mixing process was painful because I thought this was the best thing I had ever written. It's like giving birth to a baby and having it be retarded. So we were desperately tying to give it "brain surgery", and were passing certain tracks out to digital houses and trying to remove the crackles And they successfully did, but when we got those sections of the score back we found they had removed a lot more than the crackles; the frequency range was gone. So for a week and half we basically played "pop and crackle dodge" and cut through it, and it ended up sounding pretty good.

And so RCA-victor decided to pick the album up. We gave it to this guy who has created some new mastering technology using 32-bit something or other, or using 16-bit conversion whatever, and he claimed he could make the score even better-sounding. So they hired this guy, with this new scientific process to master the score and make it sound "absolutely fantastic". They brought me a DAT, comparing my mix and the re-mastered mix, and when they A/B-ed it, it was astounding. What they had done had brought out so many pieces of the orchestra that you never would hear, and they were doing this from a mix, which was something I didn't believe could happen. But it happened, and it sounded amazing. I was so blown away I said "Fine, let's just do it that way". The problem is that when the whole score sounds that clear, that "boosted," and that scintillating, my concern is it sort of has a burn-out, irritating effect. And now I'm just beside myself... I wish I could recall all the CD's and put the original master on there, because it's so agonizingly clear. Certain moments that I like to be subtle like glockenspiel or orchestral effects all stick out and have a very harsh feel to them. So maybe I should tell everyone when they buy the Incognito CD to turn the treble down and the bass up a little bit...There IS a disclaimer on the CD that says make sure your bass and treble are flat, and I would just say, read that disclaimer and maybe push your treble down a little bit and maybe it'll sound like it's supposed to sound.

MS: Does your experience with recording Incognito change your feelings for recording in Seattle in general?

JO: Not at all, I just know which people to hire now. I've learned. I will not go to Seattle again unless it's with the people I've used successfully before.

MS: How did you get involved with the project, and with John Badham?

JO: I think John and his editor, John Morris, liked my work from Suspects, and the people who were temp-scoring the film obviously liked Suspects because its score was all over the place. And I think when that normally happens they look to the composer who did that score, and hired me. I was extremely happy, not only because of the film, but because I got to work with John Badham who is easily the nicest person living on this planet. He's a really super, super nice guy. And the very valuable thing I learned on Incognito is that when you're really enjoying yourself as a composer, and not feeling like you're under a thick magnifying glass the entire time, and work with someone with a demeanor that makes you feel comfortable, you suddenly have a new mission to create a really great score for that person, because you love that person. So I think I really just wanted to make him happy, and that shows in the score.

The great thing about John Badham is that he comes from an older school of composing...he's worked with John Williams and many film composers who used to work in the old way, meaning that there wasn't a whole lot of synth demos that could be provided then. So I think John has come up the ropes of trusting the composer implicitly, and because I had that trust, and because I didn't have to preview every single note of music for him, it made me feel even more free. There was actually a cue or two he hadn't heard until the recording session. That was very strange for me. For the first time ever on a film I was recording music which the director had never heard before. The music was still in line with my themes, which he knew and had approved, but there was really kind of a wonderfully great feeling about doing that. In fact, the opening title sequence he hadn't heard until he got there because it was the last thing I composed -- I'd finished writing literally two nights before we left. But since I had worked with him for so many weeks, I knew by that time exactly what he liked, and I knew that he'd like it and didn't feel freaked out that he was going to have a heart attack at the session, wondering what the hell this was.

MS: So you didn't always have to make synth mockups?

JO: Well I did, but because of time he was just physically unable to come see some of them. He saw the important ones, which is what mattered. He actually was quite involved.

MS: How was the final mix?

JO: John was very open to my input with regards to the mix. I told him how horrified I was about having not gotten a good mix in Cable Guy, where they had somehow destroyed any vestige of what the score used to be for the film. So there's a scene in Incognito where a 747 takes off, and being from the old school like I knew John Badham was, I knew that he might favor the score instead of being sound-effects crazy. I asked him if he would just completely eliminate the 747 engines taking off in the middle of the musical sequence, and I told him, "What reason is there to hear this jet? We know what it sounds like. The engines of this jet have nothing to do with the story. Why don't we drop it completely? It'll be a nice moment." So we did, and it's really great when the music is playing and the 747 takes off, and it just gives you an idea again of how films could be creatively mixed these days. Less is often more.

However, because I did win that battle, he used that as a rationale to deep-six half of another cue over a train chase. He decided he liked the train sounds and the steam. He said, "You got the plane, I get the train." So, some of the cue ended up going by the wayside. It was a small price to pay to have the other cue shine!

MS: It's interesting how you're talking about the traditions of the old school versus the new ones...Do you think it's the advent of the technology that allows you to preview everything which makes for the heightened meticulousness of the younger directors?

JO: Yeah, I think they are able to be more meticulous, and that's fine as long as the composer's vision, as it were, isn't too confused by all the meticulousness. What's nice about a director who's experienced both worlds is that he has the discipline of both. He lets the composer go, and realizes that the composer has a plan. But at the same time if he hears something he doesn't like or has in mind specifically, today's technology allows him to refine these ideas and hear immediate results.

MS: So what's the project you're starting on now?

JO: It's called Goodbye Lover. It's a re-score job. This is going to be one of those situations where every note I write is going to be scrutinized, and that makes me feel very uncomfortable already...But because they'd already spent a shitload of money recording another score completely, they're very leery of the process this time around. So the condition of my doing the movie was that three producers plus Roland Joffe have to have approval of each piece of music I write. It's a very strange movie. It will allow me to do some really different stuff, more "hip" music for me. I'm thrilled to work with Roland. I just wish that a movie I'm going to do with him was something where I could do some landscape composing, some huge vistas and so forth to really blow him away. This film rides a line so delicately that the score is a challenge. It has to let the audience know they are allowed to have fun, while at the same time being thriller-like. It's going to be a very odd score -- a blend between thriller and ironic comedy. It's probably about 40% comedy, 15% thriller, and the remainder a question mark. And that's the way this movie is. It's different. That's good.

MS: So most of the scores you've done so far -- maybe all of them -- have handled dark subject matter in some flavor...

JO: Right. However, I would say Incognito was somewhat a departure from that. It did have its typical scenes of shifty people (the art dealers) and that Suspects-ish quality, but at the same time I was able to do non-dark music. But it wasn't really happy music... so I guess I still wasn't able to escape the envelope of the "tinged world", but I think through these classical sequences I was able to come up with music that flowers a little bit.

And Snow White as well, there's a couple of moments despite its dark creepiness where I was able to create some nice music. (Aloud, as if addressing an audience:) If John Ottman were hired on a really sweet, saccharine movie, he could do it!

MS: Would you be happier going on to more...smurfy films?

JO: Smurfy?

MS: Something happier, lighter...

JO: Oh, yes! Obviously I don't want to do something laughably sappy, but I would love to do something that's epic and beautiful. I'd also love to do something that's not necessarily a huge piece, but maybe smaller, simpler. I'd like to try a score that has a maybe very small ensemble where it has just a simple theme, with a flute and maybe a few strings and that's it. That would be kind of a fun score to do.

MS: Are there other composers whose types of projects that you're interested in? If there were another person's stereotype you had to shift into, whom would you pick?

JO: Well, on the big side I'd like to do a gargantuan science fiction films like David Arnold gets to do, because I think that's right up my alley. I grew up and was inspired by science fiction, so to me that'd be a dream come true. Like a Star Trek film! -- I'd die happy. At the other end, something like - who did River Runs Through It?

MS: Mark Isham.

JO: Yeah...At the same time I'd love to do a project like that, to experiment with a small ensemble.

MS: You could always write for TV.

JO: (Laughs.) Yes, well...I'd love to do a show's theme. That's about it.

MS: So Snow White has a CD coming out too?

JO: Finally! So will Goodbye, Lover apparently, as will Apt Pupil. I'll be a good year for me in that regard!

MS: So Cable Guy's doomed to be a promo forever because of the union issues?

JO: (Frown.) Mmm hmm.

MS: Have you had any additional editing offers?

JO: Yes, many, and the answer is no, but thanks anyway! Hey, at least I know I have something to fall back on.

THE END
 

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