 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Well, I don't want to spend a ot of time, but I will say I read Morricone will not listen to a temp track or watch a film with one.
I've gathered over time most composers don't like them. But a few days ago I read an interview with one (I can't recall his name) who said he actually likes them and they can help. Scary.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Well, I don't want to spend a ot of time, but I will say I read Morricone will not listen to a temp track or watch a film with one.
I've gathered over time most composers don't like them. But a few days ago I read an interview with one (I can't recall his name) who said he actually likes them and they can help. Scary.
Brian DePalma did the same thing and made the major mistake of showing SISTERS to Bernard Herrmann temped with his music. Herrmann, to put it mildly, did not like the temp tracks on the film.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Temp tracks were and are the death of film music. It's fine to give someone an idea of what you might like, but to temp a film with other's music and then expect your composer to ape it completely by just changing a few notes here and there - well, that's sadly where we are.
Can you imagine seminal movie scores like Psycho or To Kill a Mockingbird even existing today? You can't because they wouldn't. Neither of those films had temp tracks and hence the two composers were allowed complete and utter freedom to compose music FOR the film and thereby letting film music do its job rather than just laying music over a film like a Xeroxed rug. I frequently enjoy playing Name That Temp Track - it's pretty easy to play.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
I know some composers like them provided they are being used merely as a guide to some kind of (musically) stylistic approach favored by the filmmaker. The danger is when a filmmaker "lives" with this music for weeks and months until he/she is convinced this IS the score and that the hired composer must provide essentially the same music. It's one of the major reasons so many scores sound like so many others (because the composer is caught in the "emulation stranglehold"). I remember Marco Beltrami once talking about a cue in "Scream 2" that was "temped" with something by Hans Zimmer ("Broken Arrow?"), Marco, in his version, capturing the essence of the Zimmer music without actually copying it. In the end, the "Scream 2" producers purchased the "Broken Arrow" cue for use in the film ("Scream 2"). The ironic thing is Marco's cue sounded fine and would have worked better as it was tailored to the screen action.
While I obviously am on the side of the composer in most cases, Beltrami's guitar sound was incredibly weak in comparison to the Duane Eddy guitar on Broken Arrow. Marco should've had another go of it, at the very least.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
I would argue temp tracking is copyright infringement.
How?
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
Posted: |
Dec 14, 2014 - 1:21 AM
|
|
|
|
By: |
SchiffyM
(Member)
|
I was producing a television pilot a few years back in which wardrobe was very important. Since fashion is not really my forte, in the writing of the pilot, I found some catalogues and tore out pages with clothes that I thought were right for a few of the characters. When I showed these to our costume designer, she was very offended. She made it her business, she said, to cross out any reference in a script to how a character was dressed. It interfered with her creativity, she said. As it happened, the script had a running joke about one character's tie, and she refused to dress him in the tie that made the joke work. And while this guy was described as being from a blue-collar background who put on a blazer to go to work because it was required, she insisted on dressing him in thousand dollar Italian suits. She said this was how she saw the character, and scoffed at the description we'd had for him, and the photos we'd based our ideas on.
So we fired her.
My point is that yes, many composers are irked by temp tracks, in the way that costume designers don't want to be told how to dress a character, and actors hate line readings. And in a perfect world, everybody gets free reign to be creative. But sometimes, as much as you might not want to, you have to say to an actor "No, say it like this!"
A temp track can aid immeasurably in getting a sense of pace during the editing process. It can tell you composer what you're thinking much better than thousands of words can.
The problem, of course, comes when that temp is all you ever want to hear. Or when (as happens a lot these days), a film is tested into oblivion with a temp track, at which point deviation from the temp is determined to be an unacceptable deviation from the "scientifically" arrived-at perfect cut of the film.
So yes, there's plenty of opportunity for abuse in a temp. But a temp is not, in and of itself, a necessary evil. Yes, Bernard Herrmann hated them. But he seemed to hate pretty much everything, didn't he?
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: |
Dec 14, 2014 - 1:31 AM
|
|
|
|
By: |
bobbengan
(Member)
|
I was producing a television pilot a few years back in which wardrobe was very important. Since fashion is not really my forte, in the writing of the pilot, I found some catalogues and tore out pages with clothes that I thought were right for a few of the characters. When I showed these to our costume designer, she was very offended. She made it her business, she said, to cross out any reference in a script to how a character was dressed. It interfered with her creativity, she said. As it happened, the script had a running joke about one character's tie, and she refused to dress him in the tie that made the joke work. And while this guy was described as being from a blue-collar background who put on a blazer to go to work because it was required, she insisted on dressing him in thousand dollar Italian suits. She said this was how she saw the character, and scoffed at the description we'd had for him, and the photos we'd based our ideas on.
So we fired her.
Here here!
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: |
Dec 14, 2014 - 6:03 AM
|
|
|
|
By: |
Francis
(Member)
|
Go to any film score Q&A and it's a topic that will inevitably get discussed. It seems so ingrained in the industry today, that I find the approach of dismissing a temp track without listening to it a bit outdated. At the end of the day it is a tool of communication, the "temporary" part is important. If the composer is only asked to write music to emulate it note by note, then it is a bad means of communication. However if it's there to convey a style of music or to give an idea as to what the music needs to achieve, why not?
I personally don't like when I hear a musical cue reused verbatim out of context in another movie, it distracts me. However, when it still works in that scene and the alternative the composer wrote is not as strong, the question remains; go with the lesser cue because it is original music or go with the temp track that does the job? For an industry that's all about money, I can see how those decisions get made.
I've seen most composers talk dismissive about temp tracks, and perhaps rightly so, but I've also heard composers talk they like to have it present; I heard Cliff Martinez at the WSA tell how he had no problem working with temp tracks and getting inspiration from them.
Perhaps film score fans are seeing this topic only from the perspective of composers and originality when in fact even without temp track, a lot of them re-use their old ideas as well as quote or take inspiration from classical music and other genres. Yet no word is spoken of this outside of the odd film music forum or even at those Q&A's where "temp tracks" is eeeeeevil. 
The way I see it, film composing is a collaborative effort and if it can be achieved without temp track, great! If not, I personally don't see it as the big boogeyman it gets made out to be.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
