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Posted: |
Mar 1, 2015 - 7:02 AM
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By: |
The Thing
(Member)
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I've just watched a YouTube interview with Christopher Young, and in one of the segments he states that his (and most composers) preference for score writing would be Drama films, because they give the greatest emotional flexibility, and are also more widely seen by the movie-watching public. Horror and Sci-Fi films have limited audience in comparison.
Link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b7quTOti-Rs (starts at 1:14)
I then did a search for Christopher Young horror scores, and found an interview where his opening sentence is, "I try to stay away from horror but the calls come, and I've worked with these directors and love it".
Link:
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/composer-christopher-young-horror-film-379342
Now, Christopher Young is one of those composers who is usually dependable to write a great score for genre movies, regardless of the quality of the film. He's done so much work in genre films, and deservedly carved a name worthy of respect. But both these comments made me wonder if you shouldn't try and bite off the hand that feeds you, otherwise you could get a reputation for being a bit picky-and-choosy, and stop being asked to score films they are good at, just because they would prefer something else.
Being selective doesn't seem to have hurt James Horner's career, with his choices of more niche or obscure films allowing him freedom to be more emotionally-expressive in his work. And obviously with both these examples, they're not actually criticising the work that they have been given which got them where they are today.
However, I was wondering if there are any well-known situations where composers (established or up-and-coming) have actually shot themselves in the foot, and ended up on the slippery downward slope where they became too difficult to be worth hiring, and their careers fell by the wayside because they made it known that they weren't that keen on the projects that they were commissioned to write for?
Think of this as one of those "Whatever happened to..." questions, but with a specific reason and consequence where the composer's own words ended up stigmatising him.
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Bernard Herrmann anyone?
Yeh, ive just read the liner notes to the new Obsession soundtrack and you might say he was a bit difficult to work with.
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I don't know what counts as shooting yourself in the foot.
A composer not compromising himself for a job he doesn't need—is that shooting himself in the foot?
Maybe if he's needy. Maybe the opposite is what's true if he's not.
Some might say John Barry shot himself in the foot by defying Barbra Streisand and Robert Redford on Prince of Tides and The Horse Whisperer respectively. On the other hand, by becoming the go-to guy for films like Out Of Africa he achieved what so many other composers didn't—he got the personal drama films everyone wanted to do but didn't because they were the monster movie guy.
Cheers
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