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FSM Forum: Issue Two
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| Posted By: Jonathan Kaplan on August 3, 2004 - 10:00 PM |
FSM Forum: Issue Two
Film music is all about
relationships. There are the relationships between the composer and the
producers, the composer and the director, the composer and the scoring
team. Relationships exist between the performing musicians, their
sections and their ensemble. The music itself relates to the film's
dialogue, sound effects and mix; to an internal sense of musical
cohesion and structure; and to the drama. And yet, the paramount
relationship in the process is between the makers and their audience.
Film Score Monthly exists in order to
foster that relationship. Creators are allowed an environment for
explaining their efforts, and the audience gains a forum to tell them
what they think. But FSM has
it own identity as well, and a series of behind-the-scenes
relationships that ultimately result in our relationship with readers.
We're an audience with an audience. For years we've asked composers to
be brave and reveal their thoughts with the promise that the audience
will then better understand their efforts. To be fair, we're turning
that spotlight back on ourselves in this running series that is little
more than the FSM crew
sitting around talking film music. Self-important? Self-indulgent?
Probably. But it's honest. This is who we are and this is how we talk.
And this is what we care about.
So consider yourselves warned: This
is not breaking news. This is not critical analysis. This is us
squabbling, laughing, preaching, and teasing. This is us exercising our
belief that the audience is a significant part of the creative
equation.
You can revisit FSM Forum Issue One Here...
Doug Adams: Let's start this by
discussing what readers complain about us for. This'll be a good one.
I'm too specific with musical things.
Jon Kaplan: Okay, do you think
that Doug Adams is too musical in his written discussions of film music?
Al Kaplan: No, I think someone
needs to be.
JK: I think perhaps Doug is not
musical enough.
AK: Really?
DA: In real life or in print?
JK: No, in writing. I think you
make a constant effort to avoid talking specifically.
AK: You mean in interviews?
JK: Yes.
AK: Did you read that Thomas
Newman interview [FSM Vol. 9, No. 1]?
DA: I got in trouble for that
one.
JK: I sense you holding back.
Like you've been scolded. When we talk to you, just talking, you'll say
anything.
DA: [Laughs] Well, musically.
JK: Yeah. But that's okay,
because there needs to be some kind of balance.
DA: I'm just trying to be
cognizant of the fact that I'm not writing purely to musicians.
Although, I guess I'm not very good at that anyway, because some of the
stuff, like the Thomas Newman interview…
JK: The Thomas Newman interview
wasn't so much talking about musicianship as recording techniques.
DA: But that's so important to
what he does that it's hard to not talk about that.
JK: Oh no, no. It was terrific.
But that was the complaint. I don't think it was that they didn't
understand it, they just didn't give a s---. It seemed extraneous to
them, but it's like half of what he's doing.
DA: Wow, that's heartbreaking…
JK: Don't be heartbroken. I
wrote to you just to tell you I liked it.
DA: That was a pity vote,
wasn't it?
AK / JK: No!
DA: You know, I never thought
anything about it being too musical until I saw it show up on the
message board.
AK: "That Doug Adams, he
doesn't know when to shut his mouth."
DA: Even when I go back and
read it now, it doesn't appear to be oddly overly musical to me.
JK: It doesn't. We would have
to go through it now and see what the problem is if you wanted to
really get into this. When you were in London, what did you talk about
for the Return of the King
sessions? You were just detailing what was going on and relating
stories.
DA: Well, that one was specific
because I wanted to save material for the book. [The upcoming The Music of the Lord of the Rings Films.]
JK: Right. Well, go back one
further. What was the last one, not Thomas Newman, not Return of the King?
DA: This is going to be a
bizarre article just talking about why people don't like me.
AK: Yeah, let's change the
subject. Heard any good scores this year?
DA: [Laughs] Let's go back to Spider-man 2 a little bit. Here's
the ultimate proof that we're wrong about the score-hacking mattering:
No one's listening anyway. They couldn't find the theme in the first
film.
AK: Yeah, Ford Thaxton [said
he] couldn't.
JK: Do you really think that
people can't find the theme, or do you think that they just don't like the theme so they say there's
no theme?
DA: I think they couldn't find
it. Because now they're saying, "Hey I really like it! Did you notice
that one sounds like West Side Story?"
AK: What!?
JK: Wait, which one sounds like
West Side Story?
DA: [Singing badly]: "…a time and place
for us…"
JK: [Buries his face in his hands and screams
loudly] AAAARRRRRGGGGHHHH! I want to see how you write out that
scream.
DA: It's going to have a lot of
"A"s and "H"s.
JK: But you should describe the
way I bury my face in my hands. It's kind of guttural…
AK: I heard some "G"s in there.
JK: …It's muted because I'm
covering my mouth completely so I don't hurt your ears.
DA: It's the Garfield scream.
AK: That did sound like the
Garfield scream.
DA: Lorenzo Music, eat your
heart out.
JK: I don't know if there was
an "R." I guess it was close.
DA: Well, obviously I'll
transcribe it so carefully that…
JK: So they really didn't hear
any theme?
DA: They also said, "Oh you
notice the Doc Ock theme!?" But of course I've never seen anyone
mention the fact that the Green Goblin theme was in there because it
was a reference to something that no one got the first time. Why do
people not get those themes?
JK: I don't know if this has
anything to do with it, but I think the mix was much better in this
one.
AK: I thought the mix was
alright in the first one.
JK: It was alright, but this
was an excellent, excellent mix, with the exception of some of the
action stuff -- which I was glad for -- like the train. But a lot of
the dialogue scenes where it's totally muted in a lot of movies, like
it's a radio in the background, it was really present for almost the
whole movie in Spider-man 2.
And I saw it in two different theaters, both the same.
DA: There were at least four
themes that I can think of off the top of my head in Spider-man 1. Do you credit the mix
for people missing the themes in Spider-man
1?
JK: It could be a factor. I
would say it would be more likely if Spider-man
had a bad mix, but it had a fairly normal mix. I don't know, maybe it's
because they've seen it again. Now they've seen Spider-man 2 and there's that
familiarity.
DA: But he used the theme 40
times in the first film, there should be some familiarity by act three.
JK: Some people it takes four
times. One, for some people. Some people maybe it's really 80. Is that
possible?
DA: Yes, it's possible, it's
just depressing.
AK: There are people who can't
pull the themes out of Lord of the
Rings.
JK: That's true.
DA: There are people that can't
find the almost 70 themes in Lord of
the Rings. That's fine if you can't get the Diminishment of the
Elves theme, or whatever, but if you can't figure out the Fellowship
theme by this point…
AK: …there's a problem.
JK: That can take us to another
topic: The idea of having themes that are never codified in one exact
form, themes that change a little bit each time they come around.
DA: The anti-John Williams
approach?
JK: John Williams develops.
DA: No, no, I don't mean that.
I mean Williams always gives you "The Version" of a theme, usually in a
concert track.
JK: Right, you know which one
is The Version.
DA: His CDs are often like a
primer to the material. Here's the material and now hear me apply it.
JK: Yes. It's close to that
with some of the themes in Lord of
the Rings, but on many of them you don't have The Version. The
Shire theme you don't have The Version.
DA: The prime version.
JK: Prime, that's the word. Is
that a bad idea to have themes that change a little bit each time
around? Does that make it harder for the ear to pick up on them, or
does that make it more interesting for people who know what's happening
and want it to be a little different each time?
AK: Personally, I like to have
a change each time.
DA: I'll take it a step
further. I think that's what film music is. It's supposed to be the
development of these things. Either in specific themes or in the larger
atmospheres. If you have a character that doesn't change throughout the
course of the film...
JK: Exactly! That's the main
point that everybody makes about a film. "What's your character arc?"
So if the theme is the same all along, why?
DA: That's one of the things
that are beautiful about film music: its application as a drama. It can
have that architecture to it, where it's a progression of an idea. It's
storytelling in a very abstract form. And you're not telling a story if
you just go "da-da-daaa" every time you see the hero.
JK: A teacher at USC at the
film scoring program said that it's absolutely wrong to develop a
theme. You have to hit the audience over the head with the same theme
over and over again. If you change it, even sometimes by one note,
there's no way it's going to register with them. If you were to start
on beat two instead of beat one and change the pick-up a little bit… I
did that in a short example of something and he didn't even hear that
it was the same theme. I said, "I changed one note." And he said, "That
does it, you have to stay to the same thing."
AK: I know, he said the same
thing to me.
DA: There's a very famous film
composer that said that you should write a film score with the idea
that the audience is only going to hear it once.
JK: Interesting. Does that mean
you stick to it [The Version of a theme] more?
DA: Does that mean you play to
the lowest common denominator?
JK: Part of it does mean that, I think.
DA: That's an awfully
depressing way to approach things, though.
JK: It is. I don't like that
comment, to tell you the truth.
DA: I agree.
JK: It has to function so that
if you hear it once it at least makes sense. You can't have things
interlocking, or things that you can't possibly understand the first
time around. It has to work once. But that doesn't mean that there
can't be things embedded in there.
AK: You have to be able to
peel back the layers and find other things.
JK: You have to be discovering
things as you go. If you watch a movie one time -- forget the score --
and you've gotten everything from that movie, that's it, you never need
to see that movie again, f--- that movie! That's what I say. It's not a
good movie.
DA: That's fair. Do you listen
to Beethoven's Seventh Symphony one time and you've got it all?
JK: That's what I'm saying. You
have to be able to come back to something.
DA: Yes. If art has a
resonance, it should be a repetitive resonance. Every time you revisit
it, either you find something new included in there, or it has a new relation to
your life.
JK: Yes, absolutely! There's a
big difference between something being good once and something being
good forever.
DA: Obviously not every film
aspires to that. Some films are probably made to be seen once. If
you're scoring something like that, do you just go ahead and go for the
lowest common denominator so your audience gets it the first time?
JK: I don't know. It's like, is
it okay to make something bad just because everything around it is bad?
So why not let the rest be bad? If it's good will it stick out while
everything else is bad?
DA: Well, that's the argument
with [Yared's] Troy.
JK: With music it might be a
little bit different. Because if you have a horrendous movie, but
there's one great performance in it, why not? I don't hate the guy for
giving the good performance. I say, that's a great performance in the
midst of a piece of s---.
AK: Johnny Depp in Pirates of the Caribbean.
JK: Jerry Goldsmith has been
that great performance in many a terrible film.
DA: Probably the majority of
his career.
JK: And is that a bad thing?
Would you rather Jerry Goldsmith had scored Damnation Alley like the movie it
was…?
AK: …or the best possible
version of that movie?
DA: Or The Swarm?
JK: Does it hurt a terrible,
awful piece of s--- like Damnation
Alley?
DA: From a commercial level, it
probably helped a lot.
JK: Does it stick out?
AK: Does it get in the way? It
makes things more interesting.
JK: It is the tie that binds.
More next week!
Join in the fun...
MailBag@filmscoremonthly.com
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Today in Film Score History:
January 17 |
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| Charles Bernstein begins recording his score for Love at First Bite (1979) |
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| Harry Robinson died (1996) |
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| John Williams begins recording his score to Return of the Jedi (1983) |
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| Rolf Wilhelm died (2013) |
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| Ryuichi Sakamoto born (1952) |
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