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| Tight Situations |
| Posted By: Jeff Bond on July 12, 2005 - 10:00 PM |
Tight Situations
John Ottman stretches with The Fantastic Four
By Jeff Bond
Excerpted from FSM Vol. 10, No. 3...
For a composer who cut his teeth on small films, John Ottman's projects
have been looking awfully big lately. His long working relationship
with Bryan Singer (for whom he scored and edited The Usual Suspects) finally nabbed
him the comic book epic X2: X-Men
United in 2003, after years of capturing the quirky, atmospheric
vibes of movies like Incognito, Snow
White: A Tale of Terror and Pumpkin.
The success of X2 helped make
Ottman's name good at 20th Century Fox, so this year in addition to the
thriller Hide and Seek he's
taking on his second comic book epic, The
Fantastic Four…all while gearing up for Singer's next highly
anticipated project: Superman Returns.
Ottman is Singer's frequent film editor as well as composer, and he did
double duty on X2, meaning Fantastic Four is the first film
on this scale he's scored without also editing. "It's a double-edged
sword and a total wash because there are equal advantages to being the
editor and to not being the editor," Ottman says. "I have a lot of time
to write the score not being the editor; I have one thing to worry
about so I'm loving that part of it. What I don't like about it is when
I'm the editor I have one person to answer to, so there are never too
many cooks in the kitchen. But I much prefer to have one task to worry
about."
While it's been common knowledge for quite a while among movie score
afficianados that Ottman is scoring Fantastic
Four, official announcement of the deal has come only recently.
Ottman says the finessing of arrangements to tackle Superman Returns was part of the
reason for that. "It was confirmed privately that I got [Fantastic Four] quite a long time
ago, but it was taking forever to put my Superman deal together, and we
didn't want them to freak out while we were doing the Superman deal thinking I wasn't
going to be able to finish Fantastic
Four and thinking I wasn't going to be able to make it to
Australia to edit the movie. We also didn't want the Fantastic Four people to think I
was going to leave their movie to go to do Superman, because there's
definitely a collision between the two schedules. We didn't want either
party to worry that I was going to abandon them so I wanted to keep the
whole thing under wraps."
Despite his burgeoning status on comic book sagas, Ottman says he came
onto Fantastic Four with very
little knowledge of the Marvel superheroes created by Stan Lee and Jack
Kirby in the early 1960s. "It was just like X-Men; I had no idea what
X-Men was before Bryan started doing X-Men
1," he admits. "I knew a little bit more about what Fantastic Four was because I
remember there being a cartoon series. I didn't know anything about
these people so I got on the Internet to research the characters when I
started writing, like the Invisible Girl -- who the hell is this girl?
Because I had to write some love theme for her and Mr. Fantastic and I
didn't know what her background was and who the hell she was, and the
film doesn't really tell you, so I had to do some research on my own."
Vic Mackey, Superhero
Fans of the comic book characters have been eyeing the Fantastic Four production carefully
as it's moved through the hands of several potential directors
(including Chris Columbus and Peyton Reed) to land in the lap of Tim
Story, who's best known for directing the hit comedy Barbershop and the not-hit comedy Taxi. While X-Men and Sam Raimi's Spider-Man became blockbusters by
treating their source with respect, Ang Lee's Hulk to some tilted the approach
too far in the arty direction. By all accounts Fantastic Four shouldn't have that
problem; word is Story was brought onboard because of his skills at
comedy, and the four heroes -- stretching superscientist Reed Richards
(Ioan Gruffud), rocky-skinned "Thing" Ben Grimm (Michael Chiklis),
hot-headed Human Torch Johnny Storm (Chris Evans) and nurturing
"Invisible Girl" Sue Storm (Jessica Alba) -- are being treated like a
dysfunctional, comic family. The shot at a broader appeal will also
include ample pop source music, and Ottman is still waiting to hear if
some sequences will receive traditional scoring or songs. But he says
Story's hands-off approach to the score itself is a welcome facet of
the production. "I like directors who are easygoing like Tim because I
feel more freedom to do things; it's more fun for me."
Ottman says the film's comic approach will be an aspect of the
underscoring but won't dominate it. "It's a very traditional use of a
huge orchestra; it's a superhero score that's just a little lighter.
The theme of course is a serious superhero theme, but the score
definitely has lighter moments, but done in a traditional way. It's
very Williams-esque in its sort of wink of the eye and so forth. We
record in three or four weeks but currently they're planning on a big
main title sequence where I can really show off the theme. That was the
one thing that was frustrating about X2
-- we had 40 seconds to establish a theme that's a short theme anyway,
and you barely get a chance to hear it. On this one the theme is much
more developed, and it'd be awesome to have a couple minutes to
establish it."
The musical approach to the characters will be more unified to reflect
the fact that they're a team, although Ottman says he will be taking
individual approaches to the heroes' special abilities. "Like X-Men they all have little small
motifs that relate to their powers, but also like X-Men the main theme really
reflects all of them because they've all become who they are because of
this incident in space." That includes the film's villain, metal-faced
Victor Von Doom (Nip/Tuck's Julian McMahon) -- the mysterious emperor
of Latveria in the comic but a rival scientist of Reed Richards in the
movie, who falls prey to the same cosmic accident that creates the
Fantastic Four. "Doctor Doom's theme is a minor version of the theme
itself, and there's a love theme for Invisible Girl and Mr. Fantastic.
The one thing I'm really excited about is that Ben has his own theme.
He has the most attention focused on him in the movie and his plight
really exemplifies everyone else's. He has a lot of remorse because he
can't change like they can back to his normal state, so I have this
kind of down-home theme for him when he has remorse about who he used
to be. It's Copland-esque, a sensitive theme, but I use solo trumpet
for it -- it's Americana."
Ottman plans to push some of his score to reflect some of the
contemporary rock music that will be featured as source music in the
film, but for a very specific dramatic purpose. "The Fantastic Four
become these celebrities of course, because they've just saved the day
on this bridge and then after that they become sort of rock stars in
the public's eye, so I use the opportunity to use the theme almost
verbatim. But it takes on this intentionally cheesy quality when they
arrive at the Baxter Building and flashbulbs are going off, and Johnny
gets out of his car and he's got his sunglasses on. It's really the
theme playing there."
For the full story, check out FSM
Vol. 10., No. 3, on sale now!
MailBag@filmscoremonthly.com
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Today in Film Score History:
April 25 |
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| Alec Puro born (1975) |
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| Brian May died (1997) |
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| David A. Hughes born (1960) |
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| Franz Waxman records his score for Stalag 17 (1952) |
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| Gary Hughes died (1978) |
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| Georges Delerue records his score for L’Homme Qui Revient De Loin (1972) |
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| Heinz Roemheld's score for Union Station is recorded (1950) |
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| John Williams begins recording his score for How to Steal a Million (1966) |
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