Score: A Film Music Documentary

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[BIRDS CHIRPING]

[QUIET PIANO MUSIC]

[MARCO BELTRAMI] The piano we built

for this movie "The Homesman,"

the problem with this

is that it's out in the elements,

and it disintegrates.

But I think it's a noble

death for a piano.

The wind is a big

feature in the movie

and we thought that it'd be great

to be able to tune the wind.

[QUIET PIANO MUSIC]

It sounds really amazing.

[MUSIC CONTINUES]

This is part of the fun

of experimenting.

You know, you figure

this stuff out.

[MUSIC CONTINUES]

One interesting

thing that happens

is the sound travels

through the wire

faster than it travels

through the air,

so you get this reverse

echo, which is really cool.

You don't even have to put

any effect on the sound at all.

I mean, you can hear it

all the way down in the valley.

It's more than just the concept

of doing something cool

that nobody's done before.

It's more fun.

Samurai's Death

here, on the hill.

["ROCKY" THEME BEGINS]

[CHRISTOPHER LENNERTZ]

When you hear "Rocky"

Everybody in the audience

knows what's going on.

The composer is a storyteller.

Music has the ability to shape

and in some cases alter

or even subvert what the filmmaker

is communicating.

The score is the heart

and the soul of the film.

Film music can make an exciting

scene more exciting.

We call it "emotion lotion,"

because we can make you feel

anything we want you to feel.

It's being able

to communicate on a level

that they can't

tell in pictures.

Great film music can elevate.

["ROCKY" THEME CLIMAX]

Getting strong now

moving on now

getting strong now

[JON BURLINGAME] Music

has always been

a part of the cinema-going

experience,

as far back as 1895 when

the Lumire brothers

were experimenting in Paris.

In the earliest

days, it is true,

music was thought

of as something

to cover up the noise

of the projector.

[ORGAN MUSIC PLAYS]

[LEONARD MALTIN] Silent

films were never silent.

There was at least a pianist

in the smallest Nickelodeons,

and sometimes the bridge

between them was a theatre organ.

[MUSIC CONTINUES]

[BILL FIELD] There were

many theatre organ makers,

but the one that produced

the most organs,

and is thought to be

probably the best

is the name Wurlitzer.

They showed how a person

could bring to life

the movies that were

otherwise quiet.

[MUSIC CONTINUES]

They either did a score

that was printed for them,

or they improvised

and created their own.

They were made part

of the moviegoing experience.

[MALTIN] A number

of people had toyed

with the idea of scores

in Hollywood.

[BURLINGAME] Max Steiner's score

for "King Kong" in 1933

was a landmark.

[CHRISTOPHER YOUNG] When

"King Kong" came out,

"Wait a second. Orchestra

music in a movie?"

["KING KONG" MUSIC PLAYS]

[DAVID NEWMAN] The only reason

he was able to do it

is because the movie

wasn't scary.

It looked kitschy and stupid,

because it was so It

was kitschy and stupid.

But then he put that music in.

[MUSIC CONTINUES]

It completely changed the movie.

It made it frightening.

[MUSIC CONTINUES]

[BURLINGAME] People had

not done that before.

It was really

the first major score

that demonstrated conclusively

the power of music in film.

Alfred Newman came from

New Haven, Connecticut,

an iconic figure

in the history of film music.

[THEME FROM

"CAPTAIN FROM CASTILLE" PLAYS]

A sound that favors

horns and woodwinds.

[MUSIC CONTINUES]

[DAVID NEWMAN] My father

was Alfred Newman.

In 1930, he came to L.A.

[20TH CENTURY FOX LOGO

MUSIC PLAYS]

He was at 20th Century

Fox for 20 years.

The Fox logo arguably

the most famous logo ever written

It wasn't written for Fox, it was written

for Goldwyn and it was rejected.

And then he used it for Fox

and Darryl Zanuck loved it.

There was nothing like that orchestra.

I'm talking about rubato.

It means "slowing down and speeding

up in an expressive way."

You would never read

a line of text like,

[ROBOTICALLY] "I went

to the market today."

"I went to the market today."

You'd have a you'd have

a structure of a phrase.

That is so uber

important in music.

They became expert

at making that musical.

That helped define what we know

as the classic Hollywood sound.

[JOHN DEBNEY] A spotting

session is the first time

we all get together,

look at the movie,

and decide where

the music's gonna go,

and what type of music

it's going to be.

All movies, the first 20 minutes

are too slow because we're

laying pipe.

So we want the music to be

something but not crazy.

The goal of a spotting session

is to have a dialogue

with the composer

that you've probably been postponing.

I've done my work,

I've done my design,

I've cast the movie,

I've shot it.

We've done all our beautiful

photography,

we've done

all our super-brilliant editing.

Now it's going through and trying

to communicate

what I've heard in my mind.

[NARRATOR ON FILM] Ah, mothers.

Mothers are our rocks.

So it says "Open Road Pictures,"

then we're going to cut

to possibly not the front door

but a shot before the front door

- that establishes the house.

- [DEBNEY] Got it.

[TREVOR RABIN] Spotting,

to me, is really important

because it gives me an idea

of what the director's looking at

and what he's looking for.

- Something that's peppy right away

- [DEBNEY] Peppy, yep.

And then we come here

and we slow down.

Kind of settle on that.

You're collaborating

with people.

I want them to feel

like a filmmaker like them

has come into the process.

I'm the one that specializes in

this one thing that they're

uncomfortable with.

You're trying to come

up with music

that supports the scene and complements

it in an unobtrusive way.

You spend as much

time as you can

immersing yourself

in the backstory.

As a film composer,

you're part

of the storytelling team.

[MAN] Do you want to spin

forward to the next cue, Garry?

- [MARSHALL] Yeah.

- [DEBNEY] This one sort of

ends when she comes

around the corner, right?

I try to get a sense

of what their insecurities are.

The more time you

spend with them,

the more you get those answers.

Most directors don't know

how to convert emotions

into musical into music.

So the composer has to kind

of act almost like a therapist

and go through all this mishmash

of what the director's saying

and get the essence of it.

What if we kind of tail

right into that?

- [WOMAN] Yeah, right, you

don't need to go -right?

- [MAN] Don't score him?

- Maybe don't score

Just put a nice

little transition, Garry,

that kind of just spills over.

- And then he comes up.

- [MARSHALL] Yeah.

Something like that maybe? Yeah.

We got the We got

the gist of it.

[HANS ZIMMER] Sort of in that first

conversation with the director

I have glimpses

of what it could be.

Every project starts

roughly the same way.

Somebody comes into the room

and says, "I've got this idea."

"It'll be fun to do. It'll be

a fun adventure," etc.

And they tell you the idea and you

get drawn in and you get excited.

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