Score: A Film Music Documentary Page #3

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notice the process.

As soon as you put

the music there

["PSYCHO" SHOWER SCENE

THEME MUSIC]

You're stuck in the mindset

of this psychotic killer.

[BATES] Outside

of the context of that movie,

people probably just wonder,

"What the hell is the noise?

Turn it off."

["PSYCHO" VIOLIN SOUND]

But it was so effective

in that moment.

It really tricked you

into believing you saw way more

of the violent act in that scene

than really occurred.

[SYNTH PAD MUSIC]

[HOLKENBORG] When you

read a book, and it says

"There is this great forest,"

everybody pictures a forest.

None of these forests

will be the same.

It's exactly

the same with music.

You can ask 15 other composers

to read that same script,

they will all have

different musical ideas.

One of the things that I find

so liberating about film music

is the fact

that any instrument is valid,

as long as it makes

the movie better.

I have about five storage areas

that are all filled

with musical equipment.

At a certain point,

I collect enough stuff

that when it starts to look

like a junk store,

then the people here do an intervention

and they take everything.

They scrape it clean, and I just

start over collecting things again.

["RUGRATS" PIANO THEME]

It was a piano

something like that.

I bought it at a toy store

at the Beverly Center,

and I played the theme song

for "Rugrats,"

because I thought I'd never need

to play the toy piano again.

It was like $60 bucks.

I thought, "What a lot of money"

to spend on a toy piano."

["RUGRATS" THEME SONG PLAYS]

So I bought it, brought it

to my studio, and recorded it.

Then I took it back

and got my money back.

And now I always wonder,

where is that toy piano

that I wrote the theme

song for "Rugrats" on?

Many times I start the cue from playing

other things, not the computer.

[PLAYING RHYTHM]

These are tuned sleigh bells.

They're very rare.

There's music in everything.

I'll be taking an elevator.

You'll be in the thing

and then all of a sudden

the door will be like [WHOOSH].

And you're just like,

"What was that, man?

That was cool, you know?" And

you come back to the studio

and try to recreate that sound.

What would that sound

like in musical form?

So I'm always trying to distill

what the world sounds like into music.

[DRUMMING]

[XYLOPHONE MUSIC PLAYS]

[HITTING PIANO STRINGS]

There is no such thing

as the wrong way to do something.

You just got to keep

trying, and the wrong way

is the wrong way,

until it's the right way.

It's a bit of a dinosaur

in that it went extinct

and gave birth to the violin,

and the guitar,

and a lot of other things. The

construction's pretty simple.

You have two drones, and in this

case, one melodic string.

It's kind of suggestive

looking, at least.

They sound kind of like when

a seal plays musical horns

in a circus or something.

[PLAYING PIANO]

I haven't played that for years.

Now that I've got

the groove, I can imagine

like what could be

a melody on top, right?

[VOCALIZING]

It's a paradise.

[RUMBLING]

[HOLKENBORG] I try to find

a general rhythm in a scene.

"Mad Max," I spent at least

seven months producing the score.

["MAD MAX:
FURY ROAD"

THEME PLAYS]

Trying this, trying that.

Different types of drums.

[THEME MUSIC CONTINUES]

The drums that were

uniquely recorded

for "Mad Max" just playing one.

[SYNTHESIZED DRUM BEATS]

If you combine all these

multiple tracks together,

then you can get a really,

really interesting quality

of these drums playing together

and they're pretty aggressive,

which I'm a big fan of.

[DRUM BEATS]

That actually makes, you

know, quite a difference.

Some directors want the music

to constantly hit the shots.

Other directors want really

long pieces of music

that go over multiple, multiple

shots at the same time.

["MAD MAX:
FURY ROAD"

THEME MUSIC CONTINUES]

These are things that you

constantly struggle with

when you work to picture.

[THEME MUSIC CONTINUES]

I don't care what music it

is, but if I make a track,

it has to give me

goosebumps, myself.

I don't say that to be arrogant,

but if it doesn't hit

me in the stomach

as being a great piece of music,

I cannot expect the audience,

anybody out there,

to have the feeling

that it hits the stomach.

If it gives me goosebumps,

it's pretty likely

it'll give someone

else goosebumps,

because I think goosebumps come

for everyone from similar places.

When we're looking at emotion,

and other kinds

of responses to music,

there are many structures

in the brain that are involved.

Music is so multifaceted,

it's so multidimensional.

Different aspects

of music are processed

by different systems

in the brain.

So when you're looking

at something,

like melody and pitch,

that's processed

by one system in the brain.

When you're looking at the time-based

aspects like tempo and rhythm,

that's processed

by another system.

We are having some sort

of a physiological response

that the body is showing,

and the goosebumps

is actually just a sign

of what's happening inside your body.

There's a system in the brain,

ventral striatum

and nucleus accumbens,

in particular,

it's our reward center.

Things like chocolate

or sex, these are reactions

that we can see involve

these structures.

So it's interesting because the same

kinds of pleasurable feelings

we get from chocolate,

dopamine release,

we could see some of the same kind

of activations in the brain to music.

It's the one art form

that technically doesn't exist.

You can touch musical

instruments,

you can touch cds or cassettes

or vinyl that contain the music,

but you can never actually

put your finger on music.

It's just air moving

a little bit differently.

All music is doing is providing

some structure to these air molecules.

So if a truck goes by,

it's pushing air molecules

against our inner ear.

If someone's playing cello,

it's pushing the exact same air

molecules against our ear,

just in a different,

structured way.

And there's something odd

but really, really interesting

and powerful about that.

But they'll never

take our freedom!

[MOBY] It makes armies

march into battle.

["BRAVEHEART" THEME MUSIC PLAYS]

It makes people cry.

["SCHINDLER'S LIST"

THEME MUSIC PLAYS]

[BATES] It can really

increase the overall emotion

in a way that will make a movie

stay with its audience

long after the last

frame of film.

We are doing something here.

We're harnessing something

from the ether.

Film music, and orchestral

music in general,

is of great interest

to neuroscientists

and to scientists because of its

great power to emote.

Film music is usually

something that

we're not paying

conscious attention to,

and yet it has such

a powerful impact on us.

[RABIN] "Remember

the Titans," the music for me

was written so

specifically for that.

["REMEMBER THE TITANS"

THEME MUSIC PLAYS]

It's very interesting

about using music in film,

it's providing a very specific

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