Score: A Film Music Documentary Page #7

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down to the subway in New York

and I'm halfway done and seeing

your name on the poster,

and saying, "Oh god," you know,

it's I have a long way to go

in two and a half weeks."

The more expensive

the movies get,

they do let you know this.

You know, the

the occasional, you know,

hint gets dropped by the studio

that you know, everything is riding on this

and you better, you know, whatever.

So this is not necessarily

inspirational,

it's just terrifying.

[MITCHELL LEIB] The complexity

of putting these things together

is immense now,

and the pressure is immense.

Our studio?

We're rolling close to a half

a billion dollar roll

every time we take

out a single movie.

Do you know how much

you have to make?

Every movie that you're making has to be

in the top 20 of all-time box office.

It's insane.

I just think the complexity

of the business overall has

Has brought a complexity

to the art form.

On the movie "Armageddon,"

which I did,

I literally got a clock

from Jerry Bruckheimer

with a countdown clock, counting

down to the day we finish,

and that was in front

of me at all times.

Deadlines can be terrifying.

[KRAEMER] The schedule on this

film is so accelerated,

it's on a whole other

level of professionality.

It's been about six hours

so far,

we've got

another three hours to go.

[MUTTERING] So guess what,

six clicks into bar 29.

Yeah, you should go

up a half step, I think.

This kind of situation

is so expensive,

and so hard to organize.

But there's always more

than one way to solve a problem.

[MUSIC STARTS]

And you can solve this problem

by changing the music at this cut,

or you can solve it by changing

the music at that cut.

[MUSIC ENDS]

Great.

[BURLINGAME] As filmmaking

styles have changed,

film music itself has changed.

And as filmmakers have realized

that, over the decades,

um, they've asked

for different things

and gotten different things.

What happened in 1978-79?

Somebody flipped

on a synthesizer.

When the synth came in,

actually, punk also happened.

And you have this incredible new

extroverted musical

intelligence going on.

From my heart

and from my hand

Why don't people understand

My intentions

ooh, weird

ooh ooh ooh ooh,

weird science

Danny Elfman. He

was a performer.

You know, Tim Burton, one day

he gets to make a movie.

Who's he going to have score it?

Hey, how about his favorite

band?

Yeah, love oingo boingo.

Who's in oingo boingo?

Who's really the principal

songwriter?

Who's really doing oh,

it's this guy Danny Elfman.

- Bingo-bango!

- Weird science

I was starting to write weird

but elaborate compositions.

I wrote this thing called "The Oingo

Boingo Piano Concerto no. 1 and a half."

Without having written that, I never

would have taken "Pee Wee's Big Adventure."

["PEE WEE'S BIG ADVENTURE"

MUSIC PLAYS]

[LURIE] Since he was a kid,

more or less,

just a really curious person

who's been amusing himself, you know?

At first it was, you know, just

the antics of Oingo Boingo,

and then the whole

Tim Burton, Pee Wee.

[KRAFT] There's nothing

bland about Danny.

Thanks a lot, crew.

[KRAFT] Danny is the composer

who grabs you by the collar during the main

title of the movie and says,

"I'm about to take you into a world,

and here's what's it's about."

["EDWARD SCISSORHANDS"

MUSIC PLAYS]

Danny's biggest strength is

I think he comes up with the most amazing

little short musical ideas

that then become

big musical ideas.

When he fully, like,

exploded with "Batman,"

everyone's mind was blown.

"Batman," there

was only one template: John Williams,

and we didn't wanna do that.

Again, I had nothing to go on.

There was no model

of what kind of chords,

how you do, like, a darker score

that's still fun and has energy.

["BATMAN" MAIN THEME PLAYS]

And I realized what I tried to learn

from Bernard Herrmann years earlier,

which is, there

is only one rule.

There are no rules.

["BATMAN" MAIN THEME PLAYS]

Boo!

[LAUGHS]

[THEME MUSIC CONTINUES]

He can broach the big,

orchestral world

with the very uber

contemporary world,

and he does it

really seamlessly.

And you can hear his sound,

his personality.

["SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION"

MUSIC PLAYS]

Thomas Newman

is one of those composers

that it's very difficult to sort

of describe what the sound is.

Like Danny Elfman, Thomas has

developed his own sound.

["SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION"

MUSIC PLAYS]

[EWART] The first score

I worked with him on

was "Shawshank Redemption."

His music is extremely edgy and unique

and he has an unmistakable mark,

it's like a watermark

on anything that he does.

[MUSIC SWELLS]

That's a lasting piece

of art, "Shawshank."

[MUSIC ENDS]

["AMERICAN BEAUTY" MUSIC STARTS]

[KEVIN SPACEY] My name

is Lester Burnham.

[MALTIN] When I saw

American Beauty,

and I heard Thomas

Newman's first notes

in the first frames of the movie

I think it's a marimba that you hear.

It absolutely sets

the tone of the film,

puts you a little off balance,

lets you know that you're

in for a somewhat odd,

offbeat take on American life.

[THEME MUSIC CONTINUES]

The great thing

about Thomas Newman

is he's managed to capture

a way of doing uncertainty,

so it's never

It's never too committed,

but it's musically kind of got

this great character to it.

[J.A.C. REDFORD] He

will generally, in a cue,

he'll establish a key center.

Things will start to weave in and

out around that, around that baseline.

["AMERICAN BEAUTY"

"PLASTIC BAG" MUSIC PLAYS]

That creates a kind of a texture

that lives behind the orchestra.

When the orchestra comes in, it

becomes part of that texture.

Well, that particular

language just didn't exist.

It was came out of Thomas

Newman's brain.

[BURLINGAME] Thomas

Newman is Alfred Newman's

youngest son.

Yes, he is orchestrally trained

and he can write a great

orchestral score,

but sometimes the movies

he was working on

required something

more intimate.

["FINDING NEMO"

THEME MUSIC PLAYS]

A lot ot times you

can get a mood,

a prevailing mood and just

slap it onto an image

and let it sit for two minutes.

[THEME MUSIC CONTINUES]

Everybody rips it off.

Everybody.

And they don't realize.

They don't realize.

They're thinking "This is film

music, this is how I do film music."

This is how I do that thing."

[THEME MUSIC CONTINUES]

And of course

it's been imitated and copied,

but he was

He was there at that moment

to introduce something new.

It's so difficult to sit down

and do that cold emotive

solo piano thing

'cause he's perfected it.

[LEIB] MTV is going on the air.

What video are they first

gonna play?

A song called, "Video

Killed the Radio Star"?

Video killed the radio star

Video killed the radio star

If you look closely, you can see

Hans Zimmer in the background.

Video killed the radio star

Video killed the radio star

Hans brought an unconventional

rock swagger, okay,

[LAUGHS] To film scoring.

["GLADIATOR" THEME MUSIC PLAYS]

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