Movie Music

EDITOR'S NOTE: A COUPLE OF COMPOSER ITEMS.....

Williams and WAR OF THE WORLDS


In anticipating the June 28th release of John Williams’ soundtrack for Spielberg’s WAR OF THE WORLDS movie (and as Soundtrax awaits our own review copy), amazon.com has posted this editorial review of the score:

“Considering that the movie depicts a gigantic Martian invasion, you’d think Williams would have fully gone into his familiar bombastic mode, but he's refrained from doing so. While the composer makes full use of the outsize orchestra at his disposal, he prefers juxtaposing layers and building atmosphere rather than hitting you over the head with dramatic arias.

The Intersection Scene, for instance, begins slowly and minimally, then progressively builds into an ominous pounding; Williams then inserts spooky, otherworldly banshee-like effects that escalate into a frenzied pitch before abruptly disappearing as the track begins its descent back towards calm.

The sound is genuinely scary and could lead to a spike in blood pressure among impressionable listeners without the help of visuals.

Probing the Basement is another example of Williams masterfully building anxiety.

WAR OF THE WORLDS culminates with Escape from the Basket, in which Williams methodically builds tension over close to ten minutes.

And refreshingly, even when the action picks up, he mostly avoids the clichéd thundering timpani that often plague this type of score. --Elisabeth Vincentelli EDITOR'S NOTE: SOUNDS LIKE ANOTHER A-PLUS EFFORT BY JOHNNY W! (ONLY WHAT WE COME TO EXPECT, OF COURSE).

Hans Zimmer on "Batman Begins"
He‘s scored over 100 movies and has an Oscar decorating his mantelpiece. And now German–born composer Hans Zimmer is one of the men behind the stunning music which accompanies "Batman Begins".

This is what he has to say about his latest project.

Hans, how‘s LA treating you?

"You know something, the weather is fantastic. I‘ve just been driving along by the ocean, the dolphins were jumping, the air conditioning was working, the coffee‘s pretty reasonable, I don‘t know. I hate it." (laughs)

So how did you get involved with "Batman Begins"?

"Well there is a guy named Chris Nolan who one day phoned me out of the blue and said ‘Would I like to do this movie he was working on?‘ and after a while he was telling me what it was but the way he was describing it was that it was a small experimental film, just like the way he‘s made his movies. And I thought ‘Hey, this sounds really good, this is a really interesting angle on the superhero thing‘ ‘cos I don‘t know anything about superheroes. So I sort of said ‘yes‘ to him and then the mighty executives at Warner Bros. phoned me and they were using words like ‘franchise‘ and ‘industrial‘; all those big words that get really scary and I said ‘Well I don‘t think I can do it because I don‘t want to be responsible for ruining a perfectly good franchise, if you see what I mean. So then Chris has to go and chase me around the world for about a year and he would very cleverly not let me quite say no to him and at the same time feed me enough stimulating tidbits that I couldn‘t say no to him later. And then one day he finally said ‘Why don‘t you want to do it?‘ so I explained it was the franchise thing and that I wanted to do smaller things, I really want experiment with electronics for a bit and I really don‘t want to push a big orchestra around the landscape for a while and I don‘t know about the superhero thing too. So he said ‘Why don‘t you do it with a friend of yours, get him to take some of the weight off your shoulders?‘ So I remembered that James Newton Howard and I had been talking for years about doing something together. Our studios are four blocks apart and we see each other socially so I phoned him up and James was absolutely up for being my partner in crime on this."

The Robin to your Batman maybe?

"Well it actually didn‘t quite work out that way because we worked really as equals. I don‘t think there‘s a single piece of the movie that isn‘t somehow in some way or the other informed by the other. Like if you have two kids sitting at the piano bashing away and they say ‘This note‘, ‘No, this note‘ and that was really good, just getting over the embarrassment that both of us think we‘re terrible."

Obviously this isn‘t the first incarnation of Batman we‘ve seen and as such there are various themes that are associated with the character. Were you very careful to try and distance yourself from those?

"I wasn‘t careful at all. I just thought it would be counter productive to go look at the all the old movies again. I was working on a Chris Nolan movie with a whole bunch of new actors, a whole bunch of new toys and Batmobile that didn‘t look anything like that little Corgi thing I used to have as a kid. So I thought do what‘s appropriate for this film. We did write this huge heroic Batman theme which isn‘t in the movie because it just wasn‘t that sort of movie and I wanted to stay true to what Chris was putting on the screen."

Have you kept that theme, maybe for a sequel?

"Or maybe it‘ll just go in the bin. I find it very difficult to go through the drawers and pull out an old idea and think it‘s going to work. The fun part is sitting there in front of the screen and you‘re going ‘Whoa, ok, hang on a second. I have no idea what to do here, let‘s go and invent."

What instructions did Christopher Nolan give you when it came to the score?

"What he did, over the last year or so, when I was in the middle of lots of other projects, was phone up and put on his desperate voice and say ‘I‘m cutting this scene and can‘t find any music to support it. Can you just come up with something dark and propellant and just send it over to me?‘ And I wouldn‘t see the scene but I‘d just write something quick and send it over. The first time James and I saw the film it had all these bad little demos in it but in a way they set the tone and they set the pace of it. If I had sent him like a three–minute piece, there might have been three or four seconds in that that were inspired and all we did was try and build on them later. So in a funny way we‘d done the groundwork. We never sat down and spotted the movie, where you go through every scene and talk about it, because Chris and I had had so many conversations by that point about what the movie was and where it should go and what the arc of the characters was that it pretty much pre–defined how some of these musical motifs would get used."

You worked with another composer James Newton Howard on this. Did you enjoy having someone to bounce ideas off?

"Totally. And we got Chris really involved too. I don‘t think Chris got any sleep at all because if he wasn‘t on the dubbing stage he was with his editor. And because we‘re musicians we like working late nights we we‘d have him over at our studio just talking about ideas or just playing this. And so much of the sound design came from the music as well. There‘s a friend of mine, Mel Wesson, who‘s a great synthesist and I‘d said to him back in October ‘I‘d love you to make me some sounds of like giant wings flapping‘ and I think that became a big bench mark for us as far as the movie is concerned."

Would you be happy to work on a sequel if Chris came knocking again?

"I‘d do the same dance again of saying ‘Why would I want to do a sequel? How boring", If he came up with a legitimate reason why it could be different and why I didn‘t have to go over old ground then I‘d do it."

You mentioned that before you did this you didn‘t know much about superheroes. Has this opened your eyes to the comic book world?

"I like the comic book world. I‘m good friend with Robert Rodriguez and I was actually going to do the whole "Sin City" thing with him but because I was too busy I couldn‘t do it and I actually met Frank Miller before I started doing "Batman Begins" and, in a funny way, talking to Frank was sort of important for me on "Batman" because I knew what his concerns were about what had happened with the other movies and I don‘t think I ever told Chris this but I always had Frank‘s voice in the back of my mind basically going ‘Don‘t make it cute‘."

You mentioned earlier that you were scared…

"Well it‘s a huge big movie and there‘s only one reason for Warner Bros. to do a "Batman" movie and that‘s because they have a franchise and it makes money. But Chris was approaching it as ‘Well here‘s a dark, really psychologically disturbed character and we can really do something interesting with it‘ and that‘s the movie I was working on so I had to be very, very, very sure that I was going to be left alone and no–one was going to come along and tell me to be more commercial."

You‘re one of the busiest composers in Hollywood. Where do you find your inspiration?

"Fear, the fear of not getting it done. Sitting down with directors and chatting about stuff, I mean I always have ideas but it‘s finding the notes to express the ideas. With "Batman" the idea was really about a sound, I really had an idea of how to do the sound. And that I had really early on but I didn‘t know what the notes were. I remember sitting there in London for two weeks just getting rids of notes."

Finally it can‘t be one of your own but what‘s your favourite score and why?

"Ennio Morricone‘s "Once Upon A Time In America". I think first of all, it‘s just beautiful music. There isn‘t a single piece in it that isn‘t fantastic; I think it just makes that movie. I just think it does amazing things to that movie. There are many scores I like but that‘s one that I always think ‘Wow‘. Just the consistency of thought all the way through, he never veers from his path, he never puts a foot wrong. And all the tunes are really gorgeous. It‘s really hard to write a good tune."