Hi, I'm Ludwig Göransson,
and this is The Breakdown.
I got a call that
Mr. Nolan wanted to meet me, and
I was I had no idea
what it was about, but obviously
he's, you know, one of one of the
director that's, you know, inspired
me the most through through my life.
And also his collaboration
with with Zimmer being
groundbreaking.
You know, what they've been doing
with cinema and how they've been
together, pushing visuals
and music.
And I mean,
I saw I think Batman Begins when
I was 19 or 18 in
Sweden in the movie theater
and was just mind blown
when I saw that movie.
I was and also because
I, I never heard a score in
a blockbuster like having such much
so much room and really feeling like
a character of the movie.
And so I was I was I
left that whole experience just
I think I was like really determined
at the time after I saw that it was
like, I want to I want to be able to
do this. I want it.
I want to get in on this.
So I got the
call.
They wanted to meet and and
and I drove up to the studio
and we had
our first meeting in his
in his library or studio
library.
And we were just sitting there
listening to music.
We were he was I think it was like
six hours. We were just listening to
music. He played me a bunch of music
from his kind of
the soundtrack to his life and music
inspired him.
And and I played
a music that inspired me and that
that that had a great meaning
for my life, to my life.
And and we just kind
of bonded like that.
And then by the end, after six
hours, he was like, hey, do you want
to do you want to come back tomorrow
and read the script from a new
project?
And it's like, sure, yeah,
I'd love to.
And that was Tenet.
I thought it was going to be more
I mean, I did had to go to a
destination to read the script
and to go to an office.
Close the door.
I was I was
there was a table with the script on
and I had read it.
And the one sitting probably.
Four or five hours,
and then we had a meeting right
afterwards and I got to ask
Chris a bunch of questions,
and I had also from
reading the script I like
immediately, I knew that this is a
world and an experience
for for for the audience.
And even as I'm reading it as a
conspiracy, it's an experience
that I've never
had before.
And I knew the audience was in for
the same ride, so.
I immediately knew that Chris and
I have to create a totally unique
sound world, that that is going
to be jarring and
is going to be new and different and
a shock because
it's an emotion, an
experience that you never had
before.
I was a little bit surprised.
How savvy is it?
I mean, I know obviously that he
knows a lot about music, but
he's so interested in every detail
of filmmaking, in
every detail of the music making.
So, you know, I was.
I was. I was.
I was just blabbing on about,
like, you know, site chaining
and, you know,
Metrick modulations, and
he was all he was he was really
engaged and he was talking about
that kind of stuff. And and he kind
of pushed it that conversation
further.
So I knew that, OK, well,
this is going to be fun, but like,
we're going to be able to experiment
here.
And so
the next step, he asked me to
go start writing music.
And I went back to my studio
and he asked me to come back like
two weeks later.
And I went to my studio.
I started writing, I wrote
about I wrote one track.
He was about 12 minutes long.
And then two weeks later, I went
back to his studio and
we I actually
had to burn it on the CD because
he used the CD player.
So I had to, like, go find.
Like, my neighborhood is like a city
marker, pen and burnable
CDs, so I
can't just here with a CD and we put
it in and you just turn it up to
like eleven.
And it was so loud at one point.
In my first demo, I had this, like,
really heavy cytosine beat that
is that actually eventually
became the Trevor Scott
song, The Plan.
And as I remember, would that
be kicked in like this?
The whole house is kind of shaking.
And I was looking at it and it was
just.
And I think he was I think
he he definitely
was excited about about that
music and and we played it over
and over again at five, five, six
times.
And after that, we kind of just
that he's we sat
down and dissected the whole 12
minute piece, like what instruments
he likes, what little phrase
he likes and what chord
progressions. It's interesting.
And where we can push things
further.
And we met up every other
week
and I was writing new demos
and taking ideas further, further,
and this was about three months
before they had shot
anything. So,
uh, so when
when they finally took off to shoot
in in Tallinn,
I think was the first destination,
he already had like five, six CDs
with my music on it.
There's a lot of guitars.
There's a lot of sense, there's a
lot, but there's also a lot of
organic instruments.
And but everything
is also very heavily manipulated
and very heavily
derate derailed and ranged
so.
I think the sound is also very
blended together with the sound
design.
So what's interesting
about this is I think when,
you know, when people go to
see a movie today, you're
already expecting to hear a certain
sound.
You're you're already as an audience
member is expect to hear
a certain blend of
electronics and the
cinematic orchestra, you know,
and for this one
has really turned
turned its on its head and.
The music and the sound is still
heavily manipulated like that,
I mean, especially the organic
elements, enemy of the manipulated
that the
synth and tech elements.
So most of the times
you can't really tell what's what.
And for the ear, that's
very jarring and
it can be shocking to a lot
of people because you're trying to
hear things to try to put your
finger on what it is.
But but you can't.
There's a lot of hidden
music messages in the score and
there's a lot of thought put into
exactly when things are played
backwards and also how
they're played backwards because
there's so many different ways to
play something backwards.
You know, Bach played.
He wrote music.
He he was he wrote
inverted music.
You know, there's a famous
piece called Crab Cannon that you
play and then you play down
to the page and then you play from
the bottom up.
So, you know, it's basically
an inverted piece of music.
But when you listen to someone
performing that, it doesn't sound
like it doesn't sound like it's
reversed, you know,
and.
I mean, I was interested in both
aspects of it, like how can you keep
that tradition with writing inverted
melodies, but then also
in the modern tradition where
where you actually
hear music and it's actually
sounds rehearsed.
And but then another thing that's
interesting. What if it sounds
perverse, but it's actually the real
forward playing melody
and there's a bunch of that
going on in the score.
And then I had to I had to
figure out completely new ways of
recording and recording musicians
and recording techniques.
And it was a lot of experimentation.
And Betty was
so, so fun.
And I learned so much
by doing all this.
What was really important
to me and what was from the get go
is, was, is, was for the
music to enhance the story
and.
I wanted to make
you know, I want you like I
want you to be able to listen to the
music just by yourself
and follow exactly what's
going on in the movie.
And I
wanted to say wanted
that the action of the music to
really follow the storyline of
the action on screen.
And, you know, there's there's.
There's that scene in the movie
where.
He becomes inverted and
he steps in a
puddle of there's
there's like a puddle of water and
steps in and you see the water going
up to his shoe before he steps in
the puddle of water.
That's when I saw that I was like
best I want the music to sound like
like how that vision is, how
that visual is the actually
premiere, the Prolog in front of
I think it was in front of Star Wars
on IMAX screenings
last last year.
And so we had to finish this scene
and this piece of music
before the rest of the movie.
And this was also one of the early
demos that I wrote for
Chris.
He was like.
I can you right, can start writing
on some action ideas, and
I wrote this piece of
music that eventually became reading
night talent.
So what's
the first thing that the tenant
starts with is with an orchestra
tuning up and.
What's interesting is that the
orchestra tuning up is
it's an actually that's the one that
we recorded that in L.A.
with that lady there with the
orchestra tuning up.
But there's also some some
sort of uneasy
sense going on in the background.
So it immediately puts the audience
in in the chair
where they're like, is this
part of the score or is this part of
them just tuning up?
Or like, where am I?
It's such a because it's also
such a sound that you're so used
to hearing.
And it's but it's
a little uncomfortable.
You can kind of get a sense that
something is about to happen because
they also cut to these guys sitting
in a car.
So something is going on
and then these
terrorists comes in
and.
You have these big
hits coming.
And what that is, is it's actually
guitars.
It's three three
guitars
playing a very low note, I think I
played my eighth string
guitar in the back and they're
playing a
low note and then I pitched it.
Down.
So this is just how the guitar
sounds like.
I put some distortion and some
reverb on them,
and
then.
I started with
this since this little
arpeggio.
And it's like.
This whole thing, this whole since
that video is filtered through the
whole, so it's like it's it feels
like something is coming.
It's way of using,
you know.
Now, like Jaws, but
you get the sense of danger coming
for you.
And
when I did this arpeggio,
I created a center pedia
I.
Something that made,
you know, I'm always like, OK, well,
this is not this is not interesting
enough, like, how can I make this
more interesting?
And because and
so I think by accident,
I, like, added a beat.
I added one.
An extra bar
to the pattern.
And
you can hear that in the in the
actual rhythm
with the drums of the big hits to
come in.
It's a different rhythmic idea
here.
Oops. Let me put the filter
back on the.
So.
And it's going to play this.
So you try to figure out where
we're going be on, you know.
They really think of this
when I hear it like
this, so.
Three one one,
one two.
One, two, three, four.
And to me, it's just like we like,
you know.
I have everything pretty a lot of my
headphones, I'm like screaming into
my and don't know really where to
look, but
to me it opens up new ideas
to me where you can kind of mess
around a little bit with with an
even time signatures and
and.
Interesting rhythmic, rhythmic
patterns.