[MUSIC PLAYING]
CLIFF REDEKER: Good afternoon, everyone.
Welcome to another amazing Talks at Google event.
My name is Cliff Redeker and I have the privilege
of discussing today the new film out
called "Score," which is a journey through the history
of film composing and the interplay
between the visual medium and the audio.
And we're very thrilled today to be
joined by both the director, Matt Schrader,
as well as one of the composers featured
in the film, Joe Kramer.
So I'd like to invite them both to join me on stage
and we'll have a few questions.
[APPLAUSE]
[INTERPOSING VOICES]
CLIFF REDEKER: Great.
I think you'll have to hit the on
button just on the side there, just
to make sure that we're live.
So I was wondering if you could first tell me
a little bit about the film-- what the inspirations were,
and probably most importantly, since it's
a film about music film composition, how did
you score the score?
MATT SCHRADER: Yeah, we jumped into this as, really, fans--
somewhat educated fans, but not that educated.
And we thought it would be worthwhile to take
a plunge into this topic.
It's something that kind of amazingly
had not been done before as a documentary.
And we had several conversations about a lot of this
and realized there's an incredible depth--
obviously, it's such an immersive,
kind of creative art form in the first place.
But it hasn't really--
hasn't really been dived into before.
And so we actually wanted to try to allow some of the great
examples of film scores throughout the years,
throughout decades-- the really, last 100 years probably--
be the focal point, the thing that we share.
We came into this thinking we probably
don't need an original score.
At the end, we realized we kind of did.
We needed something to at least fill a few different areas
where it made a lot of sense, especially where we're
explaining something that needs something to carry
that just a little bit.
But I think that's largely it.
We wanted the focal point of this
to really be the work over the last many, many decades that
have made a big impact on-- not just musicians,
not just people in film, but also all of pop culture.
CLIFF REDEKER: Exactly.
And I also want to delve a little bit more
into the art form as well.
If you approach it as one of the largest employers of orchestras
these days, it's definitely in the classical tradition.
But at the same time, how did that diverge
from pure classical music?
You have Handel's water music, you
have a few big capital letter composers
that compose for film, that then seems
to have split a little bit.
And now it's actually on the way back,
where you have Nobue Uematsu in concert,
or Hans Zimmer in an auditorium.
So how did that journey happen?
JOE KRAMER: Well, I think what happened
is that we saw a decline in attendance
in classical orchestra concerts.
So city orchestras across America
were seeing radical drops in attendance.
At the same time, the young concert
goers that they were trying to attract
were interested in seeing concerts
with music from "The Legend of Zelda" or "Final Fantasy."
And that's where I first saw it happening,
was with video games.
And so you'd go to a concert hall,
and there'd be the audience filled
with people dressed as Link.
You know what I mean?
And they'd be there to hear the score
from the Wind Waker performed live with a symphony orchestra.
And then at the 20th anniversary of "E.T.,"
Williams did the score live to picture.
And it was the first time I'd seen it done in a concert,
ever.
And it was a huge success and it took a while
for all the studios' legal departments
to make all the arrangements but that became another thing.
And so what we're seeing now, the next step
was doing an entire film live to picture.
And the New York Philharmonic is getting
ready to do four Star Wars movies this fall.
The Hollywood Bowl every summer is doing--
last summer I think they did "E.T." and "Harry Potter."
They're doing two or three movies a year.
I saw them do "2001" live, which was amazing.
John Williams, as the conductor of the Boston Pops,
was always incorporating specially adapted suites
of his film music into the show--
into the shows.
And you saw once in a while, like, "Gone with the Wind"
would be on a program.
But they were usually Pops concerts
that were divided from the classical thing.
And what I would think would be interesting would be,
that in a way, the classic--
they start sneaking a classical piece
into one of these concerts that's video game music.
It wouldn't-- it would be harder to do in a concert where
they're showing the film.
But if you just had a concert where
it was like two hours of music from all the Star Wars movies,
without visual, and then you said,
we're going to throw some Mars in,
some of the planets in there--
[INAUDIBLE] you know.
That could be an interesting way to then reignite kid's interest
in the classical composers.
I mean, the challenge is that the language
of contemporary film music is so radically
different from the language of classical music.
There's a big gulf between the kind of melodic contrapuntal
writing that Beethoven was doing,
and what you're hearing in "Pirates of the Caribbean."
it's like Mitchell Loeb says.
It's Led Zeppelin with an orchestra.
CLIFF REDEKER: And then also I think it separates the art
form, as well.
Like, composing for film has inherent constraints
by definition.
The movie is only so long.
You're tying it into certain clips.
How do you work within that constraint, expand it?
And then if you're doing a suite or re-arrangement,
what's your approach when you cut out the visual component?
JOE KRAMER: Well, Yeah.
People always marvel at how much John Williams
music works on its own terms.
But-- and it's not to put it down, he's sort of-- for me,
he's sort of the pinnacle of the art form.
He makes specific arrangements for concerts.
And they're versions that you don't really
ever hear in the movie the way you hear them at Symphony Hall.
You know what I mean?
It's almost like making a hit single out of a Broadway show,
where the song is never performed that way in the show
but you've made a single of it for the radio.
What was the--
CLIFF REDEKER: How you work within the constraint itself?
JOE KRAMER: So, yeah--
CLIFF REDEKER: You know, two hours--
JOE KRAMER: To me, it's not a constraint.
For me, actually, it's a helpful skeleton
to hang musical ideas on.
So say for example, in "Mission Impossible,"
there's a sequence where Ethan Hunt, played by Tom--
the opening scene where he jumps on the wing
of that airplane and then hangs on to it as it takes off.
You have these sort of signposts along the way
that guide, and for me inform, the structure
of what I'm writing.
So we have the studio cards at the very beginning that
say Paramount Pictures, Sky Dance Pictures, et cetera, et
cetera, Bad Robot.
And then we have the shot of the field.
And then Benji pops up.
And then conversation begins and we're cutting back and forth.
And all of those events become markers
in my timeline in the computer that I use to write my music.
And it becomes sort of a binary process of saying, well,
is it fast or slow?
Is it brass or strings?
Is it light or dark?
Is it funny or tense?
And before I know it, I go, OK, so I've
got to write 12 seconds of funny string medium tempo music--
go.
And then-- and then-- but when you have that--
when you have a set of criteria that you have to satisfy,
you know-- as programmers, you would all know that.
If you've got to make a little applet that
does this specific thing, you've got that.
And in just the same way that you
have APIs built into however you're programming,
and dialog boxes that are built into the OS,
I've got those tricks in music that I
know will let me communicate.
Because what I'm trying to do is communicate to the audience--
essentially, a score is a second language track
that you're hearing underneath the dialogue.
And it's telling the story.
And it's informing the audience of connections
between characters, of where we are in the world,
of how we're supposed to be interpreting what we're
seeing on an emotional level.
And I'm trying to get at your subconscious using a shorthand
that's been developed--
CLIFF REDEKER: It triggers the emotional reaction, yeah.
And of course, thank you for calling programming an art.
We like to think it's an art here, too.
So mission accomplished.
But--
JOE KRAMER: Don't say that.
CLIFF REDEKER: But then I was also curious too,
if you could describe just the general process when you're--
are you approached to score these films?
Like is there-- are there auditions or demo reel?
Like, what's the-- how does it go
from a germ of an idea to you at the piano to you in the studio?
JOE KRAMER: Ideally, what happens is,
somebody has heard music that I've done for another film
and they're just so in love with it
that they've got to have me score
their movie no matter what.
And they call me and say, we want you to score this movie.
That never happens.
What happens is, I hear that they're making a movie
and I go, I think I'd like to try to work on that.
And I-- either I call them directly or through my agent,
we reach out to them and see if they're interested,
if they've hired somebody.
It's not a business that is--
oddly enough, it's not a career that is really driven
by the person who's doing it.
I can't force a director to hire me to score their movie.
And I don't have the means at my disposal
to write and direct and make movies,
just so I could score them.
So I'm sort of at the mercy of the people who are hiring.
And in my experience, that's principally directors.
Studio executives obviously play a part in that,
producers play a part in that.
In the case of "Mission Impossible,"
Tom Cruise played a part in that,
because the franchise is his baby.
But ultimately, it was--
Chris McQuarrie is the director of that film--
that made the decision.
And similarly, I did the score for "Jack Reacher"
with Chris McQuarrie.
Tom-- Chris loved the score, Tom loved the score.
By all accounts, everybody loved the score.
When Ed Zwick was approached to direct
the sequel, the first thing he told everybody is,
I don't want to bring anybody back from the first movie.
If I take this job, I want to have a fresh start.
Which means no-- new photographer, new editor,
new production design, new costume design, new composer.
And no matter how much I wanted to do the film
and how much maybe even Tom or Sky
Dance or Paramount would have liked me to do the film,
it was the director's call.
CLIFF REDEKER: Interesting.
And I think it's also worth pointing out that a lot of this
comes under very short notice from the time you get the call.
You're in the studio within a matter of weeks.
You're recording it within a matter of weeks.
How do you work under those deadlines and stay creative?
JOE KRAMER: You eat a lot.
So there's-- and then when you're not working,
you drink a lot.
There's a certain element of craftsmanship to it.
We all have in our brain, maybe, the perfect game
that we want to create for Chrome.
We all have the idea of what would be the perfect Google
App for the title page.
And then when we get the call to do it, we're suddenly like,
I don't--
I don't know what to do.
I had all these great ideas and now
I suddenly can't think what would
be the perfect game for me to define myself
as a programmer for the Google title page.
You know what I mean?
Similarly, with composing, I have all these ideas
and then I get the call and it's a movie that I never
thought I would be asked to work on, or a kind of music.
I'm like, how did they hear what I've done and think,
this is what I--
I'm the guy for this?
What's nice is, it frees up your thinking because
in any creative endeavor, what you're trying to do
is get past the censor in your head that saying that's dumb,
that's stinks, that's not going to work.
So you're-- I I'm--
and I have the, like I said, the craftsmanship tricks
or sparks, help spark my memory, or my creative thinking,
that I can rely on.
Like, the binary decision-- fast, slow, light, dark, happy,
sad.
There's a whole evil concept lurking beneath the whole film
world which the film doesn't really get into,
which is temporary music that's been cut into the film.
And oftentimes that can be instructive.
It can also be hand-cuffs, but at its best,
it's instructive in helping people
talk about something that's hard to talk about, which is music.
CLIFF REDEKER: And we actually had a question
from Dave down in our Los Angeles office
with that very same idea, the idea of temp tracks.
And what do you do when the director says,
I really love the temp track.
Make something like it.
Or-- how do you still infuse your own voice into something
that you didn't necessarily make yourself?
JOE KRAMER: I don't mean to be monopolizing,
so any time you want an answer, just--
MATT SCHRADER: No, you take the [INAUDIBLE]..
JOE KRAMER: You nudge me.
Well, I'm not a lawyer.
And I trust the production to have lawyers
that can vet what I submit.
But there are aspects of music that you can seize upon.
Because what you're trying to get at
is the feeling that the music is creating.
There was sort of a famous lawsuit in the early
'80s against the video game Jawbreaker, which--
Namco, I think, accused of ripping off Pac-Man.
And their argument was essentially,
if it feels like you're playing--
even if it's not the little yellow guy and it's not ghosts,
if it feels like you're playing Pac-Man,
aren't you infringing on our copyright?
And I can't remember how that thing was solved.
What you have to do with music is sort of go,
what are the elements that I can emulate without getting sued?
So chord changes-- you can't copyright chord changes.
Otherwise, every single blues artist
would be suing every other single blues artist.
You can't copyright rhythm, or else "Happy Birthday"
and "The Star-spangled Banner" would be suing each other,
because--
like, legend has it, Robert Kennedy
was so tone deaf that he couldn't
tell if it was the national anthem or "Happy Birthday"
unless they were singing the words.
You can't copyright what key something is,
or what tempo it is.
So right there, you've got tempo, chord changes, key,
and rhythm.
Now obviously, if you did all four of those,
you'd be really pushing your luck.
But those are four aspects that you
can examine in a piece of temp, and say, how can I
utilize those in one way or another
to create the same feeling.
CLIFF REDEKER: And you're also interjecting your own expertise
as well.
You can say like, this works out OK.
Here's how I want to plus or expand it, or--
JOE KRAMER: Right.
Well, and the other thing is thematic writing,
which I think helps a lot because if you have themes
for characters, what you're really then doing
is arranging those themes in the style of the music in the temp.
CLIFF REDEKER: So, Matt, I guess, going back to the film
as well, you're interviewing dozens of composers,
you have a psychologist that you interviewed as well
for the cognitive perspective.
How did you wind up selecting the list?
What was it like working with these different folks?
And also the-- the split between film scores and TV scores--
like, was that something intentional?
MATT SCHRADER: Yeah, and video games, too.
I mean, video games have become a huge--
huge, I mean, that's a big deal for composers now.
And you have to structure it differently.
You have to make something so that it's kind of--
the score is kind of maybe collapsible or expandable
sometimes, and it fits certain story lines.
Yeah, so that's one of-- we made the conscious decision,
because there's so many other developing things that
take a very similar model to what you see in the film score,
including television.
And they kind of expand on it or they
kind of collapse a little bit.
We thought the film score is the easiest one to really
comprehend and to get a sense of how it's--
how you develop something and how you can come back to it.
There is a certain kind of rhythm
and a certain kind of poetry if it's
done right, to the way that the music should work.
So that, I think we wanted to narrow
in on that kind of specific thing.
In terms of the people that we interviewed in the film,
the music psychologist that we interviewed is fantastic.
She's one of the foremost in her field
and has all of these crazy studies that she's done--
CLIFF REDEKER: The area in the brain that lights up.
MATT SCHRADER: Right.
I mean, it's that, but it's also-- it's eye tracking
things.
They've studied how music effects
where you look on screen.
And she's done some of these really great tests that
aren't in the film but she told us about,
about how if you have really scary music,
you're looking in the shadows of something.
You might miss something else entirely.
If you have happy music-- and there's
this great example from this film she told us about.
But someone rowing a boat across a--
across a river or a lake, and the left side of the screen
is almost all in shadows.
And the way that they studied where people were looking
for this is, they had some text pop up
in the shadow that's like bright red.
You're not going to miss it.
You'll see it for sure.
And when they play the scary music, everyone saw it.
They said, what's that text there?
But if they play happy music, someone rowing their boat
across the water, you never even look there.
You're following a story that kind of matches
the feeling that's there, too.
So it shows a little bit about how things can guide the eye.
And we thought that was really fascinating stuff.
CLIFF REDEKER: Well it's also a testament
to the craft that's been developed over so many years.
It's giving people an emotional context,
like playing with the theme.
I mean it's operatic onscreen.
MATT SCHRADER: Yeah.
Just the stories that you can feel through the music.
CLIFF REDEKER: And I also--
you also spoke with the session musicians, the editors.
And Joe, you can speak to this for you
personally, or more broadly for the other folks
that you work with.
Is there a sense of a recurring team?
Do composers have a choice of which
session musicians to work with.
whether they go to Abbey Road or down in LA, or--
how does that work?
And does it influence the process?
JOE KRAMER: It definitely influences the process.
You know, there's two--
I mean, I guess the first way to answer
the question is, there's two general ways that composers
work.
They either get a creative fee, and then
the recording and all of that stuff is handled by the studio.
Or they get what's called a package deal.
And generally in a package deal, it's
all the composer's responsibility.
They're given the music budget and told
come back with the score.
You'll find with a lot of package deals
that composers have mixer, orchestrator, musicians,
studio, everything where they like to work.
In this context, I mean the recording studio
where they record it.
And then you'll find with a creative fee,
it's often dictated by if it's a union film we
need to use a union orchestra.
If it was Princip-- like in the case of "Mission Impossible,"
because it was all done in London,
it made the most sense to record the score in London.
If it had been done in LA, there may
have been union requirements that insisted
that we should score it in LA.
And then if it's a smaller, independently financed film,
they're not going to have the means to afford the union.
And you do get--
to a certain degree, you get what you pay for.
And when you go with a top notch union orchestra like LA,
you're getting top notch performance.
And when you have to cut corners on the cost,
you're usually making up for that.
CLIFF REDEKER: Something's got to give.
JOE KRAMER: Yeah.
Something's got to give, and then you're
going to spend more time mixing and editing the performances
to get a usable recording.
It helps to know who you're writing for.
Certainly in the case-- say, "Harry Potter,"
John Williams has a longstanding relationship with a keyboardist
named Randy Kerber, and he's got this crazy thing where
the guy's on the [INAUDIBLE] going [MUSICAL SOUNDS]
for like, 30 seconds--
just all over the place.
And he sent it to Randy like a month before the recording
session and was like, I think you're
going to want to practice.
But he knew he was writing it for Randy,
and there's a video on YouTube somewhere of Randy
going like, I got it and it was just all [INAUDIBLE],,
I was like, ohh.
Like, it was a lot of notes, you know.
But you wouldn't necessarily take that chance
if you didn't know who the keyboardist was
that you were writing for.
Certainly on a film, where you've
got to get it done in a fairly remarkable amount of time.
When it's a concert piece and you
know that the orchestra will have time to rehearse,
you can take more chances.
CLIFF REDEKER: And the film also made a big deal
about the composer in the studio looking at the recording
as it's happening, versus the composer right
out there leading the orchestra along.
Do you have any preferences?
Do folks come into familiar styles?
Does it really have an impact on the output,
whether you control more from the studio or not?
MATT SCHRADER: Well, composers definitely
hear it differently in different places.
In some-- Joe's an example of someone who gets--
I mean, I guess I'll let you answer this.
There are some composers that want
to hear what is being recorded through everything,
so that they know what you're getting.
They maybe know what they can work
with in all of their editing and mixing and everything else.
But there's also, I mean--
Joe gave an example of this in the film
and also John Debney did as well.
But there is a feeling among a lot of composers
still that they really want to conduct,
because you are there with the orchestra
and you develop a little bit of a connection
and can influence the way they play certain things
and can correct things if they're not necessarily
being done the completely the way you want.
I'll let you explain it.
CLIFF REDEKER: Cuts out the middleman, I guess.
JOE KRAMER: Yeah.
I was just going to say it.
If I'm sitting in the booth and I've
got Pete Anthony conducting, and I want something
changed I have to tell Pete, who then tells the orchestra.
And that can work.
And that does work for a lot of people.
But personally-- there's two things for me, personally.
One is that, just how many chances
am I going to get to conduct symphony orchestras?
So every chance I get, I'm going to take.
And then the second thing is, I wrote it and I know
how it's supposed to go.
And when they play it and it's not right, I can address that.
And it's not because they don't know--
I mean, they're sight reading this stuff.
I'm throwing-- if you've seen "Mission Impossible"
Rogue Nation," there's a three minute sequence
with a motorcycle chase.
And I wrote that on Saturday at 2:00 in the afternoon,
and we were recording it Sunday morning at 11:00.
And the orchestra was sight reading it.
And take one could have gone in the movie.
I mean, these guys are top notch.
But they're sight reading.
And so what I'm trying to give them technically
as a conductor, that a person who
didn't write the music-- because the conductor,
then, is sight reading, too, if they're not the composer.
What I'm trying to give them is, this is what's going on.
They are looking at 50,000 notes, playing.
They're hearing a click in their headphones.
They're playing along-- diddle, diddle, diddle, diddle, diddle,
diddle, diddle, dana nana nana nana nana nana--
and then just, out of the corner of their eye,
they're keeping an eye on me as I'm going like this.
Dana na nana nana, dana na.
And what I want them to get in that split second
that they look at me is, if I'm going, then they go, oh, wait,
I've got to back way off.
It's communicate-- it's almost like dance.
Like, I'm communicating through physical motion
where they should be on a sort of emotional VU meter.
And if everybody's sight reading,
you're now losing a take, essentially, to that.
Do you know what I mean?
And time is money.
And you're trying to record--
I did a score for a television program last month,
and I recorded two hours of music in two days.
I mean, we had to fly.
So every five minutes I can save by not having
to do an extra take, that means in the end
I got an extra episode done, essentially.
CLIFF REDEKER: Cool.
Nice.
And I guess also, to move on to another part of the process,
is the creation of the soundtrack.
I personally find the remade "Thomas Crown Affair" one
of my all time favorite movies.
I loaded the soundtrack, and there was maybe
a hint of the melody, but not a whole lot of what I actually
remember hearing on film.
How do those decisions get made?
What are you influenced by when you're
creating the soundtrack versus the movie score?
MATT SCHRADER: We encountered-- this
is one Joe can answer for sure.
I think you talked about it briefly in that--
in the scene.
But there is a different mix that you have.
And we've actually encountered a lot of people, as we've--
as this film has started to be released that say,
I love that the end of whatever it
is, "Space Cowboys" or whatever-- but the soundtrack
is completely different.
It's not the end of it.
That's not the right music.
They did something else.
They took out this, they took out this.
And there is a different way that that typically composers
will treat a soundtrack as opposed to the film.
JOE KRAMER: Yeah I mean, the movie has to work as a film.
And there are--
Douglas Adams, I think, made a great comparison
of film making--
the guy who wrote "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy,"
where he said, getting a film made in Hollywood
is like cooking a steak by having 100 people walk past it
and breathe on it.
And it is like that.
It's slow, and it's tedious, and you never see any progress,
and then suddenly the thing is done.
But 100 people have all breathed their shtanky breath on it.
You know what I mean?
And the music is no exception.
So the director has what they want for the--
start with the composer.
The composer has a vision for the score.
The director has how they want the music to be.
The picture editor has been working with the director
since the beginning.
They're going to chime in their two cents.
In the case of "Mission Impossible,"
Tom Cruise is both producer and star, so he has an opinion.
The producer-- but the production company, Sky Dance
has an opinion.
Paramount has an opinion.
Perhaps they-- somebody at Paramount
might think, oh, would be so great
if we get to have Sting do a song in this movie.
So now suddenly Sting is in the mix.
And it's-- nobody's necessarily got a sinister motive.
But they're all thinking of ways, and what they see,
and how they could help.
So if you have a vision as a composer for a piece of music,
film music is not for you.
It's very much like, if you're a painter, they go,
I want that wall blue.
And you go, well, I really think it should be red.
I don't care what you think, I want that wall blue.
The scene needs it to be blue.
And you have to trust that the director is looking
at the whole big picture and understanding, yeah, OK, that
is blue for a reason.
So the soundtrack album, which has nothing to do--
necessarily have anything to do with pleasing a director
or pleasing producers, it can exist to please the composer.
And so I look at the soundtrack CD
as an opportunity to show my vision for the score,
or as close as I could get to it.
MATT SCHRADER: Do you think that reveals something?
Do you think that reveals something?
JOE KRAMER: Yeah.
In "Mission Impossible," I recor--
I sometimes recorded two different versions of a queue.
I recorded the one that I liked, and I recorded the one
that the director wanted for the film.
So for example, right in the beginning of the film,
there's a scene where a character pops up.
And I had a little tune that went like bum, dabadum, daba
dabadum, dabadum bum, dabadum.
And it drove the director crazy--
for whatever reason, he couldn't different-- he
couldn't listen to the dialogue with that tune playing.
And what finally satisfied him was
to have it go bum babadump, diba dabadum, babadam bum--
so it didn't change notes.
Which underneath the dialogue you didn't really--
it worked OK.
But on CD, I was like, I'd rather have the one
that changes notes because it's more interesting when there's
no dialogue on top of it.
So a great example, too, is the movie
"Alien," where the score in the film
is a hodgepodge of rewrites, and music cut from other films,
and classical music.
And the CD is actually sort of Gerry Goldsmith's vision
for what he thought the score to "Alien" should be.
Now it can be frustrating as a fan, when you see a movie
because you just see the movie.
You don't know all this other stuff took place
and you're going, I love that music!
And then you get the album and it's not there
or it's different.
And you're like-- you know.
And the other thing that's not so much an issue now
but used to really be an issue is
that you used to have to pay the orchestra twice.
Once to use the music in the film,
and then if you wanted to put it on CD
you had to pay them again, the same amount.
That was called the reuse fee.
And one of the reasons that London started
becoming an attractive option for American film studios
was that they--
they got rid of the reuse fee.
So if you recorded a score in London,
you could do whatever you wanted with the music
when it was done, whereas in America you could only,
you know.
So a lot of soundtrack albums, the movie
would have 90 minutes of score.
And they'd put 28 minutes on the CD
because that's all they can afford to repay.
So you'll see a lot of [INAUDIBLE] scores
from the '90s, they're like 28 minutes
long because that was the sweet spot where they could afford
to pay, but still make a profit enough to make more scores.
CLIFF REDEKER: So then do you write that in the liner
notes or something?
Like, this was my vision--
how can the casual fan understand or realize
all that stuff.
JOE KRAMER: Well, I would argue there are no casual film music
fans.
I would argue that--
CLIFF REDEKER: Ringtones.
JOE KRAMER: Yeah, well, I would say if you're a film music fan,
you're probably somewhat fastidious about that stuff
anyway.
And it depends.
I mean like a movie like Titanic,
most people probably bought--
the reason that had phenomenal sales
is not because of the score, no offense to the composer.
It's because of the song.
Like "Beauty and the Beast," everybody bought that album
really for the songs, not necessarily
for Menken's admittedly great score.
So when you're part of--
it's very rare that you have a thing like the original "Star
Wars" LP that goes whatever it did, double platinum
or whatever.
I mean, i was the best selling soundtrack album
until "The Bodyguard" I think.
And there were no songs, you know what I mean?
But that was very rare.
CLIFF REDEKER: Cool.
So we have time for some audience questions.
So feel free to--
I guess we have one off the bat.
We're short on mics, so tell it to me, I'll repeat it,
and we'll go from there.
So the question, just to repeat for the folks
at home was, about the scores.
Are they becoming less memorable?
Is that a trend?
Is that intentional versus "Wizard of Oz" or something?
JOE KRAMER: How nerdy do you--
an answer do you want?
CLIFF REDEKER: We are a nerdy bunch.
JOE KRAMER: OK.
Steven Spielberg used to make films on Super 8
in his neighborhood in New Jersey,
in his neighborhood in Arizona.
He'd make-- he'd make his version of Iwo Jima.
And it was a bunch of 13-year-old kids in blue jeans
and green t-shirts with like a plastic helmet that they got
at the Woolworth's.
And then when he'd show his silent movie,
he'd play the record with the orchestral score.
And you had to make such a cosmic jump in suspension
of disbelief to buy that these kids were
fighting on the sands of Iwo Jima that the score--
he needed all the help he could get.
So having this score play worked for him.
And that became a kind of musical scoring for his films
that he was comfortable with.
What happened is, in the '80s, with like, "Sex, Lies
and Videotape" and then the explosion
of independent cinema, you had people making movies
where these homemade movies were starting to be
acceptable on their own terms.
Instead of trying to make an assault on Iwo Jima,
they were making a movie about five guys hanging out
at the diner.
And so these films actually could get released.
And in order to get released, needed
music that could be cleared.
So you couldn't just track it with sophisticated film music.
You had to find somebody who could write the music for you.
And so you found somebody from a rock band,
generally, down the street who played
keyboards, who could write instrumental
music for your film.
And they may not have ever thought
of being a film composer.
They may have just thought, I'm the keyboardist
in the bar band.
And they end up scoring a movie by basically
writing instrumental songs.
Not necessarily writing a theme and counterpoint,
thinking about orchestration and arranging in the sort of sense
that Goldsmith and John Williams and Elmore
Bernstein were raised in.
They're coming at it from three chord rock.
And the epitome of that was Hans Zimmer,
who really rock and rolled the film score.
And the strings are the rhythm guitar,
the horns are the lead singer, and the percussion section
is the drummer.
And the bottom of the low strings are the bass.
And then there's synthesizers and
actual, literal, electric guitars in there, too.
And in conjunction with that approach
from the composing point of view, the filmmakers got--
their musical voice became this rock and roll vocabulary
rather than operatic film music, classic golden age film music
vocabulary.
So they didn't think that-- they didn't make films
with that sound in mind.
Spielberg makes a film, he's thinking
of what John Williams is going to bring to it.
When Soderberg makes a film, he's
thinking about what Cliff Martinez is
going to bring to it.
You know what I mean?
And they're going to bring two totally different things.
So I think in that long winded answer
is the germ of what you're hearing, which
is that the approach now is much more about background
instrumental music than necessarily about
thematic storytelling from a more conservatory, educated
musician.
And I hope I said that without insulting that other approach,
because I'm not knocking the other approach.
They're just two different approaches.
And I think the memor--
what makes music memorable is a theme.
I think first and foremost, it's the theme, or the tune,
not necessarily supportive string sustained chords.
That's a texture more than a memorable theme.
CLIFF REDEKER: Yeah.
Cool.
All right, so there's three questions.
We'll go here and then back around.
So--
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]
CLIFF REDEKER: The cook's in the kitchen,
and how much input you have when you create a score,
pre-packaged versus voices?
JOE KRAMER: Christopher McQuarrie,
who directed "Way of the Gun," "Jack Reacher" and "Rogue
Nation Mission Impossible."
So three-- three biggest movies I've done have been with him.
He had some experiences where he was really
frustrated on films that he'd written,
where the score sounded a lot like the temp.
And so he devised, as a film maker, and approach-- at least
when I worked with him-- of no temp at all.
He cuts the film based on the performance of the actors
and the writing of the dialogue, and gives it
to me with no music.
And what's liberating about that is,
I can make my own statement.
What's daunting about that is, there's no guidance whatsoever.
And if I start barking up one tree and Chris hates that tree,
I've got to come all the way back down and find another tree
and start working up that one.
So there's a lot of--
there can be a lot of--
not wasted energy, but there's a lot of work
that is done that never goes anywhere
because it was the wrong route.
Where temp can really help is when it gets rid of--
when the filmmakers have explored their options
and have decided no, this is the direction we want to go.
That can help a lot.
So OK, we know it's going to be orchestral symphonic music.
It's not going to be jazz, and it's not
going to be rhythmic electric guitar rock music.
OK, well, that helps a lot just to know that.
I'm trying to think of a film where
we had so many people on it with differing visions
and I'm actually kind of drawing a blank.
I mean--
CLIFF REDEKER: They're probably weeded out
before the process had started.
People jump on the ship.
MATT SCHRADER: The studio heads have
stories like that, where even they noticed that they've
had input from this person, this person, this person,
this person.
It all ends up being kind of this mish mash of idea.
Something that maybe you could see some potential,
but it never kind of came to fruition because everyone's
like, you do that, you do that.
Robert Kraft at Fox would tell us
how everyone thinks they're an expert in music
because we all like music for the most part.
So we're all like, oh, well, I would do this.
I like this.
I would do this.
And to a composer, that is sometimes
something that kind of restricts what you can do,
if someone says, well, I really like
this that's what we should do.
JOE KRAMER: The other mistake is thinking
that you have to-- either as a composer or a filmmaker--
like the music.
The job is not to make music that we like, necessarily.
It's to make music that works.
So I heard an anecdote about one of the Star Wars films
that wasn't directed by George Lucas.
And somebody who was brought on was like,
but I don't really like that John Williams music.
And they were like, it doesn't matter if you like it or not.
It's not about that.
That's the kind of music these movies need.
Whether you like it or not, it's been proven,
that's the voice of these films.
So maybe you like--
maybe you don't listen to that for fun
and maybe you don't enjoy that.
But that's irrelevant.
If you're making an action film but you
don't like to drive fast, that doesn't
mean you'd make everybody drive slow.
Do you know what I mean?
CLIFF REDEKER: Cool.
And so we had some other questions,
we'll do the back, back, and front.
So go, you, yeah.
Yeah.
MATT SCHRADER: It's very similar, yeah.
CLIFF REDEKER: And just to rephrase the question--
and so, to rephrase the question, the idea of remakes
is composers imitating themselves, taking extracts
from one film, putting it in another.
We had some other examples listed.
JOE KRAMER: Well, as a composer-- and then I'll go--
we have a voice.
You know, I have a way of saying things.
When David Mamet writes a script,
and he writes another script, there's--
or Sorkin, you know.
There's a voice behind that.
And there are certain gestures, you might say,
or musical ideas that are going to recur.
To give maximum benefit of the doubt to the filmmaker--
to the composers in the situations you mentioned,
I would say that they were probably
encouraged-- heavily encouraged-- by the filmmakers
to stick as close to a piece of temp music as they could.
And sometimes it's easier when it's your own stuff,
and sometimes it's harder actually
because you can't see the forest for the trees.
See what I mean?
Now, I'm going to show some ignorance here.
The Max Richter stuff was written as concert music,
wasn't it?
And then tracked into the film.
So that's-- right, so that's slightly different,
because I think it's also in "Shutter Island," right?
Do you know?
But I think it was-- it's like Arvo Part.
It was written for the concert hall, I believe.
I could be totally wrong.
Right.
So I mean, like you'll see Habanera from Carmen
is in every-- dan dan danan, dadan da dadan.
You'll hear that.
It was in "Scent of a Woman," but it's in everything.
You know what I mean?
Where they take a piece of classical music
that they love and they use in a film.
But then somebody sees that and loves that and goes,
oh, that's classical music?
I could just use that?
Great!
And then you'll see cases where the composer was encouraged
to copy the temp and they just couldn't do it,
so they've gone and bought the temp.
So like in the movie "Die Hard," when the blond bad guy jumps up
at the end of the movie, you think he's dead
and he jumps up with the gun and starts going nuts--
they just bought the music from Aliens
that they had temped in, because for whatever
reason, the director and the composer
could not come up with a solution together.
CLIFF REDEKER: Actually there is a--
on the topic of voice, because we entered this film
with the idea of, OK, I know what a Hans Zimmer
score sounds like.
I know what-- you know, there are a certain number of people
I can always--
almost always, I should say, identify John Williams.
I can, a lot of the times identify, Danny Elfman.
I can usually identify Thomas Newman.
A lot of these guys have a very kind of a signature style
if they're given--
you can do anything in the world for this film,
it's still going to sound like them.
And we tried to tap into that a couple of times,
including at Hans-- we kind of wanted
to know what Hans sounded like.
And so we-- but we thought about this with a few composers.
Some composers struggled with it,
but we asked them to just play something
and didn't give them any direction, really,
but kind of wanted to see where they went.
And a few of them--
usually on a piano-- but a few of them, including Hans,
you can tell--
and it's in the end of our movie--
but you can tell from the chords that he picks,
it sounds very Hans Zimmer.
It's a lot of long, kind of sustained chords.
But even the direction that he goes in making something up
for-- this is something for nothing,
it's just some people with cameras pointed at him.
It's never going to air anywhere.
But it sounds like the progression
that he would use in a movie.
So you can almost identify even that,
something that's 30 seconds long-- oh, yeah,
that sounds like Hans Zimmer.
So I think a lot of composers do have that unique voice
that you can pick up on even if sometimes it's
directly used in another film, but even if it's not.
CLIFF REDEKER: And speaking of the unique voice,
too, if you look at the "Mission Impossible" suite,
how do you approach composing each one?
Like, there's a core theme from the TV show
that kind of has to be there.
But are you-- do you feel forced to make
something sound completely different,
or do you like a sibling relationship
between the films, or--?
JOE KRAMER: Well, to speak specifically about Mission,
I actually-- it drives me nuts when
you go to one of these reboot or sequels
and they've gotten a different composer
from who did the original.
And they try to put the music from the original in.
And it usually ends up sounding like they've literally
just gone and gotten the sheet music from the first movie
and handed it to all the musicians and said,
just play this.
As opposed to actually organically
integrating that into this new score.
And so with Mission, it was really important to me--
it didn't necessarily help my career,
but it was really important to me
that you couldn't necessarily tell
where Lalo ended and I began.
Because I didn't want it to be like,
oh, it's Joe Kramer, Joe Kramer, Joe Kramer, Lalo Schifrin!
Brilliant!
Joe Kramer, Joe Kramer, Joe Kramer-- you know.
So I worked really hard to--
when Lalo would come in and out.
So, I mean, I embarked on a sort of reverse engineering
of the theme.
And breaking it down into its core pieces,
and then using those core pieces kind of like refrigerator
magnet poetry to create new music for the film.
And as a result, my hope was that what you would get is--
yeah, it's the same words, but I'm making new sentences
with those words.
CLIFF REDEKER: And for the documentary "King Cohen"
that you're working on, too, it's an historical perspective.
It's things that appeared on screen,
so it suggests something already.
In a sense it's a documentary medium.
Do you just feel compelled to go with the flow?
Or how would you strike out on your own?
JOE KRAMER: Well, you know, that was a movie--
to the gentleman who had been asking about too many cooks.
It wasn't necessarily that we had too many cooks,
but there were two interesting things on that film.
One was that the filmmakers were big film music fans.
And so they were very excited to finally get a chance
to actually help create--
participate in the creation of a score.
And I kept having to tell them like, guys, this film, we're
not necessarily going to be making music you actually like.
Like, I just wanted to warn them.
And in a documentary, music can often be just practical.
What we're doing is, we're cutting in and out of a movie.
And we cut-- we have a scene from a movie,
then we have a talking head, and then
we have another scene from the movie,
then a talking head, and then another scene from the movie.
And it sounds weird to have the score--
because a lot of these movies were
done so long ago and so cheaply that we don't have
the original elements anymore.
We've only got the finished movie.
So there was no way to get the dialogue without the score.
You know what I mean?
It was all or nothing.
So what I had to do was composed little bits of music
that could go under the talking head
to glue the whole thing together.
So that you'd come out of a clip from the movie,
I'd have the music in a sympathetic chord
and a similar sound play under the dialogue,
and then come back for the thing, for the next clip.
And sometimes they liked that and sometimes they
didn't, and then--
I actually haven't seen the finished film.
So I don't know how they ended up doing it,
because I gave them a couple of choices.
But yeah, it was a practical thing there
of just trying to make stuff glue together.
There was another film I worked on where
they had a thing from SNL, and they could get the clip.
It was for a Ralph Nader documentary.
They could get a clip of him talking,
but they couldn't use any of the music.
So when they came back from commercial with the screen
and it's the bluesy sax stuff, I'd make all that
and then figure out a way to get out
of that and into the dialogue from Nader.
So it's practical.
CLIFF REDEKER: Right.
So I think we have two final questions.
So we'll go with Bob Hurby, the president of the Mountain View
Film Society first.
True or not, did Hitchcock hate the--
JOE KRAMER: I haven't heard that he hated it,
but I do know that he was really happy with what--
and Hitchcock's a great example of what I talk about.
In modern film, this--
the hauteur has sort of run rampant.
And now everybody on a film is there to realize the directors
vision.
And what I'm supposed to do is write music
that the director would write, if he could write music.
And what Hitchcock did was, he was like, I'm not even
going to try to write music.
Bernard Hermann knows what he's doing.
Let him write music, and even if it's not what I'm expecting
or what I want, when I hear it, oh, yeah, that's great,
I never-- you know.
So I do think that he was impressed with that.
I do know they had a falling out, so--
but I can't say for sure that he hated the shower
scene until he saw it.
I do know that Joe Stefano, I think
it is, who wrote the book--
they had a screening of the rough cut
before the score was done and Stefano
after the screening was like, oh, my god, it's terrible.
And Hitchcock was like, no, no, no, wait.
This is the rough cut.
When you see it with the music and the sound,
you won't-- it'll be a different movie.
CLIFF REDEKER: So our last question in the back.
How do you [INAUDIBLE] your workload?
JOE KRAMER: I work in Sonar on a PC.
I'm the only composer I know who does that, but I learned it
when I was young and I just--
old dog can't--
I could learn logic.
I could learn-- my music editor is constantly on me to learn
Cubase and maybe I will.
But for now, I fly on it, because I have all my hotkeys
programmed that all that stuff.
So what I do is, I watch the film.
We have what's called a spotting session, where we discuss
where we think music will be and where it should go
and where it'll be quiet, and what the music will kind of be.
Will it be a sad score?
will it be-- is it a sad movie where we want a happier score
to help offset that?
Or is it a comedy, where we want the music to actually be like--
again, this latest project is a comedy.
It's a sort of satire on cop shows from the '80s.
So I did everything acoustically like a late '70s,
like "Rockford Files" or such, you know, "SWAT."
And the music is very straight.
If you hear the music away from the film,
much like the score to "Airplane."
If you hear that score away from the film,
it sounds like it's a disaster movie, not for a comedy.
So we'll have that discussion.
Then I live with the film.
I watch the film as much as possible.
Sometimes with the temp, more often without the temp,
and just start to learn the rhythm of the film
and pick up on connections.
Something the character says here that pays off there,
you know what I mean?
And I start thinking about--
I have a whole series of sort of mnemonics
that I go through in my brain to help
me start coming up with ideas.
So if it's a heroic character, the theme
is probably going to be kind of uplifting,
and it's going to have intervals in it of leaps.
If it's a sad movie, then it's obviously--
if it's a laconic sort of dour theme, that
might be almost like a waltz, but a sad, minor key waltz.
And I develop this material and I
keep a journal on the piano, where
I write all this stuff down.
And then usually when they're so mad at me
that I haven't shown them anything to picture yet,
I then finally start working to picture.
And I've got-- what I've got is like a cheat sheet of all
this thematic notation that I've done.
And I start drawing stuff up against it
and seeing what sticks.
And then I start making the cues.
And at that point, I've got my time line
where I go, OK, I've got to do 15
seconds of contemplative music, and then
he makes the decisions.
So then it becomes 20 seconds of definitive music
as he marches down the hall to talk to his boss.
And then he goes in the boss's office
and the boss is running around with the secretary,
so it's funny music for a few seconds.
You know what I mean?
So at that point-- and I'm doing all this stuff in Sonar.
And I may-- I have a template set up that mimics a symphony
orchestra or whatever ensemble I'm using
for this particular assignment.
And then I create a mock-up that sounds
as real as I could make it sound in a reasonable amount of time.
And I then do as much of that as I can for as much of the movie
as I can.
And then I have the director come over,
and we just watch it, from beginning to end, like a movie,
with as little interruption as possible.
Then we roll back and start going through,
measure by measure, scene by scene,
however it used to be done, to discuss
what works for the director and what doesn't work.
Now what I found recently is helping
a lot is to actually just email it to them.
Have their editors put in the film
and let them live with it for a week before we talk about it.
Because often what happens is, the first thing they think
is, it's not the temp.
It's not the temp, and now everything
I hate about the scene, I hate again,
because the temp fixed it all and this isn't fixing it all.
And it's not that.
It's that they're just seeing all the flaws, because that's
what they--
they made this thing and they can see
all the cracks in the paint.
John Lennon hated Sergeant Pepper, but he
was the only one, because he could see all the--
he could see behind the curtain.
So what I find is, if I let them live with it for a week,
then a lot of that panic that they got goes away
and they actually start looking at it on its own terms
and saying, no, all right, I see why you did that.
I see why you-- and we couldn't do that with the temp,
because no one else had done that before
and we couldn't find a piece of temp that turned that way.
There's a back and forth of revision.
When the queue is locked up--
I'm sorry this is so long winded-- that
is sent to the orchestrator as a MIDI file.
They open it up in Sibelius or Finale,
and they then adapt my MIDI performances
into notation which is then printed out and distributed
to the musicians at the session.
And that can happen, like in the case of the motorcycle chase
in "Mission Impossible," that had to happen
in less than 12 hours.
MATT SCHRADER: The orchestrator doesn't sleep.
Not very much.
JOE KRAMER: But they know.
It comes with-- they get paid for that.
CLIFF REDEKER: Awesome stuff.
Well, I invite you all to check out the documentary.
We'll have it up on Google Play, wherever movies are shown.
And of course, now I hope you have
an even deeper appreciation for the music
and the themes behind the score of the film.
So, Matt, Joe, thank you very much for speaking
with us today.
MATT SCHRADER: Thank you.
CLIFF REDEKER: Thank you.
MATT SCHRADER: Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]