- The Philharmonia Orchestra give about 150 concerts a year,
in London, across the whole of the UK,
and internationally around the globe.
But like most modern symphony orchestras,
the work does not begin and end in the concert hall.
Since the advent of talking pictures in the 1920s,
music has been an integral part
of film's storytelling powers.
While many famous classical composers
have adapted their talents to write screen music –
Shostakovich and Bernstein for instance –
the art of composing film scores
has also become a specialised industry,
and generations of composers have found that their talents
are better suited to writing film music than concert music.
This industry has expanded further still
in the last couple of decades
with the rise of the big-budget video game,
complete with orchestral soundtrack.
This film is going to look at how
orchestras make and record music,
both for movies and games.
- We've never kind of not had the music
at the core of what we're doing.
Often music comes in quite late in games,
like the same as in film and TV,
but we really put a lot of emphasis
on getting music in early,
and really making sure that that aspect of the game
has kind of equal importance
with visuals and everything else.
- Music is fantastic.
Using the right music,
in the right way, in the right quantity,
at the right time, where it's appropriate.
If it's the right music and it's organic
to what's going on, it's great, you know.
- Composers are a crucial part
of any film's creative team,
but in most cases their job only really starts
once the film is made.
The finished form – the locked cut – is handed over
and at that point the director and composer
will sit down together and view the entire thing.
The director will have some really clear ideas about
what kind of music they want, or where they might want it.
But also the composer will come to that meeting
with some musical ideas as well.
- The most important thing is that
the process has to start with the composer's emotional reaction to the film.
The first thing that happens is
the composer looks at the film in its...
albeit in its preliminary or raw rough-cut state,
and finds his or her emotional reaction to it.
Then, it's simply a long process
of discussion about the nature of the film,
the nature of the spirit of the music,
the kind of music it may be,
the composer will come up with
different ideas and suggest things.
- My approach to scoring is
really different with every project.
I try not to panic, that's the first thing,
and I don't mind leaving things till late.
I look at it and then I begin to sketch,
I suppose is what I do.
Doodles, or sometimes things directly into
Ardour or something like that
and just begin to knit ideas together
and try not to ask myself too many questions
and just follow where my emotional compass
tells me to go.
- This collaboration is slightly different for games
where composers will work more
throughout the whole project.
The shape of games, the fact that
the structure is different every time you play it,
means there are very special considerations
for the composer to make when thinking about
how the music might lead from one section to another.
- Often in video game, music has to be able to expand and contract
sort of horizontally and vertically.
And what I mean by that is, often I'll write music –
if you say A, B, C, D, E – E has to be able
to go next to A, and B has to be able
to fit next to D, so you're composing
in chunks that can move around.
They're kind of building blocks, really.
But also, in terms of the other way the music's collapsing,
is that everything in a video game session
in the studio will be recorded separately.
So you'll do a string session, a brass session,
winds, piano, harp, singer, choir,
whatever your combination is.
But then, the music has to...
you have to get a lot of bang for your buck, essentially.
So if you're working on a campaign game
that is 60 hours long,
you can't just write 40 hours of music.
So that music has to be able to expand and contract.
So if I write the string section,
it also has to be able to fit with maybe just solo piano,
or maybe the woodwinds will play with the harp so it's...
you're never just using that music once.
It always has to work in lots of different permutations.
I think what's interesting in comparison to film
is that with film music you can be exceptionally precise.
So if someone looks over and glances in a certain way,
you can score that moment so beautifully
and so delicately and so perfectly.
And I think sometimes the frustration of games music
is that it kind of sometimes has to work as more of a wash.
That you're not entirely sure
what's going to be happening at that moment,
so you don't get the luxury
of those beautiful, perfect moments
so you have to be really clever
and come at it in a very different way compositionally
to go "How do I support the player?"
whilst maybe not having that perfect moment to score.
We do get cut scenes sometimes in games,
which are little animated films that are always the same
in every game that you play, every time you play the game.
So you score those like a film.
So we sometimes do get those moments, but on the whole,
it's a completely different ball game, actually.
- There's quite a big range
of different types of collaboration between music and design.
And the... I suppose the least satisfying
as a game designer and I suspect a composer as well,
is when the game is more or less finished
and then a composer's brought in at the end to say,
"Could you just put some music on this?"
in a similar way that happens with a lot of film.
Other companies bring composers in much earlier.
They'll like maybe use them at the concept stage
so while they're developing sort of
ideas about the world and the game,
they'll also have bits of music being developed,
fragments that can be used for
inspiration or to help understand things.
- Once the first draft of composing is done,
music for films and games becomes a team effort.
A composer might compose a complete cue at the piano
but then hands that music over to one or more orchestrators
whose job is to take that piano piece
and expand it onto the full orchestra.
A typical feature film might have 60 minutes worth of music
divided up into 30 or 40 separate cues,
and the composer and his team might only have
a turnaround time of a few weeks,
so many hands make light work.
Once the score is finished and orchestrated,
the orchestra enter the process for the first time.
They assemble in a recording studio,
conducted usually by the composer or the main orchestrator.
Now, in the old days this process
was both simple and complicated.
The orchestra would play with the microphones turned on,
the film playing out on a screen,
the conductor conducting, eyes glued to the action.
In each take the conductor would aim for the hit point,
that moment where music and film absolutely had to coincide.
If they hit and the take from the orchestra was good
then the cue was in the can.
But if that savage brass chord
came slightly after the evil villain appeared,
then they'd have to stop and start over.
Quick learning and impeccable professionalism
became really important features
for any orchestra working in the studio.
You weren't popular with colleagues or employers
if a wrong note or a missed entry
ruined an otherwise perfect take.
British orchestras excelled at this,
and became known for their virtuosic sight-reading
and collective speed of thought.
- What's magical is that, of course,
they've got the score the previous day or something.
They walk in, they sit down, they pick up their instruments,
and they play as though they've known it
all their lives, you know.
- I'm always amazed by the London players,
I think that they have the best skills
and sight-reading expertise in the whole world.
People always want to record in London
because they're so adept.
They don't see the score beforehand
even if they have fiendishly difficult solos.
That music gets put in front of them and it's just like,
"Okay, now you're on," and I don't know how they do it.
And what's interesting for me as a composer is
I think it's like working with actors.
You have this idea and you have
a script in your head of how it's going to sound,
how they're going to interpret something,
and every time that gets blown out of the water
in the most beautiful and unexpected ways
because they are such phenomenal players.
And that's what I would say to young composers –
they always say, "Well, I can't afford an orchestra," –
I say, "You don't need an orchestra.
"Get three amazing musicians.
"That's so much better than a mediocre orchestra.
"Find the best, most talented, experienced players
"that you can, because they will elevate
"anything that you do."
- It's quite an interesting process.
I think it's often, it's very different
from what we do on a concert platform.
So what typically happens is
we have not seen the music until we arrive that day.
Sometimes the music is even being finished on the day,
so there'll be tracks that are being finished or edited
even throughout the recording.
So it's very much a living process
that the composers and the orchestra are engaged in.
So we show up and we just basically read the charts.
We play through the music, everybody's sight-reading,
and obviously you have more than one take to do it,
but one of the real particular things
about how a soundtrack is recorded
is that, of course, it has to fit exactly
to a scene of music, so if something is say
two minutes and 36 seconds,
the music has to precisely match that and has to, you know,
have the right thing happening at the right time
to correspond with what's on screen.
- Now, in the digital age, recording is done
to an audible electronic pulse called a click track,
which is linked to the film.
All the musicians in the studio wear headphones
through which they can hear that click,
and those music-to-picture synchronisation issues
are mostly a thing of the past.
- All the players will be wearing headsets the whole time,
and there's a little click track that's going in your ear.
Basically, we're following the click track precisely
so the music precisely fits the visual images.
- More than that, the use of click
also means that the orchestra no longer
has to be recorded as one whole body.
Instead, each section can now
record their music in isolation –
the strings on one day, the brass on another –
and the whole orchestra only comes together for the very first time
in the virtual world of the mixing suite.
- There's a story about Ennio Morricone and "The Mission",
a film that he did the music for.
He layered the sound in waves of recording
and nobody concerned with the movie,
they were all sitting there in the studios,
listening to these layers and layers.
He knew how it was gonna pan out, he knew.
They had no idea until it was all done.
Of course, it was a massively successful score, but there was panic.
But Morricone is one of the greats
and you don't mess with him, so they just let him do it.
Recording sessions can sound rather strange –
they're not necessarily "the music".
- At that point, you've got the final cut of the film.
The whole thing comes together
and they always pile into the control room when we play back
and they always want to know what it is, you know, and so on.
And that's when, finally, you see that
those moments in the film that are, you know,
coming together and it's magic.
- So the next time you sit and enjoy
a great film, or play a video game,
have a closer listen to the music
and think about how it complements
the action on the screen in front of you,
and also of all those highly-skilled individuals
involved in its creation and recording.
And imagine how it would be if there were no music at all.