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 Twopop 
Rear Admiral (Ambassador)
Joined: Jul 21, 2004
Member#: 7382
Posts: 2673
Location: Oregon
    
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 Posted:
Sat Sep 15, 2007 1:31 pm Post subject: Soundtrack Scoring Seminar in Hollywood - Sep/Oct 07 |
 
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The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences will hold 3 Thursday evening seminars in Hollywood on the music scoring process – Sep 20, Sep 27, & Oct 3.
They are open to the public.
The Music Soundtrack series passes are $30; $20 for students. You can buy tickets at the door of single event for $10.
Composers on the panels include:
Charles Bernstein
Lalo Schifrin
Jan Kaczmarek
Bruce Broughton
Mychael Danna
Mark Isham
Rolfe Kent
George S. Clinton
Michael Giacchino
John Powell
Mike Flicker (music editor) |
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 bpewien
Captain
Joined: Feb 01, 2006
Member#: 13275
Posts: 1334
Location: Vienna, Austria
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Posted:
Sat Sep 15, 2007 6:33 pm Post subject: |
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Too bad I won't have any chance getting there... yet!
_________________
If our music survives, which I have no doubt it will,
then it will because it is good - Jerry Goldsmith (1929-2004) |
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socr8s
Lieutenant
Joined: Aug 05, 2004
Member#: 7603
Posts: 207
Location: Los Angeles
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Posted:
Wed Sep 19, 2007 12:41 pm Post subject: |
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I got my tickets so I'll be back to teach you all what I learned.  |
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Twopop
Rear Admiral (Ambassador)
Joined: Jul 21, 2004
Member#: 7382
Posts: 2673
Location: Oregon
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Posted:
Wed Sep 19, 2007 12:52 pm Post subject: |
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| socr8s wrote: |
| I got my tickets so I'll be back to teach you all what I learned. |
YAYYYYYY!!!!! Way to go, Soc!! |
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socr8s
Lieutenant
Joined: Aug 05, 2004
Member#: 7603
Posts: 207
Location: Los Angeles
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Posted:
Fri Sep 21, 2007 3:44 pm Post subject: |
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Session 1
I had no idea there were that many people interested in movie scores. I mean, sure we've got 18k members here, but the theater of 300 was sold out. They have a nice building... that Academy there.
The crowd was mostly UCLA students or some scoring school up in Burbank. Can't think of the name. It was a good evening though. They don't let you take in cameras though. I was.... peeved.
Well it started with some clips from Torn Curtain with the score done by Bernard Herrmann. Hitchcock didn't go with it so got John Attison to rescore it and we watched the same clips with the new tracks. Because of this, Herrmann never worked with Hitchcock again. I did not know this.
Then we see clips from movies which our 3 guests composed. The best thing was a 5-10 min montage of Lalo's scores. Then it was 2 clips from Finding Neverland, which was just fantastic. I love that score a lot. Then we had another guest speaker, Charles Fox. We see a clip from Nine to Five.
After each clip for the composers, they each answered a few questions from Charles Bernstein. Kind of disappointed they didn't show any clips of his scores. Mainly where they grew up and how they got into the business. They each pretty much said that to be a film composer, you need to be a composer first, and a musician second... or was it the other way around? Makes sense. Compose for opera or theater or for a band. Don't just limit yourself to film. Go where the industry takes you.
They weren't fans of temp tracks because it sets the pacing before they even get to do their work. Lalo has never worked with temp tracks and once told a director to not use them. When he heard Lalo's score for the first time, he was like "That doesn't sound like the temp track." His music editor said that Lalo's score actually worked better. If you're composing and you have no choice but to have a temp track, Jan said to get it out of the way quickly so you can disconnect yourself from it as fast as possible.
Synthesizers was another thing they didn't like. You can't replace the sound of an orchestra. Using them puts the musicians out of work. Charles told us a story how for one film he had to use a synthesizer to get a sound you couldn't get with instruments. All these "YOONYUN" people got involved and engineers and stuff, they showed up at his house and he was like "Ok guys you can go home now." It was just him using the synthesizer. Well they had a screening of the movie and this producer comes up to Charles and was like "What are all these "YOONYUN" people doing here?" He responded with "I invited them." He wanted to show them he couldn't get these sounds with instruments.
They then opened up the floor with questions from the audience. It's already approaching 10pm and they're surely to wrap it up soon.... but these people were hogging the microphone. Granted they were good questions but everyone felt like they needed to ask a 2 part question and have everyone answer it. They didn't want short answers either.
One of the questions was about influences and I was hoping they'd give something of present, but they mainly listed the greats, you know, Mozart, Beethoven.... Jan did list Ennio's The Mission though.
Then one of the college kids in the back asked how to break into the industry. Basically score what you can. Do your friends short films. You're not going to make money for a while so don't expect to get a big hollywood job, no matter how talented you are. Hollywood wants known people. There's no real way to break into the industry. Go to colleges and make friends with film students. Score their films. Really the only way.
That was the night. Part 1 of 3 rather. After everything was done, went up to Kaczmarek, told him what an honor it was to have him here. Charles Bernstein noticed my SST pin and asked about it before he was whisked off by people he knew. Spread the love. If only i could have put up flyers or handed out stickers.
**UPDATE**
Pictures not taken by me but on the Oscars website.
Last edited by socr8s on Fri Sep 28, 2007 12:02 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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Luther_III
Commander
Joined: Jun 20, 2005
Member#: 10621
Posts: 846
Location: New Orleans
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Posted:
Fri Sep 21, 2007 5:03 pm Post subject: |
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Thats fantastic socr8s!!!
What a great opportunity. I hope you get other chances to promote SST... But that's not really the point, I know. (Or at least it's not the only point.)
I hope the next sessions go just as well.
_________________
"If I were not a physicist, I would probably be a musician. I often think in music. I live my daydreams in music. I see my life in terms of music.... I get most joy in life out of music."
--Albert Einstein |
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Twopop
Rear Admiral (Ambassador)
Joined: Jul 21, 2004
Member#: 7382
Posts: 2673
Location: Oregon
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Posted:
Fri Sep 21, 2007 6:39 pm Post subject: |
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| socr8s wrote: |
| Charles Bernstein noticed my SST pin and asked about it |
You rock, Socr!!
Thanks for the awesome write-up!  |
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 Alchemist
Vice Admiral (Moderator)
Joined: Dec 30, 2003
Member#: 4272
Posts: 1621
Location: Annecy
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Posted:
Sat Sep 22, 2007 4:43 am Post subject: |
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Thank you for the report socr8s!
_________________
"I've seen things you people wouldn't believe" - Blade Runner |
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LadyInque
Captain
Joined: May 20, 2005
Member#: 10281
Posts: 2224
Location: Eastern Massachusetts
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Posted:
Sat Sep 22, 2007 2:05 pm Post subject: |
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Socr8s, thanks for the report. I had a question. What was the gender makeup of the group you were with, especially the students? As you know, I'm trying to get a female film comper day going here at SST.
http://www.streamingsoundtracks.com/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&t=4401&highlight=
It's tricky, because there are so few. So I'm wondering why more women don't go into film score composing, even though there are female songwriters by the dozen, and if any more look like they'll be writing scores in the future. |
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Nate
Captain
Joined: Dec 12, 2004
Member#: 8729
Posts: 1424
Location: Here and NOT There
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Posted:
Sat Sep 22, 2007 2:11 pm Post subject: |
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Awesome information socr8s! Sounds like it was a interesting meeting with lots of good information from some highly regarded film composers! I would've loved to hear what Kaczmarek had to say.
I can't wait to hear about the next two meetings! Thank you for taking the time to write up a synopsis.
_________________
"My Logic is Undeniable" - I, Robot |
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Obi-son
Captain
Joined: Sep 10, 2002
Member#: 211
Posts: 1897
Location: Winchester,Va, USA
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Posted:
Sun Sep 23, 2007 7:18 am Post subject: |
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very cool socr8s! Nice report on part 1. Did Bernstein say anything after you told him about the pin?
_________________
If you have it you don't need it. If you need it you don't have it. You need it to get it and you certainly need it to get more of it. Which means you don't have it to begin with people just know. |
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socr8s
Lieutenant
Joined: Aug 05, 2004
Member#: 7603
Posts: 207
Location: Los Angeles
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Posted:
Fri Sep 28, 2007 12:59 pm Post subject: |
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Session 2
Awesome night last night. I took notes this time. Our guests this time had Bruce Broughton moderating with Mark Isham, Mychael Danna, and Rolfe Kent. All of them were really great speakers.
We started the evening with clips from Major Dundee. The original 1965 score by Daniele Amfitheatrof and then the 2005 score by Christopher Caliendo. Big leap huh? When the movie was released, the director hated the score. When they rereleased the movie, they redid the score to what the director would have liked, even though it was 20 years after his death. The orginal music sounded very campy and made the movie almost a comedy. The new version, the main title alone brought so much drama to the movie that it worked a lot better.
Then Bruce is introduced and he starts talking about how there's 3 great composers here tonight. Then someone shouts out FOUR! He laughs and is like "Right. 4." He asks how many people are composers or those aspiring to be and I'd say over half of the audience raised their hands. I was shocked. I mean, wow. Then he asks how many people are just here because they like music? Bam! My hand goes up.
They showed clips from a couple Mychael Danna's movies. Ice Storm and Sweet Hereafter. The one clip they showed from Hereafter, wow, what a traumatic scene. I'd be interested to see the rest of the movie. Lights come on and he says it's a lot easier to compose those types of movies. He started his career composing for theatre. He was talking about Ice Storm and working with Ang Lee. Mychael likes to try these different instruments that might work for the picture. He told Ang about it and played some samples of these gamelan (correct usage?), an indonesian instrument which is basically upside down pots and pans. Ang was like "I don't like it." He's more of a visual guy than to just hear it so Mychael flew him up to canada to have these guys play and said Ang just liked it cuz it was shiny objects. It sounded great. I'd like to hear more of it.
Then a clip from Crash, the scene with the crash, really great score. Apparently it was a low budget movie and he got paid next to noting but he wanted to do it. All electronic I think on his G3. The director likes to add the singing in there, adds more to the scene. Great scene. He says you wouldn't think that music would go to that scene if you've never seen it before. The other clip he showed was from Afterglow. He sent some samples of this new music he was working on to the director, who's also the writer, and later on, Mark gets a call from him and is like "Hey you remember that jazz music you sent me? I wrote a screenplay around it." More or less but that's pretty much how the movie came about. Mark doesn't like to put 1 specific instrument per character and doesn't like to do thematic music but with this score, he did. He had this jazz band in the studio and went "Ok, this person and this person in the scene, we need these 2 instruments playing the Friendship theme." It was like that for hours, just doing that all day. Then just went home and cut it all up in Pro Tools and the score was done. The way he gets the movies to score is that he picks them. If he wants to score a specific movie, he'll go after it.
Then we see a clip from Sideways, which oddly enough, Xan and I ate at the restaurant in the clip they showed. "I'm not drinking any Merlot!" That was cool. A lot of the scores he's done are mainly comedies, not planned that way. He's a big fan of Kamen's "Adventures of Baron Munchausen" and if he gets stuck writing a score he's like.... "What would Michael Kamen do?" LOL. He doesn't use temp tracks. Tells the directors not to use them. If he's going to a screening of the movie he's going to score, he'll ask for the script a few weeks in advance so he can get some ideas before hearing the temp.
Mychael came in and said this one score he was hired for, temped his music. His music fit into the scenes and now they want him to go and make the score better. Isham had the same thing happen. Scoring for a temp track they've already done was the hardest thing they had to do. It's already the best they thought it was and now they're expected to do it better.
When Rolfe is given a movie to score, he always asks the director 4 questions: Who's POV is the music coming from? What's the energy of the music? What's missing without music? (Is it needed?) And What do you want the audience to feel? Once those are answered then he at least has something to work with. He knows he has the right music for the film when he catches himself in the shower whistling it.
Isham was asked how he deals with writers block. When fighting writers block, the best thing to do is move to another room. Changing environments sometimes helps. He'll record himself mashing keys on the piano and play it back, forwards and backwards, and sometimes he'll hear 3 notes that might stick and go from there. LOL.
After that was all done, everyone just starts to go up to the stage to get autographs (even though at the beginning they tell you not to). Got to talk with Rolfe for a second about how some soundtracks only have maybe the main and end titles and the rest of the soundtrack is the songs from the movie. He was like, well the studio pays for these songs to be in the movie and we're contracted to have a couple of the main themes in there but I couldn't tell you what other songs are on the soundtracks, and he laughs. There are samples of some of his stuff on his website.
Shook hands with Isham after and asked about unreleased scores or out of print (commented how October sky is just amazing.... it's his favorite he's done). He says soundtracks don't sell as much as the studio would like. They could sell 35k albums but they're looking for something in the millions, like Titanic. He says that they could rerelease October sky sometime down the road. He did say that his score Bobby was just released. Might have to check that out.
Stay tuned for more.
**UPDATE**
More pictures (again, not mine)
These were Mychael Danna's instruments to just show the type of sounds he uses. Yes, that's a saw.
Last edited by socr8s on Mon Oct 08, 2007 12:29 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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Alchemist
Vice Admiral (Moderator)
Joined: Dec 30, 2003
Member#: 4272
Posts: 1621
Location: Annecy
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Posted:
Mon Oct 01, 2007 7:46 am Post subject: |
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Wow, either you have a very good memory or you took many many notes. Thank you for sharing socr8s!!!
_________________
"I've seen things you people wouldn't believe" - Blade Runner |
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socr8s
Lieutenant
Joined: Aug 05, 2004
Member#: 7603
Posts: 207
Location: Los Angeles
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Posted:
Mon Oct 08, 2007 1:43 pm Post subject: |
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Session 3. Last one.
Wow. Just reading over my notes now... I took a lot. This was my favorite session out of all of them. I got more out of it and everyone had a great sense of humor and was cracking jokes the whole time. We got insight to how they came to score, how they do it, and how they came about it. That night's session we had George S. Clinton, Michael Giacchino, John Powell, Bryan Burk (producer, works with Giacchino), and Mike Flicker (music editor from George)
This time we got a look at Legend scored by Jerry Goldsmith and when it was released in USA, they shortened it and rescored it with Tangerine Dream. Don't know why they had to rescore it though. Europe got the Goldsmith score in their release. The Dress Waltz scene was scored by Jerry before they even started filming it. The dance in that sequence was all choreographed to the music.
Then we saw the intro from Goldmember and George S.Clinton came out. Some of the things he talked about was pretty much what other composers have said at the other sessions. If you want to be a composer, score everything you can. You're not going to get the job right away. Do commercials, jingles, TV themes... whatever. He got his break working for AFI for free. If you do get to meet with a director, be authentic. Don't be fake. LOL common sense if you ask me. He doesn't like temp scores but sometimes you can't get away from it. The director's always refer to it during the spotting sessions of a cut of the movie ("Spotting" is when you go through the movie with the director and you talk where the music starts and stops, what's the mood and all that.) If you haven't listened to the temp music, the director will play it for you anyway. The first question he asks is "What were you thinking when you chose that?" When doing Goldmember, I think he said that they had a song from Run Lola Run as the temp music. Even when they're completely done with the score, the edit of the movie will still get changed. He'll usually have about 4 weeks to score a film (6 if he's lucky) and up to about 2 weeks to record it. Then we saw a clip from Wild Things (the intro, not the good scene). LOL.
Then we saw a clip from Ratatouille. YES!! I love this score. The clip we saw was when Remy was running through the sewers and finally comes to Gousteau's. With animated movies, you usually have more time to score. The movie is all edited together as storyboards and maybe some animatics so whenever a scene is cut, they'll usually hand that over to the composer. When Remy gets to the top of the the building and sees Gousteau's was the first theme of the movie that Giacchino played out on the piano after seeing the scene for the first time. The overall themes of the movie were desperation (the beginning of the movie, exploration (the middle), and fascination (ending).
Bryan Burk came out with Giacchino after The Review scene of Ratatouille. The girl singing was someone they met in France and called her up and was like "hey wanna sing in this movie?" Bryan was talking about how one of his classmates called him up to remind him that his 20 year high school reunion was coming up. One thing she remembered about him was that everyday during lunch, he'd be in his car listening to soundtracks. Nothing changed. LOL. Giacchino usually has about 2 days to score an episode of Lost and the 3rd day to record it. Crazy!!
Nobody told John Powell what exactly the session would be about so he just brought his apple laptop and showed us basically how he goes about scoring. He hates PC's. LOL. He scores everything at home so he can be distracted more. LOL. We got a sneak peak at his new score P.S. I Love You. Gonna be a very nice score. The program he had open was like Logic Pro or something. He'd have the guitar track playing solo, then he'd turn on the strings, and some other sounds until....
CRASH!!
He said he cried just by reading the script. When he had the meeting with the director, he was told to "make every cue happy." That doesn't quite make sense but okay. LOL. I'll be looking forward to that score. He talked about Bourne a little bit. He was using an older version of Logic, I guess, and when he scored Supremacy, he had the latest version, and the sounds didn't sound the same, so he had to redo it basically. Then when Ultimatum came out, Greengrass just told him to use the same stuff. Really all he did. Kinda disappointing but that's what the director wanted. So used this theme for that scene, or this one and just copy-pasted the whole score. Working on these programs sometimes crashes and you may lose a lot of work, Giacchino likes when that happens cuz then he can go back and make it better.
Told you I had a lot of notes. 1 page left.
Then we had a 10 min break and when we came back it was all audience questions. It was great because they didn't talk forever on 1 particular question (unless it was funny or a good story) so we got to hear more. Sorry if this is too much for you all to read. Do people actually read these? LOL.
Sometimes cues won't be good in a scene and Giacchino would suggest something like "just take music out of that scene. You don't need it." He's the type of guy that doesn't care if his song isn't used because it's not his vision of the movie or show. He wants it to work for the director. If a scene is bad already, the directors will sometimes ask them if the music will make it any better. They're all like "No!" lol. if the scene is bad already, music won't do a thing to make it better.
Powell's favorite score he did was Gigli. George's was Last Days of Frankie the Fly.
Now they were asked to give examples of the best direction they had to score a film. Giacchino's was awesome. It was for The Incredibles, the scene where the mom is on the phone and the supersuits were on the bed and Dash starts freaking out. The direction that Brad Bird gave him was "Imagine yourself on Christmas day, at the bottom of the stairs, you see the tree and all the presents and your mom tells you to stay right there. Now she tells you to hang on cuz she's putting film in the camera. That's the feeling of excitement until you can't hold it in anymore that I want."
George's was different. He was saying that he knows he wasn't the first choice to score Bury my Heart at Wounded Knee. He was like Think about it... hmm, who could we get to score an epic movie?? I know! Let's get the Austin Powers guy!! He said when he had to score it, the director said he doesn't want trumpets. None. No cliche cavalry. Then he played the theme of it on the piano. Awesome. Just by that alone I want the cd but it's extremely rare right now. It was only released as HBO promo cds. Weak.
You won't see many score only tracks on dvds because the studios don't want to pay royalties. If a cd isn't released but they do a score only track, think about it. I think that's stupid though. They talked about how soundtracks don't sell that many and how only limited number of copies are available. Well sometimes, they said, that they'd have to pay the musicians more if they sold 1 more copy of the cd. Something like that.
Miss Congeniality 2 was scored using only temp tracks. The songs fit so well that they just licensed to use them. John Powell liked it because one of them was his rejected scores from his other movie and George was on there too.
I'll make this last section short but it's good. Giacchino was asked how he got started. He has some background with making music but he was a producer at dreamworks at the time when they were doing Lost World. They were going to pitch it to Spielberg the next day and he was asked if he could score it real quick just to have some music in there. They had their meeting and his phone rang telling him to get to the meeting room immediately. The 2 of them met and the other head guys at dreamworks were there and Spielberg just said he loved the score, you're doing it right? He's like Uhhh, yeah. Then later on he was doing the Medal of Honor series and he said JJ Abrams was a big video game fan and just loved the music in it so called him and asked if he wanted to do Lost. His answer was only if he could use a live orchestra. After convincing abc to have the money for it, he agreed. |
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LadyInque
Captain
Joined: May 20, 2005
Member#: 10281
Posts: 2224
Location: Eastern Massachusetts
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Posted:
Mon Oct 08, 2007 2:04 pm Post subject: |
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Thanks, socr8ts. Great stuff.
Any girls there? |
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