Score: A Film Music Documentary

The piano we built for this movie "The Homesman,"

the problem with this is that it's out in the elements,

and it disintegrates.

But I think it's a noble death for a piano.

The wind is a big feature in the movie

and we thought that it'd be great to be able to tune the wind.

It sounds really amazing.

This is part of the fun of experimenting.

You know, you figure this stuff out.

One interesting thing that happens

is the sound travels through the wire

faster than it travels through the air,

so you get this reverse echo, which is really cool.

You don't even have to put any effect on the sound at all.

I mean, you can hear it all the way down in the valley.

It's more than just the concept of doing something cool

that nobody's done before. It's more fun.

Samurai's death here, on the hill.

When you hear "Rocky"...

Everybody in the audience knows what's going on.

The composer is a storyteller.

Music has the ability to shape and in some cases alter

or even subvert what the filmmaker is communicating.

The score is the heart and the soul of the film.

Film music can make an exciting scene more exciting.

We call it "emotion lotion,"

because we can make you feel anything we want you to feel.

It's being able to communicate on a level

that they can't tell in pictures.

Great film music can elevate.

Music has always been

a part of the cinema-going experience,

as far back as 1895 when the Lumière brothers

were experimenting in Paris.

In the earliest days, it is true,

music was thought of as something

to cover up the noise of the projector.

Silent films were never silent.

There was at least a pianist in the smallest nickelodeons,

and sometimes the bridge between them was a theatre organ.

There were many theatre organ makers,

but the one that produced the most organs,

and is thought to be probably the best

is the name Wurlitzer.

They showed how a person could bring to life

the movies that were otherwise quiet.

They either did a score that was printed for them,

or they improvised and created their own.

They were made part of the moviegoing experience.

A number of people had toyed

with the idea of scores in Hollywood.

Max Steiner's score for "King Kong" in 1933

was a landmark.

When "King Kong" came out,

"wait a second. Orchestra music in a movie?"

The only reason he was able to do it

is because the movie wasn't scary.

It looked kitschy and stupid,

because it was so-- it was kitschy and stupid.

But then he put that music in.

It completely changed the movie. It made it frightening.

People had not done that before.

It was really the first major score

that demonstrated conclusively the power of music in film.

Alfred Newman came from new haven, Connecticut,

an iconic figure in the history of film music.

(Theme from "Captain from Castille" plays)

A sound that favors horns and woodwinds.

My father was Alfred Newman.

In 1930, he came to L.A.

(20th Century Fox logo music plays)

He was at 20th Century Fox for 20 years.

The Fox logo-- arguably the most famous logo ever written--

it wasn't written for Fox, it was written for Goldwyn and it was rejected.

And then he used it for Fox and Darryl Zanuck loved it.

There was nothing like that orchestra. I'm talking about rubato.

It means "slowing down and speeding up in an expressive way."

You would never read a line of text like,

"I went to the market today."

"I went to the market today."

You'd have a-- you'd have a structure of a phrase.

That is so uber important in music.

They became expert at making that musical.

That helped define what we know as the classic Hollywood sound.

A spotting session is the first time

we all get together, look at the movie,

and decide where the music's gonna go,

and what type of music it's going to be.

All movies, the first 20 minutes

are too slow because we're laying pipe.

So we want the music to be something but not crazy.

The goal of a spotting session is to have a dialogue

with the composer that you've probably been postponing.

I've done my work, I've done my design,

I've cast the movie, I've shot it.

We've done all our beautiful photography,

we've done all our super-brilliant editing.

Now it's going through and trying to communicate

what I've heard in my mind.

Ah, mothers.

Mothers are our rocks.

So it says "Open Road Pictures,"

then we're going to cut to possibly not the front door

but a shot before the front door

-that establishes the house. - (Debney) Got it.

Spotting, to me, is really important

because it gives me an idea of what the director's looking at

and what he's looking for.

-Something that's peppy right away... - (Debney) Peppy, yep.

And then we come here and we slow down.

Kind of settle on that.

You're collaborating with people.

I want them to feel like a filmmaker like them

has come into the process.

I'm the one that specializes in

this one thing that they're uncomfortable with.

You're trying to come up with music

that supports the scene and complements it in an unobtrusive way.

You spend as much time as you can

immersing yourself in the backstory.

As a film composer,

you're part of the storytelling team.

Do you want to spin forward to the next cue, Garry?

- (Marshall) Yeah. - (Debney) This one sort of

ends when she comes around the corner, right?

I try to get a sense of what their insecurities are.

The more time you spend with them,

the more you get those answers.

Most directors don't know how to convert emotions

into musical-- into music.

So the composer has to kind of act almost like a therapist

and go through all this mishmash

of what the director's saying and get the essence of it.

What if we kind of tail right into that?

- (Woman) Yeah, right, you don't need to go-- -right?

- (Man) Don't score him? -Maybe don't score--

just put a nice little transition, Garry,

that kind of just spills over.

-And then he comes up. - (Marshall) Yeah.

Something like that maybe? Yeah.

We got the-- we got the gist of it.

Sort of in that first conversation with the director

I have glimpses of what it could be.

Every project starts roughly the same way.

Somebody comes into the room and says, "I've got this idea.

It'll be fun to do. It'll be a fun adventure," etc.

And they tell you the idea and you get drawn in and you get excited.

And you're flattered that they're even considering you.

"Whoa, me," you know. "I get to go on this ride."

And then they leave the room and then you have a moment of reflection.

You go, "I have no idea how to do this.

Oh, my God."

And then after a while you think

should you be phoning them and saying,

you know, "Hey, I think you better phone John Williams.

I have no idea how to do this."

You know, the blank page is always the blank page.

Plus, I have no idea where music comes from.

So there's always the fear that somebody's going to switch off the tap.

This is a film called "Race."

I've been working on it for a week, so I'm just beginning.

I'm just sort of getting into my process with it.

Where I'm thinking it should start is-- is just coming up.

And I'm going to start with it coming in really, really quietly.

No.

- (Man in film #2) Well, why not? - (Quiet piano music)

You want to win a gold medal?

- (Man #2) Sure. - (Man #1) You want to do it in Berlin?

Well, I mean, unless you were planning on waiting--

There's a change of direction in the scene.

And that's often a prompt for where music will come in.

Well, they don't care for 'em much

here in Columbus, either.

Is that gonna be problem?

No sir.

I just came here to run.

Well then, for the next 28 months,

you're either in a classroom, or you're on that track,

every hour, every day.

As a composer,

when you're sitting there watching a film,

it's not like watching a play or real life.

There's camera positions, there's cuts.

It's an incredibly artificial medium in a way,

and it's really nothing like real life.

We have to find clever ways to introduce something familiar.

("Close Encounters of the Third Kind" motif plays)

A motif is a group of notes

that might highlight what a film score is.

A good example would be "Close Encounters."

("Close Encounters" music plays)

Beethoven was one the first composers

to really take a theme or motif and spin it out in a huge way.