MasterClass: Spike Lee Teaches Independent Filmmaking

One of my favorite parts of doing my joints

is the opening credit sequence.

I think long and hard what is going to be.

I think it's a very poignant part of the film,

because there's a time for the audience

to get their mind right into what they're about to see.

They get them in the mood.

They let them get in tune with what you're

about to see sitting the dark the next two hours.

So somehow, through the use of color,

music, definitely music, graphics,

the audience is getting settled and hopefully

give themselves up to witness what you're doing.

And so for "Mo Better Blues," I decided

that we should look at Blue Note album

covers and the jazz photographs of the great William Claxton.

In fact, I have a print of this photograph of Chet Baker.

Those are the inspirations for this,

and I told that to Randy Balsmeyer, and we did it.

Let's roll the piece, opening credits of "Mo' Better."

[MUSIC - BILL LEE - "MO' BETTER BLUES"]

We shot the opening credits sequence with the actors.

We filmed Denzel Washington, Billy Gilliam,

with his two loves.

The different lights-- the yellow,

the pinkish, the blue, so you know this gonna

be some sexy, stylish shit.

Beautiful photography, look at that, a silhouette.

You don't even see Denzel's face-- just a hat, just

his throat.

Now the full orchestra comes in here.

The music is a composition composed

by my father, Bill Lee.

That's my father's score.

That's the score they're playing right there.

Sensual, musical, so we set that up already.

It's not just putting up who's in the motherfucking movie.

You know, it has been more than that for me.

The opening credit sequence of "25th Hour."

The idea for this opening sequence came very late.

I read a newspaper that a company installed

massive lights to go on at night to show where the two World

Trade Center towers were.

And this was right before I began to shoot the film.

And it was like a couple days.

We just caught it.

So we got their permission, started

to shoot before it got dark.

And then we found a position in Brooklyn

that could see Manhattan, the lower Manhattan

skyline going up.

Music composed by Terence Blanchard--

we did the score for this film with Air Studios in London.

Talking to Terence, I said that we wanted a big sound.

We want to have elements of Irish music,

because Monty Brogan, the character played

by Edward Norton, they're Irish, Irish-American,

father was a fireman.

But also, I said, Terence, you know,

we have to have the feeling of loss, too.

So this film, "25th Hour," takes place in a post 9/11 New York

City, a city of 8 million people, 8 1/2 million people,

who were all at the depths of the lowest you can be.

Now we quiet down, because we're gonna see the light being

turned off, fade out.

This is not gonna be a happy film.

We clue the audience in, you know,

we're gonna deal with some deep shit here--

some deep, deep shit.

It's not a happy film.

Hello, my fellow Americans.

They say we may have lost the battle,

but we didn't lose the war.

Yes, my friends, we are under attack.

You may have read about this in your local newspapers

or seen it on the evening news.

That's right.

We are living in an era marked by the spread of integration

and miscegenation.

Ha!

The Brown decision-- ha, ha, ha.

The Brown decision, forced upon us

by the Jewish-controlled puppets of the US Supreme Court,

compelling white children to go to school

with an inferior race.

Kevin Willmott and I wanted