Interview: Lorne Balfe, Composer for “Terminator Genisys”

Posted on July 1, 2015 at 3:32 pm

Lorne Balfe composed the score for “Terminator Genisys,” the fifth in the series, which takes place in three different time period, some very dystopian. He talked to me about creating a sound that conveyed the mechanistic themes and how he kept the music connected to the earlier films. “Some people may describe some of the melodies as noise but I think the whole score really is like envisioning what we’re looking at. It’s a hybrid score. We spent a long time in London recording with a fantastic orchestra. We also spent a very long, long time trying to create a sonic world that could represent the world of the Terminator.” He said it was “a great experience” to build on the iconic themes of the earlier films. “Especially coming from watching the classics, ‘Terminator’ 1 and 2; it’s a very iconic world, sound as well as visuals. It really is a total hybrid and a mixture of the orchestra world and electronics. There is obviously a nod to the past. There are the scenes that visually look the same. The very famous theme has one of the most iconic rhythms of all time, which we use. Being able to use that was a great experience, especially because I always remember it when I was young. Definitely, there are scenes in the film where if you’re a fan of 2 all of your senses will come alive. It’s also hitting the feelings of what you heard when you watched the original. A lot of films when it’s a franchise wants to make their own original concept and with the music, especially coming from a background of video games, the themes get forgotten about. But right from the beginning you know that you’re in a Terminator film musically. And then the story evolves. It’s a bit of a rollercoaster really.”

Balfe wanted the music to reflect the themes of the film in the way humans and machines are both integrated and oppositional. “The thing is that ironically, when I’m writing a score it’s based around the electronic world because you’re dealing with electronic samples of organic instruments. So you’re automatically beginning purely electronic and then yes, you’re coming up with different colors and textures, with a brass section or a woodwind section. You need to create the same colors with your electronics. So you start coming out of those elements and then you go and the real musicians and that then becomes organic. The other film haven’t ever really fully delved into the whole guardianship connection and the relationship between Sarah Connor and the guardian, played by Arnold Schwarzenegger. And with this I think we really wanted to try to emotionally get a piece of music that really could bond them together. That was a great kind of experiment and we ended up with ironically taking an ‘organicness’ of it but manipulating it because that’s exactly what their relationship is. It’s real and yet something’s not.”

He was brought into the film after filming, when the movie was being edited. “You sit there and it’s very like when you work on an animation and a lot of the detail is missing. So you’re still visually learning and seeing everything change right until the bitter end. It’s also like video games because you start a project and it’s not necessarily finished. The process is fascinating because it just evolves and changes every couple of days. You have to think ahead when writing because it’s all very well sitting there and you look at a green screen and you go, well that person is going to fight that person and there is nothing there sometimes. I can only imagine what it is like for an actor to have to do it because it must be difficult but musically, I in my head try to imagine what the end product is.

I asked him whether working on the film has made him more nervous about technology and artificial intelligence. “I have a long list of things that makes me nervous and that’s one of them. I think you now ironically when the world we kind of live in, I’m not going to go down it but I sat next to somebody in a meeting last week and they had a certain company’s new phone watch and it was monitoring how many times they had actually stood up for the day and done any exercise. So the whole concept of Big Brother has been around for a long, long, long time.”

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Tribute: James Horner

Posted on June 23, 2015 at 5:22 pm

One of the greatest movie composers of all time, James Horner, died this week in a plane crash. His compositions added enormous depth and emotion to some of the all-time critical and audience triumphs, including the movie that broke the box office record, “Titanic,” and the movie that broke that record, “Avatar.” His films include grand, sweeping epics, historical sagas, science fiction adventures, intimate dramas, and even an animated film for families (“An American Tail”). Vanity Fair has a very thoughtful tribute with some of the best examples of his work. He will be sorely missed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQXsGg_thSQ

May his memory be a blessing.

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Interview: Junkie XL, Composer of “Mad Max: Fury Road”

Posted on May 19, 2015 at 3:58 pm

It was a treat to talk to Junkie XL (aka Tom Holkenborg), the award-winning, multi-platinum producer/composer who created the sensational soundtrack for Mad Max: Fury Road, ranging from orchestral to heavy metal, and now available for purchase. Coming up next, he is working on the remake of “Point Break,” “Black Mass,” and “Batman v. Superman.”

Junkie XL told me about working side by side with writer/director George Miller and about the unexpected member of his household who is heard on the soundtrack.

I’ve been listening to the score and the track called “Escape” sounds Metallica if its lead singer was a Tyrannosaur Rex.

It’s a part of the movie where Max breaks loose from his capturers but this is a really strange world. It’s so over the top, the scenery is so intense, all the detail that goes into the set and the costumes, what these people looked like, the cars, it’s unheard of. And so the music needed to live up to that standard. I said to George, “Let’s do this insane rock opera where everything clashes and there is like choir and there’s sound design and there’s mad drums and mad electronic sounds and over the top strings and very small strings and very emotional little things and he said, “Yeah let’s do it.”

And so “Escape” was one of the earlier cues that I started on and it needed to be crazy. Max in this case is a very troubled character. He’s not the stable, funny guy that we know from the earlier Mad Max movies in the 80s. He’s been through this so many times and he’s got post-traumatic stress and whatever he has, he’s very troubled. And so the music needed to be very troubling too.

Is that all together electronically? did you have an orchestra?

There’s an orchestra in there but I actually set with the string players and the bass players and we created these really crazy tones that normally do not come out of these instruments. They have to play them in a certain way. They have to get really out of tune. There’s that whole string section in there with a really haunting motif which was very inspired on the great late 40s, 50s, 60s, the golden era of Bernard Hermann and some other classical composers. It’s really like a golden time period and we really have to record it multiple, multiple times to get the right feel and the right tone.

Yes, some of the tracks are very lush and orchestral.

I grew up classically trained and I have a really strong relationship with pieces written, let’s say from 1850 to 1950/1960 and it was played a lot around our house. George is very familiar with that time period too and he loves that style. So that is what we use when there are parts of the film where these characters step out of that dystopian madness and they actually warm up to one another as human beings. That’s when we need to go to that tone. That’s when we need to go to that musical language and again we discuss the 50s, late 20s, 50s early 60s and we took best elements out of that era and we use it in a very modern film score.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T9Zc9cZVdOc

Everything in the films looks like it has been assembled from pieces in a junkyard. How do you reflect that aesthetic in the music?

It’s like there’s a lot of sounds used in the score that actually come from a metal cans, oil drums, all kinds of metal objects that I sampled and did some sound design on that are being used. I mean, generally, in music, I come from a world where you sample bits and pieces from other records so you compile it together into what then becomes a dance track. That’s the world that I come from, so when George starts talking about creating objects out of other objects I was like, “Oh I know that world.”

What were some of the more exotic sounds that you sampled in the soundtrack?

Animals. There’s a lot of those sounds are in the score. The sound that you hear right at beginning of “Escape” is coming from my dog. You need some electronic treatment, and then you get it pretty far. He’s the sweetest dog in the planet. But if he bark and you treat that a certain way, yeah it becomes really scary.

The last time we talked it was about “Divergent.”

“Divergent” is quite different. It was this movie about a young girl that grows up and becomes this heroine. In “Mad Max” you get thrown into the film. You see all these really tough characters that tried to survive had to find their own methods of surviving. So we meet Furiosa played by Charlize Theron, who did a stunning job playing this character, and you meet these other extremely tough women. It’s almost like the reverse. We start with all that violence and throughout the film we warm up with these characters as we get to know them. Whereas in “Divergent” we definitely know the characters and then once we know the characters we go through the story and she becomes this really powerful heroine at the end.

How closely did you work with writer/director George Miller?

It was a remarkable process. George and I worked really intensely on this. It was a true collaboration where he got inspired by the music and to change certain things with the scene and then I got inspired because he did that and then I would do something else and we went back and forth like that multiple times. Eventually I packed up my studio with my assistants and my family and music editors and we all went shooting for eleven weeks roughly and worked with George from early morning till late at night until we were really satisfied. He’s fantastic and we have two things in common. One is we’re extremely precise and we put the bar really high for ourselves and we won’t rest until all the details are right. I drive my assistants to absolute madness and when I was in Nerv in my artist era, I would drive my fellow band members completely to madness because I wanted to do it again and I want to make it different, I wanted to try something else and then back and George is exactly the same thing, the same way. So we really admire that with one another, that you can only strive for the best constantly. You constantly have to second guess, “Is this the best I can do?”

And the second thing is we’re both extremely curious. So when certain things work out a certain way we always start wondering why and we want to know why and then when we know why we apply a little theory to it. We try to understand why it’s so great and then we apply that theory on another scene of the film. Could this be potentially as great as we did there? And how should we do that? Constantly being curious is frustrating but it also enriches your knowledge and your work ethic and also ultimately your results.

At Comic-Con last year, George talked about how excited he was to use the Edge camera car. How did that affect the way you thought about the score?

The first thought is how can we make this experience as thrilling for the audience as possible? So the fact that these cameras make the audience almost part of what you’re going to be seeing on screen, and that goes for the music too. When I saw the movie I know there’s no way I can get away with a cello and a flute.

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Interview: Tom Salta, Composer for HALO Spartan Strike

Posted on May 11, 2015 at 3:55 pm

It’s one thing to create a soundtrack for one story. But Tom Salta had to create one consistent theme for multiple potential storylines and outcomes for the latest version of HALO, called Spartan Strike.
The game is available on Windows 8, Windows Phone 8, Steam, and for the first time in Halo’s history, on iOS (iPhone and iPad). Salta answered my questions about composing for the HALO universe.

What was the first instrument you learned how to play?

One day when I was five years old, I heard my mother playing on the piano. I asked her, “Could you teach me how to do that?”… I studied piano with her until I was in eighth grade.

What was the first music you paid to own or hear in person?

Now that’s a question no one has ever asked me before… It was the soundtrack to Raiders of the Lost Ark…12 inch vinyl in 1981. I can’t tell you how many times I listened to that soundtrack. It was my favorite movie of all time and the music is what brought it to life for me. This was before VCRs so listening to the soundtrack was the only way I could experience the movie at home. I even bought the movie cards that showed scenes from the movie and would scroll through them matching the scenes to the music.

What is the most difficult part of writing music for a game and how does it differ from writing for straight narrative like a television show or a song for a recording artist?

Watching a movie or a TV show is a linear experience: It has the same beginning, middle and end. The same goes for a song. In all these forms of media, the picture, dialog and sound effects happen exactly the same way every time. In contrast, video games tend to be non-linear by their very nature because they’re interactive and, therefore, the experience is different each time you play. The music can change unpredictably from one moment to the next, so you have to think in a non-linear way and anticipate how various parts might connect with each other. This also means that most of the time you’re not scoring to a specific action on screen but instead to the general mood of that scene.

How does music help guide and inform the player?

I often refer to music-to-picture as the emotional dimension. It is the easiest way and often the most effective way to alter the player’s mood and perception. It has the same effect in films… you could look at the same picture with completely different music and it can completely change the scene. It’s been stated many a time before but I think it’s worth repeating that Steven Spielberg once said, “Music and sound represent at least fifty percent of the entertainment value of all my films.” In games, music can be even more important.

How do you reference previous HALO soundtracks to maintain familiarity and consistency but keep it new?

The original Halo: Combat Evolved from 2001 is what inspired me the most to switch from making records to making music for games. I have absorbed the soundtracks to all the Halo games for over a decade now, so it’s part of my musical DNA. Sometimes I’ll go back and reference some of Marty O’Donnell and Michael Salvatori’s original music, but usually, I don’t have to. When I’m creating original music for the Halo universe, it comes from a sincere understanding of the “Halo sound”. It’s become a part of my musical identity. When you’re being true to who you are as a composer, it’s easy to remain consistent and evolve at the same time.

How many hours would the soundtrack be if you played it all at once?

It’s about 60 minutes of music in total.

What’s your favorite part of the HALO universe?

I’m a little more surprised saying this than you might think, but looking back, I think the music is my favorite part. In my opinion, the music is what took Halo from being a great game into an iconic game. The original musical identity that Marty and Michael created over a decade ago is forever intertwined with Halo’s identity, just as much as the characters, the graphics and the story. Perhaps this is why, being a huge Halo fan myself, the responsibility that I feel as a composer in this franchise is monumental. If it doesn’t feel authentic and doesn’t draw me into the Halo universe, then I’m not doing my job. Fortunately, I’m thrilled to see that so many Halo fans out there are really resonating with the music and feel that it’s keeping the spirit of Halo alive.

Interview: Composer Matthew Margeson of “Kingsman: The Secret Service”

Posted on February 11, 2015 at 3:35 pm

Matthew Margeson and Henry Jackman composed the score for Matthew Vaughn’s new spy movie, “Kingsman: The Secret Service.” Margeson told me that “Henry and I had composed the film score to ‘Kick Ass 2’ together. And that kind of went well for all three of us, for Henry, myself and the director Jeff Wadlow and also Matthew Vaughn. He came to us both direct and said, ‘Hey, I’ve got this new film that’s again based on a martial arts comic book and it’s a love letter to the British espionage genre.’ The way he sold it to us is that it was definitely going to be this very fun film, and definitely have his fingerprints all over it, his style of filmmaking.” The movie is a throwback to the sleek, sophisticated spy films of the 1960’s, but a commentary and heightened, comic version, which is a challenge for the composers, but they got a lot of guidance from Vaughn. “When you look at it, the pace of it, the style of it, it wasn’t that hard. I mean Matthew Vaughn definitely is quite a stylistic director. When he does things with his own film production company, it’s all him and the films have a look about them, they’ve got a pace about them. He has a real good sense of music placement and first and foremost, he absolutely loves music and working with music. So he is a director and producer that really gets involved and knows exactly what he wants and knows, in his opinion, knows when something is not right and when it is right. So he is a good person to steer us in the direction of where he wants to go.”

Margeson and Jackman have worked together in different ways, but this time they were literally in the same room. “It depends on the film. I have done quite a bit of kind additional arranging for Henry on his films when either time is of the essence or they just need more hands on deck. And the dynamic for that is quite different than something like this where we are co-composing the score for ‘Kingsman’ where we were both on board from the very beginning. And so even before we started watching footage, the two of us were in a room probably for two or three weeks just jamming on the piano literally both sitting there together at the keyboard. I’m going, ‘Listen to this,’ and a lot of times Matthew Vaughn was on speakerphone from London kind of stopping us saying, ‘No, no, no, what was that note there?! Could that one go up instead of down?’ So it was a really great collaboration. I mean one way I know a lot of people will do things is maybe you take this script and I will take this character, you take this theme and I do this and we meet back in a week until we’ve stopped but we have the luxury that both of our writing suites are in the same building; we are about 50 yards away from each other, so it’s very easy for him to just give me a ring or for me to give him a ring and just say, ‘Hey, come down here, come over here and check this out.’ So it was a really healthy collaboration. We were definitely doing it together simultaneously and a lot of times like I said, on one set of 88 keys.”

Margeson told me that the score had to reflect a transition in the storyline. “When the film starts in the first probably hour, hour and 15 minutes or so it is a very elegant film and we are sitting here and Eggsy, our main characters is kind of learning the ropes of how to be a gentleman spy. He’s learning how we dress and he’s learning how to use weapons and he’s learning proper English and he’s learning how to eat and how to order a drink. And so there was a little bit of self-discipline in retaining that British elegance. I definitely had to learn quote unquote how to make a cup of tea on this one. However as the film kind of gets more in depth with Samuel L. Jackson’s character and what he is going to do and as the story unfolds, I think Matthew Vaughn’s filmmaking style kind of starts peeking out about an hour into the film a little bit more and by the last half hour of the film you are like, not necessarily ‘Are we still watching the same film?’ but like, ‘Oh my God, how did we get here?’ The amounts of just really visceral action and excitement are a lot different than say the first 15 minutes of the film. Compositionally, towards the beginning of the film when we are still kind of in more of an old-school approach, we are looking at those compositional building blocks that make up the genre and that make us more constantly reminded of that we have to be proper both musically and narratively. And I think that once you get into the meat and potatoes of the movie later on then you have license to be a little bit more contemporary and break some of the rules. And we also had to always be reminded that Harry who is Colin Firth’s character, is a Kingsman of a different time period than Eggsy, our younger kid. And so we have license to kind of get a little bit dissonant and inject some guitars and some drum kit and some bass and a little bit more knarliness into the score as it develops. We had to very often look at the big picture and say, ‘Well, we don’t want to spoil this line too early and we don’t want to hold on to the British elegance too much throughout the film.’ And a lot of times we were wrong and it’s a constant state of chasing our tails and rethink these big story bullet points to let the music unfold with the story.”

When he was working on “Kick-Ass 2,” someone asked what his dream project would be and he said it would be a James Bond film. Now that he has come close with “Kingsman,” he is happy to be working on “a really cool and different film for Paramount called ‘Scouts versus Zombies.’ It’s a really, really fun film and I speak the truth when I say, it’s 110% comedy and 110% horror so there are some really, really funny moments in it but there are some really great scares and of course you have zombies so how can you lose?’

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