A Grammy Winner’s Dream of Protecting Animals: Diane Warren and the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund
Posted on November 30, 2020 at 8:00 am
Diane Warren has won Grammy, Golden Globe, and Emmy awards. She has received eleven Oscar nominations and three consecutive Songwriter of the Year Billboard awards, and is in the Songwriters Hall of Fame. Her songs have been sung by Celine Dion, Barbra Streisand, Cher, Beyonce, and Lady Gaga.
Equal to her passion for music is her passion for animals. And both come together in her beautiful new song from “The One and Only Ivan,” which she has donated for Giving Tuesday to the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund International. In addition, Ms. Warren is matching funds raised during the Giving Tuesday campaign, up to a total of $20,000.
GivingTuesday is a global generosity movement, held annually the Tuesday after Thanksgiving, falling this year on December 1.
“Free” was performed by Charlie Puth for Disney’s 2020 film, “The One and Only Ivan.”
“We are thrilled to work with Diane Warren to help spread awareness about the plight facing gorillas,” says Stoinski. “There are just over 1,000 mountain gorillas left, and we are working to bring them and their close cousins, the critically endangered Grauer’s gorillas, back from the brink of extinction.”
“The Fossey Fund is doing amazing work to protect these important species,” says Warren. “Mountain gorillas are one of the world’s few conservation success stories, and I am honored to be part of the Fossey Fund’s work to protect the gorillas and their habitat and to help the people who share their forest home.”
Mr. Morricone was a boldly adventurous composer who saw himself as a full partner in telling stories on-screen. He thrived with directors known for their visual excess, including Tarantino, Sergio Leone and Brian De Palma.
But Mr. Morricone, whose scores could be gritty, unsettling or exquisitely gentle, was impossible to categorize. His portfolio seemed to span every conceivable mainstream genre, including comedy, drama, romance, horror, political satire and historical epic.
Some examples:
And to understand better the embrace of film and score, see this very knowledgeable essay by Bilge Ebiri about the best pieces as they were used within the context of individual scenes in the films themselves. For example:
Though much of A Fistful of Dollars’ score is quite spare, for the final showdown, Morricone gives us something altogether more melodic and traditional. This ornate trumpet dirge popped up earlier in the film as well, but here, it fits perfectly — as the clouds of dynamite smoke and dust blow away to reveal Clint Eastwood’s character, seemingly back from the dead to exact retribution on Ramon Rojo and his gang. This has become established as one of Morricone’s signature pieces, which is somewhat ironic, as it’s also an homage to Dimitri Tiomkin’s score for Howard Hawks’s John Wayne Western Rio Bravo.
Morricone was a giant in the history of film. May his memory be a blessing.
When a movie is called “Sing” and it centers on an “American Idol”-type amateur singing competition — with animal characters — it presents something of a challenge for its composer, who has to figure out a way to tie together a wildly and often hilariously disparate bunch of songs and singers. So it was a lot of fun to talk to composer Joby Talbot about how he managed to create a lively and engaging score that meshed with a bunch of iconic tunes from many different genres.
“The film is directed and written by my old friend Garth Jennings,” he told me. “I wrote the music for both of his other films, Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and Son of Rambow, and when he asked me to do it I completely leapt to the chance to work with him and with Illumination, one of the absolute greats in this golden days of animation that we’re living through at the moment. I love “Despicable Me’ and ‘Lorax,’ and all those other movies they have made. Garth explained what it was and he said that they made the decision early on they were going to keep the whole score and song elements quite separate. They do overlap occasionally but Harvey Mason Jr. and his team were in charge of the songs and I was in charge of the score. We realized very early on that the score was going to have a lot of work to do. It’s really important that in this film it is necessarily broken up by some numbers but there’s something that’s really a central kernel, and impetus of the film that really takes you through it. The score really helps you leap between the different storylines or the different characters but most importantly really helps you identify with the characters, helps gets across their kind of emotional journey and who they are and helps you really care for them and fall in love with them. That’s what I was setting out to do with the music. The music cues in the score, even though sometimes they are quite short when they fall in between songs just taking you from one to another, that doesn’t mean they are small or not important. They’re doing so much work all the time. The themes being developed and a whole number of different emotions being thrown at you — that is the work of the score, so it’s actually a huge challenge but I really enjoyed it.”
Talbot met the director in the 90’s, when he was playing in a rock band and Jennings was doing music videos. “I used to play in a band called Divine Comedy way in the 90’s in England and he was one half of Hammer and Tongs who made their name doing promo videos for pop songs. He’s one of the really famous directors in the golden days of the pop videos back in the day when there were enormous budgets and MTV ruled the world. Garth was one of the main guys and we met through our mutual friend Nigel Godrich, the producer of Radiohead and Beck, he’s got great, amazing talent, and Garth was directing actually a commercial for British telecom, the big telecommunications company in Britain and it was supposed to be like a sort of 90 second mini disaster movie with all kinds of objects falling out of the sky. Nigel suggested me for the music and although I hadn’t met Garth I actually knew his wife quite well. She had been in charge of the clothes we wore on a particular pop video that we did. Copyright 2016 IlluminationAnd we met and instantly we got on really, really well. Garth had never worked with a composer actually scoring in any of the films he had made and I felt incredibly lucky to be the guy who got that gig because and his approach as a director is inspired by people like Billy Wilder. He likes that kind of old-school moviemaking and he was adamant he wanted an orchestral score and he wanted it to function in a way those great orchestral scores of yesteryear worked. With my background in classical music that absolutely chimed for me and we just hit it off and never looked back really. Working with him is always a complete joy. I have a couple of collaborators in different fields who I really, really love working with and Garth is one of the best. He such a thrill to work with. We just get each other; it’s great.”
This film has animal characters that include a pig who is a housewife and mother, a shy teenage elephant, and the ape son of a crime boss. There are dramatic incidents which could be quite intense in another kind of film like a robbery, a parent in prison, and a fire. Talbot spoke about finding a way to musically reassure people that it’s exciting not too tense or scary. “There was one cue where they go to the visiting room at the prison and they were aware that that might be rather scary and alarming sequence for a little kids, so that was the one cue where they said, ‘If you could try and reassure us with the music rather than amping up the scariness but everything else, that would be great.’ I just was going with my feeling as to what the emotion of the scene was meant to be. The big robbery sequences were really kind of full contemporary action. So we brought in some really fantastic guitar and drum and bass players and overlaid it with big, bombastic orchestra. But those sequences don’t last that long, so you are just like catapulted into that world and then you are spat out the other end and you get on with the rest of the film. One thing I’ve learned pretty quickly, there was no putting any kind of intro into anything, it is just like, blam! We’re into the cue, here we go. The film actually lives or dies on whether or not you believe in these characters, believe in their motivations and care what happens to them and really root for them. The music has a huge role to play in that. For example, Meena the elephant is so paralyzed with shyness. It isn’t until later in the film that she sings and so the music really has to tell you what she’s failing to tell the world until finally of course in the end she has the opportunity to tell the world that she’s absolutely great. Tori Kelly has amazing vocal power. She’s incredible.”
The movie has a sensational collection of great songs, from “My Way” to “Shake It Off” to “Baby Got Back” and even “Bad Romance.” I was able to persuade Talbot to confess which is his favorite: “I am a big Steve Wonder fan, so ‘Don’t Worry ‘Bout a Thing.” But he adds, “The things that’s really nice about it is that you might go there knowing full well that you don’t like some song or kind of music and then you find yourself with a big smile on your face tapping your foot.”
Jake Monaco is a multi-talented composer who has worked on a variety of projects for film and television. His music will be featured in Fox’s highly-anticipated action comedy “Keeping Up With the Joneses,” starring Jon Hamm, Gal Gadot, Isla Fisher, and Zach Galifianakis. He is also currently scoring three family-favorite animated series, “The Stinky and Dirty Show,” Netflix’s “Dinotrux,” and Warner Bros. Animation’s “Be Cool Scooby Doo.” As a producer and composer of additional music for Christophe Beck, Monaco has contributed to the animated magic of “Frozen,” the record-breaking laughs of the “Hangover” trilogy, the furry hijinks of “The Muppets,” and the award-winning documentary “Waiting for Superman.” What he loves about composing for movies and television is creating music that tells the story. He took time from his busy schedule to answer my questions.
What was the first instrument you learned to play?
Copyright 2016 Jake Monaco
I started taking guitar lessons when I was 6, but after a year of not wanting to practice, my parents let up. Then my freshman year of high school, my family moved, which left me with a lot of free time. I started getting more into music in general at this point and so I found that same guitar from when I was 6 and started teaching myself. I think it’s still in my attic actually… I should go and get it at some point 🙂
When did you first realize, watching a movie, that someone composed a score that helped tell the story?
My favorite movie as a child was Ghostbusters and although I didn’t know anything about Elmer Bernstein at the time, I remember the music being an integral part of the story.
What was the first composing job you got paid for?
I was accepted into the USC film scoring program 2006-2007. My first paid gig was with a director named Zeus Quijano on the short “Point of Entry”. A few years later he turned this 5 min short documentary into a 20 min version, which I was also lucky enough to work with him on. He is hoping to turn it into a feature eventually. Fingers crossed!
At what stage do you usually come into a project? Before or after filming has been completed?
It completely depends on the project. Some smaller projects, I have started working on themes or sound palettes prior to shooting, or in the case of animation, during the storyboard phase. Although on the last two features, I’ve been brought on only a few weeks before completion. I had two and a half weeks for “Absolutely Fabulous” and five weeks for “Keeping up with the Joneses.” It’s kind of exhilarating to be under that sort of deadline; adrenaline gets you through!
If you could go back in time and score any movie, what one would you pick?
Probably any James Bond film. I love them all (even the bad ones). 🙂
When you work on a film that mixes genres, like the action comedy “Keeping Up with the Joneses,” how is that reflected in the music?
I try to make the action sequences as fun as possible. While there are still stakes in the film, the music doesn’t have to play them so seriously, it’s ok to have fun! There’s a long, exciting chase sequence in the middle of “Joneses” that, while it has a driving beat and action elements, has a funk horn section and some crazy EDM synth interjections. The comedy is really all about timing; when is the perfect moment to drop out. A lot of the time, a joke plays funnier when the music pauses for it as opposed to commenting on it.
Did you incorporate any unusual instruments?
Without giving away too much, there is a running theme through the movie about the Joneses going to this little café in Marrakech in Morocco. So I did a little research and found some instruments native to that region that are sprinkled throughout the score. The two most interesting being the Sintir (or Gimbri), which is a 3 stringed mid/low register plucked instrument that has camel skin stretched over the body and the kemenche which is a bowed instrument that rests on the players knee and has a very distinct, almost nasal, tone to it.
Interview: Jesse Harlin on Composing for “Mafia III” and “Star Wars: The Old Republic
Posted on August 7, 2016 at 3:49 pm
More from Comic-Con: Jesse Harlin is a freelance composer who has been in the industry now for 17 years, 10 years with Lucasfilm, working on “Star Wars” and “Indiana Jones” games. “I just finished up working on Mafia III for 2K and I’m still working on Star Wars stuff. The way that we handle it is very much like scoring for film or TV in so far as a lot of what we do is about creating themes for characters and then you extrapolate different moods based on those sorts of themes.”
It gets complicated. “There was a period of time where I felt like when I was in college my main instrument was voice and then I certainly felt like for a while my main instrument became Excel. Yes you spend a lot of time in spreadsheets.” He gets started early on, when it may be all he has to go on is some concept art and what he hears from the people working on the game. “We talk to the developers and we figure out what is important to them in terms of what they want, how they want the music to function. And game is such a broad term that it means everything from slot machine, mobile games to extraordinarily cinematic enormous games that take hundreds of hours to complete and they all need music in between. So what a development studio may be looking for may be very different from a slot machine game or soccer game or racing game than what it might be to a very cinematic game. I tend to work on the more cinematic score.”
We’ve come a long way from the tinny one-note songs played in the early Atari games. “As a game composer I have recorded at Abbey Road with the London Symphony orchestra. So there are concert calls across the world where video game music is being performed. It’s not the bleeps and bloops that it was in 1984. I’ve written articles about in the industry about how you should use orchestration to create a signature sound for your game so that it stands out, it doesn’t just become a fairly genetic orchestra or score. And I have a lot of fun. The most recent game I did was Mafia III. It is a convoluted story and it’s set in 1968 in a fictionalized city that’s a New Orleans analog so rather than doing an orchestral score which is what Mafia II and Mafia I had, we did an all blues score and we recorded in Nashville with these just absolutely astounding blues musicians and so it’s got dobro and it’s got upright bass and one of the things that I used a lot is board piano which is a really gorgeous sound because what I was trying to do is score the game cinematically but not with an orchestra. So how do you take traditional blues instruments the kind of things that might play at blues club on a Friday night, how do you take those instruments and made them sound cinematic and dramatic? I was replacing my string section with things like Hammond organ and board piano. I had a blast. And one of the things we did I don’t know if anybody else had done is I brought in three guys who were drum majors from one of the universities in Nashville and they did step dancing body percussion. I really wanted that signature sound. It’s actually getting a vinyl release as well, so it will be on iTunes and it will be on vinyl.”
Harlin prefers scoring games “because I’m totally passionate about interactivity. And the thing that amazes me is that in games as a medium, every person that plays it can experience a different thing than someone else. It can also be extremely personal. Every time you watch a film it’s the same every time for every person who sees it. It’s not always the case with games.
