Part 2

Can you take me through your process of composing a soundtrack on the basis of a movie that's particularly dear to you, please?

My favorite question. I was taking a break from composing but a friend called and said “I met someone that made a documentary about the Philadelphia Eagles winning the Super Bowl.” I’m from Philadelphia, grew up with Eagles’ season tickets, going to games with my dad. We’re total freaks. I was worried it was going to be one of those NFL Films style where they take you game by game and only the fans of the team appreciate it (which I would have scored, gladly), but it turned out to be this beautiful portrait of the city, and specifically of four fans who experience redemption through the team and in their own lives. So I ask my friend for the director’s info and he gives it to me and says “you didn’t get this from me.” So I cold called the director and begged him to let me score the film. And he said they were about to hire another composer but if I wanted to put something together in 24 hours he’d listen before making a decision. So, I made the (correct) assumption that they were using typical football music as temp (Friday Night Lights) and decided that I needed to do something completely different. That is, if I were watching the movie, I’d want something different. So, I thought of sounds and bands I associated with Philly and for me that was Bruce Springsteen and The War on Drugs. So I called my friend Jon Natchez who’s the saxophonist in The War on Drugs and we did this Clarence Clemons style thing with me on harmonica. I didn’t think I’d get hired but thought that if I did, I could make something I really believed in. And they loved it. But then it turned out to be a really hard project because I was putting a lot of pressure on myself to make something that felt as special as that season of being a fan had... so I really labored over each cue and I think it’s my best work because of that. (You can stream the album here).

I would assume that a major part of composing for film is the ability to interpret the images and the narrative at play. Tell me about how this works for you and how these interpretations in turn lead to sounds and compositions.

I think a lot of this work happens to me at the very beginning of a project. I usually try to watch a cut of the film without any music and just let my imagination run wild in terms of instrumentation. And like I just described with the Eagles movie, I try to match instrumentation with story. Then, usually my next step is to write some music and record people on those instruments away from picture. Then, my process becomes shaping those recordings and probably recording more to picture. And at that point, I’m working almost primarily off of feel and instinct, until the director comes in and says this is completely wrong, this scene is actually sad not happy and we talk about it and I try again, again from feel and instinct (shh, don’t tell them that). I think I like this process partly because it forces me to work with different musicians on each project. I’ve been really fortunate to find musicians who are comfortable improvising and making sounds that I wouldn’t have made myself or found in sample packs.

What, from your experience and perspective, does the ideal collaboration between you and a director look like?

Hmm. Great question. I think it’s like any other relationship where it really functions well if it’s based on respect and communication. So, both sides are asking for what they need and respecting what the other person asks for. I think I know I need time in the studio on my own, sustained time, weeks, to really explore sounds and get into a headspace for a specific film, before I’m ready to start trying to problem solve with words and discussions or collaboration. And maybe that will change. But that seems to be working for me now. And then, sometimes, if I don’t nail it, I need time on my own to try again before talking about it too much and getting too inside my head about why the first thing wasn’t working. I also love working with directors who understand how big experimentation is a part of my process. Like, with the film I described where I wrote from the script, even though the things I wrote and recorded weren’t right, they led to something that was. But, again, this is why communication is important, because on certain projects you have the time to experiment and on others, you don’t, and then it’s really important to figure out how to communicate so a bunch of time isn’t wasted.

How do the other aspects of a movie's sound stage – such as foley and effects – influence your creative decisions?

Enormously. I worked on a movie called Audible for Netflix (Oscar-nominated for best short documentary) about a deaf high school football team. There’s almost no talking in the film, just music, sound effects and sign language. So, there were a lot of discussions about the line between music and sound effects and a lot of sounds were shared between myself and the sound designer. I think, in an ideal world, on any project, this would be the case but a lot of times it’s not, because of deadlines. I’m hoping that it will continue to be a big part of my process, collaborating with sound designers, leaving room for sound design to do its own part of the story telling. On Audible, we even went as far as communicating with the characters in the film about how they experience music (a lot of bass frequencies, vibrations), so that the deaf audience could have an experience with the score as well. (You can stream a track from that score here).

The balance between visuals, fx and film music is delicate. What, from your point of view, determines whether or not it is a successful one?

Communication, as I described above, and a lack of ego (as much as that’s possible LOL). Being able to sit back, as Thomas Newman advised, and really try to take the film in as a story and figure out what is the film trying to communicate, and is my music helping or hurting in that endeavor. And often, it’s hurting because I’m trying to do too much. So, lately, I’m trying to do as little as possible while still trying to discover where exactly the line is, where I start to really feel something, or get sucked into the scene as an audience member. I don’t know – that part is probably hardest to describe: when you feel like something is working. Sometimes your skin tingles a bit, or a scene you’ve been watching for a week straight suddenly feels different, feels alive. That’s the thing I’m always chasing as a composer. That type of magic.

Once the movie is finished, what is the value of the score you composed outside of its original context?

Another great question. Sometimes, it has very little value beyond reminding me personally of something I was able to accomplish (getting cues approved, not getting fired). A professor in film school said you can never criticize a score because if the composer wasn’t fired it was a success. And there’s some truth to that… although I still criticize scores from time to time. And maybe someone will hear a cue and be reminded of the film they watched and reconnect to that story or that experience.

But other times, I think it has immense value. Like Jonny Greenwood’s score for There Will Be Blood, or John Williams final cue for ET. These are things that elicit immense feelings on their own, in Johnny’s case, pushed some boundaries of contemporary music..

For my own personal work, I’m proud of the score I wrote about above (for Maybe This Year) because I feel like I was able to capture the feeling of being an Eagles fan that season, what it was like to be in that city and feel connected to everyone around you, in a way that maybe hadn’t been done for a football movie before, or at least using instruments that hadn’t been used before in that context. So, maybe there’s value to these things if they’re able to provide sentimental value to people. That being said, I do think there are certain scores that have come along (like There Will Be Blood), where the composer is experimenting with musical language in a new way and gets lucky enough to work with a director that values that, and there’s this value of certain scores on multiple levels.

Different composers could potentially approach the same scene with strikingly different music. Would you say there can be 'wrong' and 'right' musical decisions for some scenes? In which way can some film music be considered 'definitive'?

I think there definitely can be a right or wrong. I won’t name the movie, but I had gotten like 15-20 rejections on a scene. And the director was a good friend of mine but things had gotten really tense. I wasn’t sure if he still had faith in me as a composer. And I wanted to lighten the mood. Make him laugh. So, I took a cue from Randy Newman’s score for The Natural and put it in a scene where some really serious things were being discussed and sent it in. And then I didn’t hear back for a few days. And finally the director called and said, I was afraid to call you because really this just isn’t right. And I had to tell him that it was from another movie and I was just trying to make him laugh. He didn’t appreciate that. But, it led to a serious discussion about why Randy’s music wasn’t right. Because it wasn’t wrong for the reasons I thought it was wrong.

There was something that was actually working a bit, to my surprise. And ultimately, we cracked the scene. But, put like music from Cinderella over Schindler’s list and you’ll see something wrong. I mean, artistically that actually sounds interesting, but it would be distracting in the context of that story. And, in answer to your question, I think some music can be considered “definitive” for sure, but only with time. And that time can be an hour in your studio when you can take a walk and know you’ve cracked it and will never be able to hear anything else under a scene other than what you’ve written and if the director doesn’t like it you’ll have to quit (just kidding, kind of!), or with years that go by and all of a sudden, to hear anything other than the melody to As Time Goes By under that montage in Casablanca would feel awful. I’m sure another melody could have worked there, at the time, but with each year that’s passed it’s really solidified itself.

So, in that sense, if you and the director and the team are excited about something and feel it’s working and make a decision to release that thing into the world, after a few years I guess that means your music will be definitive! I take a bit of solace in that.