samhayman
@Jeff - Thanks for your input! :) Yes I had to get used to doing this. Problem with this particular situation is that the director finds it very difficult to explain things about music. No, I don't expect him to be a music expert - I'm saying for eg, years ago I worked on a piece and he said it's too "Harry Potter" in style and believe me it had nothing to do with it. So I was left guessing and simply got lucky on the 2nd version I sent coz he liked it.
The best music in film ... is ALWAYS about the visuals. My suggestion is always to start with the visual and do not "listen" to the sound ... because it throws your inner "voice" off with various suggestions and innuendos from the words and visual. You have to visualize these ... directly ... I like to say ... and this is what the great ones ever did ... the Bernard Herrman's, the Nino Rota's, the Maurice Jarre's, Vangelis ... and such ... in most cases, and David Lean admitted it one time, it was the music that forced him to expand the visual sequences in Dr. Zhivago ... so to think/say that some directors are picky ... yeah ... I can tell you what I would like in a scene, but I'm not going to give it to you, because I like the free form stuff and I can ADJUST the camera and moment to suit your music, because you can ALSO create something powerful that can help define the movie!
The majority of Hollywood film musicians are a bunch of ... nobodies ... that will never be remembered with the great composers of soundtracks in movie history. Bernard Herrman has been said that he create some off instrument choices together because he wanted to have a laugh with Alfred, because he had absolutely no idea what music could do to his shows at the start ... he learned later!
IF a director says he needs this and that ... he then, does not need a "composer" for music for his soundtrack ... he just needs a jingle maker, which most of the Hollywood folks are!
You can see, for example, how Xavier Koller used the ECM music in his own Oscar winner ... very different, and you can tell he used the music to define several visuals!
samhayman
...@bapu - Words have to be taken in context right? :) I used it with the same weight if I said, "I hate cold coffee". Actually I quite like this particular director so it could be the Mediterranean temperament that makes us use stronger words than in other parts of the world ;) ...
Not necessarily. And saying that to Bapu ... will send get him bapu'd really good! Words are NOT, always the important partt of the whole thing, and this is where the music can shine the most! It might be subtle ... and it can add a subtext to the film itself that the director might not have seen or thought of before.
Remember, that above all, most film is a compromising thing ... you pretty much have to agree on every thing, so to speak, in order to get things done, but a give and take is always what separates the better music makers from the rest ... you WILL remember the music ... every one remembers the clacking sound and Vangelis ... everyone remembers ... "it's all tears in the rain ... time to die!" ... and if a director has no "ear" for music ... the chance that you will get good work done with that person, is doubtful.
Best excample of this is Scorcese ... loves music, was one of the camera folks at Woodstock that gave us priceless images ... and he doesn't know how to use music in his own films ... has no idea ... and it is so Hollywood'ish as to be boring! You will NEVER remember a single piece of music in his films ... because he is music'less as a person. He never sniffed the stuff either just like Clinton!
I defined music for the films that I made, from visuals, and some of it came from music. I made a film of the lyrics of Kevin Ayers song "Once I Awakened" and merely gave it a visual with an introduction and an ending ... that blew away the class ... I didn't care what anyone thought and I visualized what I saw in the pieces of music ... I did not give a cahoot to ideas and thoughts ... I merely visualized it all with a camera and went out and shot. THIS is an extreme, but in the end is the best way to learn how to use music.
While it was never used, I had, for example, created a whole scenario for the Coffee House Band, that was not understood, or accepted, or perhaps not that serious, and it was a "visualization" that would have sort of come off a typical half satirical Hipgnosis cover ... and the picture for the "cover" would have been a part of that film ... the film I started to write, had no story, but someone remembered something about a band last night, and all they can see now is an empty stage, lights out in the bar, and someone forgot a single light in the middle of the stage which is the only thing you can see ... off to the side was the subtext story, the janitor was asleep on one stool with his hands on the bar and a mop and bucket on his side, barely seen ... it kinda turned things inside out and made the "visualizer" wonder if this was the janitor thinking, or someone just catching this sight, which, of course, is not important to the visual or the story at all! The whole thing was to be brown-toned, except the lamp barely lit left over on the stage ... that had "color" in it ... for me it was a way of saying that what was on that stage was colorful, and the rest was not as important ... did anyone see it?
That's ok ... I have this scripted and I will publish this with 4 other scripts ... with a thank you to the CHB, but no thanks to their appreciation! In fact, they didn't like it! Or get it ... not sure which! I actually cried, because I had written this and created a story board ... but folks that do not "see" visuals or film in their music ... will rarely be able to do good work for the screen.
This my recomendation that you just grab 5 films off your shelp with your eyes closed, grag 5 sequences sight unseen, put them together on top of each other, and then take the sound out ... not go add some music to it, as IF you were adding the sound to it all!
Nothing, will EVER teach you more ... than to learn to let your imagination go and hear music off a visual .... after all, this is what film is about for the most part!
But above all, go look at the Science Fiction films that Bernard Herrman used his music for, and then go compare how his music was used for Alfred ... it is one of the greates lessons in what music is in film that you will ever learn.
Lastly ... and I know that yours is about music ... but see a film called "Visions of Light" as it is about ... cinematographers, and there is another beautiful bit in there that will floor you. Ryuichi Sakamoto and David Byrne won an Oscar for music in a film, and David wrote the Eastern music and Ryuichi wrote the Western music! And they readily admit that the visuals made the music much easier ... but then that director was also known for floating all over the place when something he liked appeared, be it an actor, music or anything else.
Good luck ... that is a place where the majority of musicians are not worth the hassle. Even Christopher Franke, that created so much movie magic with Tangerine Dream, and had good moments in Babylon 5, never was able to do it right or well in Hollywood. Wrong people! And to boot, when you watch the Babylon 5 series, you can tell right away that most of the directors they used, never knew how to use music at all ... and made the whole thing look cheap and poor and not even close to how good it could be! It was good, but the music was misused grossly 75% of the time!
post edited by Moshkiae - 2012/09/08 19:17:40