Footage?

It has now been over a month since Laurie advised me to get a copy of the footage I plan on using to experiment with in order to generate practice based research. I have contacted James several times over the past two weeks and he appears to just be making excuses at this point. I now plan on writing and shooting my own short film. I realise this is a big task but I don't have to waste waiting for James to get back to me.

Case Study

The past two weeks have seen a huge change in my plans for the dissertations case study. Rather than email composers who have worked on low budget films and discuss their process's I decided to examine the film scoring methods used by traditional film composers Thomas Newman and Hans Zimmer and compare them to methods used by Trent Reznor - who is still very new to scoring for film and has therefore has developed his own unique process.
Examination of methods used by all three composers should provide information which can be used to generate steps for the practical framework I intend to create. I have posted the case study below, this may change as the project grows as there is plenty of room to discuss other composers; Ideally I would like to add a section discussing Arcade Fires work for "Her". I am currently trying to find enough information to discuss their process in detail though.

Note to reader: throughout the case study below there are links to websites and youtube videos in brackets, these are personal reminders of where I need to add references later.

Case Studies

In order to realise the aim of this project the following case studies will analyse the scoring process of classically trained composer, Thomas Newman in comparison to composers Hanz Zimmer and Trent Reznor both of whom originate from a “pop” background. The purpose of this case study is to highlight the overlapping and most relevant elements of production that can be adapted and applied to the creation of this projects practical framework.

Case Study1: Thomas Newman

Thomas Newman is a classically trained composer who has established a name for himself in the world of Film. Newman was born into a family of composers, his late father Alfred Newman was the musical director of 20^th Century Fox and his two uncles - Lionel and Emil Newman - are classically trained composers and conductors. As well as his father and two uncles Newman’s siblings – David and Maria – are also classically trained composers. When Newman was young his mother would take the children to violin lessons every week, he later went on to study composition and orchestration at USC and Yale University. (http://articles.latimes.com/2009/dec/03/local/la-me-newman3-2009dec03) 

Although the scoring process necessarily differs between each Film a composer works on there are a number of elements that remain fixed in their creation process. Below are elements of Newman’s process that repeatedly appear when researching his score development. Listening to temp tracks and spotting the film are usually the first step in Newman’s work. Spotting sessions exist so that the composer, director and editor can select where the music will be placed within the film, Temp tracks refer to pieces of existing music that are placed in the film before anything new is composed, temp tracks are used so that the director and composer can develop a clear understanding of the main theme and mood of the film. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sg7dzJgljqY) This brings us to advice given by Newman’s; Get the director involved early, he says that by involving the director early he can avoid the hassle of having to make multiple changes or having a director not think he made the right choices. (http://www.aintitcool.com/node/38356) Newman discusses sending his early musical ideas and sounds to the director in order to make sure his work is in keeping with the themes and mood previously established. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sg7dzJgljqY). These early ideas and sounds are perhaps Newman’s most important step as a Film composer. His work is well known for been quite sequenced; he creates a skeletal idea, a key theme or melody and then works with a small group of musicians in order to flesh it out.  (

http://www.aintitcool.com/node/38356) although he is a classically trained composer Newman frequently discusses his love for and the necessity of improvisation in his process. When discussing the fleshing out of his skeletal ideas he talks about working with a small group of musicians 

“I’ll improvise, I’ll take out instruments, I’ll have players come over. I like the beginnings of processes because anything goes, anything’s possible.” (http://www.thedolphinlmc.com/arts-leisure/2013/03/14/film-composer-thomas-newman-discusses-the-art-of-film-scoring/) He discusses working with other musicians and how he remains in control of the project by working in a measured way; Newman has players experiment with ideas he comes up with. (http://www.aintitcool.com/node/38356) Traditionally Newman likes to create a large amount of Pre-Lays (work typically recorded in a multi track fashion in the studio before a composition it is taken to a full orchestra) he records in patterns and adds to these as time goes on, he later refines them to image deciding what needs to be added to and or taken away so that the score maintains suitable placement and themes. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sg7dzJgljqY)   

“I want to lay back and not take centre stage a lot with music. You want to make the actors look good. You don’t want to steal from these people.” - Thomas Newman

“The image tells you when you are right and wrong. You can say, “OK…here’s an idea and here’s someone playing to this idea…Oh that doesn’t work because I can’t hear the dialogue now. It’s more fool proof because you go over the material a lot and you are constantly looking at the material and you aren’t trying to close your eyes and jump in so much.” - Thomas Newman (http://www.aintitcool.com/node/38356) 

The next important step in Newman’s method is taking the Pre-Lay recordings to be overdubbed by a full orchestra. Newman discusses the transition of working in a small studio to recording with a full orchestra as a “wonderful thing” claiming that working in the studio allows him to place musicians within a sonic landscape in his sense of stereo whereas recording a full orchestra is very set and structured providing an almost proscenium setting and a real classical sense of what a real orchestra would sound like and that even in this process of recording small issues may be realised and altered the example provided is noticing a Clarinet been played in the wrong register and becoming distracting at section of the film.(http://www.aintitcool.com/node/38356)

Several of the steps provided by review of Newman’s process can be adopted and adjusted to suit the aim of this project; his process of experimentation and recording large amounts of work in a studio before recording with an orchestra can be compared to that of film composer Hans Zimmer. 

Case Study 2: Hans Zimmer

Hans Zimmer is a well-known German composer who has composed Film score for over 150 films. Unlike Thomas Newman, Zimmer is not a classically trained musician, when discussing his childhood Zimmer claims he briefly attended piano lessons but stopped, as he disliked the idea of formal music lessons.  "MTV biography – Hans Zimmer (in German)". Retrieved 2014-02-22. Zimmer’s career in music originates from “pop” backgrounds, he played synthesisers in several bands throughout 1970-1990, his career highlight at this time was the single “Video Killed The Radio Star” with new wave duo, The Buggles. http://www.spectrasonics.net/company/artists/artist.php?i d=11                               Although Hans began his career writing and producing pop music he soon discovered he was far more interested in and inspired by Film Score, since then Hans has scored over a hundred movies including several of Hollywood’s biggest and most successful films. http://www.spectrasonics.net/company/artists/artist.php?i d=11 

As discussed previously, traditionally the first stages in a film composers process are  listening to temp tracks and spotting the film; yet Hanz Zimmer has stated numerous times that he hardly ever receives temp tracks for the films he is asked to work on. http://www.vi-control.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=24544&start=35&postdays=0&postorder=asc&highlight=&sid=a8b588779201cc6c5181f11eab984828 Rather than been restricted to temp tracks Hanz writes a large suite of music that will provide musical themes for the film, this suite replaces the temp tracks that would have been used in the spotting session. http://www.soundtracksandtrailermusic.com/2013/07/hans-zimmer/. However before writing a single note Hanz stresses the importance of limiting your sonic world, he says that limiting your palette to suit the sonic world been created will save you from scrolling through thousands of synth, getting lost and never writing a single note. Zimmer is a pioneer of synthesizers and they are used frequently in the early stages of his creative process to generate and express his thoughts. 

“The computer is a musical instrument and the more virtuosic you get on that, the better you can express your ideas.” Hanz Zimmer  

http://www.vi-control.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=24544&start=35&postdays=0&postorder=asc&highlight=&sid=a8b588779201cc6c5181f11eab984828. In an online article entitled “Why Hanz Zimmer Got The Job You Wanted (And You Didn’t)” Michael A. Levine describes the suite Hanz creates pre-spotting session stating:

“Oddly, this isn’t really about music – it’s about the essence of what the story and the characters are.” Michael A.Levine

Like Newman, Zimmer prefers to have the director involved in the early stages of composition, while writing his pre-spotting session suite Zimmer will be in constant contact with Directors, stating “You are trying to serve the directors vision” –Hanz Zimmer http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYAZHJjLUwI. A Great example of this communication was Zimmer’s work on Christopher Nolan’s “The Dark Knight”. Nolan says the key musical element of “The Dark Knight” was the sound of character ‘The Joker” Nolan and Zimmer regularly updated each other on their progress, for example Nolan would send Zimmer clips of the film or stills of Heath Ledgers portrayal of the Joker. From these regular updates Zimmer began to experiment and ended up sending thousands of potential themes to Nolan - based on the agreed theme of extreme tension – eventually these ideas were narrowed down and the most suitable theme was found.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vt5_TB3mB2U. Once Zimmer has established initial ideas he begins to flesh them out, like Newman this stage of the process involves surrounding himself with a team of musicians. Zimmer describes his musicians as his actors.

"My players are my actors…I’m trying to get them to sort of spend some time with each other…we’re getting to know each other's strengths, figuring out what’s possible and what’s not possible." http://ccssarts.weebly.com/1/post/2013/06/lessons-on-the-creative-process-from-composer-hans-zimmer.html 

Once Zimmer and his team establish final ideas -fitting themes and ideas into a complete score that can be synced alongside the films visual - they are taken and recorded with a full orchestra. 

Zimmer’s creative process incorporates a lot of experimentation and the use of computers/synthesizers, which is well suited to the aim of this project. His communication with directors is also very relevant however as this study progressed it became clear that Zimmer’s process closely resembled that of classically trained Neman, using a team of musicians to flesh out ideas and recording a full orchestra. To establish a drastic difference between a classically trained composer and a composer originating from a pop background a musician newer to the world of film needs to be investigated. 

Case Study 3: Trent Reznor

Michael Trent Reznor is a singer-songwriter, composer and music producer most commonly associated with industrial rock project “Nine Inch Nails”.  Throughout his youth Reznor was associated with a number of bands but while working at Cleveland’s Right Track Studios as an assistant recording engineer/janitor (Huey, Steve. "Nine Inch Nails". Allmusic. Retrieved 2006-11-24) he found himself recording demos that would eventually lead to the creation and formation of “Nine Inch Nails.” (Fine, Jason (July–August 1994). "The Truth About Trent". Option.) “Nine Inch Nails” debut album was released in 1989 and in 2009 after 20 years of writing recording and touring the band announced they were going into a state of indefinite hiatus. (http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1605194/nine-inch-nails-go-on-hiatus.jhtml)  In 2010 David Fincher asked Reznor to score his film “The Social Network”, for his work Reznor won a Golden Globe and the Academy award for best original score. Since then he has scored Finchers “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo” and is currently scoring contemporary thriller “Gone Girl”. 

Although Hanz Zimmer does originate from a “pop” background he has worked in film for a much greater period of time, Trent Reznor however has only worked in film for the most recent years of his career, for these reasons his process of creating film score differs noticeably from standard methods. 

In an exclusive interview for “Tunecore” magazine Reznor discusses the “Typical process” of creating film score 

“The typical process is that they will hold off until the film is near completion, then see the film and start working with, “OK, this scene needs something like this, and this scene needs something like that. Here’s how long the scenes are, and here’s how they fit together.” – Trent Reznor (

http://www.tunecore.com/blog/2012/01/trent-reznor-interview.html)

Instead of taking this route while composing his first film score for “The Social Network” Reznor spent several weeks composing various pieces of music not to picture. Later Reznor met with David Fincher and the cues were placed into the movie at whichever point felt right. As Reznors score for “The Social Network” was hugely successful he adopted the method of composing large amounts of music not to picture as his own personal take on film composition, he discusses this method while talking about his work on “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo” 

“So when we got to [The Girl With the] Dragon Tattoo, we essentially did the same sort of thing, but with a zero on the end; everything was ten times more in-depth. We had a lot more time, we had a lot longer film” – Trent Reznor 

Reznor produced 90 minutes of music before shooting had finished, this replaced the need for temp tracks and music was added to the film from the early stages of editing. (http://www.tunecore.com/blog/2012/01/trent-reznor-interview.html) 

However in order to produce film score in this way Trent Reznor relied on a lot of initial direction from David Fincher, this involved meeting with Fincher to discuss the overall mood of the films and specific elements of the characters for example it was decided that “The Social Network’s” score should have an overall feeling of melancholy, Fincher even referenced existing scores in order to communicate his wants for the film. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aY2yb4IV4Z8) 

Even though Reznor is completely new to film scoring and has had no classical training in the matter several of his methods of composing intertwine with those of Thomas Newman and Hanz Zimmer. Just like Zimmer Reznor stresses the importance of limiting ones sonic world. When composing for “The Social Network” Reznor limited the equipment and instruments he was going to use, keeping in consideration the film they were composing for, he selected gear that would best serve the picture.  (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d7WTaSBd6Yc)  

In order to establish was instrumentation and equipment would best serve the picture Reznor closely examined the main character “Mark Zuckerberg” and decided what would best suit him, ultimately deciding something organic yet electronic would be most suited; this is similar to Hanz Zimmer’s work on “The Dark Knight” and his composition surrounding the Joker.  (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uuM4yBFI03E) Like Newman Reznor has stated that when writing film score he doesn’t want to take anything away from the picture, that music isn’t the main focus of a film, he describes his work in film score as collaboration between himself and the director’s vision.  (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ZYb9GPW09c)

Unlike Newman and Zimmer, Reznor did not use a full orchestra to compose or record any of his scores; this makes his case study particularly relevant to the aim of this project. Reznors process of creation is similar to Zimmer and Newman’s “Pre-Lay” stage, creating vast amounts of music in a studio, but is undertaken in greater depth and produced to be placed straight into film.