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Well, the last track on the Star Wars album original release -- it’s a montage of the themes -- first comes to mind. It's so rousing, perfectly composed and orchestrated. I don't know how [John Williams] does it; it's mind blowing. That's just off the top of my head, but so often I'll go to a movie and simply be blown away by most of the music. I was relieved to hear at a seminar that James Newton Howard feels intimidated by music scores he hears on many films these days....there's hope for me yet!
My first original piece of music is cemented [in] 1982, [when it] came to me during the evening I prayed that I might have the ability to create moods and emotions for others. Talk about answered prayer! I think song-wise a lot of us enjoy hearing again the songs of our youth, our teenage years, and for me that was the 80s. As such, I have huge collections of 80s music (American and Australian collections). I'm not embarrassed about this! The 80s had strong melodies, developed electronics/synthesizers, etc., and tons and tons of "feel good" moments in the music. The 90s reacts against this with a more raw, dirtier feel, and I love this too, but the 80s music just takes me back to my teen years. My personal spiritual life is a powerful one for me, and these years are when I guess a spotlight turned on to really begin my path, spiritually and professionally. As such, it is this immensely crucial point in my life, on top of just having all the teenage fun.
This question reminds me of the film Sliding Doors where Gwyneth Paltrow’s [character] experiences a fork in the road and we see where both futures go side by side. I don't know if my opportunities have really provided that fork, but I am immensely interested in filmmaking. I was also a good creative writer but dropped that when the composing workload piled up.
Another movie I made was a prequel to Silent Running (my favorite film as a kid). I used friends to act in it, and they all got tired of it, but I got through it. I had to build a drone robot (see Silent Running) and have it walk around, etc., and that was incredibly difficult. In the end this robot was very convincing and my neighbors were amazed! The thing is only I could operate it properly to get it to walk like in Silent Running, so others had to do the Super 8 filming of those scenes. I got such a huge kick out of all this and thought maybe I'd be a filmmaker some day. It’s one of those creative things -- stuff comes up from within and you just can’t stop throwing everything you have into it.
It’s not that well respected compared to film music. Most people hear the word "TV" and cringe -- for good reason. Yet, there is a lot of great material on television, Smallville for example. It can be disheartening because so much work and effort goes into composing for shows like this, but when I meet new people and say I write music for television, you can tell they are not thinking dramatic underscore! And they usually then ask "What about film? Have you done any movies?!" There [are] these worlds of creativity going on that are superb, but the overall reality-game show-commercial-advertising world of TV kind of brings it down in a lot of people's minds. As for what I like most, this is answered in Q34 below.
I think the X Files helped pave the way for a more film-like look [for] TV series. Along with that comes the film-like music which is now used a lot in many series. This is far different from Mike Post's new trends of using rock music in scores, which in the 70s and 80s was actually a new thing. One thing I really don’t like is when TV scores pep up the content beyond what it really is. It’s like watching Steve Irwin [Crocodile Hunter] who tends to drive me nuts with the hype. ("Are all Australians really like that?" people ask!) I just feel manipulated by some of the overly energetic music in some shows, and my reaction is to switch off or resist. This can also happen in the midst of a good episode or show, however, where I feel the composer might have been asked to keep the energy going where it isn't necessary. Producers sometimes don't trust that their work is working, and want the music to keep things going when it doesn't need to. This cheapens the product in my opinion, and is one thing I despise about some TV work compared to film, which trusts the audience more. Of course, that audience can’t change the channel, but still I sometimes feel TV productions that I watch [are] dumbed-down when [they don’t] need to be.
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January 31, 2004. © Copyright 2004 MiraclesTV.com. All Rights Reserved. |
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Now and again the
thought crosses my mind [and] I wonder about what else I might do. I
love art and painting and lots of creative areas, for example. But I
really am fascinated with all of the processes of film and TV creation.
(I'd say producing but that has more of a business/marketing meaning in
Los Angeles). As a kid, I made many Super 8 movies that were quite
ambitious now [that] I think of it. I didn't have actors, so I tried
other things: an episode of Flash Gordon, for example, that
starred a real live dragon lizard! Poor thing had to fly about on a
speeder thing dodging laser beams that I hand scratched into hundreds of
frames of Super 8 film!