Who Does What?: The Film Composer

Music has always had an important role in the history of film. Even during the silent era there would be live music playing alongside the movie, ranging from a full orchestra to just a guy and an out of tune upright piano. The film's background music or "score" is an essential ingredient of a well made movie and I'm going to take some time to try to explain who does it and how it's done.

Now the time a composer gets involved in a film differs with each film. The usual time is during the beginning stages of post-production, where movie's director discusses their plans and ideas for the film's music with the composer.

All worship the Mighty Ennio!

Sometimes a composer gets involved much earlier. A classic story involves Italian director Sergio Leone and his musical maven the legendary Ennio Morricone. In his later films Leone would give Morricone a copy of the script long before shooting began. Morricone would then write music for certain scenes inspired by the screenplay. Leone would then listen to the music while filming those scenes. Composing the shots and the action in time to the music.

But the usual practice is to get the musical ball rolling in the early stages of post-production. Once a rough cut of the film is ready the composer can begin spotting.

Spotting involves the composer, the director, and sometimes the producer analyzing and discussing the film. They lay out the tone of the overall film, as well as the specific requirements of individual scenes, including timing and which moments are more important than others.

Then the "syncing" begins. The composer then goes through every scene making notes of the timing he must consider when composing the music. The old fashioned way is to use a stopwatch and a notepad, but nowadays a lot of composers use sophisticated software to lay out a sort of map for the music they will be composing.

Legendary film composer Bernard Hermann.

That 'map' is called a "click track" where the composer calculates the beats of each particular scene, and the cues that dictate where the music goes in and out.

Then the composer can finally do some composing, writing the music for the film in the tone and style that directors wants for the film. 

Once the score is composed it's then "orchestrated," or "arranged." This is where the members of the orchestra, or band that's going to play the music is assigned their parts of the score, and their cues.  Now a lot of the time this is done by a specialist arranger or orchestrator, but a lot of composers like to do their own arranging and orchestration.

Then the music is recorded under the direction of a conductor who is watching the specific scene being scored, and listening to a click track giving him the essential beats and cues for that scene.

Then the final edits and tweaking are done, and the completed film is set to be released.

Now it's a common practice for directors to use preexisting music as 'temporary' tracks to give composers a rough idea of the tone and timing they're looking for. However, this can backfire, like the case of 2001: A Space Odyssey when Stanly Kubrick rejected an original score by Alex North in favor of making his temporary track permanent.

An oddity in the history of modern movie music is Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds. The film doesn't have a traditional film score, in fact the only music in the film comes from within the scenes, on radios, or being played on piano. Instead Hitchcock had his frequent musical collaborator Bernard Hermann to work with electronic audio pioneers Oskar Sala and Remi Gassman to "compose" the sound effects of the birds.

But that's a bit of a digression.

The Book Report: Amazon Might Raise The Dead...

Amazon, the mega sized book e-tailer and burgeoning publisher, is reported to be making a bid for Dorchester Publishing.

Founded in 1971 Dorchester was one of the biggest independent publishers of mass market paperbacks through their imprints Love Spell, which specialized in romance novels, and Leisure Books which was the last major publisher to specialize in horror novels as of 2000, and acted as the distributor of the Hard Case Crime series of pulp-revival paperbacks.

Now a few years ago saw a dip in the sales of mass market paperbacks, and the company immediately started to collapse in on itself. It announced that it was shifting its focus to e-books and print on demand publishing, lost Hard Case Crime to rival Titan Books, and stopped paying royalties to their authors, while collecting revenues on e-book editions of books that they didn't have the rights to.

Then the company's owner decided to foreclose on Dorchester Publishing over several million dollars that had been loaned to the publisher by its parent company.  Soon after that they started sniffing around looking for a buyer willing to sort out the dog's breakfast the once venerable company had become.

So far, no dice until Amazon expressed interest.

It is in Amazon's best interest to save Dorchester and sort out the boondoggle with the writers who are currently fighting it over rights to their books, that go beyond profit and loss.

Right now Amazon is the biggest dog in the book business. The bulk of books being sold these days are sold via Amazon. While the e-book has gone from a pipe dream to a major part of the industry in a very short period of time, there is still a large market for hardcover and paperback books, and to survive the industry needs a steady supply of new material.

To do that they can't allow a once major publisher to die, especially in the middle of a feud over rights with dozens of authors. If the company goes officially bankrupt, the battle over those rights becomes even more convoluted and harder to sort out, putting authors and their work in a state of limbo. Publishers can't buy books that are being published by someone else, legally or illegally, because that means they have to share with someone who doesn't bother paying royalties.

The industry can't afford for that to happen, and what hurts the industry hurts Amazon.

Now Dorchester's problems could add up to costing millions of dollars to sort out. Amazon though has literally billions in their war chest, and are one of the few entities in the industry with pockets deep enough to fix this in a way that can please the ex-Dorchester authors and their fans, while keeping the uncertainty and chaos from having a ripple effect that affects the whole industry.

Actually, the story reminds me of a banking crisis that struck America in the 1900s. JP Morgan saw that the collapse of a chain of unstable banks would hurt the whole financial sector. So he rounded up all the biggest names in Wall Street, and literally overnight they set out a plan where they took over the debts, protected the depositors and squelched a panic before it happened.

Fixing this mess could cost Amazon a lot of money, but not fixing it could cost Amazon more.

Hollywood Babble On & On #924: You Asked For It!

I got two questions from reader Nate Winchester that I'm going to answer here.

1) With the upcoming release of Spider-man, and the announcement that Batman will be rebooted right after Nolan's 3rd movie ends, I can't help but wonder why don't Superhero movies  do more of the James Bond route? (well, until Casino Royale, but was that even a true "origin" story?) True, if it's a more obscure hero or if it's leading to a grander epic (like Avengers), why do we have to have "origin" movies all the time? Spiderman, Batman, Superman, Hulk, Captain America, most of these the public zeitgeist get the basics of.  Why not just skip straight to a new story?

First we need to talk about reboots.


Sometimes a reboot is necessary.  There's been a long time between chapters in the franchise that the zeitgeist needs a refresher, or there's some sort of dramatic change in the fundamental nature of the franchise itself.


The Bond franchise's "reboot" with Casino Royale marked a shift to the characters literary roots with darker grittier stories and more believable gadgetry after the incredibly cartoonish turn the films took with the last Pierce Brosnan film.


I get the feeling that the people behind The Amazing Spider-Man feel a reboot is necessary to correct what were the strategic errors made in the Sam Raimi trilogy.  First, Tobey Maguire was too old to play Peter Parker, being about 10 years older than the character he was playing. Also, by dropping Gwen Stacy from the first film and bringing in Mary Jane right away, they lost the motivation for his reticence in starting a relationship with MJ in the second movie.


I try not to talk about the third movie, because it was a complete narrative boondoggle which probably increased their urge to do it again with a clean slate.

Nolan's "reboot" of Batman's origins were necessary because his trilogy was so radically different in style, tone, and method from the Burton/Schumacher movies that came before them. In fact, divorcing themselves as far from the disco-nipple-suited Schumacher movies as they could was essential to reviving the franchise.

Of course such rational thinking may not have anything to do with the studio's decisions. They might think that tweaking the origin story opens doors to more potential merchandise or they think that the audience's collective attention span is as short as their own.


Now when it comes to "James Bonding" superheroes by just changing the actor when the contracts run out, that's good if you have the character and their origins firmly established in the zeitgeist. Batman, Superman and Spider-Man could potentially be adapted from scratch without telling their origins, because everyone pretty much have those stories already burned into their brains.


Characters like Marvel's Iron Man needed a little more explanation because of their then status on Marvel's "B-List," but when Robert Downey Jr.'s time as the character is up, you don't really need to tell it again. You can just bring in another actor if you can find one who can match Downey's performance.


So I guess what I'm trying to say in my incredibly rambling way is that the James Bonding of superhero characters can be done as long as they're not trying to correct the errors of the previous movies. If there's no disaster to get away from, then why bother, just change the cast and crew.

2) I hear often the old stories about how the original studio system was "broken" to give rise to our current set up in Hollywood.  Which you point out is very dysfuncitonal.  So I'm curious what you think it would take to "break" the current Hollywood system and allow something more sensible to arise, and a rough estimate on when (if ever) it would happen?

To answer that question we must look back at what broke the studios back in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and that was the simple fact that they were broke.

20th Century Fox had to sell off huge chunks of its back-lot to avoid bankruptcy. Gulf+Western owned Paramount at the time, but was seriously considering shuttering the studio and selling off its assets because it was a financial black hole. In fact the only studios that were anywhere near being financially healthy at the time were United Artists (because of its low overhead) and Universal, (because it dominated television production).


Right now, though dysfunctional, and losing audiences for theatrical there are things that are keeping the studios from engaging in the radical reforms they need.


1. The studios are just parts of very large multinational media corporations with sizable monetary cushions that protect them from the vicissitudes of the real world.


2. They are mostly making money hand over fist from their television channels and productions.


3. The occasional record breaking blockbuster convinces them that they're on the right track, even when everything else they do fail.


4. Any independent company rises to challenge them can be either bought up, or brought down by the studios without too much trouble.


New media, via the internet, may become a challenger one day, but even they will face consumption by the awesome Borg-like power of the big media companies.


Any more questions?

Hollywood Babble On & On #923: Lawsuit Follies

If there is one thing independent film production is good for is attracting lawsuits. The latest legal lunacy is centered on the 2009 movie Transylmania (AKA Dorm Daze III). 

Financier Third Eye Capital are suing the film's makers for failing to repay the $22 million they invested in the movie, and for using money from the movie's budget for personal expenses. 

The lawsuit also says that the film was branded as a spoof of Twilight and True Blood when it was really just a low-brow farce about 30-something actors playing stoner college guys running around chasing 30-something actresses, who look like strippers, playing co-eds while both are being chased by vampires. Reports say that the film was, in fact, a sequel to the straight to video "comedies" Dorm Daze I & Dorm Daze II that I had never even heard of before I started digging around about his movie.

Now I have to ask some questions.

About the movie as an investment:

What made the financiers think that sinking money into the production and 1,000+ screen release of a movie called Transylmania or Dorm Daze III was a good investment?

About the lawsuit saying the filmmakers bogusly branded the movie as a parody of Twilight and True Blood when it wasn't: 

Didn't the investors read the script of the movie they were putting $22 million into and know what it was?

If they did, how radically different was the script they read from the final shooting script? Was it radical enough to qualify as a deceptive practice, or just run of the mill production rewrites?

Then the release of the movie...

It's predecessors were straight to video movies that came and went without much notice among people who don't watch movies while high. So why release this film in over 1,000 theaters, which is an expensive proposition? (And lets not forget that it was made in 2008 and released in early December 2009, a time dominated by the annual Oscar fodder and the exponentially building hype for the then upcoming release of Avatar.)

Now the answer to most of these question is probably that they were trying to rip off cash in on the modest popularity of the Scary Movie franchise, its assorted spin offs and imitators.

Which brings me back to the question I asked about the branding of the movie. You sell a movie as a spoof, which has a following, but deliver a frat-boy T&A farce, which don't have a following outside the DVD discount bin, you are going to get bad word of mouth from your target audience to go with the traditional bad reviews from critics.

How could that possibly be good for anyone involved?

So from what I can gather this movie looked like one big ill conceived disaster from just about every angle, and probably should have been avoided right from the beginning.

I guess the lesson is that nothing makes someone a millionaire faster than being a billionaire investing in movies, and that you shouldn't put in a dime unless you know everything about what you're getting into, including where every last penny is going to be spent.

Hey, Third Eye Capital, give me $22 million. I can't guarantee you a hit, but I can promise that it would have a lot better chance at success than Transylmania.

The Book Report: Thoughts On The Book Biz

If you want to find a business that is sometimes even more dysfunctional than Hollywood you need not look any further than publishing. A classic story about how the book business is run involves Stephen King going to meet his editor in New York. 

 

At the time King had exploded onto pop culture and was the #1 selling author in the world, literally moving millions of units in both hardcover and paperback, and was literally at least half of his publisher's profit margin. However, when he got to the publisher's office, literally no one outside of his editor had a clue who he was.

That's the equivalent of the people running Universal not knowing the identity of Stephen Spielberg while E.T.: The Extra Terrestrial ran rampant at the box office.

It happened because King, while commercially successful, was not a "darling" of the narrowly confined New York literary/critical social circle, and was to the people running the company at that time, just a name on a financial ledger that they didn't pay any attention to. King moved onto another publisher as soon as he could, and the publisher that ignored him suddenly had to pay attention to a massive dip in their ledgers.

Now that you know how the industry treated the biggest selling author in the world at the time, you can imagine how they treat new authors. From my own experience in dealing with agents and publishers I've dealt with a few egregiously unprofessional people who treat new authors with mind-boggling contempt, while the majority try to do their best, they are more often than not shackled by things beyond their control.

Now while the contemptuous unprofessional people are a taint on the industry, I can understand why the majority of agents and publishers are wary of signing new authors. 

 

New writers are extremely risky. 

 

The majority of the manuscripts that agents represent are rejected by publishers, and that means that their time, effort, and even money, is wasted with nothing to show for it.

And for publishers, they have author advances, editorial, marketing, printing, distribution costs, and general company overhead to deal with. For every J.K. Rowling that become global phenomena that sell in the tens of millions there are hundreds, if not thousands of titles whose greatest achievement is the amount of dust they gather on bookstore shelves.

So you get publishers and agents chasing fads, pissing away millions on book deals for "celebrities" that usually fail to earn back their advance, and stick with a small number of "elite" authors, even though their sales tend to go down over time while their advances go up.

 

But the rub lies in the fact that some of the biggest publishing phenoms haven't been of the past decade haven't been the literary lions, or the celebrity tell-all, but complete unknowns exploding onto the scene from out of nowhere, selling of millions of copies, and sparking legions of imitators.

So you have an industry that needs new writers to provide the new blood and new ideas that win readers, but the risks in finding these new writers is just too much for some agents and publishers to bear.

But things are not all hopelessness.

There is a way for publishers to find new writers, and agents to find new clients, and it's through the e-book.

The e-book doesn't have the heavy manufacturing and distribution costs hanging over it like printed books. Infinite copies can be shipped via the inter-webs anywhere in the world at a cost per copy that are too tiny to calculate.

Some publishers are starting e-book imprints that specialize in short fiction and/or novellas in different genres. Some are even opening the door for new writers, which is a position I applaud. It allows them to get to know the work and style of new writers, and hopefully find the next Stephen King or JK Rowling in an environment that has relatively low risk and the potential for high reward.

Now if only we can get them to stop wasting money on overpriced celebrity book deals they might start making sense.

Hollywood Babble On & On #922: Where Does All The Money Go?

Warner Bros. has put the kibosh to Johnny Depp's long awaited remake of the classic mystery comedy The Thin Man. Reports say that the studio was wary about committing over $100 million to make the movie in the wake of the box office failure Depp and Burton's Dark Shadows reboot.

Now can you see what was so freaking WRONG in the last sentence, and no, it has nothing to do with Dark Shadows being a flop.

What's so wrong with that last sentence was that up until the failure of Dark Shadows Warner Bros. was perfectly fine with spending $100 million on an adaptation of The Thin Man.

Perhaps I need to do some explaining...

If you don't know the Dashiell Hammett novel, or the 1940s movie franchise, The Thin Man centers on Nick and Nora Charles. Nick Charles is a retired private detective who quit the sleuthing game when he married the mega-rich heiress Nora. When the book and movie begins the couple are in New York for the holidays when they get mixed up in the disappearance of a wealthy inventor, the "Thin Man" of the title, who was a former client of Nick's.

The couple then drink and quip their way through the case, wrapping up in a classical "I've brought you all here because I'm about to name the murderer" finale. 

 

Both the book and the film were known for the great chemistry between the lead characters, and the actors playing them, the witty dialogue, and the collection of colorful odd-ball characters.

It's also known for the fact that the bulk of the action in both the book and the film takes place in Nick and Nora Charles' hotel suite, less than a handful of other locations, and has only about a little more than a dozen characters.

Now take a minute to think about all that you've read about this cancelled movie and ask yourself a simple question:

HOW THE HELL WERE THEY GOING TO SPEND $100 MILLION ON THIS MOVIE?

Seriously.

You could do a fairly faithful stage adaptation of the story with one set and get away with it.

Either they were going to piss away tens of millions of dollars that were not going to be seen on screen, or they were going add all sorts of expensive nonsense to transform it into some sort of Indiana Jones meets Michael Bay bullshit action fest like they did with Sherlock Holmes. 

That sort of film deserves to fail, so it was right for Warner Bros to shit-can it.

Hollywood Babble On & On #921: Random Thoughts...

THAT'S INDECENT!

The Supreme Court of the United States has ruled in favor of the TV networks over the FCC's enforcement of indecency rules which in recent years have managed to be both erratic and heavy-handed.

Now before you scream out "Won't somebody please think of the children!" and run to man the barricades, I have something to tell you.

Civilization is NOT going to collapse.

The ABC Network is not going to debut a sitcom named Fuck Off Freddy, and CBS isn't going to turn The Good Wife into hard-core porn... though that does have possibilities...

Anyway... The networks aren't going to start going "indecent" because in the long run there is no profit in it for them. Networks are big organizations with big overheads, and to profit they need to reach the widest possible audience, and you can't do that if you're dropping pointless f-bombs and flashing boobies before every commercial break.

Need proof? Look at the box office. On average movies rated between G and PG-13 tend to have larger audiences, make more money, and have longer shelf-lives than movies rated R to NC-17.

Once the novelty of naughtiness wears off the market enforces a natural set of decency rules much more effectively than any government office given to the whims and caprices of bureaucracy.

So chill the fuck out.

THAT'S INSULTING!

Comedian, radio host, and pod-casting juggernaut Adam Carolla caused a tempest in a teapot when he said that he thinks men are funnier than women.

The internet literally shit a brick.

People were freaking out, screaming defenses of Tina Fey, Amy Poehler and every other female comedian with a regular job as proof of how Carolla is a sexist neanderthal who needs to be censored. 

Which made me think of two questions.

1. Why do people think female comedians need to be defended so vociferously?

2. Have any of these people seen his act?

I mean if you can prove beyond any reasonable doubt that at least one female comedian or comedy writer lost work because of Carolla's comment, I will bake you a cake.

Also, female comedians and comedy writers are not delicate little flowers in need of your protection. Comedy club green rooms, and TV comedy writer's rooms are brutal dog-eat-dog environments that would make the saltiest sailor blush, and Carolla's comment sound like an invitation to high tea with the Queen by comparison. Any woman who can survive that sort of environment isn't going to be hurt by Carolla's comment. In fact, they might thank him, because it gives them something to talk about. There's a whole "methink they doth protesteth too much" vibe about the whole uproar.

And then there's the man himself.

I ask if any of the outraged have seen his act, because if they did, then they'd see it in a whole new light. He's not a comedian who comes out with a carefully crafted act of pre-written jokes. He comes out, interacts with others, and from that interaction says things that are provocative and/or offensive to every gender, race, religion, and political affiliation in the world. He then doubles down on the offense and provocation until you realize that he is the real target of the joke after all.

So all this controversy is a fart in a thunderstorm. You can disagree with him, I do, I've seen a lot of funny women, but don't wet yourself over what he said.

Hollywood Babble On & On #920: Barbarella The Series?

Gaumont TV, producer Martha De Laurentiis, and director Nicholas Refn are joining forces to make a TV series based on Barbarella.

For those who aren't familiar with the subject Barbarella is a character that first appeared in France as a serialized magazine comic strip for adults. She's a sexy scantily clad secret agent who bops around the galaxy, bops various galactic characters, and occasionally saves the Universe from the threat of orgasm based weaponry. 

There was a Barbarella movie made in 1968 by director Roger Vadim starring his then wife Jane Fonda, and talk about a sequel/remake has been bouncing around the movie business since the 1970s, but so far this TV attempt is the closest any such project has come to being made so far.

So let's take a look at the Pros & Cons!

PROS:

1. Barbarella is considered by many to be a pop culture touchstone with both the comic and the movie more or less sharing a dedicated cult following.

CONS:

1. That cult following is, while vocal, relatively small and doesn't really extend much beyond people in the movie and comics business.

 

2. The original Jane Fonda/Roger Vadim movie was a box office turkey that only has the reputation it has because of the overweening nostalgia for all things from the 1960s, regardless of quality. Also, if you watch the movie without the help of mind-altering chemicals you will wonder what the hell all the hype was about. 

3. Story wise it's not much to work with since it lost its novelty as the seminal work of "sexy sci-fi." The one-note character of Barbarella goes around the galaxy, has sex with people in strange and exotic locations, then does something to stop a villain's inane scheme. It's pretty much already a self-parody. Parody TV shows don't last very long because the joke loses its potency with each retelling.

Personally, I don't really think this idea is going to get past the pilot stage unless there's some sort of radical re-imagining of the character and the premise, and even then it will have a struggle, because the brand is pretty well associated with late 60s/70s tackiness.

That's what I think, what do you think?

Trailer Trashing: New Dark Knight Rises Trailer

Whoever is doing the trailers for The Dark Knight Rises is really bringing their "A Game." Just about every bit of this montage is carefully constructed to increase anticipation to see the film.

Take a look for yourself...

Hollywood Babble On & On #919: Bombs Away!

Two movies that the studios had pegged as guaranteed winners crashed and burned this past weekend. Both the musical Rock Of Ages, and the comedy That's My Boy, underwhelmed on their opening weekend, leaving holdovers like Madagascar 3 and Prometheus to continue their reign at the top.

So why did these movies, allegedly starring box office titans, tank?

The first reason is that that so-called "A-list" movie stars can't really sell movies commensurate with the hype they receive.  Despite what the people who run Hollywood think, it is extremely rare for anyone to go to a movie solely because a member of the so-called "A-List" is appearing in it.

People went to see Mission Impossible 4: Ghost Protocol, not because they wanted to see Tom Cruise. They went to see a Mission Impossible movie that looked particularly thrilling in the previews. Apparently promising that Cruise is going to sing some old hair-metal wasn't as appealing.

Adam Sandler made his way to the A-list because he used to have an audience that liked his goofy anti-social man-children and could guarantee him a return on his films which used to be relatively cheap to make.

But things have changed.

Sandler's antics have become increasingly lazy, taking that once guaranteed audience for granted. This laziness is whittling away at that audience, who are growing up, if slowly, while the costs of making and marketing his films go up.

Then are the other reasons for them to lose their appeal...

ROCK OF AGES REASONS:

The music in Rock Of Ages was not the sort of music that invokes nostalgia for a time gone by. It was a hit on stage because the audience treated such tunes with ironic condescension. Toss that music to anyone who actually grew up in that era, surrounded by people who listened to that music, like me, or actually listened to it, like my classmates, and you'll be more likely to get a cringe than a sigh of nostalgia.

Then there are the changes from the stage to the screen. In the original play, the villains out to shut down the rock and roll on the Sunset Strip were developers and crooked bureaucrats running a scam.  However greed and corruption wasn't deemed a fitting motive for movie villainy, so they rewrote them into a bunch of sinister Christian churchwomen led by the mayor's hypocritical Bible-thumping wife.

Goodbye American Christian moviegoers, even the ones who still listen to hair metal un-ironically. Audiences don't mind having their intelligence insulted as long as it's done in an entertaining way, they don't like getting their beliefs and existence insulted.

THAT'S MY BOY:

The whole pitch of the movie is "Adam Sandler's character asks like an out of control asshole." That's the pitch of most Adam Sandler's movies, and they've long stopped insulting people's intelligence in an entertaining way. They're just the product of Sandler and his friends sitting around thinking how they can amp up the assholery while burning the least amount of calories.

Sony's marketing team couldn't even go beyond that pitch for the movie, because that's literally all they got.

Now these reasons should have been seen way back in the development process, but thanks to Hollywood's dysfunctional system they weren't.