Original subtitles

[MUSIC PLAYING]

DANNY ELFMAN: When I start a score,

the first thing I'm thinking is the tone.

And so, yes, the tone involves color, orchestration,

and I'm going to build a template in my software

based on what I think I'm going to need for that score.

So I'm going to put a whole week of work

into just building my template, because obviously, once I

start writing, I want to be as clearly just focused

on writing as I possibly can.

Kind of an analogy, I-- a long time

ago, there's a wonderful artist named Francesco Clemente,

and a friend of mine, who was an artist,

brought me into his studio.

He was just setting up for a show,

a new series of paintings.

It was just the very beginning, and the room

was lined with blank canvas, and he was getting all his colors,

all his pigments, lined up in the middle of the floor.

And I learned a lot from this because this is actually

the image of how I begin to try to get my shit together

when I'm starting a score.

He was getting all the hues and pigments

he thinks he was going to use for this project from one

side of the floor to the other, and that was

his way of organizing himself.

Now, I have no idea what his mind is

like, what his process is like, how chaotic or not chaotic

it is, but I liked that idea.

And so when I'm trying to spend that week or 10 days

at the beginning of a score organizing myself,

I see myself as doing the same thing.

I'm lining up these pigments, so when I begin painting,

I know where most of them are.

And that doesn't mean I'm not going

to want to find a color that I didn't imagine

I was going to want, but it does allow

me to start with some organization,

lining up my sounds--

my colors, my pigments--

in a way that I'm going to know where to find them, at least.

But on top of that, I might have a feeling that, for this score,

I'm going to need a lot of ethereal sounds.

I'm going to really look at everything

I have in bowed glass, in synthetic sounds,

and on many scores, I might spend a week

just programming synthesizers.

If I'm going to use synths, I'm going to go through my library,

and I'm going to tweak sounds.

And in that template, I'm going to have 20 ethereal synth

sounds that I'm already liking.

If it's a certain type of score, I

might be building arpeggiated things.

And so even though I'm going to want much more,

I want to start with 20 arpeggiated sounds that I like,

that it feels like I'm getting into the ballpark of what

I think the color of the score is going to be.

If I'm looking for samples, I might go and do

a deep library I've done on prepared pianos and piano

harmonics because I love piano overtones and piano harmonics,

and I'll find the ones that are appealing to me.

So, yeah, there's a lot of work in the beginning that's

going to go into, before I've written anything,

a feel of color, and/or another word for tone, of what I think

the film is going to be.

And then over the course of, as I'm starting to write,

I'm going to expand on that.

But I want to get myself focused in the ballpark

because I don't want to, while I'm writing,

be searching for a ton of sounds all the time.

That's going to interrupt my flow, so I want to get as much

of that done before--

in the beginning, so when I start writing,

I've got a pretty deep pocket of sounds

that I've already thought this is a good way to start,

and I could use.

And then inevitably, I'll hit something where I go, no,

I need something that's--

I need something that's edgier, that's

got a certain kind of a feel.

And I'll go back to my library, and I'll

find another type of sound.

But I really will put work into that

because tone is the first thing that I want

to accomplish in the score.

Before I've written a melody, before I've

written anything else, I want to think

about the tone of the movie.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Most of the time, an idea I have has

something to do with harmony or harmonics or a figuration.

It's not something that depends on a specific sound

that I don't have, so it's just like--

if it's with an orchestra, I've got my orchestra laid out.

It's not a problem.

If it's with synthetics or percussion,

hopefully I've laid out enough that I could just

go jump right into it.

On occasion, though, it's like I have an idea,

and I don't have the sound for it, and then I've just got to--

all right, I've just got to find the sound,

or I've got to make the sound, whatever it is you have to do.

And that's where, if you're used to working with mics

and preempts, and that's how you get your sounds,

then that's what you need to have ready.

I tend to have as complete a template as I can have,

and I always have a microphone close at hand,

and I always have my guitar plugged in behind me

because sometimes I need feedback.

I want to know that my guitar is behind me

and is reasonably in tune, so I can grab it,

spend 15 seconds tweaking the tuning,

and then I have preset amplified sounds through a software

that I use.

It's all about trying to be prepared,

and you can only try to be prepared so far.

It's like going into battle.

As you go into battle, you want to get all your gear on.

You want to have your gun.

You want to have your armor.

You want to have your-- make sure helmet--

and this thing, and I got my water,

and I got my protein bars.

I'm ready to go.

All you can do is get ready for what you can do,

but you walk out there, and there's an alien shooting a ray

gun at you.

OK, this isn't quite working.

I have to improvise around how to deal with this laser ray

that nothing that I'm wearing is going to be suited for,

and then you have to start improvising.

I use a device called Axe-Fx--

Axe like an axe--

and I love this thing because it has hundreds of presets.

But I go in there with my guitar, and generally,

I have like a go-to--

a couple of go-to guitars that I really love.

One is a handmade guitar that a artisan in town made me,

and the other is a Paul Reed Smith guitar that I've had

forever.

And they're both really good, dependable guitars,

and they also tend to stay in tune, which,

when you're needing to grab your guitar and work quick,

that's a handy thing.

And the Axe effect--

I'll already, over a period of time,

have set up dozens and dozens of favorite presets.

But you can go in there on your screen--

because even though it's a hard--

it's a actual unit that I'll have in my rack,

it has a software screen that comes up,

and I'll do all my editing on it,

and changing the size of the amp,

changing the size of the speaker,

changing the era of the speaker, changing

the amount of distortion, the overdrive--

all these different things.

You can really do a lot with it, and for certain sounds,

I have to be careful because when

I plug my guitar into this sound,

it's going to be an instant squeal of feedback.

But the Axe-Fx, I love it, and I use it all the time.

And I also have a couple of specialty guitars.

The sustainer guitar that is designed for these feedback

loops is something I've just started working with,

and I really love it, but I haven't

used it a lot in scores yet.

The acoustic stuff-- I'm OK at acoustic playing,

but I'll pull out a mic when I need acoustic guitar,

and I'll kind of play the part, but I'll

be expecting it to be replayed.

I generally use my own playing when I want something funky.

So if it's kind of a funky sound--

now, if it's just an arpeggio, and I'm

going to want to play it by real guitar,

but I need that arpeggio to play along,

I'm just going to use a sample.

So unless there's something about the figuration that's

like, I need to bring somebody who can really

play this a certain way, I try to do it myself.

And when I can't, I can't.