All language subtitles for MasterClass Danny Elfman Teaches Music For Film - 12.Writing Feature Scores

[MUSIC - DANNY ELFMAN]

What are you?

I'm Batman.

[YELLING AND GRUNTING]

You begin with a
feeling of a tone.

My craziest story
of how that happened

was on "Batman," because it
hit me on a 747 coming home

from the Gotham City set.

And I was on the way home,
and I heard the beginning

of the score, and I
started to hear it

more than the beginning.

I started to hear this
whole piece of music.

Now, unfortunately for me--

most of you who are listening
to this should be able to just

take a piece of
paper, take a napkin,

and go
dg-dg-dg-dg-dg-dg-dg-dg-dg,

and you have it.

I can't do that.

I have no sense of solfege,
meaning I can't just say,

(VOCALIZING).

OK, now on C, and then this is
the [INAUDIBLE],, and here's--

I can't write
without a keyboard.

For me to write, I have
to have a keyboard.

And at that moment, it was just
nothing but me and a Sony tape

recorder.

I had no keyboard.

I had no access to anything.

And so I couldn't
make voice notes

next to the fucking
guy sitting next

to me, because, I don't know,
he just had that kind of vibe.

So I kept running
into the bathroom.

And every time I'd
come to the bathroom,

I would stay there
about five minutes,

and I would do some
notes, and try to-- now,

these bathrooms in the
old 747s are really noisy.

And then I'd leave and
I'd go back to my seat.

10 minutes, five minutes later,
I'm back in the bathroom.

I open the door, and I come out,
and there's a flight attendant.

Sir, are you OK?

I'm fine.

I'm fine!

Go back to my seat.

Five, 10 minutes later, I'm
back in the bathroom again.

Doing more.

Doing more.

OK, I'm hearing it, I'm
hearing it, I'm hearing it.

It's starting to make sense.

Open the door, there's
two flight attendants.

And I did this, like,
four or five times.

Now, this was
pre-9/11, obviously.

But there was a point
where I'd come out,

and now all the flight
crew is sitting there,

and they're watching
me really carefully.

And I knew that when
the plane landed--

this is what they
did in these days--

they played a piece
of music, they

played a piece of
composition or a pop song,

and it was going to erase my
memory, because I was holding

onto it the whole flight.

And sure enough,
the plane lands,

and they put on fucking
"Yesterday" or "Hey Jude"

or something-- a memory eraser.

It's like one of those things
that, oh, shit, not that.

No, not that.

Oh, not a Beatles song.

I'm-- it's gone.

That's it.

The song has totally
embedded itself in my mind,

and this thing I was holding
onto has evaporated to nothing.

And so I get home, I
run down to my studio,

and I press the Play button, and
now I'm hearing [BLOWING AIR]

a little bit of my
voice in the background.

I'm going, oh, my god.

And I just a little
bit and a little bit.

And then, finally, after
listening for about 20 minutes,

the different parts--

French horns, trumpets,
this is the low brass,

string ostinato--

it came back to me.

And it came-- that was, in
fact, exactly the "Batman Theme"

as it plays in "Batman."

[MUSIC - DANNY ELFMAN, "BATMAN
THEME"]

I learned after "Beetlejuice"
that the best way

to go in and view
a film for me--

I know this is different for
every composer, but for me,

I try to picture the television
screen in the beginning

of "Poltergeist"-- of course,
the original "Poltergeist"--

on the end of the
national anthem,

and the screen goes to snow, and
it's kind of telling you this

is-- something's going
to happen out of nothing.

That's how I put
my mind when I go

to see a first cut of a movie.

I try to erase every
preconceived idea

I had going into it, what I
thought the score might be,

what the movie might be.

I try to look at it from a state
of blank, absolutely blank.

And now as I'm watching
what emerges from that,

and what emerges from that
is going to be a tone.

And that's your job--

capture that tone.

Don't worry about the story yet.

Don't worry about
characters and how

are you going to do this
character or that character.

That's all down the line.

The most important
thing you're going

to capture in a film score--
for many films at least,

not every film,
they're all different--

is going to be the tone.

What is the tone of the film?

And get pulled into that.

Let the film instruct you.

I still believe it's the
most important thing a film

score can bring to a film,
because especially these days,

there's so many
big scores that are

so orchestration on
top of orchestration

on top of orchestration.

And I go, it sounds
great, caught everything

it's supposed to catch, but
I come away with nothing.

And I feel like
they didn't give me

a tone uniquely for this film.

They just gave me the
moments They gave me

the character, the thing, the
antagonist, the protagonist.

Yeah.

That shit's easy.

[CALMING MUSIC]

The movie tells you where to go.

There's a number of
elements in the movie that

tell you what type of music.

One of them is the camerawork.

If you're seeing that there's
a lot of cross-dissolves,

if there's a lot of long
shots, if things are moving

in a dreamy way from
one thing into another,

it's a completely
different score

than if you see the shots
are hard cuts, hard cuts,

jolting you, bang, bang, bang.

If it's giving you a
more gritty real feel,

clearly, you're not going to
write something melodramatic.

You're going to
go less old school

and look for something that
feels right with that jarring

style.

If the style is very
theatrical, and you almost--

sometimes as I'm writing with--
frequently with Tim Burton,

I almost feel like a curtain
is opening on the next scene.

It tells me, musically,
what I want to do with that,

because it's theatrical.

I want the music
to feel effusive

and whatever the mood
is of that moment

to capture the theatricality
of how it feels.

The editing is incredibly
important, again,

just like I'm
describing, because it's

a combination of
camerawork and editing,

how the camera and
lighting is working.

Is the lighting feeling natural?

And of course, you can't
forget the performances.

Performances will
illustrate so much.

And that's where I
saw "Beetlejuice,"

and I threw everything
out, because I

saw what Michael Keaton was
doing, how crazy he was acting

and the kind of schizophrenic,
the way he moved,

the way he spoke, the way
he kept shifting his tones.

That told me what to write.

I'm not writing something
smooth and gentle.

It got to the point where when
we were doing the main titles

to "Beetlejuice"--

it was just the beginning.

Tim doesn't like to
use a lot of temp,

but they had a temp
for the opening,

because it was a long shot of
a gliding camera over a city.

And you're going
to learn as we're

going that it's a model city.

And then, finally, we pull back
and we're in this big model.

But because the
camera was flying,

they wanted the music to fly.

And as soon as I saw the
movie, I was going, screw that.

[MUSIC - DANNY ELFMAN]

This opening title is
incredibly important,

because it has to telegraph
not where the movie starts,

but where it's going
to be in a second act,

because the second act is where
the movie kicks into gear,

and it's going to stay.

Once Michael Keaton
appears, it's

shifting into a different zone.

It's going to stay there
till the end of the movie.

And I want to telegraph
to the audience, that

is what you're getting.

But there's also
moments where you

don't have anything specific.

You just have a feel
and it's all muddled.

And this, I would say, is
probably 70% of the films I do.

And it's just letting yourself
start to fumble around on keys,

get in it.

I don't really know
what I'm doing.

I'm not even playing
specific melodies or ideas,

because I'm not even
good enough on the piano

to sit down and play
exactly what I'm thinking.

I'm just letting
my fingers work.

And I'll try to come up with
anywhere between three or four

and maybe a dozen of these
ideas when I'm starting out,

because I'm starting with just
I don't know what this is.

I'm not trying to
make anything happen.

If I try, it's done.

It'll never happen.

You just have to give
yourself to the moment.

It's just stepping
off into nothing.

Those early ideas
are really critical.

And grab the ones that have some
potential-- even if you think,

this is all wrong--

and elaborate on it,
turn it into something,

turn it into a little idea,
into eight bars, into 16 bars,

into 24 bars if you can,
and then put it aside,

move on to something else.

[MUSIC - DANNY ELFMAN]

I never in the beginning believe
in trying to create a roadmap,

because I think that roadmap is
going to be constricting down

the line.

I look for two to four
moments in the film

that I'm going to
put my energy into.

Sometimes there are really
only two that sum it all up.

And sometimes, OK,
it's four scenes.

And I'm going to put
what seems like perhaps

an inordinate amount of
time into those scenes,

because those scenes
are going to be the--

kind of the turning
points in the score.

They're going to
define the score.

And of course,
there's always going

to be something from
the end of the movie,

because I need to always want
to feel that I've got something,

if it's a thematic score, or
if it's a tonal score, that I

could let it take me.

I don't want to find out
at the end of a score

that what I've written just
doesn't want to go there.

That's the worst
situation to be in.

So sometimes it's just as
simple as one big moment here

and one emotional moment here.

And once I've defined
those, I'm confident enough

in what I've got that I
literally go back to the top,

and I start scoring with no plan
and no intention ever laid out

about what it is.

But I've got the
elements in my mind.

I've got the major tonal thing.

I've got-- if it's
a thematic score,

I've got my themes
mostly defined.

When-- again, you look at
a score as a jigsaw puzzle,

and you've defined the major
areas of that jigsaw puzzle,

so you know where the big
shots are going to be,

what you're trying to create,
the rest of it should be fun.

It should be full of surprises.

And that's the moment that
I wish for on every score

that I can get more
of these moments

where the writing that I'm
doing with my own hands

is leading me to
where I'm going to go,

and I don't know what's
around the next bend.

[MUSIC - DANNY ELFMAN]

Whether the story's
animated or not animated

is irrelevant to me.

But there tends to be a
style of animation which

can overlap with live
action, and that would be,

for example, you're
doing a superhero film,

you're doing a film that's based
on a graphic novel with very

definable good guys and bad
guys, and/or your animation

might clearly have delineated
you're going to play characters

in a certain way that's very
clear and simple, but not

necessarily.

It comes down to the
style of the film.

If the style of the film
is-- like, in "Star Wars"

is another great example.

When Darth Vader walks
in, it's Darth Vader.

It's his theme.

It's like it follows
the character.

And there's a moment
when that's correct.

And particularly within
a villain superhero,

that kind of genre,
you tend to play,

OK, the villain is on screen.

Let's play his theme.

This just goes
with the territory.

Now, in a drama, you
don't want to do that.

In a serious story, you
don't ever want to say,

this guy's bad.

You want to discover that.

You want to be very
sneaky about what

you play over your protagonist.

But in something that's more of
a cartoon, you're on the nose.

You're just saying,
look, there's

nothing confusing about this
guy with the black cloak

and the black mask and the
voice that's distorted.

He's the bad guy!

There's nothing ambiguous about
this. d And you just play it.

And animation,
there's a crossover

where the two will definitely
into the same zone.

But in animation, we could
also find ourselves drifting

to something more
heartfelt and serious

and something where we don't
want to be on the nose.

So animation or live action
doesn't dictate the answer

to that question, but
how it's played does.

And how it's played
can just as easily

be in live action or animation.

I never score to a
younger or older audience.

I think you never have to
worry about writing down,

I have to make this
really simple for kids,

I have to make
this really simple.

You don't.

It's like, you just
have to do it well.

[MUSIC - DANNY ELFMAN]

When I get my first rough
cut that I'm going to view,

the movie is generally
pretty rough.

Now, that is also an
extremely variable thing,

because I've come into movies
that are almost done, finished.

When I came into "Silver Lining
Playbook," the movie I saw

was pretty much the
movie that was released.

There was some internal
tweaking of stuff.

But I felt like it was 90% done.

Now, when I come on to one
of Tim Burton's movies,

the movie's not even
finished shooting.

He shows me a rough
cut really early on.

He wants me to see
the gist of it.

And they may still have not
even shot the finale yet.

Either that or
it's just been shot

and really rough assembled.

And what I'm looking at, I
just have to remind myself.

this is a very first
rough pass at the movie.

It's probably much longer
than the film was going to be.

And if there are effects in
the movie, there are none.

So I have to just
imagine all that.

If it's an animation, I'm often
seeing something beyond rough.

It's something where there's
just a thing called animatics.

It's like sketches.

So you're really
getting the gist

of the flow of the characters,
and you're hearing usually

the real voices, but you're not
seeing necessarily the movie.

When I first got "Alice in
Wonderland," there was no set,

there was no nothing.

Sometimes it really
looked like a kid's movie,

where you have a
live actor and kind

of a sketched out background
that somebody just

kind of put together.

It wasn't a problem, because
I'm not scoring the backgrounds.

I'm really scoring
the performances

and so even without
anything around them,

I still got the story,
Not only the story,

but the performances.

And I got a feel for the type of
editing and movement of camera

movement that was
going to be there.

So it actually was
less of a problem

than one might think looking
at something so absolutely

unfinished.

You got to remember,
sometimes I'm

brought onto a film
almost a year early.

And sometimes I'm
brought onto a film

only five weeks before
the scoring session.

And I've done plenty of both.