All language subtitles for MasterClass Danny Elfman Teaches Music For Film - 13.Changing Your Approach_ Milk

[MUSIC PLAYING]

I was working on a movie
called "Milk" with Gus Van

Zandt, and his
first impulses was

Harvey Milk was an
opera fan, and we

should do, in the score,
something operatic.

It's got drama.

It's got all the stuff.

And I wrote, like, 12 minutes
of music that was very operatic.

I was listening to opera,
and I wrote all this stuff.

And I was doing a big playback,
his first big playback,

and I had about a dozen
scenes and bits laid out.

But the operatic ones--

I could feel it myself while
we were listening to it.

It's just not really working.

It's just not working.

And he finished
it, and he said, I

think the opera idea
was just a bad idea,

and I couldn't argue with him.

So what I ended up
with, in "Milk,"

was actually the antithesis
of where I began,

the structured
feeling, operatic,

because it was actually a
semi improvisational moment.

And it was a little
bit jazzy, and it had

kind of a loose underpinning.

There was a bit of a tune.

There was a saxophone.

It couldn't have been farther
from the initial intent,

but when I started thinking
along that line, something

looser, something more--

feeling a little
more improvisational,

something that has less
structured feel to it--

it started feeling right
for the tone of the film.

Gus and I started
with the character.

Analytically, it's like opera
because he listened to opera.

Opera was a big
part of his life.

We should make opera.

That's analytical.

It didn't work.

What it came down to
was, I looked again

at the tone of the film.

It had a very dreamy feel to it.

It had a very kind of loose,
easy quality to it-- the way

he went in and out of scenes,
and Harvey's love scenes,

and they were done in a very
expressionistic kind of way.

I just rethought it
from the ground up.

Harmonically, I started
thinking of, like,

more dissonance in the
harmony and in the structure

of the harmonies.

And I still came
up with the tune

because I wanted there to
still be a theme, a tune,

but I didn't play it a lot.

Rather than the kind of
film where you're constantly

alluding-- that's the
Korngold process, of like,

it's there all the time.

You're, like, I'm here,
I'm here, I'm here,

and all the clever
ways you can do that.

This score didn't
ask for that, and you

have to constantly
adjust yourself

to the needs of the film.

I only needed to play it three
times in the whole movie,

so it didn't even barely
feel like his theme.

[MUSIC - "GIVE 'EM HOPE"]

I don't like to
bring in something

at the end of the movie
that you never hear earlier,

that's out of the blue.

I'd like to, at least, go
back and implant enough

seeds thematically that when
it comes back, it feels--

OK, I'm comfortable.

Yeah, OK, I get it.

This is where you
started here earlier,

and you used it again here, and
I'm coming back to this place.

But I definitely didn't
want to overdo it either,

which in a different
kind of score,

you would approach
it very different.

Really minimal use of melody.

Use only where you need to get a
bit of a tune, a bit of a tune,

and then let it
pay off at the end

when you actually now have,
like, a big long sequence

to play your thing.

And the sounds I found were as
far from opera as you could do.

I found a sound of
just strings playing.

There was this weird
sound I found in just

improvising with an orchestra.

And literally, when
I have 10 minutes

at the end of a session,
or sometimes I'll

even have an hour at
the end of a session,

I'm not going to ever let
the musicians go home early.

Unfortunately, if you're
working for me on my sessions,

that just isn't going
to happen because I'm

going to run in there, and
I'm going to improvise,

and I'm going to try stuff.

And this was the result
of that improvisation.

I was basically saying,
everybody, we're

just going to center
around this note,

but I don't care how
dissonant it get.

You're just going to play
overtones harmonics randomly,

and you're going to hold.

And every time I
point to a section,

you're going to change your
overtone, change your harmonic.

So it just started with a big
open chord, and then I started,

point to the violas.

They shift.

Point to the second violins.

They shift.

Point to the celli.

They shift.

And so there was a shifting
of overtones within the sound.

And I go, god, I don't
know what this is,

but I'm really loving it.

It sounds really interesting.

Now, the problem with that--

it's impossible to write down.

It's really hard to recreate
because it's a thing that

happened at the moment.

And-- but that kind of
became, in a weird way,

the heart of the score.

But the beauty of orchestra,
of a live orchestra,

is just this thing--
the surprises

that they come up with.

They play something that's
not the way you intended it,

but wow, whatever they
did, that was cool.

Play that back again.

Yeah, that's good.

Going to keep that.

And it's a random thing that
happens with real musicians.

Sometimes, [INAUDIBLE] bit
of a misinterpret something.

Do it a bit wrong,
but it's good.

It's cool.

That's one of the reasons
I still love orchestra.