Original subtitles

[MUSIC PLAYING]

How to find the tempo of an editor is a really--

it's something I learned way back at number one,

"Pee-Wee's Big Adventure."

And I was trying to teach myself, how do I catch cues?

I was in the breakfast machine.

I was in a couple of different cues.

And I realized it wasn't that difficult. But then I

also realized later why it wasn't difficult.

It wasn't difficult, because I had a good editor.

And Billy Webber, who was the editor on that film,

did a really good job.

And what I discovered was that I didn't

have to count anything out.

I was intuitively finding the pace of the editing.

And if I found the editor's pace,

making things fall where I wanted

to was just magical and easy.

And I thought, wow, this is, like, so much easier

than I thought.

I'm starting a phrase here.

And it ends right, boom--

right on that-- wow, how did that happen?

Well, it wasn't magic.

I just didn't know it at the time--

that the editing had a pace to it.

And I found that editor's rhythm.

And once I found that rhythm, making things

hit and fall where I wanted it was really easy.

Now here's the hitch.

First version of a film--

early versions are usually the best paced with the editing.

There's a point-- not the rough cut.

But it's an early cut.

And you're finding that you're scoring it.

And, wow, I'm making everything fall just where I want it.

I'm not fighting it to make it happen.

And now, over the next eight weeks or 10 weeks,

the film is going to tighten, and tighten, and tighten.

And there's a number of screenings

that are going to happen.

And as the screenings are going to happen,

notes are going to come back.

And then things start getting shorter,

and things start getting tighter.

And all of the sudden, they're saying,

oh, you got to redo this cue.

And you can't make it work.

And it's like, Jesus, I'm fighting it right now.

And that's because towards the very end in the 11th hour--

I don't know whether all editors necessarily

realize this or not.

I don't think directors really do--

they're losing their pace.

They're losing their tempo.

And I can't tell you how many films I've

worked on that, between what I thought

was the final-ish cut that I was scoring and the cut that

was released, it's two minutes shorter.

It's three minutes shorter.

It's no big deal.

But it feels longer.

And it feels longer, because lots of little cuts--

many, many many little cuts happen.

And a little bit of breathing room is cut at these moments.

It becomes like a fear factor that happens, where

it's like, there's a dead spot.

Bam, cut it.

And the tempo starts to disappear.

And now, as the composer, we're stuck in this terrible place.

This is where the sound effects guys are really lucky.

Because the individual effects, you just

tighten, and tighten, and tighten.

And you go with it, and you go with it, and you go with it.

But when you're in tempo, and you've got 4/4 and 3/4 going,

and you've got a tune that's happening,

and suddenly you just can't make it hit anymore,

that's a desperate problem.

And you start doing all these tricks

that you have to learn over time of, like, I've

got to make a 3/4, 4/4, 3/4.

I have to add in extra beats.

Or I have to make a 4/4 suddenly 2/4, 4/4, 3/4, 4/4.

I can't make it work any other way.

And you're trying to disguise these cuts in your melody

to sound natural.

So I started learning many, many years ago,

OK, now I've got my tune.

But I have to add two beats, make it a little crescendo,

and it goes into the next beat of the melody.

And try to make it sound like that's how I intended it,

even though it's not.

And so you're always looking for a way

to make it sound-- no, no, no, that's how I intended it.

That's how the melody is supposed to be played.

Whereas, originally, it was all perfectly in time

and fit the scene beautifully.

It no longer does.

So when you're in an action cue, that's a different story.

You tend to be working and start, stop, start, stop.

You're talking-- we're in Ostinatos

patterns, rhythmic things.

And you find you can just cut them, and make it work,

cut them, and make it work, cut them, and make it work.

And you'll find that, OK, this is just-- it's a lot of work.

But it's not seriously compromising the music.

This is the biggest problem with thematic composition.

You've got a tune, and you're playing the tune,

and it used to work.

But now they've cut just enough seconds from it

that nothing you do makes it happen gracefully.

And you'll either, like, invent and go, ah, I've done it.

Or you end up just sad, going, well, this

is how people are going to hear it.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

What is the technique for how to get

into and out of an idea or even a note?

And where this becomes particularly perplexing is--

I've finished a composition.

I feel this works.

And now the scene's completely changed.

And it's not just the cut.

It's not just an extension.

They've shuffled some scenes around.

But you really like what you did.

So, OK, I'm taking this section.

I'm taking this section.

OK, technically, I only have to write 25 seconds new.

On the surface, you go, 25 seconds new.

But it doesn't work.

Because I can't get out of where I was.

And I can't get into where I want to go to.

And it becomes mind boggling when to start--

OK, I didn't used to carry this note this long.

But if I don't, I feel it stop.

And then I feel the next thing start.

This is always a perplexing question film scoring,

the absence.

You got something playing for the long note.

You stop.

Well, that absence becomes noticeable.

And now you start again.

That becomes noticeable.

And so there's always that temptation.

Can I join those two?

I don't want my audience to feel the stop and the start.

Now, there's bold composers in the past--

and Bernard Herrmann was certainly one--

that didn't stress over things like that.

He stopped when he wanted to stop.

And he started when he wanted to start.

And devil be damned, it's, like, that's where we're going.

But very frequently, I'm trying to find a way

to get out of something and into something.

And what should have been 22 seconds of a rewrite on a score

ends up becoming a minute and a half.

It ends up being half the cue simply

because I couldn't find a graceful way to get out,

and I couldn't find a graceful way to get in.

And no matter what I'm doing, I was feeling this absence

of this missing part that used to join

these things in a graceful way.

They're no longer there.

And so it starts spreading.

It's like an infection that spreads.

It's just like you're--

I only got 22 seconds.

I could just do that tonight.

And you end up rewriting a big chunk of cue.

And at a certain point, I re-wrote half the fucking cue.

And that's because that little bit carried an element

that I could no longer find that invisible way of connecting

these ideas.

And there's no simple solution to that.

You've just got to feel your way through it.

And that's another rough one.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

How does one synchronize music with picture, especially--

obviously, not all pictures take a lot of synchronization.

There's beautiful scores that don't actually

hit a lot of action.

And then we've got superhero movies and animation movies,

where you're hitting a lot all the time.

How does one do it is a really difficult question.

In the old days, they had a thing called a click book.

And they actually mapped out the amount of time

between two things, how many clicks at a certain tempo

they needed to do it.

And they worked it out that way.

Thank god I came in just at the end of that period,

because I would have been terrible at it.

They say music and math are so tied together.

Well, here I am to tell you, bullshit.

I'm shitty at math.

I always was.

I don't have a good math abilities.

I never did.

And it's never been a problem.

It's never been an impediment.

Of all the deficiencies I have, that wasn't one of them.

I never needed math.

And the reason is is that your intuition

will start to tell you--

and you start to feel--

this is going to happen here.

OK, I'm actually one beat early.

Now, how do I do the same thing I just did,

but I've just got to add one beat-- bam, dead on.

You don't have to calculate it.

You feel it.

And then you adjust.

Maybe, as I've mentioned once before,

you found the editor's tempo.

And it's subconsciously playing in your mind,

because the tempo you happened to choose

ends up being a tempo that ran in the background

of the editor's mind.

Or maybe he was listening to a piece of music in headphones

while he was--

I don't know.

There's many reasons an editor gives a tempo to a scene.

And perhaps you've lucked into that.

When I was on "Pee-Wee's Big Adventure," I had so much fun.

I thought it was going to be the hardest

thing in the world figuring out how to catch things.

It wasn't the hard part.

It was the fun part.

I figured that, as I started to write things,

I need to end up-- here's my spot right now.

Wow, that was really close.

It wasn't dead on, but I'm probably only 20 frames off,

or a beat too long, or a beat too early.

Now you've done a whole phrase.

It's very easy to adjust.

You may be either--

if it's really close, you don't even

want to add or subtract a beat.

You want to adjust the tempo just a little bit, and nail it.

And that might just be one beat per minute,

two beats per minute.

You might give a slight shift in your tempo.

Or you might add or subtract a beat or something like that.

But that's the fun part.

And my real joy in "Pee-Wee" was--

there's a scene where he's writing in the park.

And he's singing in the way that Pee Wee does-- la la la la la

la la la la la la la.

And I said, I want to turn that into a song

and make it sound like he's singing--

not a song with a melody.

But I want to make it sound like he's hearing the music

and singing along with it.

And I found-- this is so much fun.

I found a way to do it.

(SINGING) La la la la la la la la la la la la.

But that was a real telling moment for me.

Because once I did that, I feel like I could handle just

about anything.

And so it was just one less thing

I had to worry about as I entered from my first film

into film scoring.

I no longer was afraid of how to find my timings, and my beats,

and catch what I wanted to catch.