Original subtitles

[MUSIC PLAYING]

I love the detail.

I loved listening to the great scores that I grew up on

and hearing the detail.

And to me, the detail is what brings it to life,

makes it exciting.

There's an quality of--

the intricacy of the structure, as you're building it,

and the details of that intricacy

is what makes orchestral music so beautiful to me.

Unfortunately, in the real world,

those details are usually steamrolled over in the dub,

and one of the first things I had to learn

was, often, when I'm doing a certain level of detailing

in a piece of music that gets me very excited,

I realize the audience will never hear this

in the film because of the moment,

because there's stuff happening on the screen.

And there's a propensity most of the time,

that if there's stuff happening on the screen--

and I'm not talking about Gatling guns and machine robots

in an army coming towards you.

I'm talking about just stuff, which

shouldn't, on the surface, conflict

with hearing the detail.

But most of the time, it does because the people that

are putting together the sound for the film,

they like their own details, and their own details

means all the detail of the stuff

that you see and might hear in the background.

And there's a conceptual problem here

because I still believe in the purity of music and image,

and there are moments where the music can do something

that sound effects can never do.

And there's moments that the sound effects can do something

that the music can never do, and they

should both have their place.

But in contemporary film scoring and film dubbing,

frequently, we're both asked to do everything all the time.

"Lawrence of Arabia" has an incredible score

by Maurice Jarre.

One of the beautiful moments that I noticed when I first

saw it was that, we're getting ready for a giant battle,

and in the preparation for this battle,

you hear nothing but horse hooves,

rattling metal sound effects.

And you feel like you're in the middle of this charge,

and it's perfect.

They're not using music.

[RUMBLING OF THE HORSES' HOOVES]

They want you to feel in the middle

of the chaos of this moment that the sound effects are

doing perfectly.

It doesn't need anything else.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Then the moment-- there it is.

That's the city.

We're going to take it.

The score comes in, and it's huge.

And the director, David Lean, let the score take over.

Now, you don't notice, when you're listening,

that the sound effects almost completely disappear

and the score takes over because it's seamless.

And it feels perfect because the score can deliver

an emotional element for what's happening

right there, as the great conflict is coming to fruition,

that the sound effects can't possibly do.

And he gave both of them their moment.

Unfortunately, if "Lawrence of Arabia"

were redone and scored today, rather than, I'm

going to guess, a 50 minute score, less than 60 minutes

probably, would be a two and a half hour score,

or [INAUDIBLE].

If the movie's two and a half hours long,

it would be a two hour, 20 minute score.

There'd be about 10 minutes with no music,

and everything would be fighting for every moment.

And unfortunately, you wouldn't come away

with the sense of hurting-- hearing a great score having

just played and the beauty that comes from feeling that.

So I love it when, occasionally, today, a director

allows both things to happen, and the detailing

in that piece of music can actually be felt and heard,

and it's a wonderful experience.

But this is just me talking as a purist, as a film purist.

I love the separation of sound effects and music

put to their best ability, both together.

There's very few scores I've worked on that I probably

wouldn't suggest that they be 25% to 40% less

music in the score today, but it's simply

not how it's done these days.

It's like, give these moments to the sound effects.

Let them bring you into their own detail

of the incremental things that are happening around them--

the sound of crickets, the sound of this, all the things

that they could do.

When the music starts, let me do that, but let

me do it in an emotional way that'll

bring us into that moment.

And then the detail does actually

happen in just the right way.

But detailing is something that I think of as wishful thinking,

but that doesn't stop me from wanting to do the job right,

because I know it's the right way to do it.