Original subtitles

The most important word about music is the word 'play'.

It's like kids sitting there with Legos.

It always is.

When music sounds good it's because it's playing.

You have to have a playfulness if you do these situations.

It gives you an opportunity to show off with music what is good about humanity.

Hi, I'm Hans Zimmer, and you're here at Remote Control

and this is Mix With The Masters.

I'm never done with the composing process because you can always improve something.

My process is, it takes me a really long time to get started

because the first thing I need to do is figure out an idea,

something I haven't done before,

because otherwise I get a bit bored.

So there has to be a concept.

And then the concept usually is something that is undoable,

you know, impossible to do.

And I talk to the director about it and usually what happens is, the problem is,

they like the concept and then I actually have to go and do it.

I mean, "Dunkirk" nearly killed me because, you know,

it's just this really simple idea,

but then seven months later I was still trying to figure out

how to actually make it work.

And to answer your question about what the writing process is,

once I have an idea about what,

not just stylistically but sonically, or how I want to tell the story,

I spend as much time experimenting, writing suites,

or just, you know, making up sounds.

I spend far too much time playing with synthesizers

and making sounds for a project until finally somebody says,

"We're running out of time, we've got to get this movie done.

Now take these themes and make them work to the scenes."

And very often, you know, once I've written this

and once I've really figured out what the sound of the movie is,

what the notes are, what the arrangements are,

and it then comes to actually going and doing the scenes.

It's really helpful having collaborators involved in that,

because at least I know all the way through

what this movie is going to sound like and what it's going to be.

But yes, if I could just spend my whole life writing one theme,

I would probably end up spending my whole life writing one theme.

By this point, I haven't really spent budget,

but now usually the music editor will come, or somebody will come and say,

"We have an orchestra booked on this and this date,

and there's no way we're going to get it done

unless you actually start focusing on the cues."

The difference between writing a score and writing a song

is with a song you usually start off with a blank page.

I mean, with a score at least you know the title of the film

and there will be something in the images, or in the dialog,

or in the story, or in the conversation you have with the director,

that points you in a direction.

And since music is subtext, you know, all you have to do, "all you have to do"

is you have to figure out what that subtext is

or what the subtext is that interests you,

because the only thing you can write about is the stuff that interests you.

It's completely pointless trying to write for anybody else other than yourself

because you don't know what to say,

so you have to figure out what is it that you can add

to what everybody else is already doing very well, you know?

I mean, the DP, the cameraman has done a fantastic job,

there's great dialog, there's great editing,

there's great storytelling.

So what's left is that subtext,

and there are many, many, many different ways of telling it.

It's really about where you catch me in time,

what I am interested in at that moment in time, and how I want to tell the story.

Is it orchestrally?

Is it electronics?

Is it sound design?

Is it, you know...

And who are the other people that are involved in this project?

The sound designer is actually very important to me.

If I know it's Richard King, I know that there will be

a great collaboration going on.

I know their style, I know what the editors like,

and what he likes, and how he likes using music.

I use my music editors in a very creative way,

whereby I just sometimes give them pieces of music

without telling them what it's for, what scene it's for,

and just see what happens when, you know, when they put it into the wrong scene.

It becomes much more interesting.

It's a constantly evolving process,

and, just like today,

it's constantly a fight against time.

Budget isn't such a big thing.

I mean, when you do a movie like "12 Years a Slave,"

from the title you know that this isn't going to be a big action movie

that is going to have a huge budget.

So you go, "Okay, a violin, a cello, a piano, and a bunch of synthesizers."

That's, you know, you can make...

It's not about the budget, it's about having ideas.

And not all ideas need to be hugely orchestral.

It takes me a long time to get to the first draft.

I mean, John Powell actually said this to me years ago, you know?

We were talking about, you know, why is it so hard to start?

Why is it so hard to get going?

And then suddenly when you're in the middle of the project,

everything you do is the "appropriate" language somehow,

you're using the appropriate harmony, you're using the appropriate sounds, etc.

And he said, "Well, it's like anything,

you just have to get it under your fingers."

It's like you practice to get spontaneous.

You practice what the subject is.

You really try to work out what you want to write about

and how you want to write about it.

And then, with me that can be months,

and then suddenly it all starts to fall into place.

And, you know, the first idea I will play

if I haven't thought about the movie or I haven't made the plan,

if I haven't figured out "the big idea,"

I'm not going to keep it.

It's just crap.

But if I've had some time to think about it, and really think about it,

and really immerse myself in it,

there are moments where things happen spontaneously.

But they're not really spontaneously,

because I have designed the moment to be within the language of that film.

I make absolutely sure that we don't do cultural imperialism,

and that we don't go and just steal all the clichés of a culture.

I try to surround myself with...

I mean, you know, the studio is very international.

I mean, "Black Hawk Down," I have to think back,

it's an interesting thing because I had Baaba Maal from Mali,

I had Hietor Pereira from Brazil,

I had Martin Tillman from Switzerland,

I had Satnam Ramgotra from, well,

I never know, is he Canadian or is he Indian?

He doesn't know himself it seems.

This movie was 16 years ago so, you know, I can't remember everybody who was on it.

Craig Eastman from Kentucky.

And a German writing about Somalia.

So it's not my job to be a musical anthropologist or even to be authentic.

All I'm trying to do, I mean, you know, "Lion King" is another good example.

"Lion King," it's not real, it's not really Africa,

but all I'm trying to say is that

there are other cultures out there and we can embrace them.

And in film music it's really interesting because you can go and mix all this up.

You do not have to be culturally specific.

It gives you an opportunity to show off in music

what is good about humanity in a funny way.

So you can go on this international journey in music

because you're not tied to language, you know?

You're not tied to the specificity of language.

You make up your own culture, which is a bunch of musicians from many nationalities

paraphrasing the story that happens on the screen.

But I'm very worried and very wary ever of trying to do a parody of a culture.