All language subtitles for 03 - Story - Hans Zimmer Teaches Film Scoring

You at the end of the day

I can tell you everything you need to know

in one word story.

Stick with the story.

Figure out the story.

Stick with the story like glue.

don't abandon the story.

Don't betray the story.

know the story you want to tell.

And, and in a funny way, that's.

It sounds like
that is actually very narrow,

but it's actually huge and vast,
because the subtext for the composer is

that there is a subtext because you don't
want to go and tell the story

that they're telling beautifully,
elegantly, and images and words.

You want to go and slip it underneath
and find that bit

that they are not illuminating yet.

That is.

That takes the whole thing
just a step further into

a sometimes a

metaphysical world, sometimes
into a more emotional world, sometimes,

just figuring out how to

color a scene
in a, in a slightly different way.

But at the end of the day, you,

everybody on the film,
if if it's a good project,

a film become successful
because everybody has decided

that they want to tell this one story,

and there's just they using
their different voices to tell that story.

I suppose it's a delicious meal.

And I suppose at the end of the day,

I don't see myself
very differently from a chef.

I go, you know, I,
you know, here's the task.

You know, the guests are coming at 8:00

and they want to have an experience. And

so I go out and I see what's available,
you know, are there fresh tomatoes?

Oh, look, those carrots look good.

You know, potato salad.

so you get all this stuff,
and then you spent an enormous,

inordinate amount of time

peeling potatoes, chopping onions and all
that sort of stuff and then attend to it.

You just put it all in the pot and

you have

a hopefully a delicious and fresh meal.

so I don't think the process

is that different.

with the one caveat

always
you just always in the back of your mind,

stay on story, stay on story, stay story.

There's an obsessive quality
about the whole thing,

because what you try to do

is you're actually trying to figure out
how you going to live in this world.

So there's a bit of method composing
that's going on.

where yes,

I'm a lot more fun to be around
when I work on a romantic comedy

than I work when I work on,
when I work on the Dark Nights.

You just don't want to be around me
that, you know, I do become the joke.

I do become all of those things
I found over the years.

It's. It's.

I have a strange way of working,

when I start on a project, really,
what happens is,

rather than reading the script,
I'd much rather

sit down with the director and say to him,
tell me the story, because

then I know what's in his head, what

his emphasis
is, where his thoughts are going.

You know, he might not tell me
all the details, and he certainly won't,

you know, won't recites
bits of dialog to me.

But I know what sort of a movie
we worked on.

I mean, when Ridley Scott phoned me and
said, hey, let's make a gladiator movie.

It's 9:00 in the morning, I'm not good.

At 9:00 in the morning,
I started laughing because I imagined

he was going to make a movie
with men in skirts and sandals.

even though it was

a movie with men in skirts and sandals,
it wasn't a comedy.

It was something completely different.

And, you know,
and the same thing happened.

I said, okay, tell me the story.

And as he told me the story, I start.

I don't hear tunes, I hear fragments,
I hear sounds, I hear bits,

but I'm starting to narrow
in on a common language set.

You know, that that we can use.

And there are lots of ways
of telling a gladiator story.

There are lots of ways of telling.

I mean, thin Red line is another example,
but I sat with turmeric probably

for a year before he started shooting
because lots of war movies had been made.

But there was a way of doing this.

There was
there was a different way of doing it.

That was there's always something so left
unsaid

and musically and in the human condition.

And I think that's
the sort of thing we aim for.

And. I think, I think the rules come in
that first conversation

you have with the director,
where he's describing what his vision is,

and he tells you the story,
and as he's telling you the story,

he's telling it
within the framework of his rules already.

You know,

I remember really not wanting to

do Pirates. Actually, it was ludicrous.

I was working with Grover Pinsky,

the ring, and I was just going, so.

So what are you doing next?

This thing I said, I'm
thinking of doing this Pirates movie.

Pirates movie?

we are from the rides to Disneyland,
right?

Oh, give me a break.

What with the dog, all the.

So just making fun of him
all the time, you know? And,

you know, so so we, you know,
because we were working on the ring,

you know, and I said, I'm
absolutely no way am I doing this right.

And and at a certain point, I said to him,

so, so how is this pirate thing going?

You know,
and he said, well, I got Johnny Depp and

on Johnny Depp thinks it's interesting.

Okay, but but I was this being me,
you know, I was just,

So I misheard his rules.

I he never told me the rules.

He never told me the story
he was going to tell.

I stopped in my imagination with it's
a pirate movie based on a right.

What could be a worse idea?

and then one Sunday, he phoned me,

he got into a bit of trouble
with the music and he said,

would I have a look at it?

And maybe help out a bit?

and I looked at it

and it was nothing that I could imagine.

But there was, you know, there was
an absolute world created which followed.

Absolutely.

The Gore Verbinski rules of what
this pirate world

and how he was going to
present this was going to be,

and had he told me those rules
when we were first so

to talk about it, I would have gone, whoa,
this sounds really great.

This is really yummy. This is fantastic.

so the rules are part of that
first moment of storytelling.

You know, when,

when Guy phoned me up and he goes, I'm
working on a Sherlock movie,

and they're putting a stamp music dark
night all over it, and I don't like it.

He's already giving me a hint to what
the rules are going to be.

And the way he,
you know, literally that first sentence

in which she basically is going,
I don't like your music and that, that,

unbelievably freeing,
unbelievably liberating,

you know, and us going,

Sherlock, what if he's, you know,
what if he thinks differently?

What if he doesn't play the Bach Partita
on the violin?

Well, that's what if it's like over there.

Gypsy music.

you know, so.

So now we're starting to define
a new set of rules, you know, and we just,

And it's a rules rule of esthetic
more than anything, I think.

And you just stick to that.

Brian Eno actually said the thing to do.

You know what Plato is?

It's like sort of this,

kids,

it's like,

clay, multicolored clay.

It comes in all these beautiful colors.

And, you know, when you're kid,
you get all these beautiful colors

and you mushroom all together,
and it doesn't matter what combination

you must together,
you always end up with brown.

And so if you don't have rules,
if you don't draw,

you know, I'm going to use red and yellow.

And that's going to be pretty cool.

Father, here.

And I'm going to use blue
and yellow and all.

You know whatever.

You have to have certain rules.

Otherwise it's all just brown.

And nobody's interested in
just brown or beige if you're even worse.

So, you know, for instance, the rules
in Sherlock are, you know, maintain

some sort of intellectual integrity
while at the same time having

a lot
of fun with it, but not too much fun,

because occasionally
you might want to go and turn.

Turn sideways
and get a little bit of bit serious.

But, you know, the other rule is,

for Christ's
sake, it's another Sherlock movie.

How many Sherlock movies have there been?

So let's not go and do certain things.

Let's not go into the big pretentious
orchestral thing,

which I break
by really orchestrating Mozart

in the middle of this,
but it's not pretentious.

Again, it's a game.

So once you've defined

the rules of the game.

It's more fun to watch the game
where somebody cheats

in a clever way than everybody plays
totally by the rules.

And I think that goes for everything.

You know, I can't think of a movie where
I didn't set myself really strict rules.

Then just at one moment go,

let's break them.

And because it's adds a fresh start,
you know,

a bit of cayenne pepper
in the middle of this, let's just you.