All language subtitles for 04 - Directors Part 1

This is the only bit of masterclass

that's going to be important
coming out of my mouth.

When you start on a project,

you are working with the director.

Everybody else is secondary. Nice.

You and the director
make a pact that you're going

to do this movie together,
and you're going to do your utmost

and your best to go
and make his film great.

Even if it means
you have to kill him sometimes. But

you're a lot of allegiance,

as with the director and yes, what
the producers say and what the studio says

and and they're great comments,
the amazing comments usually.

And you have to take them on board
and you want to take them on board,

but you have to filter them
and transform them into, is this

helpful to the film?

The director is trying to make?

Because

I don't know how else to do it.

It's a film sound made by committee.

it seems like it sometimes, but.

Not really.

If you take Ron Howard,
Ridley Scott, Chris Nolan

and Terry Malick, I mean, the directors
are working very different styles.

But really at the end,
at the end of the day, we've all come

together at the same sort of place.

I have to get into his head and,

you know, and that's part of the process,
because what I want to do is

I want to make the movie
that he wants to make.

That's what I signed on for.

You know,
I want to have a bit of his vision.

So I worked I worked really very hard
at trying to understand and

have conversations about

what this movie is about.

And of course, the weird thing is that
we don't really talk about the movie.

We talk about everything else.

We're trying to sneak up on the subject
because ultimately

he has to hand over the job
of directing in a funny way.

To me.

and the best directors and,

you know, the people I work
with time and time again,

I mean, they do it with,

the they sort of
hand it over with great joy, you know,

they get excited about something
new coming, you know, somebody

new coming into the party,
you know, with Tariq Malik.

I mean, I spent a year before
Terry went off to shoot thin Red line.

We were we're just talking about art.

We were talking about philosophy,
and we're talking about paintings.

the thing we sort of agreed on
really early on.

I had read the script and it was

there was

198 pages, which is a lot of script sucks.

So I said to him, Terry,
you know, might not be a really good idea

if we never talked about the script
any more.

We just talked about
what we want to do with this script.

Well, you know, what's the subtext?

What are the other things we want to do?

And we oh, God, we talked about,
you know, it was a year long conversation.

We talked a lot about,

such paintings, you know, the way,
the light, you know, in baroque painting,

you know, hit through the clouds, you know
that, you know, that ray of light.

I mean, I think I think that's really
what those conversations are.

That's
what all those directors have in common,

that the the conversation is one
where we are trying

to learn from each other
and we're trying to learn from the movie.

We're trying to get the movie to tell us

how to make it.

There's certain questions you don't ask
the director and you ask the producer.

Like, so, we just had this conversation
which involved the largest

symphony orchestra and three choirs
working for, you know, seven weeks.

what's our budget on this?

Oh, it's only one day of a string quartet.

Okay, fine.

Good that I know that now,
because you don't want to go and narrow

the director's dreams by asking
some of those hard core questions.

Just like he doesn't want to go
and stop me by going, you know something?

We are basically some miserable little low

budget production
with with a lack of imagination.

Our producer is terrible.

The studio doesn't care about us.

But, you know,
can you just crank something out?

so that's not the conversation to have.

So reality is, reality is the enemy of,

you know, of imagination of,

you know, the dream we have.

I mean, here's the thing.

Nobody sets out to make a bad movie.

You know, some movies,
it doesn't matter how much talent

and how many talented
people are involved in it.

you know,
they just derailed themselves a bit

because once, once you're
working, once the movie is,

you know what?

Once you on that first day of shooting,
it just propels itself forward

and you just hang on for dear life
most of the time.

Everybody still has

this image of the film composer
who's waiting for the film

to be shot, and then the director
invites them into a screening room

and shows them his masterpiece,
and they discuss music.

That was before we got all digital

and all fancy, and everybody can go
and cut a movie basically on an iPhone.

so the idea that you have
a finished picture that you can work with

has gone, and the whole mechanisms
of how we work has been turned around.

And actually, I think to, to an advantage

where suddenly you get to collaborate
before the movie's even made

for instance, on on both Russian
Frost Nixon with Ron Howard.

I mean,

it originally started
we were supposed to be talking about songs

that we might have in the movie
before he went to shoot the movie,

and it turned into two weeks of us
actually talking about

what the music can do
with some of these songs,

and that was actually really exciting,

seeing shots come in on dailies

that actually were informed
by this conversation about the music.

It was, on the one hand and exciting,
and on the other hand

it was terrifying because now
I had to actually deliver on this,

you know, the grand idea, you know, oh,

I can do this with this shot, you know,

so the whole mechanism of filmmaking

and film composing has shifted
because of the way we edit things.

And that the idea of a locked picture
and the 12 months you have at the end

has changed.

I mean, we we work hand in hand in tandem.

They're cutting picked, I'm writing music.

I get to head in in that direction

autonomously with an autonomous voice

because otherwise they would be doing
it themselves, you know?

So that's the thing.

That's that's the thing
you're always hoping for.

That's the thing that you're aiming for.

that you're adding something
to the conversation

that wasn't there before.

You know,

I know a couple of directors who go,
you know, sometimes it's quite nice.

You know, after
everybody's asked me a thousand questions,

I just put the headphones on
and I get a bit of Zima.

You know, it's like I'm not.

It's not like I'm answering a question,
but I reset the mood

because there's a mood in the piece.

All this a mood and the writing that

just informs the way things can happen.

You know, I'm not I'm not trying to

make more off the contribution
than just it's just,

a reflection of just a shadow
falling across the light.

Sometimes that informs things
in a certain way.

I work away from picture, but
at the same time, I've seen the drawings.

I've spoken to the DP.

You know, I before I read the script,

I sort of know where we are heading,
but the timeline has shifted off.

How we make movies, how the music becomes
part of it, and,

you know, more than one director
I work with, you know,

I mean, I really like from Peter Weir,
who told me that he used to

always play music on the set
and always play music to his actors.

It sets the mood until a certain tempo.

Peter sort of got me into this idea
that it's actually quite

nice to have music early
so that he can play it on the set.

And for instance,
the way I work with Ron Howard as we,

you know, Frost Nixon, for instance,

we met for two weeks
before he even shot a single frame.

we're just talking about the music.

And we were coming up with things,
and it sort of informs the

the way he gets to make a picture,
even though he's the director

and he knows what he wants to do.

And it's quite nice sometimes to be able
to just put a set of headphones

on and go, oh,
what was that crazy little thing

Hans was trying to work on?

it's nice if a little of that

turns up on the set
and it influences things a little bit.