All language subtitles for 05 - Directors Part 2 - Hans Zimmer Teaches Film Scoring

The way I work

is I talk to the director usually

before they go out to shoot the movie.

So a year in advance of actually going in
and recording this stuff,

some conversation happens with them
about the intention

why we want to do this movie,
how we want to do this movie,

and then something happens.

The director goes off to shoot the movie,
and that is basically the director is

going to battle, the director goes to war
and he comes back wrecked.

You know, three, four months later.

I mean, he has not answered a thousand,

a million insane, trivial questions.

He has been thinking on his feet
all the time.

Things have gone wrong.

the money's run out.

You know,
it rained on the day he needed sunshine.

And it was sunny on the day
he needed rain.

So by the time he comes back into my room,

he's a changed man. And.

The other thing that happens is

he might not quite remember
why we wanted to go and make this movie

in the first place, because he's bloodied
and beaten and exhausted.

And so part of my job,
I always see this as part of my job as

that the first conversation we have
when he returns from battle

as that I remind him why we wanted to go
and do this thing in the first place.

And then I remind him
of some of the instincts and some of the

things that we wanted to do, and, and

the things that we were looking forward
to doing.

And, and just to remind him why

this is actually a good idea.

To speak in plain English, if you can.

And if the, German speaking German.

No, no, no, just use your words.

You know,
like what they teach you as a kid.

Use your words and don't get technical.

Don't make it into

a technical conversation
about a minor seventh chord and augmented

chords and triads
and don't have the conversation, you know,

which is one I'm prone to.

Well, I get nerdy and I go, oh,
I want to go and use a mug.

55 because, you know,
I could get all nerdy about this.

Oh, shoot me record this on real tape.

so we do this digitally, and, you know,

and I can get all carried away in this,
and it has nothing to do with anything.

This is just this is, you know,
this is the sidebar that I'm going

to have with my guys,
you know, my technicians, etc..

I have lost myself.

And then I,

you know, because all you want to do
is you want to present a piece of music

or a sound.

I mean, sometimes it's just the sound.

And you, you want to go,
what do you think?

Cool sound.

you know, it's just right for this movie.

Does this feel right?

Does this work with the images?

And nobody cares how you got there?

Sometimes Cinematographer Penske,
he'll go,

you know, go from the dominant chord
to the tonic or something.

I think a come on, you know, it's like,

let me rock out here.

Being that specific about it,

he robs himself of the possibility
of being surprised

of something happening that, you know,
yeah, I understand what he's trying to do.

He's trying to get from,
you know, a question to an answer.

He's trying to get into a new thing.

and might that be a more surprising

and interesting way of doing it?

Temp music is a,

you know, everybody keeps going on about,
you know, temp music is ruining

creativity,
temp music is writing our movies, etc..

Yeah.

I mean, I've had it
where, director, you know, I'm

not going to name names all the movie,
but but director screened

a movie with music

from a previous one of my films on it,
and the screening went through the roof.

I mean, way beyond expect station. and

so after that, because of the success
of the

of the screening,
I was suddenly caught in the situation.

But he wanted exactly what I had done
before for another movie.

And first of all, you don't want to do
what you've done for other movies

that that belongs to that movie.

So I realized that

successful time

can stop any forward motion creativity.

And you just, you know,
and you just have to fight it.

I mean, remember temp music,
one of the pros is temp music.

Is that all finished tracks.

And you can pick the best scores
and the best music

ever written
and just line one up after the other.

I mean, my editor pop out of me once, put

Samuel Barber's Adagio
for strings up as temp music.

And everybody loved
it. And I was just going,

oh, you tried to kill me, you know? Yes.

Two weeks later, I'm still trying to write
something as good as that.

You know, I had to cancel orchestra
sessions, literally.

I mean, and, you know, it,

you know,
the burden of that was just so impossible.

So I'm recommending to do what
we've been doing

more and more,
which is not use temp music at all.

with Chris Nolan.

I mean, I think everybody knows that
he doesn't like using temp music.

He wants things
which are written for his movie,

even if they're not finished,
even if they're just like little yellow

postage stamps.

You put on a French

which just have a bit of a tune on them,
but it's just off that movie.

If you can start early enough
and you have a good music

and you guys can just work hand in hand,
there's no,

no real reason
you need to go and put a temp on. If

you know how to use a computer,

if you know how to use synthesizers,
if you know how to basically

fake up the sound, let's go.

The ideal situation to have is if,
you know,

and maybe we should talk about this for
for a second.

For me, the ideal situation to be in
is is that the director,

the editors
and I, we're all in the same building.

So, you know,
we don't do this thing where, you know,

can you come by on Friday at 3:00
and have a have a meeting and then that's

an either very little to play,
which is a bit of a disappointment.

All the far too much to play
to have a serious discussion about it.

So if we can just see each other
every day, I mean, right now,

this this was the gladiator cutting room,
you know, and,

you know,
and and my room was actually next door.

And so, you know,
we just walk into each other's room.

And, I mean, one of the things

that's important to me
is to just be able to walk.

And, you know, in the old days,
it was I would literally walk

into the cutting room

and just pick up a bit of film,
you know, that they'd cut off.

And to soft touch it, you just,

you know, just to remind myself
what the movie is we're working on. So

there's all this, there's experimentation
time going on all the time.

Ron Howard always thinks of the way
this room works.

It's like the laboratory.

And even when we run out of time,
I mean, he always.

He was, you know, just as he's leaving,
he always says,

to make sure that we don't shut
the laboratory doors too soon because the,

you know, this deadline here,
and it's a brick wall

and we're hurtling towards it, but we and

we have to have the luxury to experiment
and try these things.

And, you know,

we're not for the last second,
not none of it would have been written.