All language subtitles for 11 - Tempo - Hans Zimmer Teaches Film Scoring

The drama for the film composer
is the editor.

So you need to know your editor.

And you need to know how your editor
feels, tempo, etc..

I remembered Crimson Tide
cutting a there, figuring out

this really long scene,

that Chris Levinson had cut.

And I was thinking
he must have cut this to a piece of music.

It's rhythmically so accurate.

And I finally worked out the BPM,

which just was unwavering account
of what the actual BPM was.

You know, it's a seven minute piece.

and I never I never did a tempo change.

It was quite a slow tempo.

And I saw Chris.

I said, so what piece of music
did you cut this to?

And he goes,
I don't cut this to a piece of music.

You know, you just want to, you know,

part of

who you want closest to you is,
you want to know

the metabolism rate of your editor
because they're your drummer.

Here's how I start the day.

I go the click is your friend.

It's reliable.

It's the only thing I can rely on.

You know, the notes are lying to me.

I am lying to me going, yes, today
you're going to write a great tune.

Well that's bullshit.

So the only thing I can rely on, the only
thing that's my friend, is the metronome.

Because it's just there.

It's steady.

It's reliable.

so I like being in a grid,

and, it gives me
an enormous amount of freedom to lie,

and to invent and to,
you know, have a great idea.

Happens,
you know, when you're playing something

and there's a great idea
in there somewhere, but it's

it's just a

free form floating around in the air.

It's really hard to capture.

And make something out of it.

If it's in the grid,
you're already step ahead.

You know, you already,
you know, just put up a click

and look at the listen to the click
and look at the picture.

And it's just a click
and it's just a metronome and holds.

But if you listen carefully,
something you know in your head

not maybe a tune got a texture
or feeling or something.

Something will come about.

The picture will speak to you
in a different way when you impose

a grid onto it.

That isn't the same grid
as the editor has, and so if you're

if your question is
do you like single spaced or double

spaced in your email,
so your type or your script or whatever,

that's the click
for me, that's, you know, it's.

It feels a certain way.

We were talking earlier about
how do I start?

And part of it
is, and I can sit there forever

trying to figure out what my tempo is,
what what is,

what's the pace of the drama
for me in this world,

you know, am I going to go against it?

Am I going to go with it?

And if I go with it, what is what's

you know, how many cups of coffee did

the editor have before he cut the scene?

you know, how are the actors moving?

You know, what's the speech pattern?

and it's not like I consciously
work it out.

It's just I try to take it in

and I take, you know,
I've done 100 movies or so, and you just

you you don't consciously look for you
just sort of

feel it and then just put it in that,
okay, hang on.

I know what that is.

I used to play this game
of watching a scene once.

Figuring out what I wanted to hit
and then switching a picture off

and just writing
and then putting it back up and,

I can hit anything you want.

I mean.

there was a

there was a thing on interstellar,

Christmas shooting in Iceland.

Just we were talking on the phone

and he was describing the scene
and how it had,

you know, it had to hit this,
and it had to hit something else.

If it's something else
that had to to stop.

and I was saying, I said to him,

you know, writing all this down, I said,
look, I think this is too complicated.

I think you need to send me the scene.

I think I actually need
to write this to picture.

And he paused for a second.

He said, you know, look, we've done
pretty well at feeling tempo the same way.

I mean,

inception is all about time, you know, and

so we've been pretty good at feeling time.

So why don't you just write it?

And if it doesn't work,

I'll send you the scene.

You know that because I.

Iceland, I was a, you know, whatever.

so I wrote the thing and,

send it over a phone number.

So how did it work?

It goes.

it was, it was frame accurate, you know?

So even though
we're working independently, we we know.

You know, tempo is important.

You know, it's part of the drama.

Chris and I really get into it on on BPMs.

It's just because it's the language
we're comfortable with,

you know?

with Guy, it's much more about.

It's, you know, it's like a three way

dance between James
Herbert, him and myself. And,

I very, very, very

quickly figure out literally
just what James and Guy, you know,

literally when they walk into a room,
what pace the movie is going to be at,

you know, and I go, oh,

you know, I think, well,
I don't think about 80 bpm.

I think we're more than 96 people.

and then there's certain tempos
which just hit things

in an interesting way, you know,
what's my frame that I want to paint?

And if there's a big frame
or a small frame, a big frame,

I say 60 bpm, slow

to certain emotion
that automatically comes forth.

That's the more it's, the more you can
instantly get more profound.

Try to get profound at 140 bpm.

It's a bit tricky because it's just,
you know, it's all bit up and dancing.

Dark night.

We actually talked about

wouldn't it be cool

if Chris shot the movie with a BPM in mind

and be.

And so the first four rails of that movie
are at 96 BPM.

And then when we switched you really,

you know,
you don't notice that we switched.

But you know, it's the

the trick is we just give you a jolt
suddenly because in one way or the other,

even though there's a lot, a lot of stuff
been happening, there've been bank

robberies and dialog scenes and chases
and all sorts of stuff.

They were all in one tempo
and and in a peculiar way.

You've now gotten used to this.

So suddenly I'm pulling the rug out
from under you, you know,

and the whole, you know, the the whole

excitement shifts.

It wasn't even that radical. It just was.

What if you read slightly wrong?

Slightly wrong is great.

You know, slightly,
you know, just uncomfortable.

80 bpm,

80 bpm was just a good time process
of a good because you can go anyway.

160 is going to be close
to cardiac arrest.

And sometimes you want to go up there.

But ATP, BPM
can be quite seductive as well.

And and it just so happens that.

The math is easy.

You know,
sometimes you've got to go and do it.

You have to remember that one for far
apart 80 bpm happens to be three seconds.

So you sort of can orient yourself on 96
is 2.5 seconds to the low.

You know, it's just it's
just weird baggage you carry with you.

You just instinctively know
140 usually means I didn't have

I didn't have the courage to make
your heart burst out of your chest.

actually,
I'm pretty sure I didn't use 140.

It would have been 142
or something like that,

because there's certain things
which are divisible by frames

and certain things
which aren't divisible by frames.

And if you're not divisible by frames,

it lands badly.

You know,

it doesn't matter that we're

all in this long,
non-linear digital medium these days.

Editors still think at frames, you know,
and and we we still think about,

you know, a film about this long,
you know, or something like that.

so maybe the next generation

will use completely different
temporal and efficacies for them.

Time is just linear.

Fast time is divided into rhythms.