All language subtitles for MasterClass Danny Elfman Teaches Music For Film - 05.Themes and Melodies

[MUSIC PLAYING]

DANNY ELFMAN: What
makes a melody a melody?

A melody can be as
simple as a bass drum,

it could be as complicated
as a full blown theme,

and it could be
everything in between.

There's a movie called
"Dead Presidents" I did,

and really, what became the
melody was three bass drums.

[MUSIC PLAYING - "DEAD
PRESIDENTS THEME"]

(SINGING) Bom bom bom, bom, bom.

Bom bom bom--

[SPEAKING NORMALLY] But now, I
get hired years later by Brian

De Palma, "Mission
Impossible," and he goes,

I want a theme-- something like
you did for "Dead Presidents."

And I'm going, I didn't have
a theme for "Dead Presidents."

And I listened to it,
and I go, oh, yeah, there

was those three bass drums.

So that was the tune
to "Dead Presidents."

Now, for Brian, I
gave him a little more

of an involved thematic
piece than that,

but then I also
realized that, you

got to be able to
break melodies down.

Even if it's a
longer melody, I got

to break it down to just little
bits, how to express that.

So what is a melody,
and what kind of melody

do you need in your film?

There's absolutely
no answer for that,

because if it's a
classically themed film,

and it calls upon it, you may be
asked to do a beautiful melody,

a melody that one could
hum, a melody that acts--

gets in your mind.

I grew up on these beautiful
melodies of Maurice Jarre--

"Doctor Zhivago,"
"Lawrence of Arabia."

These were your big classical
melodies that you heard,

and you kept in
your mind forever.

And then also, out
of the era of "Jaws"

and many others, much more
simplified versions of what

is a melody.

"Edward Scissorhands" was
certainly a melodic score.

It had two very
clear full melodies,

but I was able to use little
bits of them frequently,

like in--

[MUSIC PLAYING - "STORYTIME"]

(SINGING) Dah dah dah,
or dah dah-dah dah.

[SPEAKING NORMALLY] That's it.

That's all I need to do because
I was given enough opportunity

to express the full melody
that, now, we only need

a tiny little bit of it.

In "Alice in Wonderland"
I really dealt with it

much more scientifically.

I wanted to be able to
take just the rhythm

before the melody comes in--

[MUSIC PLAYING - "ALICE'S
THEME"]

(SINGING) Bom bom bom bom
bom, bom bom bom bom bom,

bom bom bom bom bom.

[SPEAKING NORMALLY]
And OK, that's all I'm

going to use, and use it clearly
enough that, if I hear that,

I know something's happening.

Alice is on the move.

She's feeling confident.

There's something is going on.

That's all I need to say.

So I was learning by then that
you could really take things,

if you fragment them out,
and the film will allow

you to use these fragments.

You can create a lot
of memorable bits

where you can go, oh,
that's the theme from Alice.

Oh, no, that's the theme from--

no, that's the theme from--
it's all the same theme I'm just

using the introduction
independently.

I'm using the chords
leading into the first part

of the melody
independently, and I'm

using this big tune, finally,
when we get to the end.

So there's so many ways--

inventive ways to use a melody.

The classical romanticism,
the Romantic Era of writing,

is something I've listened
to, but I don't know it well.

But that's what a good
theme is all about.

I mean just listen to
Prokofiev, and you'll

hear them all over the place.

And they're all part of the
same single Russian romantic

beautiful theme, but they're
broken into so many elements

that you just keep going,
that's Lieutenant Kijé,

and this is still
Lieutenant Kijé,

and this is still
Lieutenant Kijé.

It's all from the same
work and the same piece,

but what you learn from that is
that you could break it down,

if you're inventive, in
so many different ways.

So I do love when
I have a score,

and I've got a fairly
simple thematic piece.

But the pleasure in
it is breaking it down

into lots of variations,
really turning it upside down,

turning it inside out,
turning it around.

What can you do with it?

And they all work
in their own way.

[MUSIC PLAYING - "THE SIMPSONS
THEME"]

CHOIR: (SINGING) The Simpsons.

DANNY ELFMAN: Finding a
melody, finding a tune,

is actually one of the
hardest things there is.

And like every songwriter
knows, the simplest tunes

don't necessarily come simply.

It just sounds simple.

That hook that everybody
just loves, that hook,

it may just come
in a quick second,

and it may have
just been a moment,

and it may have been like
100 versions leading up

to that really simple thing.

You just don't know, and
I've had both in my life.

I've had tunes that plague me
and plague me and plague me,

and I couldn't
figure out what it

was to make the tune
come together and work.

And I've had those
lucky moments.

I took the meeting
with Matt Groening.

He played me a pencil sketch
of the opening of the Simpsons,

and I heard this
tune in my head.

And it's like,
right off the bat,

I was thinking Hanna Barbera.

I was thinking Fred
Flintstone running

in his car, the opening
of the "Flintstones"

because Homer Simpson's
driving this car,

and I felt this energy
that felt very '60s

like the stuff I grew up on.

And I only had one
question for Matt,

which was like, if
you want something

contemporary, something modern
sounding, I'm not the guy.

But if you want something
that's retro, I got it for you.

He goes, yeah,
retro, I like that.

I dig retro.

OK.

It was done in my car
before I got home.

Everything was done.

I just ran down--

I lived in Topanga Canyon, so
I had about a 45 minute drive

from Fox to Topanga.

I get to my stairs.

I run straight down on my
studio because, God knows,

I don't want to
hear anything else.

I don't want to talk to anybody.

I don't want to hear
another piece of music.

And I got home, and
I got my 4-track--

or maybe, at that point, I
might have already expanded

to 8-tracks.

I don't know.

But I did the demo
for "The Simpsons."

Recorded all the parts in
my funky little sequencer,

all the orchestration,
all the parts.

Everything was basically
done, and it's--

I mean, it's only 45
seconds long or something.

I sent it to Matt, and I think
it took a day to come back

saying, great, let's do it.

And we recorded
it the next week.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

The worst moment--

I can tell you this
right now-- when

it comes to themes and
melodies, is they'll hit you

at the most inopportune time.

And the big fish, the
ones that get away,

are your best
ideas you ever had.

It's-- that fish was--
oh, my god, it was huge.

Of course, it wasn't,
but it got away,

and that makes it
the grand fish.

I was sitting at my
eldest daughter's wedding,

and I'm in the front row,
and everybody's behind me.

And they're doing the beginning
of the wedding service,

and they're both there, and
a fucking piece of music

hit me out of the blue.

And it's like, what is this?

Where did it come from?

And it's like, oh, this is good.

I can turn this thing
into a major movement,

and I tried holding onto that.

So I got two things I could do.

I could pull out
my iPhone, and try

to kind of like
[MUMBLING] little thing

and do the thing and
the little thing.

But to everybody
sitting behind me,

I'm going to be
taking a phone call.

Nobody is going to be going,
oh, look there's a composer,

and he's got an idea.

There's a writer
who's got an idea,

and he's trying to
get the idea down.

They're going to go, the
bastard couldn't even not

turn down a phone call at
his daughter's wedding?

What an asshole.

And I couldn't do it.

I just couldn't do.

I had to let it go.

It was one of those things.

I had to let it go.

For some reason,
I hear something--

anything can trigger
something else.

I've had cars drive by me.

I'm just sitting there
driving, and there's

a-- somebody's got their
base turned up really loud,

and I'm just hearing
[IMITATING BASS NOISES],,

like you tend to hear
through the windows of a car

with a super loud sound system.

But I don't even know
what the song was.

I have no idea what it is.

I can't even hear the notes.

All I'm hearing is
[IMITATING BASS NOISES],,

and I'm hearing (SINGING)
dun ba-dum, ba-dum ba-dum dun

dun, dun dun, dun dun da-da-dun
dun dun da-da-dun dun dun

da-da-dun dun dun, dun dun, bam
bam bam dun dun dun, bah bam

bam bam bam bam bam,
bah bam bam bam.

And now, it's turned
down a whole thing, just

that little rhythm through the
window of that random song.

You just never know
when it's going

to happen, which is
why, from the get-go,

I was never, ever without,
first, my Sony cassette player.

Then of course, that led to
the digital recorders, which

were, like, great but a little
sometimes hard to maneuver,

and you have to make sure
to keep them charged.

And then finally,
of course, Apple

came along with the iPhone.

It's like I never have to carry
anything around ever again.

But I have an iPhone that,
every now and then, I go,

oh, I have 170 notes on
this thing right now.

I better back this fucker up.

When you're on a
digital form you

have to realize there's the
possibility that everything

crashes, and you have to
wipe it and start again.

And if you haven't
backed your stuff up,

it's like you're in trouble.

So that's the only thing
I'm conscious of now

that I didn't used
to have to, is

that the form I'm using
to capture all my notes

is also eraseble
in a quick moment.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Whether it be a theme or a
motif or a leitmotif or a more

developed thematic idea, you're
often faced the same question.

Is it doing what I
need to, and when

do I know it's doing
what I need to?

And a great example for me
would be "Edward Scissorhands,"

which during the
process of writing

it-- which I loved writing it,
but then I reached a crisis.

And the crisis was, I don't
have the theme for Edward.

In fact, I have two
themes for Edward,

and they both feel right.

And I talked with Tim
at length about this.

I go, Tim, there's this
theme, and there's this theme.

And he's like, whatever, man.

Just use them both.

Thank god I had a director
who was not analytical,

because some directors
really break things down,

and they go, no, the
theme has to do this,

and it has to follow this,
and you've got to choose.

This has got to work this way.

And Tim was like, I don't know.

Just go with it.

Go with what seems right.

And that actually was
the best advice he

gave me, which was like, why?

Why do you have to have a single
thing for a character that

plays in that way?

And I realized, I don't.

There's a type of a movie where
you need to have a character

theme, but what I
learned with "Edward,"

and this is a lesson
that I took with me

for the rest of
my composing days,

is that sometimes a theme
plays a feeling in the movie,

and it doesn't
play the character.

It's related to the
character, and it will often

play when the
character is involved,

but it's not his theme.

There is no "Edward
Scissorhands" theme

that plays when he's on.

There's a theme that
plays a story time,

and I called it the
"Storytime" theme,

and it plays the
fairy tale-ness of it.

And there's a theme
that I used for the ice

dance that became Edward's
sadder part of his theme.

It's just a little bit
of his bittersweet theme,

and the bittersweet theme
wasn't like, Edward's on screen,

I play his theme,
because I rarely did.

But it played the feeling
that Edward gave me.

He was a tragic character.

He needed something sad.

He needed something a
little bit heartbreaking.

And I found that
those two themes

seemed to work in a
way that didn't seem

traditional or correct to me.

But fortunately, I--

I ran out of time.

I mean, literally,
I ran out of time.

And I said, well, all
right, I don't know.

I don't know if this works.

I have no idea if it works.

And before the movie
came out, I went

through a period of feeling I'd
failed miserably at that score.

And so, of course,
it's ironic that it's

become one of my most
well-known scores,

but I didn't feel that
when I left the film.

I had no sense of,
like, yeah, I got it.

I nailed the fucker.

Uh-uh, I was like,
I think I fucked up.

My indecisiveness--
my indecision

kept me from doing my job, which
was finding Edward's theme.

Edward comes out, and he has
a theme, and I couldn't do it.

And I felt like I failed, and
I really felt pretty miserable

afterwards until later,
under hindsight, I

realized I didn't
need a theme for him.

That worked out fine.

I had no mentor,
so there was nobody

I could turn to and say,
please, oh, wise one, tell me,

I need to know.

Please, tell me.

Yoda wasn't there
when I needed him.

So I was just left
to my own kind

of miserable, moping
around, feeling

like I'd done a shitty
job, and things worked out.