All language subtitles for MasterClass Ron Howard Teaches Directing - 131 - Music And Scoring

[Music]

the very best

composers um

are they're like another

screenwriter they key in on Little

Things camera moves

um an actor's um you know flickering eye

uh um um a glance down that suggests uh

an emotional state of mind that may not

have anything to do with the dialogue or

the plot and they often pick up on those

things and and begin to build cues

around that emotion in in very

surprising ways um but

music is such a challenge for me oh I

could play the guitar a little bit but I

can't read music I'm not a

musician um and yet I understand how

powerful it is

and I learned early on to talk to

composers the way I would talk to an

actor or a screenwriter just talk about

the ideas talk about the feelings talk

about the reason that I shot or staged a

scene in a particular way what I love

about a performance what I hope it

conveys and very very often they're able

to really reinforce

[Music]

that music is written to be what

listened to um you know

experienced um now sometimes a piece of

music um Always written with themes and

ideas that the composer has that you

know aren't specifically articulated but

you're meant to feel on some Primal

level some int intuitive level sometimes

it works great for a movie

but there in my opinion there's nothing

like score score is music that is

written specifically for a scene for a

movie themes

that represent something of a

character um sometimes movies have two

or three different uh themes uh

representing two or three different

feelings or characters characters who

fall into the category of a certain kind

of feeling

um maybe representing you know

oppositional sides in a conflict uh

sometimes there are no themes sometimes

there are only feelings uh a sort of

sound beds uh um beats Tempo uh and

sometimes there's sometimes there there

are both so again in the world of

working with composers or making

decisions on your own um it's uh it's so

much about asking yourself the question

what should the music be and you'll have

probably um you know an instinctive

answer and that may be right but it's

always worth

saying what

else the development of the musical

score for frost

Nixon was one of the most surprising uh

creative EXP experiences that I've ever

had because I was so certain I wanted I

wanted a a rock and roll score this took

place in

77 I I I wanted to evoke that eror I

thought here this is I love those I love

those movies that do that this is a

chance to do one of

those and we kept trying songs I had

lengthy meetings with Han Zimmer who was

going to you know do some some some

score but I told him I thought Hans it's

probably only going to be seven or eight

minutes of score I really want a of

songs Peter Morgan the writer and and

and and and one of the producers on the

movie he was okay with it I think he was

a little suspicious of that idea but

when we started putting songs

in audiences said they kind of liked it

because they lik those songs but both

Peter and Hans said I think you're

selling the movie

short because those songs remind us of

the period

and they may reflect the characters but

when they do reflect the characters it's

a little bit reductive it's almost like

irony uh or it's

heavy-handed um and the performances and

the camera work are so much more

sophisticated than that Ron and they

really had to talk me out of that and

into a score that was much more a

suspense score it was much closer to the

heartbeat of those characters and it

invited the audience to to Really lean

in and and feel a sense of of um

pressure and it became a a really very

contemporary um minimalistic in some

places and then sort of full and

emotional in other places but a very

modern uh psychological score and it was

H maybe not 180° but a solid 90° away

from anything that I ever expected for

the movie and I'm very very happy that I

uh was coerced um you know out of that

first that first choice that I was so

certain

[Music]

of there were a number of challenges

with beautiful mind uh musically and uh

um James Horner did a bril Brant job

tackling it but it it he thought about

it for a long a long time he was

inspired to some extent by Philip Glass

uh very modern

contemporary um and uh in a lot of

Philip glass's work there's a sense of

um of a of a kind of an ongoing search a

kind of yearning for something and an

inevitability it's kind of nature

meeting man's need to go forward and

understand something somehow it's it's

pretty magical um but it it's very

evocative and so he didn't want to

borrow that

orchestrally um and but he uh but he

took some inspiration from it and he

wrote some um piano pieces that were you

know amazing and sort of

celebrated that drive that John Nash as

a genius uh

felt and then he had to

write counter

themes that were oppressive that

represented the kind of the evil the

danger of the mental illness and at

first um because that movie has plays a

trick with the audience that that music

was meant to sound sort of like Movie

music kind of like um you know bad guy

music from you know the the the 40s or

the 50s but with this undercurrent of

John Nash's

particular um need to be able to express

himself in the beginning you just feel

like it's a genius wanting to get his

ideas out there by the end you begin to

understand that he was hampered by the

mental illness and that that that

feeling of being trapped and that need

to try to be able to work through

something that that that James's music

sort of uh seems to suggest I think uh

suggest something on on a on a more sort

of metaphorical level uh later and and

and that same dark music that we thought

was about uh Cloak and Dagger stuff and

spies winds up being the the sound of

the

[Music]

disease there are two exciting ways to

use Music um one is um you know you you

you stage your your scenes you shoot the

shots that you want you piece them

together you you share them with a

composer composer is inspired by it um

you begin a conversation and begin to

experiment with what the music could be

and you come to a you know an

understanding that is satisfying there's

another very um interesting approach

which is you can take a piece of music

and in the way that you might use temp

score uh while you're editing as a as a

way of sort of um understanding what you

know the kind of music that might work

in in a in a in a in a scene the pace

the the nature of the of the piece of

music there are a lot of interesting

directors that do all of that before

they begin shooting and they often shoot

and edit with a Tempo and a rhythm uh

already in their minds now again I'm not

that musical I've never actually um you

know tried that strategy but I hear

about it all the time and I sometimes

hear about it from actors who really

love it because when a when a director

has chosen a piece of music or a song

that's meant to inspire it might not

even be used in the final movie but it

suggests something and it is also an

acknowledgement that we're you know yes

we're creating a kind of reality the

reality of this story but we are using

the tools of the medium including music

and you the actor are going to be

reinforced and supported in this way and

sometimes actors are really inspired by

that