Original subtitles

Mean, you.

First of all, you go

and look at the whole, you know, what is the whole movie?

What are we trying to say here? What?

And what is the style that seems appropriate to tell the story?

And what are the instruments that are appropriate to tell the story?

Okay, now we got this big arc.

Okay? Now we're starting to move in.

You know, it says something between act one, two and three.

So something we want to do different in act three.

I mean, I have this habit of setting up

all these themes that you think are going to pay off in act three.

And then I always think there's some moment that triggers act three.

But when the thing happens that,

you know, Gladiator,

Connor just finds out that his sister has been betraying him, you know?

so rather than going.

And now all these themes are going to pay off nicely,

I just go and whack in something, a completely new theme because it's like,

you know, all bets are off.

Everything has shifted.

The relationship between the characters have shifted.

So I just go

out of nearly nowhere,

you know, unleash something completely, completely Indian, completely fresh.

But it's you start, you start, and you start going down your

into the scene, into the dialog, into the,

into the color

that you want to use, you know, because here's the thing.

If you suddenly stop

forward momentum because there's a dialog scene,

how does it affect the rhythm of the whole movie?

If you're doing this,

you know, it's like being a bad driver who's forever, like on the cast.

And then coming off the cast.

I'm sure you've driven with people like this.

You want to smack them.

All right. so don't be that driver.

Figure out how to how to keep the forward momentum going.

Making a movie as a

complicated human exercise.

Because basically what you're dealing with is you're dealing

with only insecure people

at their most insecure.

everybody's

worried that what they're doing

isn't the greatest thing in the world.

And quite honestly, it never is, you know?

Otherwise we wouldn't

need to make another movie if the perfect movie had already been made.

So in this environment of total insecurity,

sometimes it's really hard to say.

You know something?

We don't need music here.

This scene is perfectly fine.

You know, the dialog is sparkling because the

the the writer is going to think, well, if I could have

only had another seven years, I could have written this line better.

The director is thinking

if I had had a better actor, it could have been delivered better.

And the actor, of course, is thinking, if I had had a decent director,

you know, I could have done a better performance.

And then the, you know, and everybody is blaming the cameraman

and the sound recordist because it's too dark.

and because they're feeling insecure

about the scene, they're turning to the last man standing.

That's the composer.

And they're going, you know, this scene needs a bit of help.

Can we can you go and put some music underneath

to make it at least entertaining or something or the other?

We need more tension or we didn't quite get the we didn't get the passion

or we didn't get the whatever taste that they feel they didn't get.

And part of your job is to say, you know something, it's all there.

It's right there on the screen.

It's beautifully shot, beautifully acted, and I've never heard sound recorded

in this way that as beautiful and make everybody

feel secure enough to say, okay, good idea.

No music.

one of the first things I

learned is just because you can hit the cut

doesn't mean you should,

For instance, the

the the ear, sort of a head of the eye in a funny way,

especially if you're on a big screen and you're looking

it takes you a long time to travel across the screen

to see everything and take everything in.

So it's quite nice usually to be a little

after the cut or after the event, or then, depending on how much

you want to give the audience an emotional breathing room,

you know you can be later and later and make a reaction.

But but fun and but I get naughty

and I do really hardcore action stuff.

I actually make the event happen one frame ahead of

you seeing it, and it really you don't.

You don't quite know what I'm doing, but it certainly scares

the bejesus out of you.

I mean, Black Hawk Down, it's all done like that.

Where, you know, because I come from a super pacifist family,

so I had no experience of what soldiers go through.

So to figure it out, whenever I got lost because I could,

I got the real rangers, the real soldiers from this battle in Mogadishu,

to come in and stop talking to me about what their experiences were like.

And this whole idea that

a bullet

just comes out of, no, an event comes out of nowhere

and there's nothing that prepares you for it.

so rather than

me knowing it's going to happen

and not teaching it on paper, and therefore the musicians looking ahead

and I oh, at this point they've got to go and make a big bang.

I would constantly write these scenes which would

have been overlap into the next thing, and then I would make the event

a separate recording and just cut it hard because

I think we are so the the is so sensitive that you can

you can tell the shift in attitude of the musicians, of

just getting ready that they have to play a allowed note.

And by taking that out of the composition, literally,

things come as a surprise to you.

This is at least how I see it.

And maybe I'm completely wrong, but I keep thinking

the purpose of film music

is very simple.

You invite the audience and you say to them,

I give you the opportunity to feel something.

I'm not going to tell you what to feel.

That would be patronizing and horrible, but just the simple fact

that there's a single note going on

should just open a little door

that lets you, and you get to complete the tune.

In a funny way, you as the audience, get to complete the emotion.

You get to go and complete the journey.

And so yeah, it's about, you know, very often it's about getting rid of things.

It's it's

that idea of

Mickey mousing off of imitating action, which happens easily.

You know, sometimes it's a good thing to do, but knowing when not to do it,

knowing how to react to something, sometimes it takes the audience

a moment or two to catch up with what's going on,

you know, give them that moment, let them figure it out,

you know, don't all the I's

and cross all the TS, leave some of it

open.

Take your audience

as intelligent human beings

that have their autonomous emotions and just for a moment,

provide the opportunity to feel something.

Inception was to solve

a different problem by.

It was potentially a complicated story, and it was potentially a story

where the audience would go, oh God, I don't get this.

I I'm out of here.

You know, and I thought

if we to

set this up right from the beginning, that the music is interesting

and a little provocative and a little different, but it's like a,

it's a, you know, I kept saying to Chris, it's it's just going to be like a river.

I'm not going to hit all those cuts and everything like this.

and I'm not going to be quiet on the dialog either.

But it's like

if right away we say to the audience, this is going to be different,

but come along on this journey, you know, and the music is this river,

and you guys are in this boat, little boat, and you're

bumping down the river and sometimes it's going to get a little quiet.

Maybe it's going to get even a little boring,

and then sometimes it's going to get a little exciting.

But just trust the river.

It's going to take it to the end of it,

and it's going to be an interesting journey.

You know, that the most I can promise you is that

it's going to be an interesting journey.

I'm not going to go

and promise you anything else, but I'm going to carry you along.

And if you don't understand everything, that's okay too.

At least it was an interesting journey after,

you know, you know, when when you go to foreign places where you don't

speak the language, it's all right if you don't understand the words.

It can still be interesting and entertaining and an experience.