All language subtitles for Hans.Zimmer.Hollywood.Rebel.2022.1080p.HDTV.H264-DARKFLiX

This programme contains
some strong language

Ladies and gentlemen, Hans Zimmer!
APPLAUSE

There's a word I don't use
very often, which is genius.

Hans Zimmer is one of them.

He has the incredible capacity
to reinvent himself

without losing his identity.

He's a storyteller.

He tells stories with music.

It's not a job. It's like a calling.
It's like a crazy thing.

I can't imagine not writing music.

Hans Zimmer is the world's
most sought after

and prolific movie composer.

He's written music for blockbusters,
romcoms, animations

and even iconic
nature documentaries.

DAVID ATTENBOROUGH: This is
a dangerous place.

He's fascinated just by
sound itself.

He has all kinds of technical ideas
and tricks going on at any one time.

Throughout his career,
he's broken all the rules

about how you compose music
for films.

I don't think anybody's ever won
an Oscar for a score that blatantly

is bagpipes, heavy metal guitars
and a woman screaming at you.

This is great!

He doesn't want to read a script.

He wants me to tell him,

"What is the movie
you think you're making?"

It's like being psychoanalysed.

Even if you're not hearing
what you want to hear always,

the project gets better every time
it gets under Hans's microscope.

He remains a child, in a way.

And I think you have to have
that quality in order to sort of

be as successful a musician
for all that time.

I've been doing this for,
what, 40 years?

Somebody the other day said,
"When are you going to slow down?"

"What do you mean "slow down"?
I'm just getting going!

"I'm just getting started."

CHEERING

Hans is experimenting with some
ideas for the soundtrack of a new

BBC natural history documentary.

MUSIC PLAYS ON COMPUTER

Just trying to get you something
that sounds remotely frozen.

I'm using a bit of noise,

make it a bit more tundra-like.

You know, I mean, it's just...

I like the idea that there's like
a wind rattling across everything.

LAUGHS: I'm literally making it
as we're talking about things!

Er... Let's say...
Let's go and use this, too.

It's relatively chilly,
but we can make it chillier.

Bit of frozenness.

The problem is that wind across
a tundra and bacon frying

are very similar.
HE CHUCKLES

ATTENBOROUGH: This is a stronghold
for one of Antarctica's

most remarkable inhabitants.

ANIMAL YAWNS

The seriousness and the depth
that we bring to this project

comes a lot from me being a kid.

One of my main memories is just
shortly before my father's death,

where he took me to the Rhine,

which was completely covered
in foam.

And he was explaining to me,

"You know, look,
we're destroying the world.

"We now need to go and do something
about that."

And I think it hugely influenced me
in our work

with Sir David Attenborough.

Hans was born in Frankfurt, Germany,
in 1957 into a Jewish family.

I knew what the Nazis had done
to the Jews.

It would be brought up quite a lot.

The fear was that, "You know what?
If you tell the neighbours,

"your best friend can turn on you
within one moment."

While still a child, Hans's family
was torn apart

by a bolt from the blue.

The week before my sixth birthday -

my birthday was on a Sunday -

my dad died on either the Friday
or the Saturday.

And on Monday, my mother,
who was totally overwhelmed,

basically dropped me off
for my first day at school.

It was like, you know,
all these kids, terrible teachers

of an older generation.

Then came the moment where she said,

"You know, I think you should
have piano lessons.

"Do you want piano lessons?"

And as a six-year-old,
seven-year-old,

you think that stuff you hear
in your head,

a magical man is going to come

and tell you how to put it
under your fingers.

And, of course, that's not at all
what happens.

Some horrible German comes
who raps you across the knuckles

if you don't play your scales right!

You know, "Read, read,
read, read, read!"

And to this day, if you put music
in front of me,

it just starts getting wobbly
and swimmy and...

..and defocused.

Despite having only two weeks
of formal lessons,

Hans found his home in music.

I play the piano because
it put a smile on my mum's face.

It's the only reason.

It's not the only reason -
it put a smile on my face, too.

Hans kicked against the rules,
not just in learning music

but in everything.

He was thrown out of eight schools
in Germany

for not conforming to
the strict discipline demanded.

The music teacher
threw a chair at me.

I remember that.

He always told stories
of his childhood,

all the shenanigans he got into -

crazy thing in boarding school
that got you kicked out.

He got kicked out of boarding school
quite a few times.

I know my mum was really worried
about me.

I think everybody was really worried
about me.

In desperation, his mother
moved to England,

looking for a more progressive
education for him.

She approached a new school -
Hurtwood House.

He'd had a very chequered experience
with all his previous schools.

CHUCKLES: His mother writes, saying,
"You may have noticed that Hans

"has a strong urge for freedom
and that he is very impetuous.

"That is a reason why he has
come to blows with his educators

"in the past who expected him
to conform."

There was that moment
after the first term,

where I'm sitting outside
the headmaster's office

and she's having the
mother/headmaster conversation.

And she comes out and she's crying,

and I'm thinking, "Oh, OK.
Here we go again. Next school."

And she walks towards me
and she's crying

and she goes, "I don't believe it.
He likes you!"

I like to think of Hans
as the genius

that the traditional
educational system failed to crush.

And if we played a small part
in that,

then I'm very proud to have done so.

After leaving school,

Hans immediately joined a band
called Krakatoa,

mainly playing working men's clubs.

# Don't apologise
It's not your style... #

We were the entertainment
nobody listened to.

We were so bad, up north,

we would be the support act
to the strippers.

# Treat your mama good... #

And it was interesting
because it was the '80s

and it was Margaret Thatcher
and it was...coal miners' strike.

Whoa, it was rough up north.

People were so frustrated.

You know, you left London
and you entered another world,

you entered another country.

And this country was a country
that was desperate and it was poor

and it was everything that you could
only imagine of the left behind

and left for forgotten.

And to this day...

..I have this person I write
my music for.

And she's fictitious.

She's called Doris
and she lives in Bradford.

She has a grey coat and, you know...

..is of uncertain age.

She's got two terrible boys.
I mean, they're so ill-behaved.

And her hair dye job
isn't very good, you know?

And she works really hard
throughout the week.

And come the weekend,
she has a choice.

She has a choice of going to
the pub, having a drink,

or she has a choice of coming
and seeing one of our movies.

And she's a hero to me
because she works hard.

And so when she comes and sees
one of my - our - movies,

I want to make sure that
she gets her money's worth and...

I promise you. I mean, every movie,
I sit there and I go,

"What would Doris think?"

It's so easy to think about the past
in a nostalgic way.

Yeah, I loved it. I loved it.

My friend Warren Cann,
drummer from Ultravox,

we decided to do an album together,

which, absolutely,
we couldn't give away.

To this day,
we couldn't give it away.

Oh, and then we had this crazy idea.

We did a concert at
the London Planetarium -

you know, basically, people
looking up at the stars

and us playing weird, cosmic music
to them

and scaring the children
in the process of it.

The 1980s saw a revolution in music,
video and film production.

Computers and synthesisers
were changing

how music was made and recorded.

Hans saw the potential
in all this new technology

and made himself the master of it.

I was seriously into synthesisers

and I was a lot skinnier then
as well.

But I still have this, of course,
and I still make music with it.

And, you know, that sound that
basically pins you into your seat

when you watch Dark Knight?

MUSIC FROM: The Dark Knight
by Hans Zimmer

That's that beast.

It was a time where you suddenly
could have access to computers,

so the whole idea about doing things
on stage was far less exciting

than the idea of "How far
could I push this technology?"

Using his know-how of
studio technology,

Hans started writing jingles
and TV theme tunes,

the first steps on his road
to film composing.

# Going for gold! #

# Video killed the radio star... #

He even found time to make
a fleeting guest appearance

in the promo for hit song
Video Killed The Radio Star

by Buggles.

# Oh
Oh, oh... #

EXPLOSION

It was in this unassuming yard
in West London

that Hans really began to hone
his writing skills.

Together with his friend and mentor,
composer Stanley Myers,

he set up his first
recording studio.

I mean, you can tell from
the glamorous nature of this door

that this is the door
that leads directly

to Hollywood, fame and Oscars.

This used to be my studio.

Actually, it wasn't my studio.
It was Stanley Myers' and my studio.

Absolutely extraordinary composer.

I mean, everybody owes a lot
of things to everybody in life.

My film language, for instance,
I very much learned from Stanley.

It's really simple -

if you don't have a tune,
you've got nothing to hang on to.

So, this sort of
somewhat decrepit building

actually turned out to be
a haven for us.

I don't think many people
had the sort of idea

that you could go and do film scores

with a little keyboard and
not an orchestra, but you could.

I want to be manager of this place.
I think I can do it.

Please let me.

Of course, My Beautiful Laundrette,
I think, was pretty much

the first thing we did here.

Stanley Myers was doing the music
for My Beautiful Laundrette,

and Hans was always
in the other room.

So for some reason,
that was where you ended up.

Stanley was always in the front room
reading the racy news,

and there was clearly
a rather clever chap in the back

doing all the work.

A skinny, lanky guy who was German
with a little computer thing,

and everyone thought,
"What the hell's that?", basically.

And...
INDISTINCT

Because... I guess it was
electronic, so Hans was doing it

because he knew how to work
all those machines

and he knew how to make
the eccentric sounds.

Between them, they thought up
what the film should sound like.

And it was pretty obvious
when it was a Stanley piece -

because it was elegant
and beautiful -

and when it was a Hans piece,
which was a bit like lead boots.

And it was all rewrites for me.

And Stanley would very gently
steer me in the right direction.

He's an incredibly charming man.

And he was just absolutely brilliant

cos he had this new form of,
in a funny way, '80s music,

but he also had the wit
and the ability to charm

and to be the whole package,
as it were.

Without that character, you know,
he'd still be a great composer,

but he wouldn't have been
the successful composer that he is.

No way.

It was just a weird thing,
because, here in England,

you were always an equal.

I mean, you were totally involved
in the storytelling,

and that was the thing
that I thought was really exciting,

these conversations you are having
with film directors,

which were far more up my streets
than just playing in a band.

I know that he's the most successful
composer in the world, but to me,

he's the boy in the back room.
HE LAUGHS

It makes me laugh.

By the late 1980s, Hans was gaining
a reputation as a film composer

of British films and TV.

He is developing fast.

Yes.

A knock on the door at Lillie Yard
late one night

was going to change
his life forever.

You know, 11:00 at night -

musicians' hours,
of course we were working.

So I open the door
and there's a guy standing there

and he's going, "Hi.
My name's Barry Levinson." Pause.

"I'm a Hollywood director."

From the first time I met him,

I thought that he was
extremely talented,

and that's before he had worked on
any of the music. I just got...

Sometimes you get a feeling
with people that you connect.

And he came in, and...

I mean, basically,
the bottom line of the story is,

he went, "Do you want to do this
film Rain Man that I'm working on?"

And I said, "Yes."

MUSIC FROM: Rain Man by Hans Zimmer

Hans's ideas for Rain Man
were unusual

for a traditional American
road movie.

There's a tendency to use
sort of guitar music,

that type of travelling
across country,

and I didn't think it was
appropriate for the piece.

And he came up with that sound

which was very unique
and very distinctive...

..and very different than
a normal travelling movie.

You know, I'm sure the studio
wasn't thrilled because it's like,

"All right, I got somebody, Hans
Zimmer," and they're going, "Who?!"

"For this film, you know, we got
Tom Cruise and Dustin Hoffman.

"And who is this composer?"

Hans had to relocate to Los Angeles
to work on the film.

In terms of the way composers worked
in Hollywood,

Hans found it all
a bit old-fashioned.

I expected Hollywood to be
technologically so advanced.

And I got there and it was like
we were in the stone ages.

You know, I brought all this
kit and caboodle and electronics

and stuff with me, and I said,
"Where do I plug in?"

And they said, "What do you mean,
plug in?"

You know, "We still write on paper."

"Oh, OK. That's interesting."

And, I mean, I did Rain Man
in Barry Levinson's office...

LAUGHS: ..because I didn't
know anybody.

He was literally in the next room
working on stuff, and I'd wander in,

and I hear some music and sometimes
it begins to feed one another.

So, sometimes, he came up with
a piece of music for some section,

and I said, "Gee, I wonder
if I could play it over here."

It was sort of non-traditional,
in a way, to do it,

but it seemed exciting that way.

For his first Hollywood movie,
Hans received an Oscar nomination.

I went for that lunch
that they have, the Oscar lunch,

and I picked up, I don't know,
five, six, seven.

I mean, I didn't stand up and say,
"Anybody got a movie?"

I just sat there and people
would come up to me and say,

"Hey, do you wanna do my movie?"

MUSIC FROM: Driving Miss Daisy
by Hans Zimmer

The following year, he composed
the music for yet another

Oscar-winning film...

..Driving Miss Daisy.

And then in 1994...

MUSIC: Circle of Life

The first notes that you hear,
you're in and it's magic.

And the vocal
that you hear with it...

..poetry. Musical poetry.

The studio had given Hans
a strict brief about the opening.

It was supposed to be 20 seconds
of Elton's song

and then there was going to be
a dialogue scene

and...da-da-da-da, right?

And I forgot about the 20 seconds.

I just got excited about
doing the chant with Lebo.

Then I did an arrangement
of Elton's tune.

And so I played it to them,

and as I'm playing it to them,
I'm going, "Oh, God, I forgot!

"It's supposed to be
20 seconds long,

"and then it's supposed to become
a dialogue piece."

And they sort of shuffled off
into a corner,

and they're talking.

And I know what they're
talking about.

They're talking about, "Who are
they going to get to replace me?"

So I'm going over there,
and I'm saying,

"Look, guys, I'm really sorry. I can
do this thing in 20 seconds."

They're going. "No, no, no! That's
not what we're talking about at all.

"We're thinking we're going to go
and reanimate the whole opening.

"We're going to take all
that dialogue out and da-da-da-da."

It was an experiment, and what's
in the movie is my original demo.

The African sounds,

the unique instruments...

..it's beyond profound.

# The circle of life... #

And the Oscar goes to Hans Zimmer
for The Lion King!

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

So full of life and wonder
and beauty.

I wrote a speech, but I realised,
"It's so boring,"

so I'm not going to do it.

I'd like to thank my wife
because she's my best friend.

I'd like to thank my daughter
because she now thinks I'm cool

cos I did The Lion King!
LAUGHTER

I'm incredibly nervous.

I tell you what - writing a score
is much easier than this.

Thank you. Just let me go, OK?

APPLAUSE

I've listened to how many songs
of how many scores, and on...

EMPHATIC DRUMBEAT

Exclamation point that is...

..amazing and a signature of his.

The directors and the producers were
coming in and I hadn't finished it,

so that's why that big drum -
the "Boing!" - is there,

to distract them from the fact
that I hadn't finished the track.

Hans used his mastery of digital
technology, especially sampling,

to change the way movie directors
collaborated with their composers.

The standard way of working with
a director before Hans

is that there was no way
to present the music

other than to play it on the piano -

"Here's your theme, and here's
where the brass comes in down here,

"and the strings are playing this."

You know, I wasn't as good
of a piano player,

but one of the things I figured out
really, really quickly,

that the best way to communicate
with a film-maker was to play them

like a fake version of the score,
a synthesised version of the score.

So basically what you have is you
have all the different instruments -

horns, trumpets.

HE PLAYS TRUMPET PART ON SYNTH

Just seeing how Hans was able
to manipulate sounds to picture...

Violins...

..whether it would be a bagpipe
or a flute or a guitar,

he kept playing this
from the keyboard.

It just fired my imagination.

And I think a lot of us
have just followed that lead.

But I do recall him
saying to me, you know,

"The way you're going to...get
a career here, Harry,

"is your demos are going to sound
better than anybody else's."

What else have we got?
Lots of percussion.

PERCUSSIVE SOUNDS PLAY

In those days, nobody did it
like this other than Hans, you know?

Nobody demoed things.

Nobody, you know, mocked everything
up so you could hear it beforehand.

Hans was quite unique that way,
and I liked that method.

I loved technology.
I loved his way of doing it.

And that's why things changed
in film music,

you know, when he came on the scene.

Part of it was the technique he was
using, to do it with these demos.

Hans didn't just change the way
composers use technology,

he developed a sound that influenced
a whole generation

of movie composers and directors.

I'm fascinated by the idea of time.

The ticking happens a lot
in my stuff.

Rather than going for
a groovy rhythm,

it's ticking without accents.

It doesn't give the game away, where
the next part or the next cut is.

It just is like a river flowing. And
it sort of takes you on a journey.

In his score for the film
The Thin Red Line,

he developed a technique of building
an incredible tension

over very long scenes.

What it got was this incredible
sort of feeling of fate and dread.

It really was unique at the time.

There's not really anything
that quite does that.

He's very influential.

It's part of the language
of film-making now.

I completely ripped him off on that.

I've ripped him off on other times,
and then other times...

I mean, there's probably
a few little moments

where he's ripped me off back.

It was everything that music school
tells you you can't do.

So there was the...

You're not supposed to do
parallel things.

And they're all minors.
And it's asymmetrical.

You know, music school
will teach you

you're not supposed to do things
in these sort of parallels.

They're not chords.
A chord needs three notes.

This is two notes, always.

And it just sort of meanders
in this...

..while this note always stays...

HE PLAYS KEYBOARD

So, you get these
really interesting clashes.

And it became a sort of...
A new language in film.

MUSIC FROM: The Thin Red Line
by Hans Zimmer

By the 2000s, Hans had
established himself

as one of the top composers
in Hollywood.

He was always looking for a new way
of doing things.

Along with his business partner
Steve Kofsky,

he built a studio complex
in Santa Monica,

expanding it over several decades,

where teams of composers and
sound technicians work on movies,

TV shows and documentaries.

In these control rooms,
this is where we've mixed

some of the biggest movies
you've heard.

I mean, all the major motion
pictures that Hans has worked on

have been mixed here.

Hello, boys. Hi.

What are you guys working on
at the moment?

Erm... His Dark Materials,
Wheel Of Time.

We did all the Pirates of
the Caribbean franchise.

Yeah, we've done Spider-Man.

We've done all the major tent pole
movies, as well as, obviously,

some independent pictures
like 12 Years A Slave

and things like that.

Hello, Steven.

People here get the opportunity
to rub shoulders

with the right kind of directors.

I mean, you know, guys actually sit
in meetings.

You know, Hans brings...

Whoever's working on the project
with Hans, for example,

will be in a meeting.

This was your big idea,
so I just want to make sure

I don't destroy it.

The beauty of the old show was
it was full...

He wasn't afraid to bring in
his team into a meeting.

Don't break it.

There's always been ghost-writers
in films,

but Hans opened up the door
to all of his assistants...

INDISTINCT CONVERSATION

..who were able to experience
the meeting

and take that for their own careers
moving forward.

I should know these terms by now,
but I'll never learn!

Hans wanted his place to be a magnet
for young composing talent...

Let's start with a slow one first.
OK.

..a talent he was keen to promote.

We're going to explore
a few options,

but I just want you to do
your thing. OK.

I'm ready!

There's lots of things about
being a composer,

but being in groups is not
one of them.

I mean, they are
a very solitary lot.

We sit alone and just ponder
our navels an awful lot and work,

so being in a group of composers
was very interesting.

This is where those people said
they don't have enough to do

and they can... They can spend hours
eating and... Go and work!

The number of people that were
spawned by his career is amazing.

I wouldn't be sitting here if it
weren't for Hans. It's obvious.

Are you wearing white socks yet?
No. Just checking!

I think from his own experience,

of him having worked up
from being assistants

and making coffee
and things like that,

I think he knows how important it is
to sort of make sure

that everyone feels included.

That's Alan. He's from Brooklyn.
I don't hold that against him.

Go, Giants!

You know, Hollywood is a hard place
and nobody gives you a chance.

And I was given a chance by
Barry Levinson all these years ago.

You know, he could have had
any composer he wanted for Rain Man

and, you know, he gave
the job to me.

And somehow I'm trying to
keep that idea going

and have other people come in here

and see if we can't give them
a chance.

At the centre of the complex
lies Hans's studio,

an extension of his own personality.

I... As a European working
in America,

I miss a Europe that doesn't
actually exist any more.

And I myself had these doubts
about staying here, you know?

And I wanted to go...
I wanted to go back to Europe.

And I thought, "Hang on.
This is Hollywood.

"You know, you can be and build
whatever you want to do."

So...I was very precise about
my thinking about this room...

..even though it just sort of
looks like some crazed German

tossed it together...

..because I knew I was going to
spend 90%, probably, of my life

in this room.

I thought I might as well have
some fun with it and do something

which lets people speak their mind,
you know? A room that is safe.

Hans works in a space
that removes you from the world.

You've never been in a space
like it.

It's always been fun to hang out
there, sometimes watch him suffer,

have a glass of wine
while he suffers.

The environment inside his studio
is so alive

with exploration and discovery
that it's a blast.

You know, the sort of samurai thing,
and it's really kind of, you know...

This room is like a Buddhist
sort of... Old Buddhist temple.

And...what else? The keyboard
and whatnot, you know?

And you just sit on a nice couch
and you just feel it,

you talk about it, you feel it,
you talk about it, you feel it,

you talk about it. And he's
on the keys. He's on the keys,
he's feeling it.

You know, he's almost, like,
having the conversation with
the keys as you talk about it.

And then you find, "Hey, hey, hey,
what's that? What's that?
What's that note? Do that again.

"Is this written down?
OK, it's being recorded.

"OK, it's being recorded. OK."

He doesn't want to read a script.
So he... It's...

You know, it's like
being psychoanalysed.

He wants to... You know, he wants me
to tell him the story.

Because we had talked about that...

Not only tell him the story but,
like, "Why must I tell the story?"

It's about getting the big picture.

It's about figuring out
what moves somebody,

what doesn't move somebody.
It's about playfulness.

Right...

That's why I don't take notes.

Why take notes?
You know, we'll just record it.

We'll just listen to it afterwards.

OK, this part of our meeting...

There's nothing that stops
playfulness more than

seeing somebody taking notes.

You know, suddenly it's the job.

And he asks all kinds of questions,
you know?

And I think he's searching
for an angle.

And then at some point
he'll be like, "That's it."

"Womp, womp, womp..." Instead of...
HE HUMS RHYTHM

In the case of Pirates, it was...
He was technically unavailable,

but I really think he just thought
it was a failed endeavour

from the outset. Just the genre,
just a pirate movie, was like,

"What are you doing?" Like, "Pass!"
You know, but in a nice way.

Like, "I'm doing
Mission: Impossible.

"I can't do your pirate movie."
And so...

So when we were done editing,
I brought it to him

and played it to him.

And I think he sort of shifted
and he started playing at

that little...
HE HUMS TUNE

They had fired
the original composer...

That's very interesting.

..and we had three weeks
to finish the score.

So, Hans went home
and started writing.

And he wrote all the themes
overnight.

And then we talked, you know,
at length about,

like, the drunken waltz.

Like, "Why is Jack like that
with his sea legs?"

What is that? Sort of...

It's not just a waltz,
it's a kind of slurred waltz.

Keep a sharp eye.

HANS PLAYS KEYBOARD

So, the character of
Jack Sparrow is...

HE PLAYS MOTIF

The notes go up positive.

Sort of, you know, the innocence.

There's like an innocence,
hope, and...

You know, it's like, "Oh, I can go
and do anything, right?"

Now...
HE PLAYS NEXT PASSAGE

..this bit...

..is a bit naughty, right?

That's the wrong chord.

So, you go from naughty to,
you know, he's doing something.

It's still... It's still benign,
but it's definitely the wrong chord.

HE PLAYS NEXT PASSAGE

Here we are. We're back on
the safety of the optimism,

but...the devil's fifth...

..to a minor chord.

So, that's part of his character.
He is definitely naughty.

And then he does
something unexpected.

He changes key right in the middle
of the phrase,

but only for one second.

HE PLAYS CHORD

And it resolves in a sort
of classical way,

which is really a lie...

..because he goes to something
even naughtier, etc, etc.

So each phrase is part of his...
I'm describing his character.

MUSIC FROM: Pirates Of The Caribbean
by Klaus Badelt and Hans Zimmer

HE HUMS MELODY

It kind of rolls like
you're on the deck of a boat.

Boat and rum make for
unsteady rhythms.

Arriving on a sinking dinghy,

that's the fanfare
that he travels with -

"I bring with me my own soundtrack."

He's still the greatest pirate
of the seven seas.

That allows the music
to be quite big...

..because it's consistent with
that character.

It's what he's hearing.

APPLAUSE

And it was just fun to do.

It's not clever.
It's just fun.

Yes!

I think Hans has an approach
which I wouldn't call unifying,

but I do recognise it
over and over again.

It's this great ability
to build a theme.

In The Da Vinci Code,

Hans refined the technique
he pioneered in The Thin Red Line

of using a small number of notes
to create complex, driving themes.

I mean, this is so simple.

The simpler these things are,
the more I fear

I'm going to get found out.

I mean, look, I can't think of
any artist who doesn't think,

"They're going to catch me at it.
They're going to find out."

You get some very simple notes
that inspire other simple notes

that go with it, and you can go
and play with these rounds.

It's not easy, but it's
incredibly powerful and stirring.

That's one of his patterns
that you will see -

and with different kinds of themes,
different sorts of tunes.

Some of them are just
one or two notes.

Some are very melodic,
like this one.

But getting that music
through repetition...

..to sort of evolve
into something...

..go from one place to another,

well, that's what every movie
wants to be is a journey.

And, you know, his cues
often convey that.

It's a journey. It takes you
on a journey,

and you add experiences
every time round.

I mean, you've heard it,

so now you need to add another layer
of experience,

a layer of time,
layer of something to it.

MUSIC FROM: The Da Vinci Code
by Hans Zimmer

This technique of creating
longer themes that build and build

found their ultimate expression
in the films

of one of Hans's key collaborators.

I've never liked music that feels
layered onto the movie,

like sauce going onto
a piece of meat.

You know, to me, good film music
really should be baked into the DNA

of what the actual film is and woven
into the fabric of the film itself.

And Hans was very on board
with that process.

There's certain things which...

I know they're good ideas, but
I'm not good enough to do them yet,

so I use the next movie
to actually go

and get a little bit better at them.

Hans's work with Nolan
would result in

some of his most memorable scores,

involving war movies,
dream-stealers...

..and superheroes.

It's not who I am underneath...

..but what I do...

..that defines me.

What he was doing on Batman Begins
is he was distilling the essence of

this great icon, not into
a complex melody,

into an idea of almost the sound
effects approach of these bat flaps,

these kind of big whooshes of noise.

Literally two notes,

but the recording process that went
into that - the layering process,

the hundreds and hundreds
of tracks of sound

that is supporting that, musically
and harmonically and all the rest,

and the different combinations that
allowed from us - is extraordinary.

At times, the music
is very, very minimal,

but the production methodology
is always extremely expansive

and full of design ideas
and imagination.

HE PLAYS EXCERPT

I mean, that's nothing, right?
And then the theme is...

HE PLAYS THEME

It's two notes, right?

That's it.

And only at the end does it break.

And it goes...
Still the same two notes.

And it becomes triumphant
for one moment...

but before it recedes back
into darkness.

You know, just for one moment,
you can see...

You know, quite...
INDISTINCT

He's fascinated
just by sound itself,

beyond the emotional qualities
of music.

He has the best samples,
for example, of anyone in the world,

but he continually strives
to improve them.

When it came to The Joker Suite,
I remember talking to him.

He was like, "I'm convinced that the
Joker should be a piece of music",

and started from one note.
I was like, "Oh, God, here we go!"

You know, but if anyone could do it,
it would be...

That's more the thought of
an inventor. Do you see what I mean?

Come on, come on!
I want you to do it.

I want you to do it.
Come on, hit me. Come on, hit me!

There's something anarchic
about the Joker.

Hit me!

By the time I'd bumped into me
again, he was like,

"I think I have to concede -
it has to be two notes."

So, he spent ages on this,

and it became the iconic,
sort of distorted violin thing

that's just the two notes going...
HE HUMS

I thought that Joker was the most
interesting character in that movie.

He was always in control
of the situation

and was the only one
who always spoke the truth.

And then this idea of these endless
rises that start in one pitch

and just climb and climb and climb
and climb and climb.

ELECTRICAL JOLT, JOKER LAUGHS

JOKER LAUGHS, FLUTTERS LIPS

Come on!

This idea of just
a one-note metamorphosising

in this absolute incredible...
And very quietly as well.

I wanted you to lean in
a little bit to pick it out.

I wanted you to lean into
the darkness.

Could you please just
give me a minute?!

That, to me, is something
no-one had really ever done.

You had people who wrote
extremely note-y symphonic music

and you had, like, rock guys
who just about crossed over enough

to be able to scramble together
a film score,

but to have someone sort of
right in the middle

who could sort of steal
the underlying structural techniques

of modern popular music
and then understand enough of

all the vocabulary of all sorts
of different kinds of,

and often symphonic, music
and sort of put that together.

People don't even need to think
about this

when they're watching a movie,

but it's one of the reasons
that he's able to deliver

so much of the feeling you need
and the storytelling

without being invasive and fussy
and pompous.

The more I worked with Hans,

the more I realised the value
of his creative contributions

to the conceptual underpinnings
of what the films could be.

With prompting from Nolan,

Hans developed radical new ways
of scoring a movie.

With Interstellar, I actually
got him to do his first demo

on the basis of a short letter
that I wrote him,

explaining the feelings,
the sort of fable

at the heart of what the film
was going to be

without even telling him the genre.

And I did that while I was writing
the script.

I gave him one day to give me
his first impression

of the emotions I was talking about.

And what he did for me
in that one day

became the basis of
the entire score.

Chris made me write this whole score
away from picture.

It was a good experiment.

I was writing freely.

You know, I wasn't a slave
to the edit, as it were.

He stopped writing pieces of music
that are integral to the structure

of the film, and he started
just writing music

and not watching the picture.

So, he would create
a 35-minute piece

that he would try against picture

and it would inform, then,
the process.

By writing these big, long
pieces of music,

it gives you more of a sense of
what the picture is

and how the music can help it.

A couple months ago, I was
rewatching the movie with my friends

and we're all sobbing.

And I realised that the way that my
friends were experiencing the movie

was completely different
from how I was,

because I was able to hear
how my father loves,

you know, because that movie
is about a father and a daughter.

And to be able to hear how my father
loves and how he sees his children,

I think, is probably the greatest
privilege of my life.

He worked really, really hard.

You'd catch him in the mornings,
catch him at night.

But throughout the day,
every single day, he was working.

Yeah, I'm glad that he takes
more breaks now,

not just for us to be able
to spend time with him

but also for himself.

Because he hasn't been around
in my life -

and the life of his children -
all too much,

he's tried to really make up for it.

I think every parent
comes with flaws,

but he's really tried to show us
how he can love.

He doesn't always say it,
but he shows us with his gestures.

He tells you with his eyes,
"I understand.

"I'm here.

"I'm sorry I wasn't earlier,
but I'm here now."

Having conquered the world
of superheroes

and science fiction epics, Hans was
on the lookout for new collaborators

and new projects.

He sought one out.

It was a world away from
Hollywood blockbusters.

I made a film called Shame.

And there was a piece of music,
there was a little temp music

we were using, called Hans Zimmer.
It was close to him,

but not exactly. So we were
just playing with it.

I thought it was great.
I thought it was OK.

It's not that piece of music,
obviously not.

But, yeah, it is obviously
hugely inspired by it.

So I was in New Orleans,
in a hotel room,

and I get this call early in
the morning - and it's Hans Zimmer.

And I said, "Oh, shit, this guy's
going to sue me or something.

"What's going on?" I thought...
He goes, "No, no, no, no, no, no!

"But why didn't you ask me
to work with you?"

I thought, "Well, I never thought
I could, you know,"

He was like, you know,
"You should ask me.

"I'm interested in working with
film-makers, great film-makers
like yourself."

I said, "OK, well, I'm working
this film called 12 Years A Slave."

"Are you interested in working
on it?" He goes, "Yeah, of course!"
"OK, but you're pretty expensive."

"Don't worry about that. Listen,
I would love to work with you."

And that was it. That was the start
of our relationship.

Hans is lavish with
what he brings you.

You know, 12 Years A Slave
is the really good example,

that we were there with
empty pockets

and he was getting people on
planes - and first class musicians -

to come over from Germany
and start working with us

and developing...

You know, we wanted a kind of
slightly home-made feel

about some of the score
in 12 Years A Slave,

particularly in that area where
he's trying to write using juice.

I loved working on it so much.
I thought it was important.

Nobody believed in it.

We had no budget.

It's very few of us,

but I remember Steve being
in the room, and it's like...

The intimacy was vital.

It was a very low-budget film,
and it was really Hans's generosity

at bringing the right
ingredient over

and getting him to work with us.

I'm a short order cook.

You know, I go out, I find...
I go shopping.

Oh, good ingredients -
you know, fresh tomatoes, special...

"Oh, look at those carrots!
They look really good," you know?

And then I spend forever
peeling and chopping, etc.

And because the ingredients
are fresh

and the ingredients are delicious,
I'm hoping it's going to be OK.

He's like a kid that doesn't want
to do his homework,

and it's like, "Come on,
what the fuck?"

But at the same time, he's working.

He's... It's working, he's working.

Shit takes time. You know,
anything takes time. You know?

This desire never to be pigeonholed

even led him to score
natural history films.

Hans brought all his feature film
experience to these projects.

But he discovered there were
crucial differences.

If you take something like
a Chris Nolan's Batman,

there's an enormous amount
of sound design music.

It's like literally creating
worlds from scratch...

..which, of course, you don't want
to do in a natural history.

What you want to do is you want
to leave room for the natural sound.

So, yes, there is a difference.
You try to work around it.

There's a danger of
making animals cute...

..Disney-fying them.

And since I know the other side
of the coin,

you know, I know what not to do.

On the other hand, the iguana
and the snake scene.

I keep referring to that scene

because I know every director
is just immensely envious of it.

The best car chase
nobody ever filmed.

And that, of course, was scored like
an action scene.

He's always changed.
He changes and changes.

Yeah, he uses a sound for a while
as he kind of perfects it,

and then there's this era
of that sound on films,

and then he'll change again.
He gets bored with his own sound.

Hans's most recent work not only
earned him his second Oscar,

but it might be the most radical
reinvention of his sound ever.

His brief was to create what
the director, Denis Villeneuve,

described as an alien score.

MUSIC FROM: Dune
by Hans Zimmer

The idea for doing that,

it should be a score that will use
unknown instruments...

..that the sound would be something
that would come from another time,

from another place.

It was also very important that
the score would have some kind of

spiritual quality.

It's one of the main theme of Dune -
like, that exploration of religion

and the danger of mixing
religion and politics together.

The male characters are not really
the male characters

that drives the story forward.

It's the female characters
that drive the story forward...

..so it was really important for me
to find a great female voice...

..and then frame her...

..with all these instruments which
we built, which we synthesised,

which we drove people crazy
that write software - you know,

"Can you build me a resonator
that will turn Tina Guo's cello

"into a Tibetan war horn?"

"What does a Tibetan war horn
sound like?"

"I have no idea."

Quite late in the day, he recorded
some sort of scratchy noise

that was redolent of sand
and dry wind.

I don't know what it was.
I think it was a sound effect.

And he remixed everything
to include it!

I think it drove everybody nuts
on that show.

As much as he has designed
all those alien instruments,

he decided that the instrument
that will have survived 10,000 years

in the future will be the bagpipes.

He started to compose with
the bagpipes,

which was, like, very fresh,
surprising and interesting.

And the Oscar goes to
Hans Zimmer, Dune.

CHEERING

I don't think anybody's ever won
an Oscar for a score that blatantly

is bagpipes, heavy metal guitars
and a woman screaming at you.

SCREAMING

"What's going on here?

"Where are the strings?
Where are the nice things?"

It was just a provocative thing.

APPLAUSE

Hans began his musical career
in a band

touring working men's clubs.

His life has turned full circle
as he takes his scores on the road.

But these days,
the venues have changed.

His enthusiasm has increased.

I think it's going out on tour
that's responsible for that.

He loves the people he works with.
He loves touring.

It feeds him. It nurtures him.

When he's on a stage, there's nobody
who quite has that relationship

with the audience.

They come in to see a maestro
and they end up seeing somebody

who feels like a friend
by the end of the show.

I used to be so afraid of being
on stage, but nowadays,

it was just like dinner party with
12,000 people, just having a chat.

He's basically had a midlife crisis
and become a rock star.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

I'm still learning something.

I just want to use all those things
I've learned.

And I want to go and play with
all these synthesisers,

and I want to go and tell
all these stories,

and I want to go and work with
all these directors.

He is not the norm,
and that's, like, why he has
the career that he does.

Like, he doesn't want to do things
the way other people have done it,

and he thrives on it.
You know, he loves it.

Things moved really fast.

Life isn't as long
as you think it is.

You have a choice. You can go
and try to live a playful life,

or you can go and live a life
which excludes playfulness.

And it doesn't get you anywhere.

Playfulness gets you somewhere.

It's fun, it's inspiring,

just making a racket and hopefully
have a bit of a laugh.

It's wonderful.