Are tight schedules killing good film music?
Written by Jonathan Shearon
January 10, 2006
You would think someone like John Williams, with a mantle full of awards and perhaps the most prestigious career in the film music business, wouldn’t have to worry about a tight post-production schedule threatening to derail his work. But that’s just what happened recently on Munich, the score he just completed for Steven Spielberg’s film about the 1972 murder of 11 Israeli athletes during the Olympics. Spielberg wanted the film out for Oscar season, which left Williams, his longtime collaborator, with just weeks to write and record the music.
The recent Howard Shore / James Newton Howard switcheroo on King Kong inadvertently produced a similar situation. As everyone now knows, Shore’s music was dumped with just weeks to go before the film’s release, leaving the other Howard with a massive scoring job to complete virtually overnight. Howard managed to produce a professional if somewhat pedestrian composition, but the film’s online video diaries revealed an exhausted composer just struggling to complete the assignment. I can’t help but wonder if Shore’s score, even with some flaws, might not have been an improvement given the advantage of months of preparation.
This certainly isn’t anything new. In my recent interview with Graeme Revell, he lamented the generic looping he was forced to do on the first Tomb Raider film, for which he was given just eight days to write a large orchestral score. James Horner was famously asked to write the massive score for Aliens in just a couple of weeks only to have it massacred by director James Cameron in the editing room. There are dozens of stories like that in film music lore.
I’m sure studio heads and producers would say that’s just life in Hollywood. But while it may be true that tight schedules and last minute replacements have become the status quo in the business of movie music, that doesn’t make it good practice, and I think it is evidence of the general lack of respect filmmakers and studios have for the power and importance of a film’s music.
Imagine Peter Jackson asking Weta Digital, the effects house that created much of what was on screen in King Kong, to produce those effects in two weeks. He’d be laughed out of the room. What if he decided that Jack Black just wasn’t working out as a dramatic actor halfway through production? Although it has happened in rare occasions, studios almost never allow major casting changes after production starts, even if said actor is obviously negative influence on the artistic value of the film.
George Lucas has said again and again in interviews that John Williams’ music is greatly responsible for the dramatic success of his Star Wars films. There are also numerous examples of Hitchcock simply altering the score a little to get the desired reaction from his audience. The score, as much as the dialog, lighting, costumes and even actors, can hugely impact whether a film is a triumph or a disaster.
So why is the score almost an afterthought to all except the composer? That’s a question Hollywood should be asking itself right now. With the whole town buzzing about a lousy box office year, it’s time to reevaluate the process of production. There is no way that even the most talented composer can complete two hours of music in two weeks without a few shortcuts, so what you get is a few recycled themes and a lot of generic padding. What’s the point of spending $200 million+ on the visual component of a film, only to give someone the impossible task of creating a score in a matter of weeks?
So, what’s the solution? Well, bringing in a composer during pre-production instead of post-production might be a start. Heck, one could even get the composer to do some mock-ups to use as temp-tracks during filming and editing. The composer would suddenly have a newfound artistic freedom, since they can be a part of the creative process from the beginning, and the director and producers can have ample time to change the direction of the score if they are unhappy with the first draft. Such a process might also end the recent rash of “borrowing” that happens in Hollywood film scores as a result of temp-tracking.
Whatever the answer, Tinsletown had better find it fast. The movies are quickly losing their audience, and the general apathy of producers, directors and studios about such huge component of filmmaking must be at least partly responsible for that attrition. Perhaps someone should put a billboard next to the Hollywood sign that reads “Good and fast is not the same thing.”
...Perhaps someone should put a billboard next to the Hollywood sign that reads “Good and fast is not the same thing.”...