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There's very little artistry on the aural side with Nolan's films. He just hits you over the head with everything, and he loves momentum and propulsive music.
Indeed. I need to go back to things like THE PRESTIGE or MEMENTO to see if there's a bit more creative use of sound in those films.
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Posted: |
Jul 25, 2012 - 8:17 PM
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By: |
vwing
(Member)
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There's very little artistry on the aural side with Nolan's films. He just hits you over the head with everything, and he loves momentum and propulsive music.
Indeed. I need to go back to things like THE PRESTIGE or MEMENTO to see if there's a bit more creative use of sound in those films.
I absolutely adore Memento, but I can't really recall Julyan's score or what the mix was like (it's been a while since I've seen it).
That said, I do remember the score to The Prestige, and remember thinking that Nolan just asked Julyan to mimic Zimmer. There's even a motif that's pretty dang similar to Zimmer's 2-note Batman motif (same long crescendo and everything). The music I thought added very little to the film, and was a bit of a missed opportunity. I think Nolan, music-wise, either gets lucky with a good score that ebbs and flows so he and his sound editor/mixer don't have to manually make it ebb and flow (Inception), or he doesn't. When he doesn't, he kind of just throws everything to the wall hoping it sticks.
As I said, it's not at all a surprise that the most striking musical moment of the film, the National Anthem montage, was an idea of Zimmer's, not Nolan. I think Nolan is a very good filmmaker who has improved vastly visually, but he just has a tin ear. Hopefully that develops through the years as well, especially if he can develop a recurring relationship with Zimmer.
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Posted: |
Jul 25, 2012 - 8:49 PM
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By: |
desplatfan1
(Member)
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A great note of Nolan talking about the Batman musical trilogy:
There is one musical contribution to The Dark Knight Rises that clearly demonstrates the importance of Hans Zimmer as a creative collaborator. It explains why, eight years ago, as a first time tentpole filmmaker, I so needed his help with reinventing Batman. A fresh musical approach was going to be a key component, but beyond that I needed the help of a master -someone who had faced such huge odds and emerged unscathed. For me Hans Zimmer was the sound of contemporany movies and I was delighted when he agreed to talk about the project. I was less delighted with his initial thoughts - why make the music heroic? Why not play the tragedy and nobility of the tale, like an Elgar concerto? Fear provied a couple reason right away, but then I started to learn the method to Hans's madness.. an unerring ability to hone in on the one thought that cracks a project open. The darkly romantic, lush score, with its strangely minimalist core that he and James Newton Howard labored over with such passion brought new ways of tapping emotion and pathos within the context of relentless action. The sound was fresh, distinctive and has been mercilessly plundered by every action movie (or at least their trailers) since 2005.
The score for Batman Begins dominated the direction of blockbuster movie music for everyone except Hans, who, when we came to revisit Gotham, insisted on moving in a completely different direction for the crazed, tortured sound of the Joker, and refused to let us put in our favorite cues from the first film, insisting on pushing further towards a destination that only he could hear. Hans has sometimes been accused (not within earshot) of taking the long way round, but what I've seen over the last eight years is that you have to take the long way round to find the new sound, the new approach. I have never worked with someone so dedicated to the idea that the real risk is in playing it safe. Hans taught me that you have to pull aggressively in the wrong direction to discover the possibilities - and that without discovering the possibilities you can never do anything exceptional. Togheter with his team of extraordinary collaborators, Lorne and Mel among others- Hans sets creative goals for a project higher than your ever thought possible or practical. He took the same approach with The Dark Knight Rises, crafting a magnificent and totally unexpected suite for our new villain as we were just starting to shoot. Hans pinpointed our prison world as the seed of an evil spreading across the world, and we were able to incorporate that notion into the shooting of the sequences, leaning more and more on the significance of the sound of evil rising. Here you see the essence of Hans's approach. He is not playing along his gratest thinking is not even done to pictore - Hans sees through the screen to the dark beating heart of the story and is faithful to that and only that.
But this is not the contribution to which I was referring.
The musical contribution in The Dark Knight Rises that most clearly demonstrates Hans's importance as a creative collaborator is not to be found on this record. He did not write a not of it. It is a hinge point of the entire film and it is the lonely fragile voice of a boy singing the National Anthem at the center of a massive, crowded football stadium. While we we're considering how to stage this sequence I called Hans to ask what big draw artists we might convince to do a star spangled cameo. He threw out a few ideas, trying to get into the spirit of the thing. Then called me back a few minutes later, gently suggesting I might be betraying the spirit of our endeavor. He told me to make the most instinctive and unconscious connection with the lonely boy at the genesis of our story. It was the sort of priceless contribution that gives you goosebumps and revals your dangerous dependence on a collaborator. I told him I'd think about it.
Christopher Nolan
June 1, 2012
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Posted: |
Jul 26, 2012 - 3:37 PM
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By: |
kingtolkien
(Member)
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I am not talking about the dramatic use of Zimmer's music. In my personal opinion, the dramatic use of music in a film is strongly influenced by the director. He makes the decisions. The composer just follows his instructions.
I didn't even say that his music is bad or smth, I enjoy quite a few scores of his. I just prefer symphonic music written in paper and not synthesizers and computers. I can hear the difference. I prefer Superman, The Phantom, The meteor man, X men, Batman, Batman Returns, Batman Forever, Judge Dredd, The shadow, Captain America as superhero scores because they are symphonic music of finer quality in my ears. It's a shame that Cliff eidelman hasn't written a big symphonic score all those years. It's just that films with that kind of scores (Dark Knight) have great success and it's what the producers demand today. Some may prefer those scores. I don't. And yes film music is in decline even though there are many talented people that are capable of writing magnificent scores (Doyle, Powell, Jones....). It's just that nobody asks them to write that kind of stuff.
I think that most film music fans if are asked what are their favourite Doyle scores, the most common replys would be scores like Henry V, Hamlet, Much ado about nothing, Dead again, Into the west, Indochine, Needful things, A little princess... Beautiful scores all of them and he is the same man, but he doesn't write like that anymore in most of his films. If Thor was filmed 15 years ago and had a Doyle score then the orchestration and complexity of the music would be a lot different of what he has eventually written 2 years ago.
It's not Doyle's fault. It's the producers. All they care about is money money money.
Even Spielberg chose Zimmer as the chief composer in DReamworks studio. The reason he chose him is that he understood too well, that Zimmer's type of music would dominate films. And of course Spielberg was right.
Anyway sorry for those posts (bad film music of today and stuff) but I made an order to Screen Archives the other day and noticed that they were all old film scores. I also checked my previous orders and old film scores dominated in all of them.
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Best music in the film was from Ravel.
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I'm a bit obsessed with this score right now. I think I've listened to it almost every day since I've got it! Not Zimmer's best nor is it the best Batman score but boy is it addicting! And how great is track 3?!
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Posted: |
Jul 28, 2012 - 8:27 PM
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By: |
mrchriswell
(Member)
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Just saw the picture. The last 30 minutes of the picture manages to make some compellingly shot and edited footage and cool plot developments into a sheer and agonizing endurance test thanks to Zimmer's loud, grating, relentless monotony of sound. I reserve the term music for something else. Zimmer has done work I've enjoyed, but his Batman scores are deadening soulless things, and this one was the most unpleasant yet. He had me during the Bond-like opening on the plane, but I didn't know I'd have to hear the same motif for almost three hours. I know Zimmer has his supporters and I'll get slammed and that's fine. I'm not even going to respond. Just had to go on record that what he does with (and to) Dark Knight Rises has nothing to do with the purpose and potential of film music as I've come to understand it as an admirer of the form for 40 years. Rather, it represents a wasted opportunity. Nolan's script nods to the better nature of Gotham, a place worth fighting for. A more nuanced and expressive score could make you believe it. But there is no hope or humanity in what Zimmer is asked to provide. Just grinding, industrial sound. I hate the score and I hate the sensibility that produced it.
I was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt on Man of Steel, but now I'm dreading it all the more. Zimmer, Nolan, and Snyder, I fear, are conspiring to rob the culture's most optimistic hero of his soul.
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