GABRIEL YARED

Couldn't agree more. I guess in the world of film music, we can safely talk about one of the biggest ever FAILS on behalf of any studio and any producer / executive, ever with this one.

Today, the 16th of october, was Yareds music seminar class here in Ghent, an initiative from the film festival and my college, curated by my filmmusic teacher. He played bits and pieces and talked about his relationship with Mr Minghella, his filmmusic, his life in the film industry, the problems on Troy, the current state of filmmusic, the good effect of Santaollala, and how he works as a omposer.

His main idea was that a good film composer is not just a film music writer but a composer. He should write music that works with the film but that should be able to stand on its own as an independent composition. In order to write so, the composer should be involved in the working proces very early on, preferably in the scripting stage, before shooting.

“The three months (or much less) that most composers get in post production is bullshit.” Yared liked to talk about the relationship between a composer and a director as a marriage. In the early stage you’re engaged, you talk about the film, you try to take all their ideas and work with that. You start writing, you let them hear your music, and you go back writing, back and forth. “I could play it to them on a piano,” he said, but often directors don‘t trust that, or lack the musical knowledge to get where I‘m going, so I play it out in demo’s. (the Vienna software has very beautiful sounds)

Examples of good marriages that he gave were Rota-Fellini, Hitch and Herrmann (although that was a difficult and hard one), and Leone&Morricone (he didn‘t mentioned Williams). In the best situation you can have your own demo’s be used as temp tracks. Editors (like his friend “the butcher” Walter Murch) can cut those demo’s while they are re-editing all the time, but your central ideas, the “cells”, and the composer his musical voice stay the same.

But, he continued, the essence of film music is not sitting behind your desk, after your computer screen, with your keayboard and scoring the right spots and moments, scene after scene. It is about finding the spirit of the film. After the golden age with Steiner there was a decline. Now there aren’t many real composers who can touch you in the brain and the soul. It is about effects, for them. Th effect of hitting you in the somach, Yared said. A theme and some cheap harmonies.

[more to come]

Thanks indeed! We should make this an article.

thanks for this.
I was going to ask if he mentioned anything else on troy.

Cool! Thanks