JERRY GOLDSMITH

justin boggan wrote
And if you don't like it, I'll but it off you for a good, opened, used CD price.

Steven wrote
It's a masterpiece. Of course being a true soundtrack fan you should already know that.

justin boggan wrote
What's the score like? I am completely unfamiliar with it.

Steven wrote
It's a masterpiece. Of course being a true soundtrack fan you should already know that.

Timmer wrote


I have to say : Being a true soundtrack fan of what? Hollywood? Indie? European? Asian? etc???

The majority of score fans know little beyond Hollywood scores, and I'm not suggesting that of Justin, far from it, but UNDER FIRE, besides being a Goldsmith score is hardly a film most people have seen.

It's a bit unfair calling out someone as "call yourself a true soundtrack fan" just because they've not heard it.

And Justin, YES it is brilliant!

KevinSmith wrote
I've had a Goldsmith day, bits of The Edge, First Blood, Rambo First Blood Part II, Rambo III, Hoosiers, Rudy, Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Supergirl, The Burbs, and Under Fire.

Steven wrote

YEAH BOI!!!!!!!!!!!!

Allow me to show my enthusiasm for this...

...

KevinSmith wrote
I sense sarcasm.

KevinSmith wrote
I meant sarcasm from Dreamy.

AV: As far as the music is concerned, before ending up with Jerry Goldsmith, you first turned to Rachel Portman?

TB: Well, you know, we listened to a lot of different composers. At one time, we really considered Danny Elfman because we were many fans of his work. We listened to Thomas Newman. And then we listened to something from Rachel Portman. I’m not even sure what movie it was to tell you the truth, and found she had a really good emotion side, but that she could also do a good action and add some energy to the score. So, we thought that she would be a great choice. We talked to her about it and accepted. She actually started working on it for a short time. But then she got pregnant and she decided she couldn’t do because she wanted to enjoy being pregnant and not being stressed. And the baby would have come while we would have been on the soundstage, on recording, and that would have been the worst timing possible. So, she stepped down and I think it was a good choice. And we were fortunate that Jerry Goldsmith became available. We had talked about him also, but he didn’t seem like it was gonna be a potential because of his schedule. Then, I think, one of his movies dropped down, something he was working on, so we jumped at it!

AV: How did you work with Jerry Goldsmith?

TB: We would break the film up into sequences. Maybe 15 or 20 different sequences and we would review those with Jerry. We would look the sequence and then we would talk about just the emotions that we wanted to see in the score. We talked about themes for Mulan or for Shan-Yu, the villain, some adventurous theme for the army and that sort of things. We wanted to get that feeling of Good and Evil and definitely play on Mulan’s theme whenever possible. So, we watched the movie together and then we talked about using those themes and versions of those themes. Happy version for a certain sequence or sad version for another. And that’s what he did first. He said: “Well, the first thing I need to do is to create that theme for Mulan.” So, he did that and then he created a villain theme. Those were the first things he sent to us, little sound files, and we talked about those on the phone and he changed them a little bit based on our notes and then he started composing the sequences. That was easy to work with him on that project.

The biggest trouble that we had; when Barry and I, the directors, and Jerry didn’t see eye-to-eye totally was a sequence where Mulan cuts her hair to make the choice to take her father’s place. It’s a key moment and when we storyboarded it, we had always played it with music from another movie. We wanted it to be a musical moment, with a kind of a pop-rock kind of energy to it so that it really moved the sequence along because it had a lot of drums to it. It was still score, it didn’t have vocals, but there was a very driving percussive beat to it. When we showed it to Jerry Goldsmith, he didn’t quite get it, he didn’t quite understand what we were trying to do with it. His first approach at it, musically, when he showed it to us, was like he scored on different beats to it.

We explained that we wanted one kind of musical song that plays over the whole sequence, from the moment that she’s sitting out in the rain and she sees her father and mother, then it starts. And then she walks into the temple and she blows up the candles and she grabs the conscription from her father, she leaves the house, she goes up on the horse up to the grandmother wakes up. It was all one song. But he saw that with several different beats. So, he disagreed, creatively, with our choice on that. So, we had to make him change it and that was difficult because, I mean, he’s Jerry Goldsmith, and I was a first-time director! I remember going to his house with co-director Barry Cook. We would sit in there, in his studio with him playing music for us and here we were these little kids, really, to him! It was kind of comical when I look back at it, now! But I was happy with what he finally came up with for that. I think he finally understood, towards the end of the production, what we were going for on that, and he gave us something great!