[Closed] HANS ZIMMER

Well, If They're talk jokes about this as a porn track, than thats really rest the case. How could He used such a porn track title ? But seriously, So What that someone make Joke about it? As for Me this Title sounds great, as You said for yourself poetic and I would never think of it as a porn title. But everyone Can Think up somethink that's on his Mind

Sorry, but that's rubbish! A Beautiful Mind is an excellent score, and well spotted in every scene.

Horner's score ruined the end of the movie for me.



Yes and no. You say that his stuff rarely works in a more multi-layered film, then how on Earth does The Thin Red Line work? Maybe he simply gets all feedback from the director and based on this, he writes his scores?. The sense of bigger view is important with the spotting and thematic writing, but scene-specific, I think often he tries to find the right point of view to get across with the meaning of the scene (meaning, not emotions. Horner on the other hand thinks of making the scene most dramatic possibly, this ultimately is the reason behind me preferring Zimmer to Horner, of course in context of the picture. I don't think it's a case of multi-layered films (how many of those did he score? Two? Three? Did he screw them up? Well, not - The House of the Spirits, The Thin Red Line, Frost/Nixon, even his Brooks comedies are more multi-layered than you think - Spanglish, As Good As It Gets (I don't count I'll Do Anything here, whcih maybe his worst comedy), Driving Miss Daisy (one of his in-film best scores). Not so little

I guess you don't know anything about Zimmer's process, not to mention this discussion isn't about the use of additional composers. If you want to know, Horner has also some controversies with numerous people stating that Don Davis was Horner's ghostwriter in several scores (a friend of mine says Balto was partly co-written by Davis, that's a theory only. Clear and Present Danger's final action piece has a cue sounding exactly like Davis's Matrix chords).

But back to Zimmer's process, you have no idea how he works, it seems. If someone else scores a scene it means that Zimmer thinks it's NOT important. Usually Zimmer writes a big suite (20-30 minutes, if you have Da Vinci Code, his original suite is presented from The Poisoned Chalice to Chevaliers de Sangreal). He writes that big suite, then goes on to score the major scenes (Tears of the Sun may be the only major Zimmer score with him NOT scoring the main title sequence) and leaving the suite to his people to rearrange it for the remainder of the scenes.

Zimmer's palete is not limited. In fact it it's what makes Hans who he is.

Take Gladiator and King Arthur as an example. the composition (big, bold and anthem-ic can be similiar), but the palette is very diferent from one to the other.

If you say Zimmer techniques of "composition" then we can star to talk...

Anyway, music touches or it doesn't....Zimmer music touches me.

PS I will not writte anymore about this , it's really tiresome.

Zimmer better than the other RC hacks? That's a serious question? Of course he's better, nobody said he isn't and the fact that he's so successful proves he does something correctly As i said before, i love his work but 90+% of the times, you know what to expect from him. And that percentage is very fair it seems, proven by that one and only clear surprise and breakage of the rule, which was THE THIN RED LINE. As for that YARED's score would have ruined TROY thousand-heard argument, i both find that it has nothing to do with the conversation here, it doesn't really prove a point and also it's completely false. The score was utterly brilliant. One of the last classics in the genre and it could have perhaps the potential to somewhat elevate that crappy hollywoodfied ridicule of the ancient civilizations of the area, that doomed failure. I am happy the composer's name wasn't eventually involved with the final theatrical version of that shame.

But again, remind me WHY are we comparing Zimmer with Horner again? *










* rhetorical question

It kind of does. Yared's classic score COULD have worked in the movie, if Petersen gave him feedback over the general fitting to the scenes (technical issues like synchronization points).

I think Zimmer is capable of more than he is said he is, but he is simply demanded his old stuff, that's what I mean. What if somebody demanded Zimmer to write for woodwinds and higher pitched brass? He would do it, because he'd be asked for it (Zimmer writing in mid-range only is one of his detractors' points).

The comparison between Horner and Zimmer is because we discuss movie approaches. I would work with Zimmer (Desplat, Goldenthal, many others). Horner is the only A-list composer, whose instinct I DON'T trust.

Actually, the name of Goldenthal appeared here because of Black Hawk Down, kind of. I love Goldenthal's style and I think his dark romanticism would be great for any darker thriller movie (until my rediscovery of The Thin Red Line, Hannibal was my favorite Zimmer score, but I shutter to think how beautiful score would have Goldenthal written for that one). I have most recently played a World War II game and it made me think of making the kind of "Saving Private Ryan on the Pacific Theater" movie. And I would hire Goldenthal for that, even more: Zimmer's experimental method of scoring that movie (music serving as another track of sound effects, except the thematic statements) shows what kind of music works for modern war movie. Goldenthal's atonal style would serve that well and beyond. If I was making such a movie, I would ask him to give me action music - his typical relentless atonal writing, showcased by tracks like Toccata and Dreamscapes or the whole Alien3 score. My favorite listen from Goldenthal is actually Michael Collins, so imagine what he can do with a full orchestra and off-kilter writing for traditional Japanese instruments, we would get some kind of a beefed-up and more violent version of Tora! Tora! Tora! And honestly, this would work wonders in a movie.

It's not that I am incapable of seeing my movies scored by anyone else than Hans Zimmer. It's that I am incapable of seeing my movie scored by James Horner, because I would have to work with him too closely and even cut down on his personal instincts sometimes, which would bring Horner to the trauma he had on The New World (actually if I met him, I would actually tell him that I am on Malick's side and the fact that he didn't understand what the director wanted from him doesn't say good things about him)

I am not too sure. There are projects where he's clearly allowed all artistic freedom (not that someone with the status of Zimmer would have difficulties demanding freedoms of any kind) but all he ends up with is the same stuff (same thematic approach, same chord procession, same "rock riff guitar" approach, same quirkiness at places, but on somewhat different instruments each time.

Malick tends to reedit scenes to fit his visions. Horner wanted to give the movie emotions (ie. make it a straightforward romance). Malick said that some scenes aren't about emotions and this is when Horner totally lost it. Malick wanted a metaphor, but feel free and call a professor of philosophy an idiot. Not literally, but Horner DID (something like it looks nice, but the director doesn't know what it all is about).

Horner falls flat, when colors aren't what you want. All his approach goes to hell then! Malick definitely proved that Horner is incapable of discussion on philosophical terms. Zimmer is and, ultimately, that made me stay faithful to Zimmer as a composer.

Madagascar 2 can't be compared to anything, even genre-wise. I think if we go through comparisons, we could compare Horner's synth only scores to Zimmer's orchestral-only scores.

How would Zimmer score Apocalypto?

It does have a small orchestra (devoid of brass) though.

I don't like most of sounds of Horner's synths, especially that faux-choral synths, which he is using all the time, maybe after Avatar he'll stop.

Well, Malick proved to have a more European mindset than Horner (and if Malick wrote his Ph. D. in German philosophy then INDEED, he has a more European mindset, he could always write his articles on Austin or Rorty, but he chose Heidegger and Wittgenstein).

The thing that Zimmer (and many other composers, especially European) understands and Horner has problems with is that music works in movies in multiple possible ways. Music can be a metaphor, can just bring your attention to a detail (Da Vinci Code's problem, that score brings your attention to everything AND nothing at the same time), convey characters' emotions, represent the locale. Horner is good with, sometimes, conveying characters' emotions (House of Sand and Fog, mostly), representing the locale (the best in Hollywood in that aspect, I think he even surpasses Williams here in his best "ethnic" works), but isn't too good with bringing attention (barely anyone is, to be honest, it demands a very specific sense of film, Europeans have it a lot - look at Desplat here... Hollywood is a bit too intense musically here) and very bad at metaphors (that's a case of spotting and a certain approach to music, Zimmer did it in The Thin Red Line with the right spotting, right arrangement (based on the director's will!) and discussions with the director about the non-emotional aspects of the movie, possibly in perfect German).

Well, my stance is that Horner is often somewhat too saccharine, some of his electronic sounds are quite bad (I actually have problems with his more "action" synth stuff, which sounds like farts to me at time).

A little problem I have with Horner is that he is sometimes too orchestral for the movie and thinks of the orchestrations more than the movie itself. And yes, I am serious here.

I love big orchestras and I think that in, say 7 out of 10 cases they are important. But there are the cases when they aren't so important and those scores are projects for the likes of Clint Mansell (his big orchestral stuff is/was orchestrated by Dodd), Hans Zimmer and others. Where do I as a hopefully future director stand? I want serious restraint. I'd love to make Hollywood projects, but more character-oriented and I'd rather have a rock-riff/thought-up-by-the message Hans Zimmer score than an overally dramatic (great in cases of SOME epics, like Braveheart or indeed Avatar) approach.

To me the best score of a "personal" epic (a single person's journey at heart of an epic historical story) is Barry's Dance with the Wolves. That's the way such movies should be done. Restrained use of the music in the movie, big sound, but not losing the character and message just to use a nice orchestration effect, complete thematic coherence, beautiful themes. Barry doesn't belong to Hollywood anymore for numerous reasons - the movies turned very fast (too fast at times), the emotional intensity of the movies is put somewhere else and such an unabashed romanticism of the late Barry would sound a bit too much (look at movies like Mercury Rising). If he became a bit less intense, he could do the kind of projects Desplat does so well in France.

Horner of course is old-fashioned, but his mostly Hollywood, that's why he doesn't use metaphors. Horner rarely uses contrast (slow-motion scoring of fast scenes, a notable exception being A Beautiful Mind's Car Chase and rejected fragments from Windtalkers, where Woo did a lot of bad to Horner's score).

The problem with Da Vinci Code in the film (as a score album it's one of Zimmer's best scores, also musically it's one of his best, it's very well orchestrated for his standards, for example) is that he scores a small scene like the world was just ending. It wasn't proper narration (the film did it well itself, though the film rather sucked, due to its rather big lack of action), it just made everything overly important. Too much of too intense music. Same problem is in the last scenes of The Last Samurai - why should the score give information that is already given by the visuals?