Interview – Page 18 – We Are Movie Geeks

Interview: WAMG Talks To TREADING WATER Director Analeine Cal y Mayor – Stars Douglas Smith, Zoë Kravitz & Carrie-Anne Moss

TREADING WATER is a modern-day fairytale complete with hero and heroine, seemingly insurmountable obstacles, a fairy godfather (of sorts) and an unexpected all-dancing / all-swimming finale.

Mica (Douglas Smith) faces a number of challenges. He’s grown up in a house that’s actually a museum celebrating the renowned Mexican crooner Guillermo Garibai (Gonzalo Vega). Mica’s mother Sophie (Ariadna Gil) is the guardian and tour guide of this wildly over-the-top shrine. And then there’s the fact that Mica smells like fish…

Mother and son are both too much (or not enough) for Mica’s father Richard (Don McKellar), who ends up abandoning them. No one around Mica, not even his therapist Catherine (Carrie-Anne Moss), is able to get him on track, until his childhood crush Laura (Zoë Kravitz) swims back into his life. For the first time in his life he feels happy, but Mica ends up losing her as well. That’s when Guillermo Garibai magically swoops into town in his white Caddy, meaning to save the day. And he does… in his own fairytale way.

TREADING WATER opens in NYC at the Cinema Village and in LA at the Laemmle Music Hall on March 13.

I recently interviewed Mexican filmmaker Analeine Cal Y Mayor about her first feature film.

WAMG: I loved the film. It’s absolutely charming. How did you come up with the idea for the film?

Analeine Cal Y Mayor: Thank you! The film’s co-writer Javier Gullón saves newspaper articles in a folder for script ideas. I saw this one about the disease and immediately felt attracted to it. It read “First Case of Fish odor Syndrome Detected in the Country,” and the article came with the photo of a very sweet 7-year old girl. I had never heard anything about this and when I started looking for information online I saw that the problem was more psychological than physical, and most people knew they had a disease after suffering from it on average more than 8 years!

The patient and everybody surrounding them usually think they smell bad because of their personal hygiene habits. It all seemed so unfair, so sad. Later on, I decided to give it a twist and turn it into a comedy.

WAMG: What inspired the opening animation sequence?

Analeine Cal Y Mayor: There are two styles of narrative in the story, realism and “magic realism” which is a term used mostly in Latin American literature, like in Gabriel García Márquez’ One Hundred Years of Solitude where there is magic and acceptance of it in the world that we know. So the disease Trimethylaminuria is real, and the effects that it has on Mica are real, but as the story advances there is some magic that the audience accepts and enjoys, like the underwater world under the tub or the arrival of Garibai.

Since I don’t want to give away the ending, I would just say that the animation sequence opens the possibility that this boy felt better in another world, and there was a mermaid in that world.

WAMG: I really like the characters – the Therapist, the Girlfriend. Mica. How did the unique cast of Zoë Kravitz, Douglas Smith & Carrie Anne-Moss come about?

Analeine Cal Y Mayor: Yes, I couldn’t have been luckier with the ensemble of amazing actors I have! My producer Niv Fichman visualized Doug in the role just after he finished reading the script for the first time (maybe even while he was reading it!). He told me Doug was very talented, very handsome and very tall. But sometimes it seemed that Doug didn´t realize just how tall he was, or he wasn´t completely aware of his own body… and this is close to how Mica is, because in a way Mica doesn´t seem comfortable with his body.

For example, the very first time I met him in person (I had been waiting for that moment) we said hello, hugged each other and I thought “Oh, he is stepping on my foot”! The next day he took his coat from a hanger and everything fell on top of a lady because he is so strong! Niv knew he was the one and I also never doubted it.

Then with Zöe Kravitz I wanted someone that had more energy than Mica and the character had to be very sure of herself. Zöe had the right energy for the role and made a great combination with Doug. (I’m not even going to start writing about her talent because that would take up a whole page!)

With Carrie-Anne Moss the role called for someone that had a lot of determination, and who is a parental figure, but also someone who was attractive and at the right age where it would be believable for Mica to kiss her and the moment would be awkward, uneasy but not funny. She was perfect as the therapist.

WAMG: Who composed the score and decided on the choice of songs? It’s fantastic.

Analeine Cal Y Mayor: As you can see, it’s a very musical film as we are always talking about the fictional character, the Mexican romantic singer Guillermo Garibai.

The score was composed by Benoit Charest, an incredible Canadian composer who was nominated for an Oscar for the film The Triplets of Belleville and won the Cesar award for the score, then Yamil Rezc in Mexico City composed some parts that feel different in the film like the animation sequence and the witch doctor sequence, and the original songs for Garibai were composed by the duo of Lisa Lambert and Greg Morrison. I told them that for me Garibai was a mixture of style and personality, like Tom Jones meets José José and with that in mind they started to compose and have fun.

And last but not least, both Doug and Zöe have bands and know music, in fact Doug plays guitar the minute he wakes up. They generously gave me a song for the credits that they composed and recorded in Mexico City.

WAMG: The film was originally titled THE BOY WHO SMELLS LIKE FISH. Why the change to TREADING WATER?

Analeine Cal Y Mayor: I think that a number of people thought that The Boy Who Smells Like Fish was a very long title and not very commercial. What can I say? Yes, it may have been too long but all my titles are very long and I couldn’t think of a better one! I knew with this title either you love it or hate it, there´s no in between. There were discussions about the title even before we started shooting.

My next film is called The Day When Nobody Died. Another script that I have with a colleague is called The Stars Shine On Me Backwards (translated into English) – ok, this one doesn’t sound very good in English, and it’s really more like The Stars Don’t Light My Way… Still long, you see?

WAMG: Two Mexican filmmakers, Alfonso Cuarón (GRAVITY) and Alejandro González Iñárritu, have won back-to-back Oscars for Best Directing. BIRDMAN’s Alejandro González Iñárritu was the first Mexican to win 3 Academy Awards. What did that mean to you as a filmmaker?

Analeine Cal Y Mayor: The fact that Iñárritu and Cuarón both have Oscars doesn’t really change my way of creating or envisioning my career. I mean, I’m blown away by Children of Men and Birdman, and they’re both very talented filmmakers. I’m sure it will change the way a lot of young people think in Mexico. They’re going to think bigger, maybe become more ambitious.

The important thing is that they keep working on scriptwriting, as that is always the weakest part! And also I tell my students to travel, to read more, to go to the theatre. You’ll never be a great director if your background and knowledge comes mostly from other films.

WAMG: Are there opportunities for women filmmakers in Mexico?

Analeine Cal Y Mayor: In Mexico, it´s still a male dominated industry. During filming they sometimes called me “Sir” but all of this is changing, I can see it.

WAMG: What’s your next project?

Analeine Cal Y Mayor: Because I always get into trouble and don´t like easy things I´m trying to do a project that will probably be a Mexican-German co-production starring José María Yazpik. The title is The Day When Nobody Died, still a comedy but a lot darker than Treading Water.

WAMG: TREADING WATER is an endearing film. The ending credits sequence with the synchronized swimming scene is right out of an Esther Williams’ “aquamusical” – it’s delightful! What do you want the audience to take away from your movie?

Analeine Cal Y Mayor: I hope that they identify with Mica and be more open and tolerant with people that are different. Also I’ve learned to see my own problems from a different perspective.

TREADING WATER is now available on iTunes, Amazon Watch Instantly, VUDU, Google Play/Youtube Rentals, Xbox & PlayStation and all US cable platforms.

facebook.com/TreadingWaterTheMovie

Composer Junkie XL Discusses His Score For RUN ALL NIGHT; Listen To Four Tracks

Opening in theaters on Friday, March 13th is RUN ALL NIGHT. The action thriller stars Oscar nominees Liam Neeson and Ed Harris and is directed of Jaume Collet-Serra (NON-STOP).

Brooklyn mobster and prolific hit man Jimmy Conlon (Neeson), once known as The Gravedigger, has seen better days. Longtime best friend of mob boss Shawn Maguire (Harris), Jimmy, now 55, is haunted by the sins of his past—as well as a dogged police detective (Vincent D’Onofrio) who’s been one step behind Jimmy for 30 years. Lately, it seems Jimmy’s only solace can be found at the bottom of a whiskey glass.

But when Jimmy’s estranged son, Mike (Joel Kinnaman), becomes a target, Jimmy must make a choice between the crime family he chose and the real family he abandoned long ago. With Mike on the run, Jimmy’s only penance for his past mistakes may be to keep his son from the same fate Jimmy is certain he’ll face himself…at the wrong end of a gun. Now, with nowhere safe to turn, Jimmy just has one night to figure out exactly where his loyalties lie and to see if he can finally make things right.

RUN ALL NIGHT also stars Nick Nolte, Bruce McGill, Genesis Rodriguez and Oscar winner Common.

The film’s score is from Grammy-nominated, multi-platinum producer and composer Junkie XL (Tom Holkenborg).

He previously scored 300: RISE OF AN EMPIRE and his additional works include Robert Luketic’s PARANOIA and the young adult film DIVERGENT, based on Veronica’s Roth’s successful trilogy.

The foundation for this new career path was laid in his native Holland, where he created multiple film scores. Earlier in his composing career, Junkie XL also provided music for such films as “Bandslam,” “DOA: Dead or Alive,” “The Chronicles of Riddick: Dark Fury,” “The Animatrix” and “Resident Evil.”

He later continued to grow under mentorships with celebrated composers like Harry Gregson-Williams, on the films DOMINO and KINGDOM OF HEAVEN, and Klaus Badelt on CATWOMAN. From there, Junkie XL formed a highly successful association with Hans Zimmer. They have collaborated on films including the 2013 blockbuster MAN OF STEEL, Christopher Nolan’s THE DARK KNIGHT RISES, the MADAGASCAR films, MEGAMIND and INCEPTION.

Junkie XL’s music accompanies the night’s journey with Jimmy and Shawn facing the ultimate sacrifice for their sons.

“I’ve always had a soft spot for the tapestry of family conflict in movies, especially if you can wrap it up in a little bit of action, and I believe this movie has all of that,” says Liam Neeson.

Collet-Serra notes, “I think if audiences come for the action, they’ll get hooked in by the emotion, and they’ll enjoy quite a ride.”

In my recent interview with the composer, Junkie XL and I discussed his latest score as well as his upcoming music for some of the most anticipated films in 2015 and 2016.

Warning: Movie plot SPOILERS ahead.

WAMG: Where’d the name Junkie XL come from?

Junkie XL: From my teens, because I was spending too much time listening to music, playing drums or on the guitar. The XL I added later which stands for Expanding Limits.

WAMG: I was wondering how one goes from Tom to Junkie XL.

Junkie XL: You don’t get born a Junkie, you become a Junkie.

WAMG: Director Jaume Collet-Serra said, “It was very important that with a movie called ‘Run All Night,’ we don’t just run from Brooklyn to Queens. You want to run through all of New York. We made a big effort to go into Manhattan several times, as well as Queens, Brooklyn and the Bronx. We really shot almost everywhere.”

Audiences haven’t seen an action movie like RUN ALL NIGHT in some time. Your score doesn’t overpower the chase scenes.

Junkie XL: When I saw the movie the first time, I thought the more interesting part to tell was not necessarily the action but the story of two dads having a troubled relationship and the two sons. When I started writing the music for the movie, they were actually very emotional themes. The movie opens with that, the movie ends with it – ultimately you need some big action music every now and then. When you have 15 helicopters over a building with a 150 FBI agents looking for two guys, you really can’t score that with a piano and a flute.

There were a lot of moments where I basically advised the director not to use music at all. The chase scene through New York City between the cop car and Liam Neeson, I said let’s basically go back to some really cool chase scenes that we have in the 70’s with just the sounds of bullets like in THE FRENCH CONNECTION – let’s not use music at all.

Another scene where Liam Neeson chases Ed Harris through the train tracks. It was another spot that I wanted to go scoreless and only go with some cool sound effects. Have the music start once Harris’s character is killed.

I think it’s an interesting movie too like you said. There’s not really an action movie at this point that does it like this and there’s some really proper acting in it. My favorite scene is in the restaurant during the conversation between Ed Harris and Liam Neeson. It was another example where I said we don’t need music here – just let the actors act.

WAMG: Fans of this genre will appreciate your themes for Jimmy and Shawn Maguire and as well as Jimmy and his son, Mike. Both are very subtle moments of your score.

Junkie XL: There are two main themes – one is for Jimmy and one is for Shawn. Then it gets sprinkled down to their sons. The theme for Michael is very much related to Jimmy, while the theme for Danny is very much related to his dad Shawn. It seems to make a lot of sense to have just those two. In a movie like this you could go with almost too many themes and then it becomes cluttered. I wanted to make it very clear what the intention is and what these characters are going through.

WAMG: The movie is about surviving the night, but it’s also about redemption.

Junkie XL: The movie is totally about redemption and the most beautiful part of the theme that I hint at, at the beginning, comes at the very end when Liam Neeson’s character dies and his hand falls to the right that we see the card with all the names of the people he’s killed. Plus his son Michael and the FBI agent need redemption too, so at the very end everyone finds some kind of peace. That’s why I took the thematic material from Jimmy and Michael and turned it into a warm, fuzzy motif because at that point in his life he’s fine where he is, and he got to have that moment with his dad. Jimmy’s only got one shot at redemption, at having his son not hate him anymore.

WAMG: How much of the movie did you see or even know about before composing the score?

Junkie XL: They waited quite a long time and I got in really late in the mix. I received a call somewhere in November from Darren Higman (Vice President of Music at Warner Bros.) and he said that the movie would be opening up soon and would I be interested. I said yes. He then asked if I could write a small demo theme of a couple of minutes that could help convince the director that I was the right guy.

He then told me the story of the film and I was so inspired that I wrote twenty minutes of music. I went to Warner Brothers where I saw the film, and realized the music I wrote would fit perfectly with it and then went back and wrote another 35 minutes of music. I ended up having 55 minutes of a sketchbook.

I met the director for the first time and handed him 55 minutes of music for the film. He listened to the whole thing and Collet-Serra said, “this is like the story of the movie!” He called me back later that night and said it was perfect and exactly what he was looking for.

After I got the job, we started turning it into cues and we only ended up having two meetings about the music because he was so convinced because I got what the movie needed. That’s a very important task for a composer to take that kind of stress off the director. They have a lot of things on their mind and by making a sketchbook of the music, that’s one less thing for them to worry about.

WAMG: The interesting transitions of jumping from one part of the city to the next through visual effects are very compelling. Did you see that before you started composing?

Junkie XL: That was as we went. When I saw the movie for the first time, it didn’t have those shots. At that specific point, the movie was testing so well with audiences, they were able to add those clever special effects. I think it’s important to the story because it shows the audience what’s going on in different parts of the city and correlates to the previous scene. The violence in the film is very personal – it’s not just a bunch of random shootings with people dropping like flies. The music didn’t need to be big during those scenes and it needed to feel personal.

The score gets the biggest halfway through the film when Jimmy and Michael are stuck inside the apartment building with the hired killer (played by Common) and the police are surrounding them, that’s where the music gets really big. It’s also the moment in the film where if they can’t make it through here, there’s not going to be a future to begin with. After that scene, it kind of mellows down again and the violence becomes personal again to the one on one situation. I thought it was great to score that scene really big then go back to small.

WAMG: Nick Nolte’s unexpected cameo is pretty cool. The music is very gritty like the classic hit man films of the ‘60s and ‘70s.

Junkie XL: I’ve been doing a lot of research on these older movies. I went as far back as “Le professionnel” with Jean-Paul Belmondo with a score from Ennio Morricone, or even THE GODFATHER – all these movies were scored with a very emotional theme. We’re talking about a modern 2015 movie and it’s hard to make films for a big audience where there’s mostly no music and just music only where it counts.

Unfortunately that’s not the case and people want to be thrilled constantly, but I do feel RUN ALL NIGHT has a high level of 70’s quality to it and how it’s composed. Plus, how it looks and how it sounds – the sound effects are not overpowering either which is usually the case in an action movie. It’s nice for a composer to fill the blanks with music that tells the story, especially on this film. It was great to make music that was actually going to be heard.

WAMG: You covered the gamut of instruments for the score. What was your go-to instruments for the score?

Junkie XL: The signature instrument for Liam’s character was the piano. The signature instrument for Shawn (Ed Harris) was a solo cello. I used a distinct signature rhythm especially for Mr. Price (Common), the hired hitman.

Then I used a lot of unique sound designs from voices and choirs that I recorded a long time ago which was a very signature sound along with synthesizers and certain melodies and harmonies.

WAMG: What other film scores are you composing for?

Junkie XL: I’m going to be writing two during the rest of the year.

I’m starting on the reboot of POINT BREAK. That movie comes out in December so I have some time still.

I’m also working on BATMAN V SUPERMAN: DAWN OF JUSTICE which I will be doing with Hans Zimmer. He will do Superman and I will do Batman. We did MAN OF STEEL together, plus MADAGASCAR 3 and MEGAMIND. We have a track record of collaboration.

My score is finished for MAD MAX: FURY ROAD. It comes out in May, and while I can’t say too much on that, the movie is spectacular.

The RUN ALL NIGHT original motion picture soundtrack is available now from Water Tower Music.

http://www.amazon.com/Run-All-Night-Original-Soundtrack/dp/B00U27Y4RQ/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1426213605&sr=8-1&keywords=run+all+night+soundtrack

https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/run-all-night-original-motion/id968926190

Interview – WAMG Talks To CINDERELLA Soundtrack Composer Patrick Doyle

On Friday, March 13, Disney will release the live action version of CINDERELLA from director Kenneth Branagh.

The original animated movie opened on February 15, 1950 to universal acclaim and 65 years later, CINDERELLA has become one of studio’s most treasured titles.

Branagh has once again turned to the Scottish composer Patrick Doyle for the score. The album features original music by Doyle marking the eleventh time he has teamed with Branagh.

In 1989, the director commissioned Doyle to compose the score for HENRY V and they have subsequently collaborated on numerous pictures, including DEAD AGAIN, MARY SHELLEY’S FRANKENSTEIN, MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING, HAMLET, AS YOU LIKE IT and THOR, and most recently JACK RYAN: SHADOW RECRUIT.

Doyle scored RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES for 20th Century Fox and BRAVE for Disney Pixar, which was awarded Best Original Composition for Film at the International Music and Sound Awards.

From the worlds of Asgard to the Highlands of Scotland, Doyle’s various scores have whisked audiences off to distant lands, past, present and future. With an enchanting score full of magic and musical color, as well as creating a new Disney song, this time the Oscar-nominated composer takes us to the fairy-tale kingdom of CINDERELLA.

WAMG: CINDERELLA is such a beautiful film and your score is just wonderful. It sounds like a fairytale.

Patrick Doyle: Thank you very much. I think it’s a gorgeous, sumptuous film. It’s a classic movie – a timeless movie. It’s enchanting and it’s funny. It’s magical and very emotional. It’s a wonderful opportunity for a composer.

WAMG: The story is very familiar as well as the music. What was your first thought when you found out Kenneth Branagh was doing a new version of CINDERELLA?

PD: It’s a classic story. Number one, knowing Ken, I knew it would be a completely different approach to the iconic animated version. I think he’s done a wonderful job transferring from animation to live action. There’s always a thought that people will compare the two. I have been through this in the past with HENRY V and I knew Ken would have new approach to the film. I think he did a tremendous job.

WAMG: Your score is very romantic and while reminding the audience of the original, it takes you into this new adaptation.

PD: I’m glad you agree. I tried to write a classical score and hopefully it will have a classic feel to it. The reaction to the film, and the score, has been fantastic and it’s a tremendous opportunity to write for a symphony orchestra. Any reason to employ a symphony orchestra in a movie is always welcomed, especially when it’s the calibre of the London Symphony Orchestra.

The movie is from the original Charles Perrault’s French interpretation of the tale entitled “Cendrillon, or the History of the Little Glass Slipper” which introduced the fairy godmother, the pumpkin carriage and the glass slippers. We also come from a culture where we have what’s called Pantomime in Scotland, England and Wales. It’s an annual event – they’ll show Puss and Boots one year and Cinderella the other. Cinderella is a wonderful story and goes back to Greek times. It deals with diversity and it’s universal to every culture – it resonates to every culture the world.

It has a wonderful happy ending that everyone knows, but it’s the journey along the way is what’s so traumatizing. It’s cathartic in the end to watch her dream come true where she finds someone who’s a good person. It’s the best possible circumstances where people fall in love for themselves and not what they are.

WAMG: I loved Cate Blanchett’s theme – she makes quite the entrance as Lady Tremaine with the cat Lucifer in tow. Did you go with theme cues first or melody cues first for the character?

PD: (Sings the cue) I worked very hard to have a sort of chromatic theme – to roll around in the lower register of the instruments in the orchestra. I wanted to have a very distinctive theme for her.

The CINDERELLA waltz music at the ball, “La Valse de L’Amour,” was heavily plundered and mined by me throughout the score. (Sings the cue) I like to weave all these themes throughout the score. There’s waltzes and polkas, along with a plethora of dances, so there was a wonderful opportunity for me to write real classical music.

WAMG: You can hear it all through the film. With that classical theme in mind, what instruments, whether it was percussion, strings, brass, were you keen on using?

PD: It was an absolute mixture of everything. That’s the joy for a score like that – you can choose and strategize so that the sound can influence the viewer to see specific things. You can use the oboe for the mystery with the lower register, the bassoon for the entrance of the step-mother, the harp for the magical qualities. The whole symphonic voice comes into play and every instrument is utilized. The palette was wide open. I used the percussive sounds to give off wonderful colors.

My objective was to capture the magical enchantment and emotion in order to give it a timeless quality because the Disney canon is timeless. It survives generation after generation and that was in the back of my mind. I wanted to honor that great musical tradition of Disney.

The first film I saw on my own was FANTASIA. I went on my own at age 14 to Glasgow to see that film. That turned me onto music and animation – I was amazed by the marriage of the two.

In addition to the score, the soundtrack also includes end credit tracks by Lily James (“Cinderella”) and Helena Bonham Carter (“Fairy Godmother”), plus the end credit original theme song “Strong” (written by Patrick Doyle, Kenneth Branagh and Tommy Danvers) performed by Compound/Motown recording artist Sonna Rele and produced by TommyD (Kylie, Kanye West, Corinne Bailey Rae, FUN). Sonna was chosen by Kenneth Branagh to record “Strong.”

WAMG: Along with the score, fans have always liked that Disney made it a point of adding songs to his animated & live action films. In this CINDERELLA, there is the song that your wrote, “Strong.” How did that develop for the movie?

PD: The tune is totally based on all the themes in the film. You’ll hear the melodies and motifs, which I’m very proud of because all the score was first and then the song came in based on all the material in the score.

TommyD Is a great producer and writer and Ken worked on the lyrics and we worked very hard on it. I’m very proud to be part of that tradition to have written a Disney song. It’s really lovely.

I’ve also been the only one to write a Gaelic song for Disney with the movie BRAVE. I loved being involved in “Strong.”

WAMG: If I may ask you about BRAVE for a moment. When you first found out the movie was being made, being from Scotland, did you get choked up?

PD: Talk about being choked up! When the Pixar people invited me to San Francisco, after my initial meeting, to talk about the movie, I walked into a conference room and they had rocks, heather and little twiglets and branches and pictures beautifully displayed for me. Pictures of Scotland and the glorious Highlands – my wee eyes got choked up.

“I can’t believe you’ve done this to me,” I said. My life flashed in front of me! I was very proud to be asked to do that score.

BRAVE (L-R) Producer Katherine Sarafian, Composer Patrick Doyle and Director Mark Andrews amongst bagpipe musicians. Ph: Jonathan Prime ©2012 Disney/Pixar. All Rights Reserved.

WAMG: Your music for RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES goes so well with the Jerry Goldsmith’s original 1968 score. The movie was such a success, especially for fans of the APES franchise. In APES and CINDERELLA, there are a ton of sound effects to accompany the visual effects. Did you work closely with the Sound Department on both movies?

PD: It was a fantastic opportunity to work on such an iconic franchise. I remember on RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES, I asked the sound department to let me hear the early recordings they took of the real apes and I used one of their cries and turned it into a noisy musical cue for the percussion parts. It also became the running string motif in the film driving all the action sequences.

When thematic sounds come from an organic source, I think it has far more resonance so hopefully it connects people to the film.

I worked very closely with the sound department on CINDERELLA. I did a facsimile of the score, as I was going along, to give them so they were able to shape their sounds around the music and to tune the effects to the key of the orchestra. I had to work very closely with them to get an inter-organic marriage.

WAMG: You wrote the score for the silent movie IT starring Clara Bow, commissioned by the Syracuse Film Festival, which received its world premiere at the Syracuse historic Landmark Theatre in October 2013. How was it to score a film after the fact?

PD: I’ve always been a great fan of the early days of cinema. When I was a kid we had only two television stations in Scotland. There was the BBC and an independent station, and that was it. They would show lots and lots of movies from the 1920’s and 1930’s through the 1940’s and 1950’s. When I look back on it, I watched silent movies that were only about thirty years old.

I’m very lucky to be in that transition period to have written in the 20^th and 21^st century. When I was approached to commission the score I leapt at the opportunity. I loved the film and I’m very aware of Clara Bow. I took great care to write a contemporary score.

I’m quite excited because there’s going to be a Scottish premiere in June and I’m working with young children from my old Shire. I’m tremendously pleased and other movie industry people are doing workshops with these kids, so I’m very proud to be working on that.

All young kids from North Lanarkshire and South Lanarkshire where I was educated will be there. I remember as a very young kid going on weekends where I played in the youth orchestra and to be able to go back after working on this for a number of years, is a nice feather in the Royal Scottish Academy of Music, so we’re very excited about it.

Walt Disney Records will release the original motion picture soundtrack for CINDERELLA on March 10, 2015.

The score was recorded at Air Lyndhurst Studio in London, and was performed by the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by James Shearman and produced by Maggie Rodford. The film arrives in theaters on March 13, 2015.

CINDERELLA track list:

1. A Golden Childhood
2. The Great Secret
3. A New Family
4. Life and Laughter
5. The First Branch
6. Nice and Airy
7. Orphaned
8. The Stag
9. Rich Beyond Reason
10. Fairy Godmother
11. Pumpkins and Mice
12. You Shall Go
13. Valse Royale
14. Who Is She
15. La Valse de L’Amour
16. La Valse Champagne
17. La Polka Militaire
18. La Polka de Paris
19. A Secret Garden
20. La Polka de Minuit
21. Choose That One
22. Pumpkin Pursuit
23. The Slipper
24. Shattered Dreams
25. Searching the Kingdom
26. Ella and Kit
27. Courage and Kindness
28. Strong Performed by Sonna Rele
29. A Dream Is a Wish Your Heart Makes Performed by Lily James
30. Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo (The Magic Song) Performed by Helena Bonham Carter

The album is now available for pre-order at iTunes http://smarturl.it/cnsa1 and Amazon http://smarturl.it/cnsama1.

The digital soundtrack includes 3 bonus instrumental tracks (“Strong,” “A Dream is a Wish,” “Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo”).

Photos by Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images for Disney

Composer Patrick Doyle (L) and director Kenneth Branagh.

Actor Richard Madden, composer Patrick Doyle and actress Lily James attend the World Premiere in Hollywood.

WAMG Talks To MARK DUPLASS: THE LAZARUS EFFECT

THE LAZARUS EFFECT is in theaters now, and in celebration of the film I got the chance to sit down with star Mark Duplass to talk about the film. Check it out below.

From masters of horror Blumhouse Productions – producer of THE PURGE, INSIDIOUS and SINISTER franchises – THE LAZARUS EFFECT follows a group of researchers led by Frank (Mark Duplass) and his fiancée Zoe (Olivia Wilde), who’ve achieved the unimaginable – bringing the dead back to life. After a successful, yet unsanctioned, trial on a newly deceased animal, the team is ready to unveil their breakthrough to the world. When the dean of their university learns of their underground experiments, their project is unexpectedly shut down and their materials are confiscated.

Frank, Zoe and their team (Donald Glover, Sarah Bolger and Evan Peters) take matters into their own hands, launching a rogue attempt to recreate the experiment, during which things go terribly wrong and one of their own, Zoe, is horrifically killed. Fueled by terror and grief, Frank pushes them to do the unthinkable : attempt to resurrect their first human test subject.

Initially, the procedure appears to be a success, but the team soon realizes something is wrong with Zoe. As her strange new persona reveals itself, the team quickly becomes stuck in a gruesome reality. They are no longer faced with the question of whether they can bring someone back to life – but rather, the wrath of her return.

What was it about particular script that made you want to be a part of it, because you’re not a big horror fan, right?

MARK DUPLASS : I mean, I haven’t done a lot of it. I directed a movie called BAGHEAD that has a little bit of that in it, and I’m in a movie called Creep that was a partnership with Jason Blum, and that’s how we became friends. So, I was less looking for a horror movie to do, but rather was more excited to work with JasonI saw that the script was a solid, straight ahead horror movie that wasn’t as much about the gore as it was about being in a tight space in the psychology of horror. I was like ‘Oh, good!,’ that’s what ALIENS did, and that has the potential to be up my alley. When I knew that David Gelb was going to direct it, who’s a documentary filmmaker I was like ‘Oh, this is cool! We have a potential alchemy here to do a combination of naturalism with a science based horror project, and I was like ‘I think I could add something to this by just trying to do a really naturalistic performance,’ and make this lead character feel less like a super buff, awesome haired hero who doesn’t look like a scientist at all, but kind of looks like a science dork. When he’s running around, he kind of looks like a science dork too, and that was interesting to me.

The film does take on the controversial subject of science versus religion. Were you ever concerned with ruffling a few feathers?

MARK DUPLASS : I was not concerned for a second about the subject matter being to incendiary for people because I feel like viewers at this stage have been hit with so much, and are so savvy that anyone who is put off or offended by this is really just kind of living in the stone ages. What was exciting to me about the essence of the story is that… I think people are very curious to figure out where we go when we die. I think that you can answer almost any question in 2015 by picking up your phone and googling it, and in three seconds you know the answer… and this one we never do. That’s kind of fun.

Does being a director yourself help when you’re on set?

MARK DUPLASS : It does, and not in the fact of where I’m like ‘Hey! You should do it like this?’. It helps me in a multitude of ways. One, being a director is incredibly stressful and exhausting, so when I’m on set as an actor I’m just having a blast because I’m not shouldering the entire ship. That’s fun. Second, I think I’m appreciative of how stressful it is to be a director, so I know how to not be a pain in the ass to my director, and respect their space. Thirdly, I think that I have a global sense of where the story is headed, what is unique about the project, and that allows me to try to be a guardian of one or two things on the set that I value. The thing I really valued on this set was to try to deliver and foster naturalistic performances amongst the whole cast. That meant improvising things to surprise people, and throw people off kilter, or taking that super scientific piece of dialogue and improvising around it so that it feels more natural. That was my whole goal. I just want these people to feel like regular people and scientists, and not superheroes. As much as I could do that with the kind of bad clothes, and the dorkier hair, and all of that stuff… that was important to me, again, rather than be like Hotty McHottersan who just so happens to be leading a science research lab. It doesn’t feel right.

I’ve heard actors say that watching themselves die on film is rather cathartic, because, as you just said, it’s the one unknown. Whether you do or not in the film, so that there are no spoilers, is this an area of acting that you enjoy?

MARK DUPLASS : Well, I don’t want to give away too much about the story, but what I will say is, what we have in our movie… there’s this wonderful little sense of ’10 Little Indians,’ which is just a great story. It’s really less a question of who’s going to die, but more of a question of when, and how are they going to die. Once that thing sets into place it gets really exciting. There was a lot of discussion on set about ‘What’s yours going to be like?’ and ‘How are you gonna do it?’. When you’re on a low-budget horror movie a lot of that is up to you as an actor. I’m super excited about how that element of the movie unfolds.

FOR MORE INFO :

FACEBOOK : www.facebook.com/thelazaruseffect

TWITTER : www.twitter.com/blumhouse

THE LAZARUS EFFECT is in theaters now

Interview – WAMG Talks To Director Mat Kirkby From Oscar Nominated Short THE PHONE CALL; Stars Sally Hawkins and Jim Broadbent

Whether making a feature or short film, a great amount of time goes into the process. The writing, the shooting, the editing and then getting your film shown… every filmmaker makes the arduous journey and dreams one day they’ll hear their names announced on Oscar nominations morning.

For one such filmmaking team, Mat Kirkby and James Lucas, the dream became reality on January 16 when their short film, THE PHONE CALL, was among the five films nominated for an Academy Award in the Best Short Film category.

Their emotional film follows Heather, (played by Oscar nominee SALLY HAWKINS), a shy lady who works at a helpline call centre. When she receives a phone call from a mystery man (played by Oscar winner JIM BROADBENT) she has no idea that the encounter will change her life forever.

Mat Kirkby is a commercials/music video director working out of Ridley Scott Associates in London, although he spends much of his time writing screenplays and eating cake. His work includes videos for Adele, Basement Jaxx and Muse and adverts for Nike and Playstation. Mat appeared on the cover of Screen International as a “uK STAR OF TOMORROW”, (although the other ‘stars’ such as Gemma Arterton, Andrew Garfield and Felicity Jones all actually became stars). He is currently developing 3 features, the psychological thriller “CALL GIRL”, biopic “HAIR OF THE DOG” and comedy “WINGMA”’. Mat’s greatest achievement still remains setting the Guinness World Record for ‘most consecutive bikini-waxes in a 24 hr period’ for the Fatboy Slim video ‘Bushes’.

Having already made his way to Hollywood for the Oscar Nominees Luncheon, Mat Kirkby and I had a delightful and funny phone conversation on the inspiration for the short film, what he’ll be wearing on Oscar night and his upcoming feature film.

WAMG: Your film was shown at the St. Louis International Film Festival in November and it received a warm reception.

Mat Kirkby: You know what I do is all these festivals where I can’t go to, which is most of them, that are in wonderful places like St. Louis, I have a look at where the cinema is and when the screening is, I have a little walk on Google maps down the road. (laughs). So I’m there in spirit.

WAMG: Everyone is getting the chance to see it now as it’s playing as part of the OSCAR Nominated Short Film program. People can watch your film in theaters and On-Demand.

MK: It’s incredible, isn’t it? When you think about it, with these feature films, we’ve seen them all – the Oscar campaign and all those big stories. We know who the stars are and we’ve seen the movies, but in our case, we’re only just, at this moment, finding an audience.

WAMG: How did the film come about?

MK: My day job is doing commercials and music videos. One of my colleagues, James, as we were talking at work, discovered both of our mums volunteer for helplines. It’s a funny coincidence. We decided to write the script together as an ode to our mothers as a tribute to them. They are both very selfless and they give up their times with no money or no reward just to help other people. We wanted to celebrate that.

WAMG: What was their reaction on the nomination?

MK: They’re both extremely excited. We just had the Nominee Luncheon and I sent her a picture of Clint Eastwood which she liked.

WAMG: You even made it on The Academy’s Instagram page

MK: I know! We did well. I wore a very loud suit on purpose. I thought I’m going to get in the way here and get on people’s pictures.

WAMG: What’s great is that everyone can follow your road to the Oscar’s on the film’s Facebook and Twitter pages.

MK: It’s funny, isn’t it? I never would have believed it. When we started up our little website, we had one picture and we just filmed a film. I didn’t think it would keep going this long. It’s been great.

WAMG: You tweeted out, “we’re sending on our film to the Academy today.” Like on a lark.

MK: I remember sending that package off and kissing the envelope for good luck. I thought, it’s out of our hands now and off it went. (laughs)

Today we sent our film to the Academy for consideration for the Oscars in early 2015. Wow!!

— The Phone Call (@ThePhoneCall) September 23, 2014

WAMG: How great was it that someone was recording you and James Lucas as you were watching the Nominations announcement!

MK: I saw that. It was recorded on somebody’s phone and I’m so glad. A couple of people have asked what it felt like to get a nomination. I have no idea because my mind went completely blank. It’s like I’m from the Shires – like I’m a Hobbit. He’s not really used to this kind of stuff. I know what my reaction was because there’s video of it. I tend to send them this and say this is what it was like.

WAMG: How did you convince Hawkins, a previous Oscar nominee and Broadbent, an Oscar winner, to be in your film?

MK: We sent them the script. Sally is simply amazing. She read the script, which I couldn’t believe. Then we arranged to meet for a cup of tea, through her agent, and she said, “I’d love to do this. We need to wait for a window in my schedule.” We waited a year. We had to be really tenacious and not go mad and patient because when you’re asking somebody like that to do this massive favor of lending you their talent, we dug our heels in. When we got the call, they asked if we could shoot in two weeks – there’s a window – and we said yes. We filmed with her two weeks after she finished shooting BLUE JASMINE. It’s taken a year longer than it would’ve taken a feature film to get a nomination.

With Jim Broadbent, because she’s the central role and you’ve got to see her, we waited until we got her and then we used her as a carrot. It’s a very good carrot to dangle in front of Jim. The minute we knew she was available then we could call up Jim’s agent. We asked if he was in town and that Sally Hawkins would love to do a short film with him. He was available! It was just sheer luck. It took a year to get her and two hours to get him.

WAMG: Tell me about working with one on the phone and one in front of the camera?

MK: It crossed our minds – what if Jim is not available. How would we technically do this? He was available for both days, so we had a proper phone line going between him and her. We had Sally in an office and we had him in another room and he sat there for two days on the phone. I made him up a little room that his character would inhabit. We got him a comfy chair and put pictures up on the wall to make it feel like the character’s home. I didn’t even point the camera at him.

Funny enough, after the first day, someone said they couldn’t believe we were using Jim Broadbent, an Oscar winner, and we’re not even going to film him. I said, oh, has he won an Oscar? I didn’t realize. If I had known, I probably would have succumbed, but that’s the freedom of making your own short film. It was all done on favors with no expectations.

WAMG: There’s such a nice, natural pacing to the film.

MK: There were 20 pages to the script and Sally did four run-throughs, so that really helped them. There was no start and stop as with a normal film. It’s hard to get back into that moment. We were doing these long takes which meant they were really getting into it and crying every time. We only did about six takes for the main shot we used of her. The only thing that stopped us from continuing was so Sally could clean up from crying and her tears. They’re not pretend ones. You couldn’t just wipe them up. She looked like she had been crying for hours.

WAMG: Who wrote the score – it goes so well with the emotional dialogue.

MK: A friend of mine, Andrew Wallace. He’s amazing and a brilliant pianist. He had a friend who played the saxophone and in the story, you’ve got this little bit about Jim Broadbent’s character being into jazz and he used to play the tenor sax. There’s this bit about a famous jazz club in London called Ronnie Scott’s and we managed to get a fantastic jazz saxophonist and he watched the piece that we already filmed. We showed him the cut and he played it to the picture. The sadness, the mournful tune came straight out of watching it.

There’s a fantastic song at the end by an Irish singer called Carmen Phelan. We were in the edit room and struggling with the end and what music to put there. Andy suggested his friend Carmen and he had some of her songs on his laptop. We had a listen and her song fitted perfectly – all the lyrics were spot on. You can do a commercial and listen to a hundred songs to try to find anything that works and you’re always looking – it was just kind of serendipity I think.

WAMG: It’s a lovely song that by the film’s end you’ve run out of tissues.

MK: It’s funny, I didn’t watch the film purposefully for a little while and there was recent screening where it hit me as well. I know how it’s made so I never hit that emotion that everyone else did. I had to get up and do a Q&A, and I’m crying and had to apologize by saying it was the first time I’d seen it after watching it 500 times in the edit room. It was the first time it got me. Now I know what it feels like as well.

WAMG: Now more people will get to see it.

MK: Yes! I think it goes up to four or five hundred screens across America, which is fantastic because that doesn’t happen in Britain. We don’t get that opportunity like everyone in the States.

Director, Mat Kirkby talking with Sally Hawkins on #ThePhoneCall film shoot. #ShortFilm #BritishFilm pic.twitter.com/M3rOtBvhdU

— The Phone Call (@ThePhoneCall) September 4, 2013

WAMG: What’s next for Mat Kirkby?

MK: In the year the film’s been on the road, I’ve been screenwriting. I’ve sat at home writing a feature film which is completely finished. I’m pitching that now in LA to producers. The success of the short film is what’s enabled me to be in the situation I’m in now where I’m at all the big studios talking to very well-known producers – I’m able to get in the room now.

WAMG: What’s the film about?

MK: It’s a thriller. I’ve gone from teary-jerky to kind of an emotional thriller. With the short, I’d never done tear-jerker before. That’s my first go at it. I’d mostly done comedy before. This thriller that I’ve written is my first go at trying to scare the bejesus out of people. It’s kind of a FATAL ATTRACTION type thing. Imagine if Quentin Tarantino directed FATAL ATTRACTION.

WAMG: Who are you wearing to the Oscars?

MK: We got a call from Burberry, the designers, and they said they’d be honored if we wore their tuxedoes to the Academy Awards. It’s been amazing. We went in and got fitted for them. They loved the film and wanted to help out. People are continuing to help us.

WAMG: If you win, where’s the first place you’ll be going with the statue when you go back to London?

MK: There’s a bakery nearby where I live and there’s a lady who’s promised me a free donut if I bring in the Oscar. I love their rhubarb donuts – they’re really good!

WAMG: Best of luck on the 22nd!

The 2015 Oscar® Nominated Short Films are in theaters and on VOD now.

http://shorts.tv/theoscarshorts/about/

http://thephonecallfilm.com/

Interview – WAMG Talks to FINDING VIVIAN MAIER Directors Charlie Siskel and John Maloof

Film makers Charlie Siskel (left) and John Maloof (right)

2014 turned out to be an exceptional year for feature-length documentaries about artists. A film from 2013, TIM’S VERMEER, opened wide that January and was soon followed by JODOROWSKY’S DUNE, FOR NO GOOD REASON, LIFE, ITSELF, and GLEN CAMPBELL: I’LL BE ME. However, the only art doc to be included in the five nominees for BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE FILM at the 87th Academy Awards is the acclaimed FINDING VIVIAN MAIER. You can read my review here. Recently WAMG was able to speak to the two men behind the film, producer/writer/directors John Maloof (who also narrates the film) and Charlie Siskel.

WAMG: I suppose we should start with you John, since this journey began back in 2007 with your purchase of a box of Maier’s negatives at an auction. You mention in the film that you’d hoped to find some research materials for a historical project. Had you done historical projects for film or multimedia (DVD) before?

John Maloof: Not for video type projects. I had recently purchased a 100 year-old house in the Portage Park neighborhood of Chicago and was collecting materials for a history book about the area surrounding the property.

WAMG: You said in the film that you were familiar with going to auctions and estate sales and such in your youth. Did your family introduce you to that?

JM: Well, I did partner with my family in attending such sales when I was growing, even hitting a occassional flea market a few years ago and setting up a table.

WAMG: So, the building you bought, is that on the North side, the West side (of Chicago)?

JM: Portage Park is a neighborhood on the Northwest side.

WAMG: Oh yes, I’ve got some friends that attend that theatre quite a bit. I had confused it with Rogers Park which factors late in the film. When you started accumulating the work of Vivian Maier you mentioned about submitting or trying to get some museums or cultural facilities interested, including MOMA (the Museum of Modern Art). I’m wondering, with the release of the documentary, if they have been in contact with you after several of the special gallery set-ups and such?

JM: Well, the main reason I contacted them originally was just to get some help in organizing and cataloging the amount of materials. The hundreds of negatives became too time consuming to scan on my own. Mainly I needed help in the scanning process.

Charlie Siskel: I should mention that we did having a screening of the film at MOMA and they helped in digitizing and listening to the Maier audio recordings and their cataloging.

WAMG: Well, It’s certainly a compliment to them that they realized the worth of this artist. I was wondering, John, about how you went about accumulating these pieces that had already been sold off to other parties. Must’ve been like having Christmas several times a year, discovering these new treasures, and even expanding the feature with audio cassettes and film footage. Must have been a startling discovery.

JM: Happily, I was able to acquire the other Maier artifacts without much difficulty at reasonable expensive which helped me in putting some of the pieces on display via the internet and working toward the goal of a public display.

WAMG: I guess then we can jump ahead to the big show at the Cultural Center, It sounded like you had an incredible turn-out for that, I think that this is where you, Charlie, became aware of the work and got involved, is that true?

CS: I had seen the story about these incredible photos in a story I caught one day watching PBS. Of course, I spent a good part of my youth in Chicago. Since much of my family was still there, this report sparked an ongoing interest I’ve had about people with double lives, specifically as it applies to undiscovered artists. It seemed that John’s story could be the basis for a documentary that explored these themes.

WAMG: Yes, It’s a pretty incredible seven-year journey, although I guess it could be eight years now, wouldn’t it John? You said in the documentary you found the first photos in 2007, so it’s quite a trip from there to the red carpet.

JM: We were filming this right through 2009.

WAMG: That would be right after Vivian’s passing, I believe. I had seen (actor/comedian) Jeff Garlin’s name in the credits (as executive producer). Charlie, was he instrumental in inspiring you with the documentary process? Did he help open some doors for you?

CS: Yes, he too was fascinated by her photos. We were stunned by the wonderful images that appeared in our email inboxes, which soon became hundreds of photos. Once we became aware of all the material, the receipts, notes, audio cassettes, and especially the 16mm and 8mm footage we realized that these incredible images told a very compelling story of this woman.

WAMG: I had dabbled in 8mm films in high school and was impressed with the color quality you were able to get, there wasn’t a noticeable amount of damage, I guess they were stored at the correct temperature? Was there any footage that didn’t make the transition, there was nothing that become too brittle to use?

JM: It was all Kodachrome film, so the color saturation was very bright and vivid.

WAMG: I’m assuming the 16mm was black and white?

JM: What we used in the feature was primarily the 8mm then Super 8mm home movie footage of the families.

WAMG: Speaking of the families, it was quite an unexpected treat to see one of the icons of daytime TV involved in this. I guess that cues into tracking down the families. Would you say that about 80 or 90% of the folks you contacted at least agreed to talk to you or be in the film?

CS: Pretty much all the families came on board. Several of the children that were cared for by Vivian are in their 50’s now, but still had strong recollections of their time with her and shared their memories. A couple of her charges paid her expenses for the last years of her life. They didn’t wish to be interviewed or identified, so we respected their wishes. They all recall that camera hanging from her neck.

WAMG: One of the things I came away with from the film was it was startling to them that a person that was sort of in the service industry would have such a rich, creative spirit, and that’s one of the great joys of the film is to see this work and realize this person was able to get out and do this and share with us specifically a Chicago that doesn’t exist anymore. It’s agreat exploration of that and a mystery film, so it works on that level also.

CS: We really wanted to show that artists can come from every walk of life. That everyone could have a secret passion. Vivian, as you said, was in the service industry. Kafka was an accountant. I mean, where are the artists in society? Is it only those in the upper classes, who can attend colleges and training centers? Maybe that person sitting next to you on the bus or train has that artistic spirit.

JM: Vivian didn’t want to be cooped up in an office or a factory. She decided to make her living as a nanny or caregiver in order to be out and about in the world. She enjoyed the freedom of it. Her passion wasn’t limited by her humble beginnings, Vivian was really a romantic.

WAMG: One of the more amusing segments, I enjoyed the two linguistics experts who believed that she was doing a fake French accent, I wondered if they were surprised by the film to learn of her family’s roots in France?

JM: Vivian was born in New York City, though. On her first visit to France in the 1930’s, she didn’t speak the language at all. But when she returned in the 1940’s, she spoke French fluently.

WAMG: I’d imagine she heard a lot of French growing up, in the household?

CS: It’s interesting that we did have a screening at the Portage theatre for many of those people featured. When I went out to the lobby after the film’s ending I spotted those two experts still arguing about Vivian’s accent.

WAMG: I was looking over your resume, Charlie, I saw that you were mostly on the production side of TV and films, has this film inspired you to direct more feature film projects?

CS: Directing on this project blurred the line between the writing and producing work I’ve done on different projects. I had the luxury of learning from the guerrilla style film making working with Michael Moore. The storytelling really came together by having someone to bounce ideas off of. The interviews might alter the story of Vivian, so luckily I had John, the detective of the story, making sure that we were on the right track.

JM: We were able to sift through the different stories and test each other a bit.

WAMG: It occurred to me that some documentaries become the basis for dramatic films like GREY GARDENS, have there been any inquiries or have you explored the idea of turning this into a stage play or a dramatic feature film?

CS: There’s been some talk with Killer Films, but nothing’s has been set.

WAMG: I’ll wrap things up by asking about your Oscar nomination morning story. Were you waiting up to hear the news live? Were you awakened by a phone call?

JM: Charlie called me! (laughs)

CS: (laughs) Yeah, I had the liveblast set, but I woke up beforehand. I threw on my bathrobe, grabbed a cup, and logged in to the live streaming broadcast just in time to hear the announcement.

WAMG: What a great way to start the day! Will you be showing the film out there? I know there’s a documentary day at the Oscars.

CS: It’s going to be a whirlwind couple of days out there. We will be showing the film on “Doc Day”.

JM: The nomination and ceremony is wonderful, but the best thing to come out of this is the attention focused open Vivian Maier’s remarkable work. So many people will be aware of her because of the Oscars.

WAMG: It’s a terrific film. As the young folks say, “It’s got all the feels.”, it’s funny at times, it’s tragic. it’s involving, as I said, a great detective story, and I’d don’t know what the proper things is to say. With the theatre you’re supposed to say, “Break a leg”, I don’t know if I should wish you good luck, but I hope all goes well at the big show.

CS & JM: Thank you

WAMG: And thanks you for a great film. It’s always wonderful to tell folks about a film that’s well worth their time.

FINDING VIVIAN MAIER is available on home video, streaming services, and via premium cable TV channels

Interview – WAMG Talks To KINGSMAN: THE SECRET SERVICE Composer Matthew Margeson

If there’s one film you need to see this weekend, it’s KINGSMAN: THE SECRET SERVICE. It’s funny, it’s fast-paced and it’s one insane, entertaining experience. Catch this one in the theater and with a crowd!

Based upon the acclaimed comic book and directed by Matthew Vaughn (Kick Ass, X-Men First Class), KINGSMAN: THE SECRET SERVICE tells the story of a super-secret spy organization that recruits an unrefined but promising street kid into the agency’s ultra-competitive training program just as a global threat emerges from a twisted tech genius.

Composers Henry Jackman (CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE WINTER SOLDIER) and Matthew Margeson score the spy action adventure comedy. This is the second collaboration between Jackman and Margeson, who had worked previously on KICK ASS 2. The duo supplied the soundtrack for the star-studded KINGSMAN with Oscar winners Colin Firth and Michael Caine, Oscar nominee Samuel L. Jackson, and newcomer Taron Egerton. The film also features Sophie Cookson, Mark Strong, and Mark Hamill.

Matthew Margeson is part of Hans Zimmer’s exclusive Remote Control team, and is known for his powerful arrangements and his ability to make audiences fall in love with the music instead of the movie. Margeson composed Position Music Orchestral Series Volume 5, and has provided additional music to the scores of KICK ASS, THE EXPENDABLES, and X-MEN: FIRST CLASS.

Matthew Margeson’s additional music is also featured in video games such as Monsters vs. Aliens, Lego Universe, Socom U.S. Navy Seals: Combined Assault.

Jackman and Margeson’s score for KINGSMAN delivers nail biting action sequences while emphasizing the heart of the film which lie in the relationship between Firth and Egerton.

Listen to a few tracks HERE.

During my recent phone conversation with Mr. Margeson, we discussed the importance of music in all of Matthew Vaughn’s films, how to “Vaughnesize” a movie, the use of Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Free Bird” during one memorable scene, as well as his work on the upcoming SCOUTS vs. ZOMBIES.

WAMG: The film is quite a ride. Your score is a nod and wink to spy movies.

Matthew Margeson: We wanted to make it our own thing, but we definitely needed to remind ourselves it is a spy genre film.

WAMG: You’ve collaborated on KICK-ASS 2 with Henry Jackman and now on the KINGSMAN. How did the two of you get involved in Matthew Vaughn’s film?

MM: It goes back quite a few years. There were four composers on the first KICK-ASS – Marius De Vries, John Murphy, Ilan Eshkeri and Henry Jackman. There are a couple of cues where Henry was brought in, for whatever reason, and there were four of them on the project.

I think one of Matthew Vaughn’s producers went to school with Henry, so that was the initial introduction. On KICK-ASS, one of the cues on the score at the end, in the fight between Hit-Girl and Frank, Matthew was still a little unhappy with this cue. All the other composers were recording with the orchestra – they were past writing and were all on the stage recording for a week straight. There was a big question mark – how are we going to get this cue right? Henry was trusting enough to say to Matthew Vaughn, “I’ve got this friend I’ve worked with back in Los Angeles, we should give him some direction over the phone and see if we can whip something up in the next 24 hours.”

I got this phone call at eight, nine p.m. and Henry says, “listen, we’ve got a bit of an emergency and we need to rework this fight cue and send a pass back to Matthew in a day.” I did this piece and Matthew reacted really well to it. Henry worked with him throughout the film and that was my first introduction to working with Matthew Vaughn, even though it was in an indirect way.

When it came time to do a sequel to that movie, he really enjoyed what Henry did and his contribution to the pie, so he called Henry to do the score. Henry was on a couple of different projects at the same time and really wanted to do it. He said he couldn’t prepare to write an hour and twenty minutes worth of music for this score by himself, but suggested co-composers on the film with the young lad who wrote the “Frank fight” on the first KICK-ASS and Matthew took a little bit of a leap of faith. It let me take a big part of the responsibility off of Henry’s plate and we put our heads together and got it done together, while splitting the workload.

WAMG: From what you’re describing, it sounds like Matthew Vaughn really takes a vested interest in the scores for his films.

MM: He’s more involved than any other filmmaker I’ve worked with. The other extreme being someone who shoots the film and edits it, and hands it over to you and says, “here, do your thing.” What I love about working with Matthew is he’s invested in the whole entire process in post. He’ll be sitting there with the editor for days and days. We’re in Los Angeles and he’s in London, where we’ll skype or face chat, and we’ll have these daily meetings with him and he’s very clear in steering us on what he wants.

He really likes to be involved with the music. When we go to the final mix for his films, a lot of the times if you’re doing action or chase cues, with massive explosions and bullets flying across the screen, I know music is not going to win that fight. We take that into consideration. But on a Matthew Vaughn movie, when I say there’s a huge explosion there and I’m not going to win, he’ll be the first to say, “I’m in charge of what’s going to win and make the music louder.” We never have a problem with not being able to hear any of the music in a Vaughn film. An awesome position for us to be in.

WAMG: It’s a dark film. It’s a funny film. The soundtrack is very over-the-top, while being a fairly traditional score.

MM: Yes! I hate to use this cliché, but that’s part of the wink in the score and something Matthew wanted us to keep in mind the whole time we were writing. No matter what’s up on the screen, you should always be having fun. Part of the way we accomplished in this one are those moments that are so over-the-top, that you’re laughing with them. You are feeling for those characters, but at the same time it is a comic-book film. You’re always enjoying yourself and you can’t put the popcorn in your mouth fast enough, because you’re trying to keep up with the pace of the film.

WAMG: There are some great percussion cues throughout, especially in the “explosive heads” scenes.

MM: We experimented with a lot of different cues over that scene and we found what really worked was re-recording “Pomp and Circumstance.” We needed to “Vaughnesize” it and basically took Elgar’s orchestration and added some extra percussion, some extra guitars and gave it a slightly contemporary, bit more edgy theme for this world. It was an opportunity to work with the visual because everything is synced up with the explosions, so we were able to get involved with the visual effects department. We were able to tweak little things here and there to make it become a set piece. It was definitely a lot of fun.

WAMG: Who chose the songs that show up throughout, such as “Free Bird” and “Money for Nothing”?

MM: The music supervisor usually goes through a whole catalogue of songs to see what fits. I usually get involved to see if there’s an underscore cue that goes into the song or for technical consideration to make sure what key it’s in and tempo – that kind of thing. Because MARV films, the production company, in one of the five majors, Matthew will sit there and throw different things up there.

With “Free Bird,” that was one of those things that was placed in there very early on and it stuck. We tried different arrangements of “Free Bird” and since it’s set in a Baptist church in the middle of the U.S., we tried a blue-grass version. Ultimately it was just getting the multi-track from the original and doing our own deconstruction of it, because that scene is quite long.

Even though I wasn’t involved with picking “Free Bird,” I was eventually given the film because if you remember, at the very end, it breaks down to almost a piano/choir version of it when Harry is coming out of his trance and that was one instance where I did have to get involved to write with the song, so I guess I can now say that I’ve worked with Lynyrd Skynyrd. (laughs)

WAMG: The use of vocals and choir really add to the score.

MM: We had to pick and choose our moments for that because once you use a choir, there’s immediately an epicness about it. And there are moments for that in this film.

WAMG: Samuel L. Jackson’s bad guy, Valentine, has a unique sound and theme. How did that come about?

MM: As far as thematic material, his vibe was one of the most difficult times we had to really nail down. We had a tune for him that we wrote very early on, but we had to rewrite it a few times to crack the encasement of it and how it’s presented. Valentine is basically a little boy, a cartoon character – his hat is sideways and he’s funky dressed. Henry and I felt we had to play against that and make his music extremely serious – almost Wagnerian.

Although Matthew liked the tune, he felt we weren’t having enough fun. He said, “he’s a tech mogul with plans of taking over the world.” Playing out his evil scheme is with his cell phones, so Henry and I started thinking about telephones. What are some of the components we think of? Back in the 80’s and before, when you would call someone, and you couldn’t get on touch with them, you’d get a busy signal. We tried to recreate that – recorded some dial tones and busy signals and putting them through the effects chamber. Slowing them down and playing them backwards. Just doing all sorts of experiments with them in the lab here and eventually we came up with this weird, twisted reverse tone.

WAMG: It’s very effective – it really works.

MM: Thank you very much. I can proudly say it hasn’t been done before and we managed to come up with one kind of sound that you’ve never heard before in a film. It was a way to remind the viewer that Valentine is from that kind of world of cell phones and tech and how we can sprinkle that throughout the score, especially in his areas.

WAMG: After you hear it a few times, you realize it’s done on purpose.

MM: You kind of latch onto it after a while.

WAMG: How did you originally get into music? Were you the typical “band kid” at school?

MM: Yes. I started playing the piano really young. I did the whole band thing in school and at a certain point did a lot of musical theater. I was in the pit band and directing small orchestras for regional theater, and then ironically, I was working at a small video rental store in my hometown, so I was able to sit there all day and watch films. I noticed there was music throughout these movies and somebody has to be doing it. The John Williams and Alan Silvestri scores really stick with you when you’re that age while you’re watching Indiana Jones and Back to the Future. I think all those random thought processes, and being involved in directing musical theater, led me to drive out to LA and to see how I could get involved in film music.

WAMG: This must have helped with your work on INTO THE WOODS.

MM: It was such a fulfilling job to be part of INTO THE WOODS. I’m such a huge Sondheim fan and being from that world many years ago, it was really nice to get the opportunity to dive into some of those scores and to work with Rob Marshall who’s on the top of that game as far as musical theater and those movies go. It was a real treat to work on that film.

WAMG: Is there a KINGSMAN 2 in the works?

MM: I would love to tell you that I have some inside information – I know we’ve always joked about it, but a lot of it depends on how the film does. If Matthew is up for it and wants to do another one, I think we would. It’s a lot of fun and we’ve gotten a lot of good buzz from the screenings.

WAMG: How’s your upcoming project, SCOUTS vs. ZOMBIES, which I can’t wait for, coming along? (Stars Tye Sheridan and Logan Miller – slated to open October 30, 2015)

MM: When I first got involved with it, I was a little skeptical and when I sat down to watch the film I said, what do I need to do to work on this project! It is absolutely hysterical and absolutely scary at the same time.

I can promise you, it’s got some really great laughs and some awesome creepy moments too and you have Boy Scouts and Zombies, so it’s a good recipe.

WAMG: I was glad to see the movie is being released at the end of October now.

MM: After many meetings, they decided they had great success in releasing this kind of movie at Halloween. It’s a good time of year for that film and after everyone Trick-or-Treats, they’re going to want something to do.

I’m pretty sure there will be an R rating, so it does have some good action and some good chases, while at the same time, again like KINGSMAN, you’re laughing with the film. It’s a hoot.

WAMG: Is the score done, have you started recording it?

MM: Today I’m starting the last cue of the film that I need to write and get approved. We’re on the very tail end of it and we’re recording with the orchestra at the beginning of March. Some of it has been shipped off to orchestration, getting it on paper and we’ll be recording in two or three weeks.

WAMG: Thanks to Matthew Margeson for taking the time to talk to us.

The KINGSMAN: THE SECRET SERVICE soundtrack will be released on La La Land Records, February 17, 2015.

Order it here: http://www.lalalandrecords.com/Site/Kingsman.html

Order it on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Kingsman-Service-Original-Picture-Soundtrack/dp/B00T76W2ZY/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1423772330&sr=8-2&keywords=kingsman+soundtrack

The movie opens in cinemas Friday, February 13, 2015.

Read Jim Batts’ review here.

WAMG Checks in With Composer Christopher Lennertz On THE WEDDING RINGER, HORRIBLE BOSSES 2, “Galavant” And “Agent Carter”

Scoring Sessions

From scores featuring Horrible Bosses, Marvel Agents, and Knights to movie soundtracks starring Kevin Hart and more Kevin Hart, Christopher Lennertz hasn’t slowed his TV/film composing pace since we last interviewed him during the release of THINK LIKE A MAN TOO.

With audiences embracing HORRIBLE BOSSES 2 after its November 2014 opening (as of Dec. 28, 2014: $93M worldwide), I recently spoke with Lennertz about the sequel, his upcoming films THE WEDDING RINGER and RIDE ALONG 2, as well as composing for ABC’s new musical comedy, “Galavant” and “Marvel’s Agent Carter.”

WAMG: Coming up on January 16th is THE WEDDING RINGER. Audiences from the early screenings are saying it’s very funny.

CL: It’s getting really great feedback. The NSFW red-band trailer is absolutely hilarious. The movie is described as THE HANGOVER meets SOMETHING ABOUT MARY. The funny thing about it is it looks like a crazy guys movie the way OLD SCHOOL or ROAD TRIP was. If you go with a date, it’s also got a romance to it. It has Kaley Cuoco-Sweeting in it – it’s really a movie for everybody. The great thing about THE WEDDING RINGER is that people will be talking about it for weeks.

Both it and HORRIBLE BOSSES 2 have some great lines that people will be quoting for the next couple of months. This film is more fun than you’re supposed to have in a movie theater. It’s a fun ride.

WAMG: You wrote the score for the original Horrible Bosses and people loved seeing what Bateman, Day and Sudeikis have been up to since we last saw them.

CL: And Jennifer Aniston

WAMG: She steals the movie, doesn’t she?

CL: She’s perfect!

WAMG: Was it good to be back on the second film?

CL: Yes! When I heard they were making it I knew I wanted to be a part of it. Sean Anders knew he didn’t want to change the characters at all and a continuation of their story. I was totally on board with that. Sean really respected what the first movie did. He was really great!

WAMG: Being that you worked on the original movie, how did you approach the score for Horrible Bosses 2?

CL: I’ve come to learn through my own love of movies, that I want to feel comfort. When I see ROCKY 3, I want to hear the ROCKY theme. When I go to a James Bond movie, I want to hear the Bond theme. I wanted the sequel to feel like HORRIBLE BOSSES and sound like the original HORRIBLE BOSSES. There were some new twists that were easy to do with new characters like Chris Pine and Christoph Waltz.

Plus the guys are in a different situation because they felt they had gotten rid of the horrible bosses and had it figured out. We learned very quickly that’s not the case.

Scoring Sessions

WAMG: Audiences really loved the song choices. They fit perfectly with all the physical comedy that included Pearl Jam guitarist Michael McCready and Dave Matthews Band bassist Stefan Lessard. It added a rock-n’-roll edge to the sequel.

CL: What we started on the first movie, and continued on in this one, was that we wanted viewers to feel the music in the movie would be the songs the guys would be listening to inside their own heads. Like when the guys are thinking about the kidnapping, what music would Charlie Day be listening to on his own iPad if he was doing a kidnapping? That was the way we figured out what the sound was supposed to be. It was mix of Beastie Boys meets Pearl Jam meets Black Keys as well as The Clash’s POLICE ON MY BACK, Macklemore & Ryan Lewis CAN’T HOLD US plus BRIAN KILGORE on percussion.

Screenwriter/executive producer Dan Fogelman (Crazy, Stupid, Love, Tangled, Cars) teams up with Broadway and Hollywood award-winning musical team — composer Alan Menken (The Little Mermaid, Aladdin, Beauty and the Beast) and lyricist Glenn Slater (The Little Mermaid, Tangled) — for 4-week comedy extravaganza. Once upon a time, the dashing hero, Galavant (Joshua Sasse) lost the love of his life, Madalena (Mallory Jansen), to the evil King Richard (Timothy Omundson). Now, our fallen hero is ready to take revenge and restore his “happily ever after.” But it won’t be without a few twists and turns along the way.

WAMG: Judging by the trailer for “Galavant,” the show looks like so much fun.

CL: It is and a whole different thing for me. I have the opportunity to work with Alan Menken who revitalized Disney over the last couple of decades. Nobody writes better songs and melodies than Alan. I get to work with him on that and write the score for this crazy show that’s basically the closest thing anyone in America has ever done to Monty Python.

It’s pretty fantastic and so very different. “Galavant” is really for adults – it’s not a kids show.

I have that plus the new show from Marvel – “Agent Carter” – premiering the same week. It’s a 1940’s-period TV show with Captain America’s kickass girlfriend. I’m working on a lot of different things right now. I’ve got a lot of projects coming out in January.

“Marvel’s Agent Carter” – It’s 1946 and peace has dealt Agent Peggy Carter (Hayley Atwell), a serious blow as she finds herself marginalized when the men return home from fighting abroad. Working for the covert SSR (Strategic Scientific Reserve), Peggy finds herself stuck doing administrative work when she would rather be back out in the field, putting her vast skills into play and taking down the bad guys. But she is also trying to navigate life as a single woman in America, in the wake of losing the love of her life, Steve Rogers – aka Captain America. When old acquaintance Howard Stark (Dominic Cooper, “Marvel’s Captain America: The First Avenger”) finds himself being framed for unleashing his deadliest weapons to anyone willing to pony up the cash, he contacts Peggy — the only person he can trust — to track down those responsible, dispose of the weapons and clear his name. He empowers his butler, Edwin Jarvis (James D’Arcy), to be at her beck and call when needed to help assist her as she investigates and tracks down those responsible for releasing these weapons of mass destruction. If caught going on these secret missions for Stark, Peggy could be targeted as a traitor and spend the rest of her days in prison – or worse.

WAMG: Has work started on RIDE ALONG 2?

CL: It is already shot and in the can. I’ve seen a screening of it – it’s great and has turned into a huge action movie which is kind of fun!

Most of this one takes place in Miami, so it’s beautiful to look at along with some great boat chases. I’ll be writing the music for it in January or February. The movie will be out in 2016.

RIDE ALONG 2 stars Ice Cube, Kevin Hart, Benjamin Bratt, Olivia Munn, Sherri Shepherd and Ken Jeong. Tim Story will direct.

http://instagram.com/icecube/

“Galavant” premieres Sunday, January 4 on ABC. http://abc.go.com/shows/galavant

“Marvel’s Agent Carter” premieres Tuesday, January 6 on ABC: http://abc.go.com/shows/marvels-agent-carter

THE WEDDING RINGER opens in theaters on January 16. http://www.sonypictures.com/movies/theweddingringer/

HORRIBLE BOSSES 2 soundtrack album is available on WATERTOWER MUSIC. http://www.watertower-music.com/releases_spotlight.php?search=WTM39615_horrible2

Composer John Powell Talks HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON 2 & His New Oratorio

In June 2014, moviegoers traveled to the village of Berk once again in HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON 2. The film’s composer, John Powell, recently won Best Score – Animated Film for the movie at 5th Annual Hollywood Music in Media Awards.

Powell has scored films including Antz, Chicken Run, Shrek, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, and X-Men: The Last Stand and has frequently collaborated with directors Doug Liman and Paul Greengrass, on films including the BOURNE trilogy, UNITED 93 and GREEN ZONE.

His infectious score for HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON earned him his first Academy Award nomination. Powell has also lent his voice to the score of DR. SEUSS’ THE LORAX, and ICE AGE 4: CONTINENTAL DRIFT. Most recently, audiences heard his music on the scores to RIO 2, directed by Carlos Saldanha, as well as the DRAGON 2 sequel.

With the latest adventures of Hiccup and Toothless released on DVD in November, we caught up with the composer to discuss his music on DRAGON, his break from film scoring and his oratorio called “The Prussian Requiem” to commemorate World War I, premiering in London in 2016.

WAMG: For those who follow what’s going on in the world of movies and film composers, you’ve been in the news a lot lately. You recently won Best Score – Animated Film for How To Train Your Dragon 2 at 5th Annual Hollywood Music in Media Awards. The sequel came out on DVD in November. You went to the Governors Awards ceremony.

John Powell: I seem to have been at everything recently, I must admit. Our producer, Bonnie Arnold, she’s been taking me to all these things. We went to the Britannia Awards – I think she just took me because I’m British – then the Governors Awards.

We went to the Hollywood Film Awards where we won Best Animation, which was great.

WAMG: What was it like to be there, because watching from home, it looked hilarious.

JP: It was great fun. I sat behind Keira Knightley and Benedict Cumberbatch and Harvey Weinstein. It was kind of like hanging out inside your TV, it was very odd.

WAMG: It was really funny when Jennifer Lopez got up on stage and called it “How To Drain Your Dragon.”

JP: We’ve called it all sorts of names, much worse than that. (laughs) Yeah, that was cool.

WAMG: DRAGON 2 is another fantastic score. You’ve really outdone yourself with the music and it’s a really sophisticated kind of soundtrack. Were you surprised initially on how well the first movie was received?

JP: Yes. I said this at the time – you try your best on every movie – whether it’s a good movie or a bad movie. I absolutely give it my all. And that one I absolutely gave my all to. The interesting thing, I worked for so long with Jeffrey Katzenberg, but I’d always been in collaboration with other composers – Hans (Zimmer) and Harry (Gregson-Williams) – and strangely enough this was the first one I had done on my own. So it was a slightly different environment I found myself in. I probably felt that I had to show Jeffrey that I can do it on my own, in case he thinks I can’t.

He’s never even suggested he didn’t have complete faith in me, but because I had always been there with somebody else, it would always be kind of a game we’d play about who can re-write a cue better than each other – whether it’s Hans/me or Harry/me – we’d constantly battle over these cues together with Jeffrey and really try and get something good.

On the first DRAGON, I thought I’ve got to make sure I get every cue right and the tunes as well. Often when you’re with Hans, and you’re working on tunes – he’s very good at tunes, he sorts out tunes easy – if you’ve got a problem with a tune or Jeffrey doesn’t like a tune, you just throw it to him. With HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON, I had to get the tunes just right and it was a struggle. Often I spent quite a lot of time finalizing and getting the balance of the tunes as I wrote the cues. But with DRAGONS 2, obviously it was really a question of we had all the tunes from the original movie and Jeffrey liked those, but my director rather smartly had denied everybody the first movie’s soundtrack temped into this film – he just wouldn’t do it, he refused to do it.

There was lots of BATMAN BEGINS and all sorts of things (laughs). Until very near the end, there was no music from DRAGON 1. That made it harder for them as filmmakers and would have made their lives easier to have that initial relief that the score was going to work the same way. Until I really started writing it, they couldn’t relax and it gave me a chance to write a whole load of new material and a new way of working. I think it gave us a chance to mature the score as the film matured, as you say, make it a little more sophisticated, while hanging onto the same “heart” that it comes from.

WAMG: There are many new emotional elements to the story and score. You have the mother-son story and your lovely track “Flying With Mother“. How’d that track in particular come about.

JP: They had lots of material, nothing from the first film except a little bit in the front and they had a song by Jonsi written for that moment that you’re talking about and it was light for quite a long time until near the end. There was something about the structure of the film and having a song at that point, everybody kind of tuned out because it was a song, I suppose it may be felt a little bit less like you were you’re inside the scene.

Right at the last moment, I had to score that moment as well. I hadn’t expected that and it’s a tune I call “Lost and Found”. It starts when you see Valka being taken away – where Hiccup loses his mother as a baby. That tune starts there and it runs throughout the movie. I was really trying to make sure it worked when Hiccup and Toothless get back together after his hypnotic state with Drago.

Then I have to make this joyful moment with is mother and that was a real puzzle as I hadn’t expecting it to be joyful. It had been desgined to be honorable and heroic and tragic at some points. I never thought of it as being upbeat, so it took me awhile to get that tune to work there. I was pleased with it myself.

WAMG: Who said, “we need to get together with Jonsi for the end title song, Where No One Goes?”

JP: Jonsi is a very good friend of Dean’s (DeBlois), our director, and they’ve known each other for years now. Dean is a huge fan of the band Sigur Rós. When it came to the first movie and Jonsi gave us this song off his new album, “Stick and Stones,” I just liked it because it was so different. Not what you expect in an end title, because they can be awfully kind of sickly and sloshy. I was very pleased we went that direction.

When it came to this film, Dean said to me, “Would you like to work with Jonsi on some things for the movie?” Of course I said yes because I’ve always liked Sigur Rós and their music. So we got to write the song that the mother and father sing together and we got to work on the end song which is basically a remix of some of the material from the first movie for the Hiccup and Toothless flying tune. I gave Jonsi a load of new versions of that and he wrote a song around it. It feels like the DNA of the movie and Jonsi’s style for the end titles of DRAGON 1. We did a fully finished version of that for the end titles as well where we rolled into that through that last section as they’re wrapping up the movie.

WAMG: The drums really tie it all together.

JP: Yes, very much. The drummer is from Finland that Jonsi loves and lets him go wild. There’s all this crazy drumming going on. I just threw in some of the string licks and some of the melodies from the flying stuff. It sits well under dialogue that way as you hit the end title and we can go into the song proper as Jonsi comes in singing.

WAMG: The choral parts streamed throughout gives it this operatic feel.

JP: Right! I’ve always loved working with voices. Voices give you this instant humanity. You can write them nondescript and they’ll blend into the background like an orchestral color. But if you bring them forward, you can use them a little more aggressively within the orchestration style.

One of the ways to do that is to put words with it. There’s a few places where they are singing words. You were talking about the mother and child reunion as it were in the middle of the movie that has some words in Gaelic which is a Scottish language. I found some poems from the 17th century and I used some lines from those. That whole section is sung in Gaelic and allows the voices to use a little more rhythm once they’ve got words to hang onto.

It’s not unconnected that I’m working on an oratorio, so I probably wrote quite heavily for the choir as an experiment.

WAMG: If I can go back to one of your earlier works, CHICKEN RUN. The film and score are still lively and funny. How has writing for animation films changed for you over the years?

JP: I was brought up watching all sorts of animation – Disney, Warner Bros., Chuck Jones – Tom & Jerry. Then I became a teenager and I really loved “Ren & Stimpy” and “The Animaniacs”. My favorite is “Freakazoid!”. I’ve never been into Anime. I must admit that’s the only animation style I’ve not really liked – I don’t know why. Except for Miyazaki, he transcends the style. All this other animation that I was brought up on, it went in without me thinking about it. I get to Hollywood and I’m looking around for gigs and Hans introduces me to Jeffrey and we start working on PRINCE OF EGYPT. I just fell into animation and it happens that I really enjoy it! I love the artwork, I love the styles of animation that DreamWorks has done, that Blue Sky has done. I’m a huge fan of Pixar.

There are such great animators around at the moment – it’s a real Golden Age. I’ve really loved working with all these people. I’ve loved the way they tell stories. In a way, I love them more than live action because often it’s not so obsessed with a warrior and fighting and violence, I mean I’ve done my fair share of that. I’d like to see if I can bring something into the world that’s more about beauty or joy.

WAMG: One of your other scores is DRUMLINE. The drums seems to be prevalent in many of your films. Do you tend to gravitate to a heavy percussive sound in general?

JP: I’m not sure I do it deliberately. With everyone’s style, if you look at how people sound – why is it I sound the way I sound, why does Hans sound the way he sounds, why does John Williams sound the way he does? Over our lives, you experience lots of different types of music and it’s during those moments – and it doesn’t matter if you’re 3 or 30 – you’re struck by some special piece of music or one sound in a piece of music that it becomes what I call a fetish and you just love it so much. The trumpet solo from AN AMERICAN IN PARIS, from the sexy kind of dance in that. That trumpet sound to me is perfection. It’s a moment when one trumpet is playing a tune, admittedly by Gershwin, a genius, but the playing of it as well expresses every longing any human being has ever felt. It was the deepest and most earthly lustful sound I’d ever heard.

For my whole life, if I have a trumpet line, I’m forever obsessing about how close to that sound I can get. You don’t do it in the front of your brain, you do it in the back of your brain. In the ten thousand moments in my life, up until now that I’ve loved obsessively just as a listener and they’re all in there and they’re all trying to get out all the time. That’s what’s constantly within the sound of anything I’m trying to do.

As far as percussion, when I was at music college, I remember being introduced to the room where they had record players and a collection of World Music and I’d never heard any World Music before. I’m in there listening to the drummers of Burundi and lots and lots of West African drumming, and Tibetan Music and all of it was eye opening. I was in college studying music composition and Brahms and Beethoven, but to have this access to all this World Music, which at the time was hard to find and I didn’t have the money to have big record collection, was remarkable. What I had amassed up to that point was only Classical records and suddenly here was a thousand records that I would have never bought on my own and I’m sifting through and l listening to these amazing things.

That particular fetish started then. (laughs) The strange thing, when it came to DRUMLINE, I was offered it because the director liked something I’d already done. For me being British, and it was quite a while ago when I did it, a marching band was not something that you would ever think of as the pinnacle of musical achievement. The marching band is something you would try to avoid. I didn’t realize there is this incredible tradition, so the director and Fox said, “No, no, we’re going to send you a DVD” and it was all these Southern bands. I couldn’t believe it, they were funky as hell! This was not my expectation and I didn’t know any of this world at all.

Getting this DVD and hearing this stuff, I was completely surprised. I said yes immediately. I met with the director (Marc Lawrence) and we started work on it. It opened my eyes to another source of really interesting drumming styles and percussion styles that I’d never have gotten to otherwise. That was a really lucky moment and that style has definitely been filtering into my scoring every year since. It was a seminal moment for me as far as percussion goes. Any appearance of my disapproval of that style of music was completely blown apart once I saw this.

One of the things I had to do a lot of was matching the percussion players. Every time you’re seeing people playing the big bass drum, they sound great if you’ve got fifty of them playing out on the field – you can’t get that bottom end from them. Every time you see it and it sounds nice and rich and warm, that’s me with a 808 drum kit. We went back in to make sure it really kicked and there are all sorts of fun tricks we had to do to make sure it sounded really good. There’s a little bit of the Earth, Wind and Fire horns going on whenever you hear the hero band and they stayed as funky as the band in the film – they just added a little tuning perfection that allowed us to push it up a little more.

A lot of the drum battles, between the drummers, were rerecorded with a very famous drummer who was the only one who could watch them and listen to them and then recreate what they were doing so we could get the sound better sometimes. There were little tricks but the drumming you see is as it was. We kind of gave it that Hollywood thing.

WAMG: Sounds like you really enjoy going between the two genres.

JP: I seem to have gotten out of live-action recently. Partly because I was getting bored with the music I was being asked to write for. They tended to be trying to get the music to be less and less. One film I was doing where I’m asked to come up with a three note tune and the director asked me if I really needed all three. At that point, I wondered if I really want to do this.

Again, you tend to get stuck into action films, they tend to be violent, they were getting pernicious. I didn’t feel as if I was doing myself or the world any good. I found I was enjoying writing for all these animation films. It’s very hard work and more notes, but you get to write more tuneful music, more joyful music.

WAMG: Will you do DRAGON 3 before your oratorio that you’re working on?

JP: Well yes. The idea is that 2017 now is DRAGON 3 and I’ll definitely do that one. Between now and then, I’ve got the oratorio in London in the spring of 2016. We’ll record it at the end of next summer.

WAMG: So you’re still working on it.

JP: Yes. Absolutely.

WAMG: Will you score KUNG FU PANDA 3?

JP: I don’t know about that one. I doubt that very much. There are plenty of people who can do that.

WAMG: IMDB has you listed on ZOOTOPIA.

JP: Ah no. But if it’s a sequel to ZOOLANDER, I’ll definitely do that! (Laughs)

WAMG: Your oratorio – if you had to compare it to classical, traditional composers, will it sound like Handel or Bach?

JP: That’s a very good question. Does it sound like me in Hollywood or does it sound like me before? Before I came to Hollywood, I was a little bit more radical sounding so I’m not really sure yet. One of the things that I’m fascinated by at the moment is polyphony, so I’m studying more polyphony and I think I’m trying to make it sound more polyphonic than one would expect these days. I’m trying to see if I can do something interesting with that idea now – maybe refresh it. It hasn’t been used an awful lot.

The piece itself is a story driven by a man who took a moment in history and stood between the chance of peace and the chance of war. His own pride made us go to World War I and basically destroyed the 20th century. Everything bad that is still happening, you can trace to this one moment in history at the end of July in 1914. The Kaiser had the option to negotiate with France and/or Russia so that he wasn’t fighting on all fronts. If he had only fought on one front, the whole first war may have been very different. Maybe it wouldn’t have become a world war with so many Allies being brought in. It may have become a war but not a war that setup the whole of the 20th century’s downfall in a way. It may have not led to the second world war, the rise of Hitler, the rise of Communism, it goes on and on and on. There’s a whole political view I have of the 20th century.

It’s what we’re still dealing with based on the futility of this moment of a man with hubris and pride. He worked on the Schlieffen plan for ten years and he came from a hugely famous Prussian military family, he had a lot to live up to and there was no way he was going to let them negotiate peace at that moment before the war started. He wanted his place in history and he wasn’t going let any of it stop him. At that moment when all the negotiations could happen, he was persuaded that it was never going to work.

The final name of the oratorio is called “The Prussian Requiem” because Prussia, where he came from and was part of Germany, was basically wiped off the map at the end of the first world war. It had such a political hold over Germany the Allies decided this is where all the problems were coming from, so they got rid of it as a place and it became just Germany. Prussia was a country until 1918, so we call it “The Prussian Requiem”. It’s a requiem for the 20th century, for the people that died and I’ve wanted to write about it for a long time.

The main thing is that I wanted to make sure I had the time to make it right and that we had the right choir and the right orchestra playing it, which is the Philharmonia Orchestra – one of the most exquisite in the world. We’re doing it at the Royal Festival Hall as part of their season and I’m very pleased when it’s going to happen. We’re recording it next year.

I’m also hoping with the orchestra to try and record an album of suites of film music. I’m going to reinterpret some of the music I’ve done from films – some quite radically. There are moments in some of the pieces that are like suites and you just want to end them differently to finish the musical idea, tie them all up as well as add a few fun things that people haven’t heard before. Probably eight movies, eight suites that we can perform live with orchestras around the world and make an album of it. It will come out at Christmas next year.

The How to Train Your Dragon 2 soundtrack is available on Relativity Records.

SLIFF 2014 Interview: Wyatt Weed – Director of FOUR COLOR EULOGY

FOUR COLOR EULOGY will screen at 3:00pm Sunday, November 23rd at the Tivoli Theater as part of the St. Louis International Film Festival. Ticket information can be found HERE

Shot in the St. Louis area by the team behind SHADOWLAND, FOUR COLOR EULOGY is a dramatic comedy that shows it’s never too late to let go of the past or to create a new future. Growing up the only child of a single mother, aspiring comic-book creator Chris (Jason Contini) escaped St. Louis 10 years ago and moved to Portland, Ore., with girlfriend Anne to forge a new life. But when Chris learns that his mother is ill, he and Anne have no choice but to pack up their lives and move back home. Uprooted, his life completely disrupted, Chris is forced to face both his mother’s mortality and a nagging childhood question: Who was his father and why wasn’t he around? With the help of longtime buddy Brian, a pop-culture geek, and family friend Rich, a bartender with a secret, Chris will have to determine what’s ultimately more important: the hero’s origins or his ongoing journey.

Wyatt Weed, the director of both SHADOWLAND and FOUR COLOR EULOGY, took the time to talk with We Are Movie Geeks about his upcoming film.

Interview conducted by Tom Stockman November 7th 2014

We Are Movie Geeks: The version of FOUR COLOR EULOGY I previewed was two hours and 13 minutes – is that the final cut?

Wyatt Weed: No, We’re continuing to whittle it down. Our first cut came in at 139 minutes, but we’re going to get it as close to two hours as we possibly can. It’s a long movie, but it’s not like it just sits there for long interminable moments where nothing’s happening. There’s constantly some drama or comedy taking place. I feel like we have a Judd Apatow-style film on our hands, a film where there’s a lot going on.

WAMG: I liked the film. In fact I was going to go to the premier on the 23rd and was just going to watch half of it and let the other half unspool before me at the screening but I ended up watching the whole thing because I wanted to see where it went. What locations did you use for FOUR COLOR EULOGY?

WW: I would say a third of the movie took place in the South city home of a woman named Michele Bolen. We shot there for about eight or nine days and that was the majority of the film. Another major location was Melrose bar over on Southwest Avenue.

WAMG: So that ‘Sassetti’s’ sign was a digital overlay I assume?

WW: Yes. FOUR COLOR EULOGY is not the kind of special effects film that our last film SHADOWLAND was, but it still has a lot of subtle visual effects. For example, we could never get the pretty thunderstorm over the tops of the buildings that we wanted so we got a thunderstorm someplace else and then put it over the top of the buildings ourselves, in the computer. Also, there’s a scene where the main characters travel from Portland to St. Louis. Obviously we never went to Portland. We went to the Larson Park area of Webster Groves, then out to Wentzville and shot the countryside and dropped Mt. Hood into the background along with some freeway signs, making it look like Portland. There were many other locations. We shot at a great comic book store out in Maryland Heights called Newcastle Comics. That was one of the few locations that was not in South city. It is supposed to be a South city film but we never found a comic book store that was big enough and would let us take it over for the required amount of time. Newcastle Comics was big and they had periods of time where they could let us come in and shoot, so we turned it into “South City Comics”. We were originally going to do something elaborate with the sign outside, make something really cool, but we realized that no local comic book store has that kind of big expensive sign. That would have screamed “digital effect” so we just painted out the Newcastle logo in the white box over the store and replaced it with a plain “South City Comics” text. It couldn’t have been more simple, but that’s the type of effects in the film – simple, but very effective and money-saving.

WAMG: So you shot in South City and Maryland Heights, where else did you shoot?

WW: All over the place. We shot at SSM St. Joseph Hospital in Lake St. Louis. There are a couple of hospital scenes near the end of the film but if we’d had to pay for that, we wouldn’t have been able to do it. St. Joseph provided a room and some equipment for us and it turned out fantastic, really great production value. We also filmed at Crane’s Country Store which is way out in Williamsburg. They were so cooperative and friendly, really willing to bend over backwards for us. Then there was U-Gas, that big gas station that looked like it was out in the middle of nowhere, which we made look like it was out in the desert. That was in Wentzville. They were really great, too. They were a little concerned at first, wanting to know if we needed to block their whole parking lot. But we just needed to film at one pump for 45 minutes and they were fine with that. We also shot at Uncle Bill’s Pancake House, which I’ve wanted to do for years, so I was really excited about that. In addition to the cooperative locations, I have to say that the in-kind donations and the equipment that we were able to arrange from places like Bad Dog Pictures and Avatar Studios really helped us out. I’m not exaggerating when I say there are parts of the film we couldn’t have done without their help. I know other film productions are chasing the money, chasing the tax credits, but this was a $15,000 film. It wasn’t worth our time or energy to leave the city – we wouldn’t have even qualified for a tax credit in Illinois. But once again, St. Louis really came through for us. All of the locations that we took over and all of the food and donations we received was really just stunning.

WAMG: There are scenes all throughout the film in a church. Was that the same church you’ve used in SHADOWLAND?

WW: No, it was a church called St. Mary and Joseph Chapel and that was also in South city. There was the main church that was a couple of blocks away, then there was the chapel, which was only used for certain functions. They handed us the keys on a Monday morning, we went over there, lit, redressed, and shot all day. Then we moved outside in the early evening to shoot a short scene and got rained out. That was the scene at the end of the film where two characters exit the church and are talking to each other about the service. The chapel was nice enough to let us come back for a pickup day to shoot that.

WAMG: You said the budget was $15,000. What was the shooting schedule?

WW: It ended up being a total of about 23 days. We had 21 principal days and two days of pickups. We shot over the course of two months. We started shooting in early June and we didn’t finish until late July. With so little money, we could afford to pay people something, but most of the actors had to maintain their day jobs. So we’d find a five day block where everyone was available and go and shoot in the house. Then we’d find a four day block and go shoot at the bar. The comic book store we broke up a bit. We would go there at 8 o’clock at night after they closed and we didn’t have to be out of there until noon the following day. But we didn’t push a lot of super-long hours either. I think most of our days were just 10 to 12 hours. There was one time that we got rained out on a night scene, and the schedule was getting tight so we pulled everyone aside and told them that we really needed to pick up this night scene that we had lost and the only time to do it was on a certain day, which meant they were looking at a 16 or 17 hour day, but everyone was cool and agreed so we pulled the long day and got caught up.

WAMG: Speaking of rain, there’s a big dramatic scene that takes place in the rain. I assume that was scripted to take place in the rain. How did you film that?

WW: It was scripted to take place in the rain and we thought it would be great if it was raining that day, but of course it was not. Jason Contini wrote the scene to take place in a rainstorm. I was originally hesitant because rain is tough. A couple of days before we were scheduled to shoot that, we were really exhausted. We were pushing the boundaries on a couple of things; pushing our technical limits as we had so little resources. I tried to talk Jason out of it, but he really wanted to do it, so all we got garden hoses with those adjustable spray nozzles and rigged them to light stands. We had a couple of stagehands off screen and had them adjust those nozzles from about 20 feet away, spraying them up and into the air so a light rain would come down. The shots you see in the film, there was no rain to the left or the right of frame – we had just enough rain to cover the main area in any shot. Rain is hard to photograph so we kept adjusting the lights and we ended up back-lighting very heavily so the rain would pop out. The big master shot where they bust out the front door and argue we did in one take. We knew that if we had to do that more than once it would be a problem because everyone would have to re-dry their hair and their clothes, and we didn’t have a wardrobe truck or mobile homes standing by. So we rehearsed it and blocked it for lighting and sound and camera, really got it down, then fired up the rain and did it just one time. After that the actors were already established as wet, so the scene where Jason and Jessica come out and argue could be shot more than once. We did the lightning with photo strobe units. Bob Clark had some big flash units that could be manually operated, so he would hit the strobes and create lightning on cue.

WAMG: One thing that surprised me about the script, after reading about it the past few months was that I was expecting more comic book culture and trivia. There is some of that, but the film is primarily a cancer drama.

WW: I think maybe we all thought the film would have more of a geek element than it did in the end. However I do feel that we nailed what we set out for in that these people are real, they live in the real world, and have real world problems. They aren’t a complete fabrication, like some of Kevin Smith’s characters can be, or like the guys on The Big Bang Theory. I know we’ve talked about taking this film to Comic-Con and places like that, but I don’t think that’s the film we have now. I think there are fan-boys who will appreciate the references, or at the very least this will be the first “cancer drama” that fan boys will enjoy!

WAMG: This is Jason Contini’s story. Did he have experience with cancer in his family?

WW: Perhaps not cancer, but health scares within his family. The story is a combination of Jason wanting to do certain dramatic things and John’s concept to do a one-act play set in a bar, I believe. Jason and John melded their concepts and came up with the story that now drives the script. Jason did a couple of drafts on his own and then he started working with me and Nick Hearne. So this really is a balance of three or four different writers. Typically, I don’t like to work that way, but I thought it worked really well for this project. Everybody had strengths. Jason had strength in drama, Nick had strength in comedy, and I had strength in structure. No egos, no protectiveness – just whatever was best for the script.

WAMG: I think one of your films greatest strengths is the acting. John is superb. I think when we talked several months ago you were going to go with a movie star. I believe you had talked to Dee Wallace. I assume that was for the role of Carol?

WW: Yes we talked to Dee and to her agent. She was asking for a very reasonable sum and we really wanted her, but it was tough enough raising $15,000 and at that point we all voted to just get the movie done and not worry about a name. I think Jason originally wrote the park with Amy Loui in mind, and we auditioned a half a dozen actresses, but Amy really was the best and she’s the one who finally got the part. The irony was that she has known John as long as her character has in the film. There are actually photos on the wall in the background of the film that show Amy holding a baby Jason, so this has been a most incestuous acting troop. Jessica Laney had been in plays with John. Taylor Pietz had been in plays with John as had some of the other supporting players like Dean Christopher and Whit Reichert, who play the drunks. It was a real community of theater actors who had all worked together or knew of each other.

WAMG: I remember Whit Reichert from local TV commercials 40 years ago.

WW: He was really great. EVERYONE was really great. As a director, I did less directing of the actors than I ever have because they were so good and so prepared. For me it was more about blocking the scenes, making sure everything was going where I wanted it to go and then pretty much leaving the actors alone. Occasionally I would dial a reaction or line reading in a different direction but it’s amazing to me how little I had to adjust the actor’s performances.

WAMG: If you had more time and money, what would you have done differently?

WW: It would’ve been nice to have a bigger crew and more specific equipment. We shot with the same camera we used for SHADOWLAND which is a great, venerable camera but HD standard is now 1920 x 1080, and we’re still shooting 1280 x 720. It looks fine, kind of filmy and grainy, but it would’ve been nice to step up to a higher end camera. It would’ve been nice to get a better set of lenses more suited to the widescreen cinematography style that we were shooting. We had dolly track with us and a doorway dolly for the duration but a doorway dolly is a far cry from a real dolly that has a boom on it and steerable wheels. Gayle, one of our producers, doubled up as a sound person, but it would have been nice to have a dedicated sound person so she could concentrate on putting out fires, as we say. But in all honesty, we rarely shot outside the range of what we could do. We didn’t write a script that was beyond us…other than maybe that rain scene! We wrote to the equipment and locations we were sure we could get

WAMG: Who did the songs?

WW: Taylor Pietz, who plays Katie the bartender, wrote and performed the opening song ‘Color Me’. That was an original song for the film. Then we had songs from the bands Manitoba Rock N Rolla and Clockwork, and from artists Patrick Conway, Rhyan Sprague, and Abby Stahlschmidt, who also appears in the film.

WAMG: Were these songs original to the film?

WW: No, these were songs by local performers that we were given permission to use. It should be mentioned that we are currently using some stock score from the great Kevin MacLeod. He is a very prolific composer who allows his music to be used for free, if you give him credit. There has been interest from local composers to add their music to the film, but for the SLIFF screening, it will be Kevin’s score, in addition to all of the songs.

WAMG: What about the comic book art in the film such as the old pages of art with Captain Arabia and Prince Lancer?

WW: John Contini was an aspiring comic book artist back in his youth, and those are actual pages of comic book art that he drew as a young man. For the new stuff, we worked with a company called Lion Forge. Lorenzo Lizana did the “Kota” and “Conquerors” covers, and Aaron Allen contributed posters and new comic pages for scenes where Arabia and Lancer are being revived. When we were filming in the comic store, we worried that when we panned around, we’d see a bunch of DC and Marvel stuff and potentially get in trouble. So there were a lot of times where we would put a SHADOWLAND poster over a Marvel poster or put Jason’s artwork over someone else’s artwork. There are scenes with the comic book racks in the background where we just laid issues of Lion Forge comics on top of the Marvel and DC titles. We didn’t want to get in trouble if Batman or Ironman ended up making an unauthorized appearance.

WAMG: What’s next for Wyatt Weed?

WW: Right now, we just want to get FOUR COLOR EULOGY out on VOD, DVD and digital download, probably within the first quarter of next year. We’ve learned enough through our struggles with distribution that we can do that much ourselves. We don’t have to sit around chasing our tails for a year trying to get somebody to help us out. It would be nice if we can get Four Color into a local theater for a couple of general public screenings. After that I have a couple of personal projects I’d like to do that are kind of geeky and fan-boy related. I have been wanting to do a Batman “fan film” for years, maybe 20 minutes long and I think the time has come for me to do it. My goal is to make the Batman fan film to end all Batman fan films. Then we’d like to continue this string of smaller, low-budget projects that we can make fairly quickly. We’d like to continue the relationship with Archlight Studios, which is Jason and Nick. We’ve talked to a couple of other local filmmakers about getting some things started. We’ve got plenty of scripts, science-fiction and western and drama scripts, so count on us doing another feature in the next year or so. And then we have the ongoing corporate and commercial work to pay the bills in the meantime, but hopefully when we get a couple more features under our belt we will have to do less of that.

WAMG: Good luck with FOUR COLOR EULOGY and I’ll see you at the premiere at the St. Louis international film Festival on November 23, 3pm at the Tivoli.

WW: Sounds good. Thank you

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THE LAZARUS EFFECT is in theaters now

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