An Afternoon with the Gruber-Meister Part II

On Hollywood: Composers, Directors, Studios & Cinema  

By RYAN M. LUÉVANO

 The Composers

When you think of the “Golden Age” of film composers, you think of the likes of Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Miklos Rozsa, Dimitri Tiomkin — many of whom had emigrated from war-torn Europe and found their way to Hollywood. “Silver Age” composers are represented by Bernard Herrmann (who bridged both Ages), John Williams, and Jerry Goldsmith.

“The problem now is that almost anyone thinks they can be a film composer—”

Currently working A-list composers (the “Bronze Age”) are represented by Ennio Morricone (who also is an Age-spanner), Alexandre Desplat, Michael Giacchino, James Horner and James Newton Howard. However, their film assignments are gradually being diminished, most likely because of the fees they command — and deserve.

It is so easy these days to find a composer who works for nearly nothing. As Ken says, “The problem now is that almost anyone thinks they can be a film composer—all they have to do is noodle around on a keyboard.” 1n 1968, when Ken began working with his father (“The Quill”) in the music preparation business, composers would deliver handwritten music that ranged from 2 to 6-line sketches of full scores, to fully written out, transposed scores.

 “I get files that are a complete mess, and worse the music doesn’t really work with the picture.”

The point here is that the Quill Music crew was given actual music, that was musically conceived and expertly planned, by real composers. Today what Ken often receives are electronic files, often from people who cannot actually read or write music. These range from MIDI files, Logic files, PDF exports, or MP3 sound files (where he is required to write out the music upon hearing it) — or a combination of the above.

About this practice Ken remarks, “it depends on who is doing it. Many of the A-list composers do this; they have to because the deadlines are so tight — but at least they know what they’re doing. The thing is, they could write by hand if they wanted to. Often times, however, I get files that are a complete mess, and worse the music doesn’t really work with the picture.”

A John Williams Sketch from the movie “Star Wars”

Ken continued, “I’m not only Quill Music, but I’m also the ‘Tech Daddy’: I’m an Apple Certified Support Professional (ACSP) and I’ve been a personal tech consultant and advocate for over 20 years, so it’s not like I’m against using a computer or digital technology in general. Quite the opposite. But I’ve seen the same thing not only in music, but in graphic design and many other fields: in order to effectively use a computer to do something, you should know how to do it first the ‘old-fashioned way’ —in this case by hand.

“Jerry, who was a master of economy and speed in composition, wrote out the entire score on a 6-line sketch during a plane ride from New York to LA…”

Keep in mind that the computer is just a tool, an extension of your brain. If you don’t know what you really want, the software you’re using will do what it wants… which may not always be the right thing.” An example of a great and accomplished composer Ken often worked with was Jerry Goldsmith, Ken recalls, “I was fortunate enough to work with Jerry on several projects over many years. In one instance, Jerry had been asked by the music supervisor of Quinn-Martin Productions to score the 90 minute pilot episode of Barnaby Jones [1973-1980], which in turn would be ‘sliced and diced’ for use in the rest of the first season shows — a common practice in those days.

The problem? CBS execs finally made up their minds and gave the show a greenlight only two weeks before airdate! Jerry, who was a master of economy and speed in composition, wrote out the entire score on a 6-line sketch during a plane ride from New York to LA, using just the shooting script and spotting notes, and then had it messengered over to me!”

Given the type of composers often found in Hollywood today, the area of musical literacy has severely shifted, “It used to be that composers were the last line of musical literacy, then it was the orchestrators, who could take anything and make it work; now it’s the music prep people — and they’re getting rid of us to theoretically save money.

“…in the last 10 years [. . .] the directors have been getting younger and younger—and a lot of them are first-timers or relatively new at it, and they have no idea how music works in film.”

And that’s a big mistake. Talk to any studio musician about the quality and accuracy of the music they’re being given — when scoring actually happens here in LA, which is becoming increasingly rare — and you’ll get an earful.”

The Directors

“What I’ve generally been seeing in the last 10 years or so is that the directors have been getting younger and younger—and a lot of them are first-timers or relatively new at it, and they have no idea how music works in film. They don’t understand the function of it. I’ve found that my role — and by extension most of the music team’s role — increasingly encompasses musical education and advocacy when dealing with a director.” As an example, Ken discussed his experience working with director Tom Hooper on the HBO miniseries John Adams (2008).

The original composer Hooper had chosen was Rob Lane; however Lane had only completed roughly 15-minutes of score out of the seven-and-a-half hours that was required, and it was now slightly less than three months until airdate. On the plus side, Lane had done some good work, and had also come up with a very catchy main title that would become synonymous with the show. HBO decided to call in a team that had delivered for them many times in the past under similar circumstances: composer Joseph Vitarelli, orchestrator Jorge del Barrio, and Ken, who was in charge of music preparation, score supervision and coordinator of the music team.

The task was to compose and record about 7 hours of music for a 68-piece orchestra in less than two months. That would be daunting enough, but then there were differences of opinion between the director and composer. “We came to the quick realization that [Hooper] had some … interesting ideas about how music works in a scene. There were arguments all during the process of spotting and scoring. And I get it: his guy had been removed, and we were brought in and he didn’t know us. So naturally there was antagonism.”

“John Adams” Scoring Session (2008) Jorge Del Barrio conducts the Hollywood Studio Symphony

In spite of all the arguments, “In episode six (out of eight) he finally got our viewpoint, he finally got what we were trying to tell him. It was like a light bulb came on. Then something very unusual for TV happened: we actually scrapped the score for that episode, which had already been recorded, and did another one.

Tom Hooper after winning the Oscar for best director for “The King’s Speech”

That was an amazing experience. And Tom has been going great guns ever since. He went on to direct The King’s Speech [2010] and Le Misérables [2012] and in both cases was able to use music in new and very effective ways, because he could really communicate with his music team what his vision was. I’ve seen this happen many times with other directors, and it’s always a magical moment when it happens.”

The Studios & Cinema

In addition to working as a music copyist in Hollywood, Ken has also worked as a music librarian, score supervisor and orchestra contractor for LA studio orchestras; those legendary musicians are “starting to retire or drift away because of the lack of work.” Hollywood producers have gotten so stingy that they no longer want to deal with the cost of composers, music teams and orchestras in movies. “You are now seeing a lot of movies with only songs in them, or Indie rock bands just jamming to picture.” Ken described how many people do not realize that in LA there is both a low budget and ultra low budget agreement between the Musicians Union and the producers, and yet the studios are going to Prague or London to record.

‘I don’t need to hire [musicians] I can get a kid with a Casio.’

In these locations, “it’s a buyout—no benefits, pension, health and welfare, insurance, or taxes. Even though that sounds like a bargain, in truth it’s no less expensive when you consider travel costs and the entourage they typically bring—it’s a free trip for all of them.” Some confounding examples are “…movies like The Avengers [2012], which they knew was going to make a huge pile of money, yet it was scored non-union; The Hunger Games [2012] and the just-released sequel Catching Fire, which were both shot with an all-union crew in North Carolina, yet recorded non-union in London.” “Why would the studios do that?” I asked, and Ken replied “Because they can. I have never figured out why many productions will shoot union, but score non-union. But I have a theory.” Ken’s speculation for why this happens is that, “we have something that other unions don’t have — something that producers have hated for the last 35 years — and that is a small piece of profit sharing called the Film Musicians Secondary Markets Fund. Typically each musician who participated in the creation or recording of the score gets an extremely small share of the profits, which is usually .005 percent per person. I’m not kidding about that. Even so, they still hate it.”

Things started to change in the 90s, and Ken does not see them changing back, “The people in Prague are really good, and they’re cheap — and they know they’re cheap. Winning them over is not an easy thing… they give you a lot of attitude first.” And, unlike LA musicians, “they often don’t get musically idiomatic material, such as Caribbean-feel, Mexican-feel, whatever the feel. They don’t get it.

“…it was that quirky Indie sound with a ukulele, orchestra bells, a couple of guitars, goofball percussion, they just threw something together and now everybody does that.”

The same thing can happen with London, you sometimes can’t get them to swing anything, or do improvisation.” Ken draws a comparison between the circumstance of the LA’s studio musicians and the space program, “we probably couldn’t put someone on the moon today because we’d have to create a team, and we don’t have a team like that anymore—we had a team, they did it, but they drifted away because there was nothing else challenging for them to do after that.”

“In the last five years 70 percent of all major studio releases were composed by first time composers who will never write another score… [this is because the studios] think of composers as dispensable; a dime a dozen.” Ken spoke about certain benchmarks in cinema, one of which was Chariots of Fire (1981), which “spelled unemployment for me and a lot of us for many years. There was a musicians strike going on at the time. And Vangelis turned in this completely inappropriate score. I understand the appeal: it’s a catchy theme, but it was the same kind of spacey synth music he used for Blade Runner [1982] for a period 1920’s film about runners. I never felt it worked with the movie, but the producers’ eyes lit up at the perceived cash cow! ‘I don’t need to hire [musicians] I can get a kid with a Casio.’ So for three years or four years we didn’t work.” Another watershed movie was Juno (2007), “it was that quirky Indie sound with a ukulele, orchestra bells, a couple of guitars, goofball percussion, they just threw something together and now everybody does that.” Of course Ken does not want to disparage bands because “some of the composers we know and love now came from rock bands: Danny Elfman and the late Michael Kamen are two examples. It’s true that if someone comes from that background they can progress, but not always.”