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Like most other Japanese of my generation and younger, I grew up watching Hayao Miyazaki’s anime films.  I haven’t watched all of them, actually, but Kiki and Totoro are my favorite family fares.  Over the Christmas, I had a chance to watch it twice, once in Japanese and once in English.  It was an interesting observation on how to adapt a film to two completely different cultures by subtly (and not so subtly) adjusting the sound track.

Naturalism vs. Hype

In the US version, they hired additional composer (they chose not to hire the original composer, Joe Hisaishi, to compose) to create cues where there was none in the original.   One such scene is a pizzicato arrangement of Sorcerer’s Apprentice, used where Kiki goes up and down the stairs to go to the bathroom.

Going to the bathroom!  Not the most dramatic of the scenes, obviously, but compared to no music, having a cue there forces a certain comedic tone to the scene.

There are also subtle synth patches playing when Kiki is performing magic — like the flying sequences during the climax.  It being a synth, it comes across as modern and artificial — it’s pretty subtle, though.

Meeting the Cultural Expectations

Perhaps the biggest difference is the casting of the Jiji, the black cat sidekick.  In Japanese, it’s voiced by a cutesy female voice, while the English version gets a more pronounced smartass treatment by late Phil Hartman.  Not only that, the English Jiji talks a heck of a lot of more, once again spoon-feeding the comedic episodes.  Mr. Hartman’s delivery is most excellent here, but in the wrong hands (voices) this could have easily backfired.  That said, I have to say, the young girl vs. old man dynamics creates a much better contrast than the Japanese cuteness.

The Need to Explain Thyself

In general, the Disney version does a lot more explaining than the Japanese version.  But the additional material is very tastefully inserted, so while the overall film comes across as a lot more rollicking than the quieter Japanese version, it really doesn’t taint the sweetness of the film.  The good and bad, the hope and heartaches are much more clearly delineated, though, so the US version is slightly shallower film, leaving less to discover upon repeated viewings.  But, really, it’s not bad — and perhaps because the film is set in a more Western settings, some changes actually come across more naturally and fitting.  When I was watching the Japanese version, there were spots where I felt like I was watching a Japanese dub of a Western film!

My Verdict

Generally speaking I think a film is to be viewed in the original language, but this film may be an exception where the modified sound track has just as much to offer, in a slightly different way, than the original.  And above all, this is such a superb film — it’s truly a gem for all ages.  I only hope to be involved in a film such as this in my life.

I just watched Once.

Wow.

Wow.

I know this is predictable, being what I am, but….

Now I know why I really can’t be serious about film composing.  Films that need “dramatic underscore” all seem phony now.

It really hit me — profoundly.

If you love music, go watch this film.

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PS: I just learned that The Swell Season, a unit made up of the two leads from this film, was just in town yesterday, Dec. 5, 2009, apparently the last performance of a US tour.

The thing is, I hang on to this DVD from NetFlix for like 2 and half months, always meaning to watch it but never getting around to it.

Weird, huh?

I feel like there’s an omen, here.  Just don’t know what it’s trying to tell me.

This week I mixed & mastered all the cues for America’s Next Felon, the indie film sound track I’ve been working on.  I’m quite pleased with how it’s coming — acquired a new love for loop-based music.  I have never been much of a loop person, despite doing heavy MIDI sequencing for a long time.  I can see why it’s everywhere in today’s musical landscape — particularly among TV shows and commercials — because working with loops is faster!  I’ll put up a few choice cues in the film section when they are ready.

Soon the director and I will sit down for a mixing session.  Film mixing is just as fun as mixing music, as you get to see the whole thing come together.  It’s one of my favorite parts of the process.

I’m mostly finished writing the sound track for America’s Next Felon.  All that remains is just fleshing out the sketches, mix ‘em and master ‘em.

The end is near — but this stage always takes surprisingly long. Like this week I spent over 2 hours polishing up drum sequencing to one heavy metal track that’s about 1.5 minutes long. It’s still not great, really, but it’ll have to do — with film music, I focus on the task at hand, which is to create an aural backdrop to what’s going on the screen. The music is not the focus — as long as it’s polished enough not to be distracting, it’s fine. But it’s one thing to sketch out music, it’s quite another to make it sound solid and “finished!”

Still, I enjoy this part of the process. It’s fun to see the ideas turning into realized pieces of music. A recording is a process where it just doesn’t sound good until the very end — until then, what I’m hearing is what the music can be, not what it is.

I’m slugging away at it. It will end.

Yow, over a week went by quickly since the last entry.  I’ve been hard at work on the sound track for America’s Next Felon (ANF).

The truth be told, sound track work is always very stressful to me, at least some of the phases in the process.  It’s always nerve wracking before the 1st meeting with the director to show my first sketches.  And it stays stressful after that, as inevitably I hit the right tone on some cues and not on other cues.  There’s always a nagging voice in my head going “what if I can’t get it right? what if I can’t hit it after 20 more tries?”

But I always do hit it on the mark sooner or later.   The 1st phase is always like choosing the color palette for a painting.  There are millions of colors to choose from so the choices are rather overwhelming.

The next phase is more fun, though it can be stressful in a not-so-bad way.  Once the palette is put together, I usually experience a great increase in my productivity — I can just nail cue after cue without struggling.  It’s because most of the themes and motifs are written at this point, I know the range of instruments/sounds that work for the project, and it’s now just the matter of pulling in the right pieces, arranging them to fit a particular spot.

A film doesn’t usually have myriads of moods and pacings.  They all have a limited range — a thriller will be suspenceful, a comedy will be light-hearted most of the time.  So once all the material is prepared, fitting them into all the places aren’t as hard.

To illustrate, get this: ANF is a spoof on reality TV and there are 6 “episodes” within.  I spent the first 6 days composing the first episode.  Then in the next 4 days, I scored one episode each.  See?

I hit the stride on this project, and now I’m having fun.  This is the reason why I love making music for films.

I read somewhere that on a typical 8-hour day, a composer on the average composes 1-2 minutes of music.

Then I read articles of composers who score features in, like, 3 weeks.

I am not a slow worker with other stuff — like when I’m working on making web sites — but film composing, I’m afraid I’m not that fast. The 1st statement above is definitely applicable to me. A feature in 3 weeks? No way.

Well, it can be done, I suppose — a lot of minimal music, though, like some drum loops and percussion. I believe Tan Dan scored Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon in like 3 weeks. His solution for fight scenes? Single drum.

I’m about to start working on my next project, the sound track for an indie film “America’s News Felon.”

I always get this when I start a new project — particularly a film project — a slight trepidation of sorts.

Basically, the question is always this: will I be able to make music that the director will like?

I have been making music long enough to know that given enough time, I can always careate good music — at least in my book.  But the tricky part of film music is that I’m writing to someone else’s taste, to serve a different purpose than just plain “make good music.”

Add to the trepidation the pressure of budgets and deadlines — meaning, I’ll have to achieve the desired outcome within constraints of time and money.  Of course, this is nothing new, either — all real world production has limits.  Limits are good — limits are what makes me creative.  Unlimited options scare me.

The only cure, really, is experience.  I have done this before.  And it came out fine, just about every time.

This time will, too.

Director: Gillermo del Toro
Composer: Marco Beltrami

Well, this one was a complete dud for me. I’ve been reading about Mr. del Toro for quite some time, so I was looking forward to checking out this film. There can never be too many superhero films with depth, you know?

Deep, this one isn’t.  Granted, I don’t know anything about the original comic book — so I had no expectation, no background knowledge.  So from a complete novice’s point of view, this film was just another well-packaged eye candy with no meat inside.  There was not a single character worth caring about, giant plot holes galore, and not a moment of the-edge-of-your-seat thrill.  The villain was a bore and visual effects, while impressive, were all predictable.

The only thing that I did like was the visual design — makeup and how everything looked.  Cinematography is good, but set design and makeup were really top notch.  It sure has a distinct feel to it.

Marco Beltrami’s score didn’t really offer anything that stayed in my head after the viewing.  It really was a typical Hollywood fare — constant bombard of operatic gestures, strung together continuously because every scene needed “help” from the music to explain, emote and be believable.  I am a fan of his work on Scream films and his collaboration with Marilyn Manson on the first Resident Evil was rather interesting.  I’m not saying he did a bad job.  A film composer’s work is only as good as the director he’s working with.  So on this film, the director didn’t get him to do anything that caught my attention.

Based on this viewing, I’ll skip the sequel.  I will still check out Pan’s Labyrinth, however.

Good news first: this morning I signed on to become the composer of an indie feature film Lost in Sunshine, written and directed by Jentri Chancey.  Her producer is my good friend Lorie Marsh.

Bad news: it’ll be at least a year and half before my work starts.  Film composer comes in dead last in the process of filmmaking….

But seriously, I’m super excited!  I read the script and I’d describe it similar to American Beauty, except it’s set in a small Texas town and the protagonist is a turning-30 woman stuck in a bad marriage, instead of a middle-aged man lusting after a highschool cheerleader.  Equal amount of dry humor and vulgarity (sex and drugs, anyone?) but equally profound and classy, too.

In all honesty, it’s so humbling to be chosen to make music for a feature film.  People outside of the film industry may not realize this, but it takes years of work on the part of filmmakers to create one feature film.  And while the digitalization of tools made filmmaking somewhat more affordable than in the past, it still costs hundreds of thousands of dollars to make a feature film that has even the smallest shot at being competetive in the market.

I dearly admire my filmmaker friends.  The odds are stacked sky high against them.  Yet they soldier on, armed only with passion for the story they want to tell.  It makes all the whining and moaning of us musicians seem puny in comparison.  That’s why, whenever I encounter a project I can believe in, I am happy to contribute whatever I can to their cause.

So — while it’s still a long time coming — and I am sure I’ll score other films before this one — I’ll be talking about this film for the next couple of years.  Follow me down the road of what it’s like to make music for an indie movie.