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Transcript

#40 - STEVEN PRICE · Half the Picture

• 0:00
  That opening sequence when baby's walking through the streets, we chipped away at that thing for months. The cash machine, you know, the buttons there, they're in tune. The guy's making a cappuccino in the coffee shop. Those blasts of steam, they're in tune, they're in time, everything. There's moments in that film that you look back now going like, God.
• 0:16
  There's moments when babies run in through shops and there's four different tracks playing because they're all playing through speakers in different shops. We made all of those little spoof songs and things as if they could play as Muzak in a shopping mall and that sort of thing, but make it so that it could run. The stuff you get to do is great fun.
• 0:40
  So Stephen, welcome to After Picture. How are you doing today? Very well, thank you. Very good. We're so happy to have you on the show. I've been a fan of yours for years, and I know many of us here can say the same. I feel like we say this to quite a few of our guests, but it is true. We were talking in the office about a lot of your music that is sort of
• 0:58
  either inspired us or that we're big fans of like you know attack the block obviously and uh you know the work you've done with Edgar Wright, World's End, Baby Driver, The Running Man most recently and then stuff like Gravity you know incredible film incredible score which you know you won your Oscar for you know incredible stuff and then working with David Attenborough on our planet I mean like the scale of your work and the scope of it is just fantastic so it's a great pleasure to have you on. Thank you very much indeed.
• 1:23
  Cool. So, I mean, going back to the start, if I may. So your passion for music, for me, seems clear in like all the stuff you do. I mean, like it seems to me to be a passion and exuberance and love for what you do. There's an energy that kind of thrums through so much of what you do. And I guess, where does that come from for you? I mean, like, does it come from a specific...
• 1:41
  place or time like was there a particular piece of music or a composer that really galvanized you and made you go oh this is for me or where does that come from really i just i don't remember there being a time when music wasn't around it's like it's it's it was always being played in my house i grew up with with um parents who who always had music on so there's a vinyl player in the living room there were radios in the kitchen
• 2:01
  and one of them was always on. And I have vivid memories of being really, really little and learning how to put the record on and then sort of crawling or stumbling from speaker to speaker, the right side of this big sort of sideboard thing and noticing that there were different things coming out of each speaker and thinking, this is cool. And if you went to one side, you'd get the vocal, these like early sixties records, whatever. One side, you get the vocal, the other side, you get the instrumental and you kind of, one day you might go over here, one day you might go over there. My mum swears that I learned to talk from listening to Beatles records.
• 2:31
  So it's always been around. And I've just always found it fascinating. And to this day, I find it fascinating. And if something, you might hear something on the radio or whatever, just a chord sequence that's slightly different from what you expected or something that pulls you in in a way that you can expect, I love to know how that works. I love to know sort of, go home and work that out and see, oh, why is that making me feel like that? And that's always been there, really, that fascination.
• 2:57
  Yeah, and those Beatles records, I mean, like you literally, those really are kind of maybe the ultimate examples of like, yeah, one speaker's doing one thing, another speaker's doing another thing. I mean, there's that hilarious sort of video, I think, maybe it's a reel or a video where like, you know, listening to the Beatles with one headphone. And it's like, you're getting half of the track and it's like, it feels so disjointed and almost kind of, it's always kind of slightly more avant-garde than even like, you know, Tomorrow Never Knows or something. It's like, what is going, you know? It's so interesting the way that like, what makes that into a record, you know? It's like all these disparate elements and,
• 3:26
  Very early on, I was interested of what instruments might go with other instruments and why that combination was interesting. The idea of people playing something, then adding a little thing on, the little decorative things that suddenly became the character of it all. Yeah, so the Beatles were kind of, and I guess George Martin and that kind of work was kind of really formative.
• 3:44
  Yeah, absolutely. And George Martin, you know, because of course they expanded into using string sections and that sort of thing. It kind of opened up everything. And because their references were always kind of interesting, you'd hear McCartney talking about listening to Stockhausen or whatever. You'd go off and go off, go and listen to a bit of that then, you know, or there'd be a little reference in a lyric to someone's book. You go, I'll go and read that. So it felt like this little map came from music. And I think.
• 4:08
  One of the things I used to love about buying a record is you'd work out where it was done, who was involved, and you just follow all those little threads and you find yourself going through this canon of music.
• 4:16
  Yeah, and it was kind of, that information I guess was less available back then because it was pre-internet, you kind of really had to hunt stuff down and track clues. It was the most exciting thing, just like working out what linked to what. I was talking to someone the other day about, I loved in my teens, I got well into REM. And one of the things I think I loved about them was the fact they were so weird and you couldn't find out much about them. You'd get what was in the NME or whatever, but there wasn't any information. So it became like you're part of this little club. Have you heard that one? Have you heard that one? And part of the fun of it all.
• 4:46
  Because you've been doing music, I want to say, all your life. You started on guitar, right? Yeah, I was about five years old when I had my first guitar lesson. We had this little plastic guitar in the house, a little toy thing from the 60s. And I just used to, you know, one finger, it's like try and make little tunes on it. And my dad one day sort of noticed like,
• 5:04
  I don't know, you want to have a go at that properly? And I'm like, yeah, right. And that started me off. What's the history? I just was dead lucky that the first guitar teacher I got was a brilliant guitarist. So, you know, when I was terribly rubbish for years, he would play something at the end of the lesson that would just make you go, oh, one day I'd love to be able to, you know, be half as good as that. So just the enthusiasm kept going.
• 5:26
  Yeah, because you said before we started rolling, you were saying that like the first 10,000 hours of doing something is really kind of is the toughest period, but also kind of the most formative. You have to put in those hours to get good. It's that depressing thing that you kind of all the time through my teens and my 20s, if you wanted to be doing this, be doing this. And it just it took its natural path. And it seems to be that, you know, putting the hours in was was a big part of the process for me.
• 5:49
  Yeah, because you went and studied music at Cambridge, I want to say, right? And then you got in based on your guitar playing, you gave a little performance for the entry. Yeah, they'd call you in for an entrance exam. And I came from Nottingham State School. So academically, I must have been so far off what they were looking for generally.
• 6:09
  but I got in luckily I played a piece and the lady who was interviewing me happened to really like that piece and I think that gave us something to talk about and she gave me a chance really so you know I was fortunate to get in there and was it do you remember what the piece was was it a composition you'd done I can't remember no it wasn't something I'd written it was it was something it was a very early sort of 15th century kind of piece that had been transcribed for guitar and that was that was very much up our alley I think so that kind of worked for her
• 6:37
  And being like, I guess, like a Nottingham lad, going to Cambridge, from state school to Cambridge, what was that like? I mean, massive sort of learning curve. I mean, it's probably very different now, but I found it massively intimidating. And there was not a lot of effort made to make it not intimidating at that stage. I remember going to a very early Harmony and Counterpoint kind of seminar or something like that. And one of the doctors there saying sort of like, your knowledge is that of an imbecile.
• 7:05
  And he may have met Matt humorously, but at the time, when you're kind of 18 and away from home and all that stuff, I remember it being a little crushing. So it took me a couple of years, I reckon, to kind of catch up and work out, you know, that, oh, hang on. It's, you know, and like most things, you worked out eventually that there's academic kind of intelligence. But then if you have ideas, you can actually bypass a lot of that and, you know, say something interesting about something is worth more than, you know, saying it academically correctly sometimes. So I kind of found my little path through it.
• 7:35
  You can circumnavigate it. Yeah, a little bit. Yeah. And then in terms of sort of breaking into music, I mean, so I know you were a huge record fan growing up, you know, you collected records and that sort of world of music, I guess, was maybe the starting point for like, oh, this is what I want to do. Yeah. I mean, I guess, you know, coming back to the George Martin of it all, you know, that when I was looking at music jobs, I was like, well, you know, I hugely admire everything he did. So maybe that's the way record production might be a way in.
• 8:02
  Because I hadn't really thought of film music at that stage as a thing. Which looking back on it is crazy because all my interests were always stories and music, so it kind of makes sense. But in those days I was still trying to piece together what to do. And record production felt like an avenue. And there were loads of studios then, so you could write to lots of studios and try and get a job helping out really and see if you liked it. So I got a job with Andy Gill.
• 8:27
  Yeah, yeah. A gang of four, founder, guitar player, writer, brilliant bloke who gave me a chance basically. And we finished off building his studio together in Chancery Lane. And I did about a year, 18 months there learning how to put a record together.
• 8:43
  Yeah, and you were working for some pretty big name artists, like Bono, I think was in the... We had Bono in like within weeks of me starting, because there was a Michael Hutchence record, a solo record that Andy had co-written and produced, and they were finishing that off after Michael's death, and Bono came in to do a vocal, so I was weeks into trying to do this stuff when suddenly Bono was sitting there, sort of expecting me to be a half-decent recording engineer, which I was not.
• 9:07
  Was he alright to work with? Oh, it's that thing of sitting there. He was probably this close to me, and just with an SM57 mic, because he didn't want to go into the studio with the headphones and stuff. He just wants to sit in front of the speakers. Oh, really? And so, you know, Bono is sitting there. And this was late 90s or whatever. So, you know, I remember seeing, like, Acton baby films and stuff of them playing live, and the voice was that, you know. So it was incredible just hearing him doing his thing.
• 9:35
  Wow. And then, I mean, because not too long after that was when music editing came into it, because that was, I guess, your entry point into film scoring. Well, there was a little interim bit before that where I got a job with film composer Trevor Jones. Yes. And it was more of a general assistant job, really. And, you know, it would encompass everything from bits of arrangement, a lot of team making, you know, transferring demos into Sibelius, which is the program we use to make the charts for players and that sort of thing.
• 10:05
  And he was great. He used to lead me with the rigs sometimes. And it's like, have a go at this. And you play a bit of music to picture and realize the power of moving the image and moving the music to the image. And how emotionally that could change things. And so that was a really good experience.
• 10:21
  That was where it kind of got in your blood a bit. Like, oh, this is... That was when I clocked that it was a job. You know, it was like this idea that, oh, God, the influence. Because I was really super aware growing up that I loved the music in films. But I'd not really managed to work out that connection that it was possible for someone like me, you know, to go into that world. So it was, yeah, seeing people working on film music and being at a recording studio, seeing an orchestra playing a score,
• 10:48
  was like, oh God, this is an incredibly powerful, exciting, endlessly fascinating art form. Yeah, and I guess it's kind of talked about less now, but I think back then, I mean, I wasn't really there, but from what I understand, it was the entry points into the industries of music, but also I guess like creative industries, it wasn't as sort of foregrounded and as open and a bit more transparent, I think now, what with the internet and the access to that information about how people make those journeys. Back then it was a little bit more,
• 11:16
  it was just a little bit less transparent. And like, how do I get from here to there was a bigger question. Yeah, I mean, there certainly weren't YouTube tutorials on scoring or anything like that. And really at the early age of sampling as well. So it wasn't like all of those ways to make stuff that sounds like film music in your own home existed. We were still transitioning into computers and that sort of thing. So yeah, it was definitely more of a hidden world. But once you got into it, it was like, oh, this is the thing, you know.
• 11:44
  A little sidebar there, because you mentioned Sibelius, because I remember using Sibelius at school. I don't know if Sibelius is still there, still knocking around. Because there was hours of endless fun just putting that in and you kind of loved it and hated it. I mean, I was never particularly musical. I mean, I did do music, but I didn't have the knack for it. But I remember Sibelius just kind of like becoming, like you just go on Sibelius every music lesson and you're just kind of putting things together.
• 12:07
  That's it. And it's always staggered me that, you know, I can play something into a computer and then that will become parts that are in front of amazing musicians. And suddenly this thing comes to life. You know, this little idea that you might have had at two in the morning that you jotted down on a keyboard is suddenly, you know, in front of people.
• 12:24
  Yeah, you mentioned, I mean, I guess odds are about, but like you mentioned sort of at two in the morning, you can make an idea and put it down. I mean, I've heard some composers say, I remember Danny Elfman saying that like he has a thing where like sometimes if he's working on a job, like a particular score and it's quite, maybe it's quite an intense job, not much time for turnaround deadlines. Yeah, he kind of works into his sleep. Yeah. Like there's kind of, he thinks he's working while he's sleeping and then he'll wake up and he'll be like, oh, I'm exhausted. Yeah. And none of it, obviously he wasn't working because he was sleeping. I mean, have you ever found that?
• 12:50
  Yeah, and there's a weird thing that happens sometimes. If you wake up kind of with the thing in your head you were working on the day before, I almost take it as a kind of, okay, that one's got legs. This one has survived this process of me sleeping, and now I can kind of, it's developed almost. You know, this is a keeper. Yeah. So it's amazing how once you're into something, everything...
• 13:13
  is ticking over even if you're not very aware of it usually when i'm walking around in between sessions at the studio is when the little answer to a question comes up yeah that little downtime you get or like yeah because people say oh when i was in the shower i had the idea or something 100 the amount of times you've been in the studio and someone's sort of nip back in that sort of visit in the bathroom or whatever we could try this you know and that is the idea so
• 13:33
  Yeah, it's important, isn't it? To have that, I guess, that breathing space in between and then to breathe and then you go back in. And it's just a different, different way of looking. I remember years ago, a recording engineer sort of standing at the side of the studio, sort of like with his head slightly outside the door because he was hearing the music differently like that. Yeah. And thinking, that's interesting because we sit in this glorious, glorious position all the time. It's like it's not real, you know.
• 13:54
  But it's kind of like, you know, even just like when it's the old adage of like, yeah, you look at something and you like you cock your head to one side. You're just looking at it slightly off. It gives you a different perspective on it. It's like when you play something to a director for the first time and you've worked for days on this piece of music and you're really happy with it.
• 14:09
  And the moment you press play for the director, it suddenly sounds totally different. And often like mono or something. It suddenly sounds like, oh, the thing I loved is not. Because you're suddenly hearing it through someone else's eyes. And that's when you almost start, you know. It's like now you're kind of working together. Sure. And then with, so then you'd worked with Trevor Jones. And then that was your way into the world of film composition. I mean, because you say that, so even though.
• 14:33
  you know film scoring was not on the um was not sort of your ambition when you were younger i mean were there still any but but which you say was almost a bit of a surprise because you were so keyed into the world of sort of film music were there particular films or scores or composers that were resonating with you i mean the earliest films i really remember the music for were et and back to the future back to the future because i think it was our first vhs tape when we got a player so i watched it a million times yeah
• 14:56
  But E.T. was, to this day, like we saw it live with an orchestra playing to Pitcher a few years ago when my kids were little. And it's amazing. I mean, it's like a proper, the first 20 minutes of it are all dry eye shots of people's legs while this music develops and all these ideas are planted for later on. And it's just, yeah, structurally is fantastic, melodically fantastic, has a character to it, which you can't imagine the film without. Totally. Yeah, that's huge.
• 15:23
  Yeah, that's John Williams and Alan Silvestri, isn't it? Because when we had Murray Gold on the pod recently, he was talking about John Williams of Home Alone, that score, and then Michael Kamen for Die Hard, and just the amount of work that goes into those scores. They're so complex. For films like Home Alone, it's a family film. The set-up is ingenious, but also simple, the kid defending his own. But there's so much work goes into making that score just so memorable. And when you remember it, it's so simple because you're just, oh, that melody.
• 15:53
  There's so much work and I think ET is no exception and Back to the Future. Compositionally there's all this sort of work that's gone through it, but somehow there's spirit and energy in the performance of it. It feels incredibly fresh and live every time you hear it. You know, you can almost hear the musicians in the room kind of enjoying themselves, which I think makes a massive difference to how those things feel.
• 16:11
  you can feel like, yeah, the energy, like they've got to that bit of the score. Oh, this is just great to play. It's just a great score to play. But there was on those sort of scale things. But I remember stuff like Magnolia when that came out and the John Bryan score in that. Because I was a big fan of John Bryan's work anyway, a few stuff he'd done with Amy Mann and people like that. And suddenly that sort of voice being in film, I remember being kind of struck by. It's like, ah, the world opens up. You know, it doesn't have to be orchestral all the time. It can be anything else, you know.
• 16:36
  That kind of Baroque kind of discordancy of his. Slightly homemade sounds and, you know, lots of Chamberlains and Mellotrons and, you know, all of that stuff was like, oh, OK, it can be anything. My favourite John Bryan score is Punch Drunk Love. Love it. Yeah, absolutely. I just think that's one of the greatest scores ever. And the way that he was, he devised that, that was so embedded. Kind of like you were saying, I think with your score for Gravity, that was worked on for years, but you had a lot of time on that.
• 17:00
  And then I think Punch Drunk Love, Brian was involved basically from the start, and PTA would record little, he would record PTA sort of singing little rhythms into a dictaphone. And then he would go away and make those rhythms because of... That would be what was going on in PTA's head. And then he would play that back when they were shooting the movie. So the score is embedded in the DNA of the movie. And I just love that discordant, everything what you just said about that kind of odd, peculiar feel.
• 17:27
  That's it. And just, you know, getting in early means you can do something unique, right? Because no one's got wedded to anything. The rhythms of things haven't been established yet. So I've been a couple of times working with Edgar Wright where I've started really early and put demos in before they've shot a frame of it. And then you see an assembly coming back and it's got little snippets of your music on it. Like it sends you up in this different direction.
• 17:48
  and so with I mean with so many we've reeled off so many great composers there Brian Silvestri Williams I mean and you've because obviously before you then sort of composing yourself for films like like with Edgar and then Attack the Block and Gravity later on you yeah working as a music editor with other great composers like you know Hans Zimmer on Batman Begins and Howard Shaw and Lord of the Rings I mean that must have been an education right working on those absolutely I mean you sort of I was on Lord of the Rings I was part of quite a big team so you
• 18:18
  But just to see a film being done on that scale and where music was so intrinsic to it and every note was really thought through and worked out and the journey of the films would change as you worked on them. It was kind of amazing to see all that come into play. Sure, because that was Abbey Road, I want to say, right? Yeah, it was another one of those things. I was working on a film for Trevor and they were building a team to work on the Lord of the Rings films. And I just happened to be in the canteen at the right moment and got asked.
• 18:45
  to join and it basically became you know every year you'd be at abbey road for three four months of the year working on these films which is amazing privilege to be on that yeah and as a beatles fan as well i mean doesn't even bother worth saying right i mean being in abbey road working it's nice to sort of yeah to be part of the the the fabric and you know going back to when i started out with trevor a lot of the people that were there making tea when i was making tea they're still there as engineers or you know running the place or whatever so it's it's been like a you know second home really that place
• 19:12
  because something I've heard you say before about being when you were a music editor was the idea that like your music editor is one of their sort of main functions is a kind of a go between between the composer and the director or the producers and you kind of have to because sometimes directors and composers you know their way of communication can it's quite from what I understand it's quite a complicated relationship sometimes because you have to communicate what you want to the composer and it's an emotional thing but how does how do you communicate that when music can be so complicated and subjective and the music editor kind of almost is the middleman
• 19:41
  Is that what it was like? I think it's certainly, it's different in all cases because some directors are wonderful talking about music, others just talk about feelings or whatever it is. So the relationship was always very different. And I just used to see my job as, you know, making sure both parties were getting what they needed out of the other one so that they came out of it happy.
• 19:58
  And so, yeah, sometimes it would be a case of, you know, helping the director understand the process of the composer. Sometimes it would be the other way around, you know, and explain to the composer that the reason they just changed that cut isn't because they hate you. It's because the visual effects shot didn't work out or whatever. So it was a good education being part of both worlds and seeing how a cutting room interacts with the music department. I think if I'd gone straight into music.
• 20:23
  it's it's it's still perfectly workable but I'm pleased I had that experience of seeing both sides of it running concurrently for sure and then I guess like being as you say a kind of go a kind of go between between like yeah like I'll say Peter Jackson and Howard Shaw or I guess Christopher Nolan and Hans Zimmer on Batman Begins I mean do you remember any sort of like moments where like that was really key like you had to be okay to communicate this and like I had to do this I think it was my my direct interaction was more more on Batman Begins than on Lord of the Rings certainly but
• 20:50
  But it was always just a case of, you know, you'd be aware that Chris had loved something in a demo. And sometimes, you know, in the recorded performance of it, something might have got lost. And it was a case of how we get that back and finding out what was in that version that used to really give him the buzz of it all, you know? And it was moments like that when you...
• 21:08
  you realize he was looking for a feeling a lot of the time and it was it was trying to capture that feeling that might have been there for a split second and what was that thing that was what are we missing now how can we help get that in or whatever so it was always little nudges here and there um you know it's amazing to see you know those two working together and i remember sitting behind hands the night he
• 21:28
  kind of defined action film scoring for 10 years just just and you could hear him sort of like he had it in his head and he was just chasing it all night long chain smoking writing tweaking synths and it gradually developed and it was you know all over those three films you know yeah and is it was that the kind of you know that big bombastic batman theme that he there's through all of them it was kind of the ostinato-y sort of stuff the ticking clock the sort of all that sort of stuff
• 21:51
  And you could just hear it was like a bubbling kind of synth thing with strings popping through it. And you could tell he had it in his head. And he was just pushing, pushing, pushing to get it out onto the demos where he could share it with people. It's just sort of a really interesting thing to watch, you know, him translating what was in him.
• 22:09
  And did you get to see the moment when he kind of, I guess, like Nolan first heard that and was like, that's it? Yeah, it was pretty instantaneous when you knew when they were excited about something. Yeah. So it's amazing to witness that. That's incredible. Because as you say, that did. I mean, Zimmer generally is defined so much in modern music. But like, yeah, that those scores have defined, yeah, action cinema for the next decade. Yeah. The techniques in there that, you know, everyone was was, you know, ripping them off for years, you know.
• 22:33
  Yeah, kind of in temp scores and stuff. I feel like most temp scores seem to, at some point, were just Zimmer, right? You could trace the sort of temp score journey sometimes between they used a bit of that one and a bit of that one, which ripped that one off. And then, you know, it was, yeah, it got a little too much for a while. Yeah, inception is a lot to answer for, I think, in some ways. The Guam's, you know, that was everywhere. It was a water thing. The first time you heard it, you know, it was incredible. Totally. And then, so jumping from there, because I know one of the key examples of
• 23:02
  your work as a music editor was on Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, which also marks your first work with Edgar Wright, who you've since gone on to work with many times. And also, you're working with him on that, and also Nigel Godrich, who did the music, who is one of the great music producers of, does Radiohead.
• 23:17
  Paul McCartney, Beck, some of the greats. I mean, what was that like? And how did that come about? Well, I mean, they are a lot of my favorite records. So, you know, when that came up, I'd met Edgar a few years before when he was starting early days on the Baby Driver scripts. Oh, really? And I was introduced to him as just someone who could help out musically in a kind of how do we explain his idea in a script form that someone might greenlight, you know? So I was involved analyzing these songs that he was thinking of using.
• 23:43
  know what the bpn was how they might lock into picture things and all that but that was sitting on a shelf for a long time when scott pilgrim came up because i knew him from that i got asked to help out and nigel being um a first-time film composer i was kind of the person who knew the film music side of things whilst he did his amazing kind of uh nigel thing so it was incredible i worked at his studio for i think six months and just the best ears and um
• 24:09
  just a way of hearing music and knowing immediately what needs to be there and what doesn't need to be there it was so yeah one of those like really intense six months where you're like oh learn a lot from this he's great Nigel's amazing yeah and as a fan obviously of his like you know like like I said all like so much of Radiohead is produced by him and like I said Paul McCartney and Beck and so many other great people I mean are you as a fan are you also like asking him questions but I think I irritate him a great deal
• 24:32
  Yeah, I mean, certainly that period, he'd just done the McCartney record shortly before it. I think the Chaos Migration one, which I sort of see as like this great turning point for Latter-day McCartney, where he sort of just a great run at records, all those stories. And, you know, he was doing Radiohead stuff at the same time. So that world was knocking around. He'd done some of that record with the Supergrass guys around that time. I was a big fan of them.
• 24:55
  but it just you know his studio was set up for making things sound great all the time the drum kit was permanently mic'd up the gear never seemed particularly posh it was just he knew how to get the best out of everything so it was fascinating
• 25:11
  And I guess in some ways Scott Pilgrim kind of marks a beginning of an approach of yours and your scores. Because something that I love about your scores is your use of diegetic sound and layering in all these sort of blurring the line between sound design and score. And so on that, was it kind of like, you know, because I know there are even there are bits that I think Nigel and you.
• 25:29
  you know did like there's there is there are 70s doctor who sounds in the in the soundtrack yeah you know that punctuated bits like all these little elements come from the stuff even from spaced there are little callbacks to that i remember noticing what was that process like and was that for you kind of a beginning of like ah this is i can play with this looking back on it i think it was a massive um moment for me and i started to realize that film scores and records didn't have to be different things you know the the sound of a score
• 25:55
  was as important as the notes almost, you know? And it's, you know, back when I started out in film music, you'd kind of make your demos and then you'd replace everything. And it would be the whole orchestral thing would happen at the end and that would be its own thing. Whereas with Scott Primm, he was building it like a record. So, you know, the things you recorded on day one might be there in the final mix or whatever, and it would just consistently evolve. And it was, the whole film was an...
• 26:21
  in evolution all the way through it, Edgar might have an idea of like, oh, a noise there for that person. And that would be a layer. And gradually the ideas would build and build and build. And so by the end of it, this thing is like this bubbling kind of alive soundscape that you couldn't have imagined back when you started.
• 26:36
  And then you still did your traditional film scoring elements at the end of it, and you put your strings on or whatever, but the sound of it and the character of it had built up over these months while everyone shipped in their ideas. And that was huge for me, the idea that you're making a record, really, and you're making something that's bespoke to the film. And if you've got things happening on screen that you can make music out of, fantastic, that's unique to that film, that makes it a bespoke
• 27:02
  film score that can be for nothing else and i've really clung on to that ever since i think
• 27:07
  because it's for me I remember buying that record like actually well I actually borrowed it this was in the days where you could go to the library and rent cd and borrow cds I remember borrowing that cd and like ripping it to my mp3 player and playing that over and over again and loving it because I was a big fan of the film and the comic as well and and the score and everything about it that detail and for you I mean like I say it was the first time you'd worked with Edgar on a film and and you've subsequently did the score for all of his movies did you get a sense of that when you
• 27:34
  I want to work with this guy. I mean, I got the sense for that when I went to see Shaun of the Dead. Years before that, when I'd gone to see it in a cinema, I think it was in Muswell Hill, and I came out of it and said to my now wife,
• 27:47
  like, oh, that's what I wanna do. I wanna be involved in this sort of filmmaking. And it seems so unlikely. It was just like this running joke, like, yeah, of course you do. And so I loved the way he was thinking from that point on. And then to see how he works and how everyone who works on his films gets
• 28:05
  given the sort of freedom to run at it. And then sort of, you know, he gives his feedback and gradually this thing shapes into something unique. It's, yeah, from the word go, you're like, ah, you're a really interesting filmmaker. And you know, the way he plans things out in advance to give everyone the freedom to play with it is great.
• 28:23
  and have you told him that oh yeah Shaw the Dead that was it oh yeah yeah we did I don't think he knew it until we did some vinyl release of The World's End like 10 years after it came out and I put that down in the liner notes and he sent me I never knew that so because
• 28:38
  Because you mentioned there about Baby Driver, like you were involved quite early on with the script in terms of like, you know, the BPM of the songs, how would these work conceptually? I mean, because I remember him hearing Edgar say that like Baby Driver, when he did the script and he was shopping it around, like there would be QR codes in the script and you could scan them and you could hear the song. I think it was an iPad app.
• 28:56
  My memory of it was that it was an iPad app. And, you know, he'd, again, he'd done a lot of work with someone who'd put sound design along with the songs. And so literally as you flick through the scripts, you would click and you'd hear, you know, say the opening trap with footsteps and traffic noises and that sort of stuff put together in a very loose kind of way. But it just gave you the sense of like, oh, music is the thread of it. I think the first page said like, music is every frame of this film or something like that.
• 29:23
  and it was just it made sense when you could hear it it's almost like a sound play kind of like a really yeah absolutely and again sort of you know so much work at that early stage to prove the concept of it but you see it in the final film i mean like without that work i mean that's the dna of the movie and like you can when you watch it you everything is so perfectly coordinated and choreographed
• 29:41
  You know, it's just, it comes off. And the film sort of gives back, I think, to that sort of level of work. That opening sequence when baby's walking through the streets, we chipped away at that thing for months, you know, and there's, you know, the cash machine, you know, the buttons there, they're in tune. You know, the guy's making a cappuccino in the coffee shop. Those blasts of steam, they're in tune, they're in time, everything. There's moments in that film that you look back now going like, God, yeah.
• 30:05
  the detail was great. Yeah, but I can only imagine that sometimes it must be like doing calculus. I can only imagine the timeline in like an Avid and just be like, how many tracks are there? But that's, you know, Edgar works very closely with his editor, Paul Matchless, and he's a very musical man. So he's keeping it in line. We have a wonderful music editor who came through working with me for a long time called Bradley Farmer, who was intrinsic to a lot of that stuff and kept everything, you know, in line. But there's sequences in that film that...
• 30:33
  when I see them back now, like the Hocus Focus sequence, there's a foot chase in that film. Yeah. Which there's moments when babies run into shops and there's four different tracks playing because they're all playing through speakers in different shops. We made all of those, all of those things to run concurrently. Everything was kind of made. You know, there's tracks in a shop where I'm being some Spanish DJ at some point. And it's, you know, the stuff you get to do is great fun.
• 30:57
  So you were recording like vocals of like you as a character. Yeah, we would make little spoof songs and things as if they could play as Muzak in a shopping mall and that sort of thing, but make it so that it could run. We did similar stuff in The Running Man. And, you know, there's moments in that where, you know, you head to a youth hostel and everyone's playing something different in their rooms. Or like a Rooty 2 advert or something in the background. Absolutely. It's all sunk together with this undercurrent of a song or a score.
• 31:23
  Yeah, it's funny because we had, you mentioned Paul Matchless, I remember him saying something about when you guys were doing Last Night in Soho, and the opening crawl of that movie, I guess crawl, like the opening logos and there's music already underneath the opening logo, and it's just a piano. Originally that cue was way more complicated, there were many more layers and stems to it, but basically when they were in the editing room, him and Edgar just pulled off all the stems until he got to that piano and I, ah, that sounds really good, and that became kind of the theme of the whole film.
• 31:50
  bonkers i mean that was that was a you know when i'm first doing a piece if i'm not structured to picture i'll just keep going and so it was one of those you know extendeds here's a load of ideas things what do you think pieces and you just you know i'll add another bit i'll add another bit another piano thing was like the last overdub that i'd done on it and it was just another little idea that came out in the outro of this piece that i just played in and that was the thing they zeroed in on it's like oh
• 32:14
  I did not notice that. So that's where that collaboration of being open to everybody, you know, it really works with, it gets easier each time you do it.
• 32:22
  And I feel like that's quite common in music, film music, is that you'll create a cue or a track or a demo that will be quite, there's a lot going on there, and then the director or producer will hum in on one tiny element and be like, that's it. And that's the most exciting bit. Oh, we're onto something. Great. We're all behind something. Now how can we explore that? Now can we explode that out into a film? And you just follow your nose. Yeah, exactly. It's just all the time listening to what's landing and what's feeling like it's helping.
• 32:49
  So going back to your film scores, I mean, because after Scott Pilgrim, then you got brought on to do the film score for Attack of the Block, which is one of my favourite films of yours that you've worked on. And that was your first official job as composer. And what was amazing to me about going back and watching the film and listening to the music specifically was just how confident.
• 33:09
  It is. There's almost a kind of swagger to the score because it's so sort of bold and like pulsating. I mean, I know because you worked with Basement Jacks on that score, which are obviously great in their own right. I mean, what are your memories working on that? Because that film turns 15 this year, which is pretty crazy. Yeah, 15th anniversary. Yeah.
• 33:25
  Wow. No, at the time it was just really, really fun and intense. It was very quick. I wasn't the first person on the job. I think the only reason I got the job was because it hadn't worked out with someone. And by this point they've run out of money. So, you know, who do we know who might be able to do this and is cheap? So I came on and it was it was written really quickly. And I think that's some of that energy to it. You know, it was written with energy because.
• 33:49
  You know, I had this little chance to get on a film and to contribute and you wanted to not blow it. You know, so you just threw everything at it for a period of time. It's a very, very small band, but it feels bigger because everyone just threw themselves into it. There was like an energy to the sessions. And yeah, the whole thing, I remember just little moments with Joe where...
• 34:08
  He'd play back something and again he'd zero in on the smallest detail which would just give you the clue to the next bit, a little piano thing that was very high up that reminded him of a Spielbergian kind of moment which was the angle he was looking for. He'd go, oh okay, so we're making a sort of a London version of that.
• 34:25
  And so I would write these cues and send them back to the guys at Basement Jacks and say, I've done a drum thing there. It needs to sound like you for that bit. And they would send that back and I'd incorporate that. And it just became a kind of different sounding score, which had a bit of freshness.
• 34:42
  yeah it did and the interplay and the sort of the way that you guys would embed like you're embedding your score in with Basement Jacks' work and vice versa like I remember they're accusing that like when Moses when John Boyega's character is running from the aliens that big finale that slow-mo incredible sequence of him running and like you've got that fromming Basement Jacks but also you've got your incredible strings all built up all built up yeah and as you say like for something that came together quite quickly and I think it was a month that you guys did the music it was yeah certainly my bit of it was yeah coming on the last month of it
• 35:11
  Yeah, but you would not know that because then it was put together quite quick because it had to be, but because it just flows so beautifully together. Yeah, I think sometimes the energy of the situation kind of takes over in a fun way and it's lovely to have time to really analyse things sometimes, but other times the spirit of it. You know, a lot of my favourite music was done pretty quickly, one or two takes, whatever. And it's, yeah, the whole orchestral element of that was done in a day. Wow. There's, yeah, no time for seconds passes on that stuff.
• 35:40
  and do you think that being your first job, I mean, what lessons do you think you took from that? I mean, was one of the lessons like speed is good for efficiency? It was the fact that what was reassuring about it was that you followed your nose and you followed your instincts with it and people responded to that. And that kind of just meant
• 35:58
  maybe I can do that then maybe I could have another go at that and maybe I can really explore this you know and and that was encouraging because until then you you were never sure you know will I ever get a go you know I'm I know I'm good at supporting other people doing it but you the dream was always to go and do it so it was it was that feeling of like oh it's possible you know and then of course you the phone doesn't ring for ages because you're kind of
• 36:21
  You know, you've only done this small film, which didn't make much money. It was kind of critically liked, but it didn't have the sort of success that makes Hollywood go, ah, you know. So it was still a case of waiting for an opportunity, but it was a lovely opener. Yeah, and then I guess that opportunity did come a knocking not too long after, because in 2013, you did World's End, your first collaboration with Edgar, and then Gravity, which you, of course, with Alfonso Cron, which of course you won your Oscar for. I mean, that sounds like a pretty banger year.
• 36:50
  to me, Stephen Price. It was that minute of what I mean. Gravity was done the year before. We sort of held onto Gravity a while for release date reasons. So I worked on Gravity before the World End. Right. And I kind of finished off most of my work on Gravity by the time the World End started. Okay. But yeah, Gravity was, again, just an opportunity that came up through. I'd worked with a post-production supervisor on another project. And when they were looking for someone to talk to Alfonso about music,
• 37:13
  which was something he wasn't really that up for talking about on Gravity. His original vision wasn't a music thing. Right. That, you know, he might help, you know, and so I got to go and speak to Alfonso, which was one of the most amazing meetings with anyone I've ever had.
• 37:28
  What's he like in a meeting or just generally? Just incredibly creative man, you know, and very, very driven to find something new and to make something unique to the film he's making. So the first conversation I had with him were all about what we couldn't do, you know, and, you know, don't want it to be like a film school. Don't want that.
• 37:45
  Well, didn't he, you told me earlier that like, he freely just admitted to you, he's like, yeah, I don't like film music. Or was that just it? He didn't want anything to feel cliched or anything to feel. He was aware what he was making was a unique feeling film. And you know, the camera was this sort of constantly moving thing. There were very few cuts in the film. There's no reason for a film like Gravity to have a traditional score sitting at the front of a theater. It's like that presentation was irrelevant to him. But I think to express that is really difficult.
• 38:15
  and you can only really express it if you if you show people what you mean and so we talked a lot about that and like you know if you're if you're trying to do all the things a film school would do emotionally but without using any of those devices how might you do that which is you know not a bad starter totally yeah forget everything that kind of you think you know and let's go off I said that to you I remember saying to him once I feel like I don't know anything he was like great well now we can get started you know that was like what he was looking for
• 38:40
  And do you think that's how he approaches his filmmaking? I think he needs to feel excited about stuff. I think he's excited about the possibility of cinema and what that can be. And, you know, if stuff's been done really well, why do that again? You know, you can kind of do something different and make it unique. And it was really challenging, but really exciting all the time. Every day was like a really exciting day.
• 39:03
  Because that film, as I say, as a composer, you're so brilliant at layering it, using diegetic sound and just blurring that line between sound design and score. And I feel like that film is kind of in some ways like the Naples Ultra of that in a lot of ways, because you have all these sort of cinematic kind of, I guess, rises in there, like guitar rises, I guess. It's such an influential score.
• 39:23
  Because I feel like so much has taken something from it, from these elements, and not just films, but more broadly, I think, just generally, people take things from it. How does it feel to feel, I guess, your influence from all these experiments? It's funny to hear about it. I guess I'm less aware of it than others. It's nice to hear that it has had that sort of influence. For me, every film, you're trying to make this bespoke thing. And I used to find it weird when people would use a bit of gravity and attempt for something else.
• 39:52
  It's not in space. That sounds weird. I kind of always, I can't detach it from the visuals really in my mind. But there's so many things that came up technically making that film. And you make these little discoveries of what would happen if I just treat the orchestra quite badly and cut them off and don't have decays of things. And suddenly they would sound kind of electronic, but they're not. They're organic.
• 40:18
  And so you learn all these things that felt human, but were kind of played with at the same time. And that stuff has certainly lived with me a lot. And the fact that you can make music out of all sorts of things, you know, it doesn't have to be the traditional meme. Well, I remember on Fury, I bet didn't you use, like you were using all other kinds of sounds, like dog tags rattling, like jerry cans,
• 40:39
  Yeah, we had a tank delivered to Studio Two in Abbey Road. We had these big Verlie guys from somewhere or other deliver big chunks of a World War II tank. And a chap called Alastair Malloy, who's a brilliant percussion player, just went around hitting stuff for a day. But amazing, you take these things and slow them down. All of a sudden, it's kind of an ambient noise, but it's got a bit of pitch to it. And it feels real, in a way, because it's come from the actual organic stuff.
• 41:06
  And David Ayer as a director, is he like there going, yeah, let's bang on that jerrycan a bit harder. Let's do the scope for it. I think just embrace the fact that, you know, the film sounded like it was coming off the screen a little bit and the music was really sort of supporting how everything looked and how the materials were. It's a very sort of murky feeling film that, you know, sort of very, and some really strong imagery in that film. I think he definitely embraced the sort of the rougher edges around music stuff.
• 41:33
  Yeah, because there's a tactility to it as well that really sort of draws you in as a viewer. And it's a kind of subconscious thing, I guess. Like, unless you're sort of looking out for it, you're not thinking when you're watching a film, oh, that's an interesting sort of diegetic sound or this, that's an interesting sort of cue. I mean, ideally, you're just sort of enveloped in the story, but those layers are in there and you are being pulled in.
• 41:52
  Yeah, and I think one of the things I like about some of the projects and the filmmakers I work with, they kind of reward repeated viewings, a lot of these things. Something you might just feel the first time, you might notice the third or fourth time or whatever and realise that, oh, okay, that's interesting that that's in there, you know.
• 42:07
  And on gravity then, because like I say, going back to what you're saying about how it's like, it's an atypical score because it sounds human, but also it's not as well. Yeah, it's kind of that blurring that line between sort of organic humanity and kind of that sort of synthetic, I guess, slightly more synthetic feel. I mean, like, because was there any, I don't know, was there even any percussion on that score?
• 42:26
  It's not conventional percussion. That was one of the rules that we had quite early on. Because, again, you're in an action film, and traditionally what you're going to get is a lot of drums, a lot of brass, because that's what's going to cut through sound design. But we had no sound design in that sense. So you had all this space to play with. So why would you use the traditional tricks? Yeah.
• 42:44
  You know, percussion would come out of chopping into other things, you know, like creating a drone based out of me singing the lowest note I could do and slowing it down and then making that into these little units that could pulsate and feel like they were doing the same job as percussion, but in a way that came out of the body in a different way.
• 43:03
  Yeah, kind of like, because I remember you saying that vibrations, you do get vibrations in space, and so that low frequency rumbling was kind of part of the sounds. And the sound designers were doing incredible work with that. Their kind of rule for them was that, you know, if Sandra Bullock's character could sort of feel it through the suit, the vibrations as she was holding things, that would be the sound design. So it was all quite low frequency stuff, which gave me the rest of the soundscape to play with. So I could plant the smallest little sound in a reverse speaker, a rear speaker,
• 43:32
  knowing that it would be heard, which is not the case in most films. You could play with detail in all sorts of different ways. For sure. And then, because as we say, there is really beautiful melodies in that score, as well as these sort of frumming pieces of sound design and score. And when you get to a scene like the ending scene, I guess a spoiler alert for anyone who hasn't seen Gravity, but that ending where she comes out of the ocean...
• 43:56
  And she stands upright. And it's incredible, sort of like the human voices on that. And it's one of the greatest punch the air moments in like modern films. I mean, as a composer, when you watch that scene back, you're rubbing your hands together and going, oh, great. I always thought I'd overdone that at the end. I was always really paranoid about the sort of the big sort of
• 44:15
  huge wailing voice thing that we did at the end now I did another version that I was always more fond of because I was a bit sort of self-conscious about it now I see it back and I see what Alfonso was pushing for was this sense of freedom and this sense of like the resolution and it's this feeling of rebirth that the whole film is kind of doing but yeah it was films with with moments like that you know they're few and far between really so yeah I think you grab hold of them where you can
• 44:40
  Yeah, and when you watch that, you're like, oh yeah, I can dive into this. Is that fill you with excitement, or is it kind of intimidating, or is it? It's always intimidating until you do it, and then it's just exciting. I remember there was the actual re-entry sequence in that film. There's an incredible top shot where you see the craft she's in and all this debris around it that sort of re-enters the Earth's atmosphere. And the editor and myself used to have this running joke that if I hit that really hard with the orchestra and a choir, and we were standing next to each other at the final dub, it meant we'd both not been sacked.
• 45:10
  So whenever I see that shot, it's like, ah, there's the shot that meant we'd made it. And she'd made it, isn't the character? Everyone made it. Exactly, we all made it together. Yeah, and because that score, like we were saying about Alfonso and his approach to filmmaking, because of course, I mean, one of the most famous aspects about it is that it's long takes, you know, they're like eight or 10 minutes, some of them, I think, if not longer.
• 45:30
  And as a composer composing to that, like I imagine you're not composing then to the picture in a way that in a conventional way of like, OK, this cue, this one minute cue for this bit, almost like chapters of like music. You're composing something that's much more organic and sort of evolving, I guess, with the picture. Is that right?
• 45:47
  Yeah, I mean, it was all written very, that one was written very specifically to picture. So it was all, there were no sweets or anything like that. They go, I don't really do the sweets thing very often anyway, but this was very, very specifically to picture. And so little moments you would work on and you might really focus on two minutes of it for a while and then try and try and link that to the next one. And so it always felt like every, every scene flowed into the next scene in a sort of very seamless way. And there's, there's all sorts of little moments in it that
• 46:15
  you know, because you put all that work in when the visual effects started coming together towards the end, it almost felt like they gave you the extra 10%. There's moments where, you know, suddenly there would be a reflection in a tear heading towards the camera or whatever. And it just shimmered along with this bit of music that you'd done in a way that I could never have predicted. But the film started to develop its own momentum as we got towards the end of it. And yeah, when they work, they kind of they give back a bit, you know.
• 46:40
  And it's that chemistry that you find when you just bring those disparate elements together. They come together in a way that you can never, you can't predict, but they work. It's the most predictive thing, I think. The idea that all these different elements in a film can come together and suddenly there's these little moments that take your breath away a little bit. And that's the thing you're always hoping, the next project, the next cue, the next, you know, where you're going to find that, you know.
• 47:04
  I mean, where else have you found that? I mean, any other moments in your career where you're like, ah, that comes to go, it's like, that's a good one. I mean, if there's moments, and certainly in Edgar's films, in the Running Man we did last year, I remember sitting at the final play through of that, and there were moments where everything just seemed like it mitted, and there were all these different elements that we played with, and fiddled, and up, down, left, right, whatever. Suddenly it felt like, oh, the flow is there, and it felt like you were being dragged into the next bit of the story, and the next bit of the scene, and the whole thing felt like it was bubbling along together.
• 47:33
  Just those are the moments I really like, where it just feels like the film is flowing. And then with Gravity then, of course, that was your third film, was it second or third? It was the second one written as a standalone composer, the third one that came out. Came out, and then you find yourself being flown off to the Oscars, where you win the Oscar for best score. Because I remember I was watching back that bit of the ceremony and you're sitting there next to John Williams and Newman, Thomas Newman.
• 48:02
  Two of the greats. And when they call your name, like Williams is like shaking your hand. I mean, that must have been a surreal experience. If I think back to the whole thing, that moment when I turned to him and he was so lovely to me throughout the entire experience in a way that he really didn't have to be. And like, you know, I think everyone talks about his music and how wonderful he is. But as a human, he was amazing. We'd done a concert that week where we all had to play bits of our scores.
• 48:27
  And I remember he showed up to my rehearsal in a supportive kind of way. There was a meal where we were all sitting there, and I, of course, didn't say a word, because I was sitting in a room with, you know, Desplat and John Williams and Thomas Newman. I think Randy Newman was there. Yes, one of the Sherman brothers was there. Burt Bacharach was next to me. And so you're not saying... And he kept turning around and just giving me a little nod and a wink. Aww. So what a bloke, you know? So he was, yeah, that moment when they announced the winner and he seemed genuinely pleased for me. Mm. It was, yeah, that was the real memory.
• 48:57
  Yeah, because I imagine, like I said this to Murray when he came on, Murray Gold, the composer when he came on a little while ago, that like music is such a hotline for like emotion and character and personality. I mean, like with Murray Gold's music, you can hear it feels like a Murray Gold score, not just in his choices, but like his nature is in the music. And I think that's the case with most composers. I think that's the case for you. When I listen to that music, it's part of the Stephen Price sound. And with John Williams, I feel like because his music is obviously so beloved, but it's so warm.
• 49:24
  If that is a reflection of his character, it doesn't surprise me that he was like a lovely bloke because his music, you kind of, I mean, I don't know, Jones, but you know what I mean? Like you can feel that. There's life and joy and yeah, there's the emotion in it. And that's all the writers I like really, the ones who are looking to express that. You know, that's the reason I got into telling any sort of story is to move people in whatever way it is.
• 49:45
  And do you find that, so after you won the Oscar for Gravity, did you find that that was that quite a dramatic shift for you in terms of like, like how you worked and I guess the attention you were getting from, from like the industry? I mean, it was certainly, it meant that I could start looking at it as a career that would continue, you know, which, which it was, was far from, from certain at that point.
• 50:01
  And even now, you know, you're as good as your last sort of hit sort of thing. So it's never, it's not a forever job. But it's, yeah, it was great to have conversations with people who were interested in what you might be able to do for their film, you know. And Fury came up soon after that. And, you know, I certainly was allowed to do a bolder score for that than I think I would have been allowed to do without Gravity. You know, people were much more willing to take the call when I was like, I'd like to get a tank, please. You know, that wouldn't have happened before. So, yeah, it was exciting, that period, you know.
• 50:31
  Then, like I say, you've worked with David Ayer, and then Edgar being another key collaboration of yours, and then in 2013, you did The World's End, and that marked the beginning of that full-fledged composer-director relationship. And we were talking a bit about it earlier, but the fact that Edgar is so meticulous, and you as well being so meticulous, is that kind of like a match made in heaven, you two coming together? I find it incredibly rewarding, the fact that...
• 50:57
  those detail things are noticed, celebrated, encouraged. We've all worked together for a long time now, so the sound department have been with him since spaced, I think. So the language they speak together is incredible. And it's very open. So if I have an idea of like, this is my tempo for the music, wouldn't it be great if,
• 51:18
  the alarms were at the same tempo and we pitched them in. Everyone's sort of into that. And gradually we build this thing together, which is kind of a mosaic of all these different things.
• 51:27
  Yeah, and is Edgar a kind of director who will encourage you to go further and push you and he'll go further? And that's one of the things that is great about that partnership and other directors I've worked with who kind of their feedback on stuff and their excitement and ideas makes you think about it all in a different way. Before you know it, you've written something that you would never have come up with a month ago. It's this thing that's influenced by their ideas too and it's like a...
• 51:50
  a combination of the two spirits coming together. And then that's when it's exciting for me. You come up with something that isn't just you, it's the film as well.
• 51:58
  And with Edgar, like I say, he has that template in his head and he's so musically savvy with the sound as well. I've heard some composers talk about how they communicate with directors and how some composers prefer directors to talk to them in emotional terms rather than technical musical terms. Because if they try to talk technically, if they're not musically have that background, it's normally not what they actually want. And it can be hard to communicate that. But with Edgar, does he communicate emotionally? It's a bit of everything.
• 52:25
  I mean, he's very, very capable of talking music, you know, in terms of what melodies he wants and, you know, how he's feeling about it. But it does tend to come down to how this is serving the film, you know, and if this is not enough or this is we need more here. There's a lot of very specific stuff about it. It'd be great to really hit that line. It'd be great to really get that shot. But lots of melodically, it seems like, you know, he likes it, he doesn't like it and we develop it as we go.
• 52:49
  But it's always felt like a very organic kind of easy process just to communicate with him about it. You know, it's how it feels really is like, you know, this one's not quite working out. What can we do? You know, is it an approach of mine? Is it something that I need to play this bit a bit louder? Do I need to get rid of the melody here? Just trying to find the key a lot of the time just to open it up. But it's always felt very easy to try things out with him.
• 53:14
  And was there like a specific key on like, on something like The Running Man? Was there like a moment where you hit on like, say, a melody or a bit of, ah, that's the movie? That was really early. I mean, I started writing on that based off the script. So way before they started shooting. And usually I send something to work when I hear back quite quickly.
• 53:31
  And this time I hadn't, so I was like, oh, maybe they haven't gone down so well. Oh, well. But he was just really busy doing what turned out to be the hair and makeup tests. And then I suddenly get this QuickTime sent to me of the hair and makeup tests and people, you know, being shot with the very vague backgrounds, but in their costumes and stuff. And my music's been played and there were bits of it where people were walking in sync with the music and all this sort of stuff. It's like, oh, we're in, we've got a language for this.
• 53:56
  And so I just kept writing from that point onwards and through their edit process they would use these very basic demos to kind of help us get the tempos going. Then send it to me, I would rewrite it, send it back and it would just go back and back and forth throughout the whole process of the thing.
• 54:11
  Because he does involve music, as I understand it, so early in the process, if he can. Because, like I say, Paul Mackliss, his editor, he was telling me once that, even when we were doing Baby Driver, he's editing on set. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Which I think even then was only just, I think that's more common now, but he was really... Baby Driver felt like one of the first times I'd seen people doing that, and it was super intense, sort of, and he's there in his little band. Yeah.
• 54:34
  just cutting it together live. Yeah. And Edgar would shout out to him like, you know, did we get that, Paul? And Paul's like, yeah, we got it. Yeah, absolutely. Because they know they need certain coverage to make things work. So they literally chop it in situ. And he's, I want to say he's layering in music and sound, maybe not them, but not far off. Yeah. I mean, by the time that the assembly exists, that sort of first bit where the whole film's put together, it's quite evolved. You know, there's a lot of the intent is there. And then it's like, how can we improve every single bit of it until we're told to finish?
• 55:04
  Yeah. And then with Edgar and his team, because like you say, it sounds like such a sort of open environment for collaboration. But then I've heard sometimes with film composition generally, like, you know, because there's a composer, I've heard composers say, you know, you're not just dealing with a director, you're dealing with producers, execs. You have to present work. It could be, you know, that could be kind of intimidating sometimes, you know, if they don't like it or if there's like a temp score they're used to, which they're really wedded to. And you have to kind of break them away from that and encourage them to go, no, no, this is actually what I've done here will work as good, if not better. Yeah.
• 55:33
  Do you have to deal with that much as a composer? That kind of like, I guess, sort of safeguarding almost, or trying to preserve what you've done and communicate that to them and deal with that. Yeah, there's always some of that. And there's always some kind of proof of concept. When I always feel like you sort of have to have something there that's undeniable, right? There's something that everyone agrees is the way forward and then you can kind of get on with your work. Till that point, everyone's a bit twitchy because they don't really know, is this gonna work? Is he right for this? There's always that sort of slight uncertainty. So you're always pushing for the thing that everyone goes,
• 56:02
  oh yeah, that really plays. And then you're kind of at the races almost. Because you're looking to be able to work without that pressure really of kind of worrying about, trying to, I think you're gonna end up with something a lot more bland if you're trying to please everybody. So you need to kind of find the bold thing quite early on that the people can get behind. And sometimes that can be very tricky because until you've finished it, sometimes it doesn't come together. I remember getting a very good bit of advice years and years ago,
• 56:31
  from a composer who, you know, his demos were like, I thought, pretty bad. And I was like, how do you get away with that? I couldn't get away with that. And it was like, well, you know, if I'm watching the film with the producers and they're questioning it, I'll go, well, look at your picture here and how you've got this,
• 56:47
  thing here, which is going to be a CGI thing. I trust you that that's going to look brilliant. And you need to trust me that this is going to be brilliant because I know this job, you know. And I think that's great advice because until we're finished, there's got to be a bit of trust and there's got to be a little bit of belief that you can do it. And sometimes it's easier to convince people and others of that,
• 57:09
  you know you you without the trust i think you know you're going to end up with something pretty boring all the time and is that moment in when you're in sort of i guess the the studio and like when when everyone goes ah that's good is that the moment where you go okay there's yeah yeah sometimes it's earlier than that sometimes it might be you know a demo that just has hit the spot or whatever but yeah there's always that moment in the studio it always seems easier because of course it's glorious when you hear musicians playing music it's a wonderful
• 57:32
  experience to have. But yeah, you'd hope to get to that stage, you've already got to the state where everyone's gone like, oh, okay, I think we're on to something.
• 57:40
  Because there is a kind of almost there's a sort of there is very much an interpersonal element I hear to being a composer and like because a lot of composers kind of get drafted in the 11th hour like at the end of the process that the movie's been shot and edited and they have to sort of deal with all the politics that have already been created on the set and then in the post. And you kind of have to be a bit of a psychologist as well as like a composer. You have to be able to deal with people. And it sounds like there's a lot of skills that you need as a person.
• 58:05
  Yeah, I mean, they're all so different that the situation is so different every time, but there's kind of a sweet spot to coming onto a film where sometimes you come on early and that can be great because you can plant some really sort of interesting ideas that would never exist if you came on at the end because there's not gonna be time to implant them in the same way.
• 58:22
  But sometimes you might be putting those ideas in and the ideas might be right, but the film's not ready for them yet. And maybe the film hasn't found its cut yet. So people are really worried. And the easiest thing to sort of look at if something's not working, it's like the music's not working. Sometimes the film's just not ready for the music yet. And so it's kind of maneuvering through those situations in a way that gives you the best chance of coming up with something really interesting for me.
• 58:43
  Yeah. And I like starting early because you get rid of a lot of the problems of temp music and you know, you do get to throw in some ideas that are a little obscure at that point and it just has a little bit of something that someone likes, then you're doing something interesting then. But then, you know, coming in at the end of Attack the Block was great because you could come in and just hit it really hard. And people were so excited to be at that stage of the film that it all ran through quite straightforwardly.
• 59:10
  They're all different, but the psychology is definitely a big bit of a job. And do you think that's the same for all composers? I mean, no matter how, I guess, in a way, quite-unquote big they are? I mean, someone like Hans Zimmer, obviously, being as renowned as he is, do you think he has a bit more... Do you think he has leeway to come in and be a bit more like, you know, I don't need to be sort of as interpersonal. I can just be like, I'm Hans Zimmer. I'm sure, I'm sure at that sort of level of Hans.
• 59:33
  He's obviously incredible in the room. I've never seen anyone in a room analysing picture like he could. And, you know, of course, with the weight of the amount of things he's done over the years, there's going to be a huge amount of respect and excitement for what's he going to come up with, which puts him in a different position to virtually anyone else, I'd have thought. But, yeah, it's...
• 59:54
  everyone's going to come at it from different ways, you know. And the excitement for me is just finding that director's thing, you know, the thing that they didn't know they were looking for, but you've kind of just found a little key into something that means something to them. And if you can feel that excitement, that makes you write better and that makes you want to kind of do more and more and more. And that's when the good stuff happens, I think.
• 1:00:15
  Another project that we haven't mentioned yet, but I think we should, because it's an incredible one that you've done, is working with David Attenborough on that series of documentaries, Our Planet and Ocean, the incredible work that you've done on those. Thank you. I mean, because Attenborough being such an institution...
• 1:00:32
  And, you know, that voice alone, I remember hearing you describe it as like that voice alone is an instrument. Yeah. And building the music or the sound for one of the soundscape for, you know, one of his documentaries. I mean, is it right? Am I right in thinking that when you started working on Our Planet, you asked, like, oh, what is David like in terms of what is his music? And it was chamber music. That was, yeah, that was a film. So we did. The Our Planet show was like an eight hour kind of thing going all around different biomes of the world.
• 1:00:56
  The first one that had really kind of dealt with environmental issues as its core. And then after that, we did a thing called A Life on Our Planet, which was David's life story. And because it was not done for the BBC, it was a Netflix thing. It was the first time really he could be totally honest about what he'd seen during his life and how the world had changed and be quite angry about it. And actually you'd be staring down the barrel of the camera.
• 1:01:20
  and one of the things i've loved about working with him is the era i've been lucky to work with him in it's when he has kind of really gone for the cause you know and and that one because it was his life story and we were really going from early archive footage of him you know looking glamorous with his shorts and sort of bare chested sort of looking out over the ocean um it it felt like it had to be him and so i did ask lots of people around him so like what does he like
• 1:01:45
  And it sounds like he's an amazingly interested music fan. You know, he would always go with a lunchbox of CDs to wherever they were traveling around the world. And he would always have things he'd listen to. And his big interest was chamber stuff. So that meant the score for A Life on Our Planet biography of him was done in that way. It was quite small forces and all meant to be very sort of like it's supposed to sound like key sounds.
• 1:02:09
  That was the idea. Which I guess is in some ways a challenge. Because, like I say, sound like he sounds. I mean, because he sounds so mellifluous and so iconic. Like, was that a challenge? Like, okay, this needs to blend. This is a companion to that. Yeah, exactly. And his phrasing is really interesting. When you start to analyse what he's doing, he picks his words very, very precisely. He doesn't use that many words. And he will emphasise...
• 1:02:33
  not the one you'd expect conventionally. You know, it's almost it's he's a great actor, I think, you know, a great actor could have been a great musician, just one of those people who could probably have done anything. And he places his words in really interesting ways. And they seem to fall beautifully against music. You know, he seems to naturally express his thoughts musically. And so I just cling to him, you know, and try and try and do things that accompany him and support him and follow his words and his tone. And that seems to work out well.
• 1:03:02
  And I mean, it's interesting because then talking about that in relation to, I guess, because if it was on a more typical feature film, like you're working with a director closely. I mean, like with David, was he involved in that process, your scoring process? He's less involved in the day-to-day of my stuff. I work with producers of the show that tend to be my more immediate people I speak to. And they're very...
• 1:03:25
  interested in music and these shows because they you know you haven't got characters that talk beyond the narrator the music is kind of intrinsic part of it so they tend to sort of involve you early and and but they give you a lot of leeway in those shows to to express what you want to um and then you know give you good notes you know structural things about you know you're going too soon or whatever
• 1:03:44
  to make the show flow. Again, those shows are all about, you know, feeling the flow of it. The films are kind of different because they're a standalone thing, but something like Our Planet series, it was like eight hours where the whole thing needed to feel like it was the same show, but you're going through totally different environments and they all sound different because you know, the Arctic sounds different to me than the jungle does. And so it was like a big jigsaw puzzle of making it feel like it all belonged to the same thing, but at the same time reflected what was on the screen.
• 1:04:13
  Yeah, because I mean, eight hours, that's a lot of music as well. It was a lot of music, yeah. And it was, and, you know, I loved doing it because it was, you had to be really kind of disciplined. And, you know, if I didn't write three minutes every single day, then I would fall off the edge of the schedule and never climb back up again. So there were moments during it when you're like...
• 1:04:30
  episode three and I'm gonna feel a bit, but it was so satisfying and again, you get moments in those shows, you know, there's moments when the music just is allowed to take you on a journey really. Something that you picked
• 1:04:45
  Picking up on something you said about melody and how, I'm curious to ask about what your views are on like film music today, because I feel like melody is kind of becoming less and less of a prized commodity. Like music almost, there's an idea, I feel almost like an unspoken notion that it shouldn't be noticed.
• 1:05:02
  which I find strange because like you were saying about Attenborough, like there are spaces and so much of the music is intrinsic to that. And it's just, sometimes it's just music. So you get like that big canvas, but then on films and TV, I feel like, and even like, I think pop music, like melody is so, music is so much not given that space to be memorable and catchy and take that risk.
• 1:05:22
  Yeah, I know what you mean. And yeah, I agree, actually. There's a lot of time that you feel that people don't want to feel the emotion in the way. I mean, a lot of the note I dread is kind of like, are we leading the audience there? I'm like, yeah, great. Because when I go to see something, I want to be moved, you know?
• 1:05:40
  A side of me feels these things are cyclical and a tune is going to, and people are going to respond to certain things musically and those opportunities are always going to be there. You just might have to fight a little harder for them at the moment. But a lot of the film scores that were, they were huge, great film scores we remember from our youth, there wasn't that much sound design. There was so few tracks going on. There was a lot more room for music.
• 1:06:03
  I think that will come back again. And it's like, you know, there's certainly all the moments I'm most proud of musically have tended to involve a melody that pays off and might be planted as a little seed somewhere early on in a film and allowed to evolve. And, you know, there's glorious moments when you're writing a score and you get sort of towards the last act of a film and you realize all these things you've set up in the early reels can suddenly pay off in different ways and themes can play against each other. And it's all part of the storytelling to me.
• 1:06:28
  So I know totally what you mean that production and things have become more the driver in a lot of places, but I still think that there's going to be room for all that stuff.
• 1:06:38
  I hope so too because as I say I feel like it's something that I notice in film music and also more broadly like in pop music like I feel like so much music is I think we were saying before like music it's almost stuff that you can have on in the background like I say it's underscore it's almost like you can tune it out in a way and like but then like your music and like and someone like Murray Golds or Hans Zimmer like it's music that cries out to be noticed because it's so memorable and it's so powerful and in the in the right place in that works great it's like you know there's there are occasions when people people you know don't want to leave the audience in that in that way and it's
• 1:07:08
  you know, great. That can work wonderfully too and leave things in that sense. But I really like when all the elements of a film could come together. And to me, it's like, you know, I want to move people. That's what was always fun about the job to me. The fact that, you know, you can leave people having had an experience, you know. And if we want people to come to the cinemas and to leave their houses and watch things in a really sort of dedicated way, I think we need to give them something that really fills the senses and
• 1:07:36
  I always think one of the great things about Gravity was that we didn't express it in an old fashioned theatrical way. It wasn't just here speakers at the front and a bit of reverb in the back. The whole music moved around you, the soundscape moved around you in a way that was pure cinema. And so there was a reason to go. And if we're worried about people going to the cinema, let's give them something they can't get anywhere else. And to me, that is emotional, immersive experiences.
• 1:08:04
  I remember Ryan Gosling recently said that about Project Hail Mary. I mean, another big science fiction film. He said, like, you don't need to be coming out for us. We need to be giving you reasons to come out. We need to be doing our work and make you want to come to the cinema. And it's worked. You know, they've just had an incredible weekend. And then they all go on to be considered a great thing.
• 1:08:22
  I think, yeah, we do absolutely need to give it a unique reason to come out. You know, we've got incredible technology now to do that with, you know, speakers have never been better in theatres. You know, when I started out, you were lucky to have like surround speakers working. Now you've got amazing places to see it. The screens have never been better. You know, we can do stuff.
• 1:08:40
  So you think it's something that is actually not only surviving, but kind of thriving and evolving, like it's getting better. I think there's this whole untapped areas for it. You know, I think we've probably not touched the surface of what modern cinema can be. You know, there's not many stories that have really kind of embraced the possibility sonically, you know, there's Gravity did it, Dune did it, you know, things like that, where you feel like you're in an environment, you know, and just story can play out in that way and use all the techniques of that. I think there's all sorts of possibilities.
• 1:09:08
  It's immersive. I mean, out of interest, like you mentioned Dune, are there any other great sort of films or filmmakers you think recently that have really taken advantage or are pushing the envelope a bit of what you can do? I think something like Denis Villeneuve is, you know, crucial. I think Edgar's, you know, done a lot of that. I think the detail he places all around you, there are moments when you walk through his films and you feel like you're in an environment and you're walking through an environment. It's very sort of immersive kind of way of watching a film.
• 1:09:34
  So, yeah, I think I'll be interested to see where that all goes next, you know, what Nolan will do with it, you know, with the next one and filming it all with IMAX cameras. And, you know, that's going to be a film you have to see in a theatre. And that's great. And it's great. So I was thinking about this recently with Nolan that, like, yeah, you know, he's like, I mean, I know he gets talked about a lot of him, but like he is one of the guys, maybe even some, he's the only guy or certainly a handful who can go off and do the Odyssey, you know, like they did Spartacus back in the day and like take all those people across. And it's a massive undertaking. Yeah.
• 1:10:02
  and he's interested in the cinematic experience the movie going experience sound you know he loves all he's got his practicalness of it i think people people have got you know so used to seeing things that are computer generated it's amazing what you can do but there's you can definitely feel it differently the same with with music you know it's a it's a big difference between recording a piano in a room or having a piano sample played in another room somewhere else and
• 1:10:27
  You know, it's people can feel it, the human touch of these things. And that's where we can offer something different, I think. So you've worked with such an incredible breadth of people, Edgar, Joe Cornish, you know, and going back, you know, Nolan and, you know, Hans Zimmer and all.
• 1:10:43
  you know trevor jones and then obviously people at attenborough you know you've worked with so many great folks i mean is there and you see obviously like such a great fan of film and music i mean is there anyone out there right now be they like filmmaker or artist you know generally who you're a fan of who you haven't worked with before that you know oh you know if i could get a chance to work with them like my music and their images that would be great i mean anyone out there like that it's to me it's the people who i don't know about yet are the exciting ones that's that's the thing that i'm most excited about who's who's going to be you know this next nolan who's going to do
• 1:11:12
  Who's going to be the people who embrace the possibilities of what cinema can be now? And that's the exciting thing for me. Somewhere there's the filmmaker who's going to just really grab hold of the next generation of films. And that's who I want to meet. The people who are going to just take it on and embrace what emotional filmmaking can be.
• 1:11:36
  So that's, yeah, that's my dream. And do you think there's anyone out there right now that you've noticed that is sort of picking up that baton of like, ah, you know, someone who's interesting, who's doing new things? I don't know, yeah, I don't know. I've not, it's that interesting thing of going from the, making that break, you know, having that vision of the bigger, thinking bigger, you know, you could see when you saw...
• 1:11:55
  What was the film that the Sinners guy did at the very start of it, like 10, 15 years ago? You could see the scale in his filmmaking. You could see it. Same with Nolan when you first saw Memento. You could see that the ideas were so big, you know, that he was going to sail, right? Yeah. And that's what, yeah, that's where it's like, that little glimmer of like, you know, thinking on the big scale, but stories leading it.
• 1:12:19
  I felt that when I saw people like the Safdies or Sean Baker or Damien Chazelle, obviously, Whiplash. You see that and this guy's a voice and an understanding of the craft and he's got the direct line to his brain through the camera. Whiplash was incredible for that. I remember seeing that and being incredibly excited about what are you going to do next? Yeah.
• 1:12:41
  was that a kind of moment like oh time to raise the game almost like oh we need to this is we need to it was that energy is that that sort of using that the cinema as energy you know like that sort of the the camera moving in a way that you hadn't seen before and whipping around and and just just yeah the whole the marriage of it all you know it's anything like that where you feel like here's the the energy of what cinema can be
• 1:13:02
  Because that's Justin Hurwitz who did the score for that. And he's obviously did La La Land. First Man as well, I thought was a very underrated thing. Yeah, really underrated. And Babylon as well. I mean, they seem like they've got a shorthand. Like you and Edgar. Damien Chazelle and him have got a shorthand, it seems. I think it's all such totally different films. And you look at sort of the vintage periods for the Scorseses, the Spielbergs, whoever. They're working all the time, right? Every couple of years, some totally different genre of film.
• 1:13:30
  happens and you know you can always feel them exploring what can i do you know that's exciting yeah and is that the thing that sort of drives you do you think that what can i do where can i go next i love i love um finishing a project and looking for the absolute opposite of that project you know and like how it comes back to that that thing that quran said you know that feeling of like i don't know what i'm doing you know is terrifying stroke exciting every single time so yeah you're looking for the next thing that might make you find something you didn't know you had
• 1:13:57
  kind of throwing yourself in sort of the least the least desirable water and then swimming like see if you can you can yeah exactly and and you know there's there's an old old john lennon quote of like you know we're competent people you know give us give us a give us a tuba and we'll get a sound out of it but every now and then we'll land on something there's a bit and you're looking you know you're always going to do something solid but can you how can you elevate that and you know what can you find out about you know how how music can interact with the world
• 1:14:23
  And are there any genres of film or just project that you haven't done that you would love to do? Like you say, something completely different. Yeah, I've never done a rom-com. I think that would be fascinating to do. I've never done a pure comedy, sort of comedy comedy. I would love to do that. But the things that I always come back to are those ones where the concept leads everything. And Gravity is a big case in point. The Dune sort of films are a case in point where...
• 1:14:49
  Music can be a language, right? And it can be a very distinct language to that. And it'll always be those sort of wide screen kind of things for me where, you know, preferably they're the most entertaining things in the world, but they've also got that bit of art to them that makes it feel like it lasts forever, you know? And those are the ones that, yeah, they're the dream.
• 1:15:07
  Well, I think that's a lovely note to end on, Stephen. Well, thanks so much for coming on the pod. Thank you very much, indeed. It's been such a pleasure, honestly, just to listen to you talk about what you do and just, yeah, I mean, I was about to make a really bad joke. Music to my ears, but I don't want it. I've made it now. I've made it now. Well, thank you very much, sir, for inviting me on. Our pleasure, sir.
• 1:15:33
  Hey everyone, thanks so much for listening to my chat with Stephen Price. Remember to like and subscribe to the podcast so you never miss an episode. And stay tuned for more exciting interviews and guests coming soon on Half the Picture.