Music Forum 8/4 April 2002

Sculpting Sound: New Bell Designs and Attitude

Leah Curtis takes a look into Christopher Gordon's world, gaining a valuable insight into the demands of a contemporary professional screen composer.

Christopher Gordon is recognised as one of our country's leading screen composers. Just as comfortable writing for the concert hall as the screen, Gordon is particularly noted for his skillful orchestral writing. His scores have gained both National and International recogintion, with awards and award nominations from, APRA, AGSC and ASM (Australian Screen Music Awards). Gordon is certainly well seasoned in the broad range of demands placed on a film composer today.

His credits for film and television include Moby Dick, Fox's When Good Ghouls Go Bad, the highly acclaimed score for On The Beach, as well as the Imax film, Sydney: Story of a City. Gordon is also in demand as a conductor and orchestrator of film and TV scores by other composers, including Changi (2001) and Moulin Rouge (2001).

L.C: How would you describe your work process for screen music?

C.G: Disciplined and regimented. I tend to spend the mornings isolated from the world, composing the outlines. The afternoons and evenings are spent completing those outlines to full score as well as dealing with the copyist, orchestra contractor, engineer, booking studios, handling the budget, negotiating my contract through my agent, etc.

L.C: How does it differ from your approach to writing concert music?

C.G: Quite simply, when writing a concert piece you're making music; when writing a film score you are making a film. When making a film, a lot of decisions have already been made by the time you come on board. With concert music, no decisions have been made except the very approximate length and general instrumentation - almost anything is possible.

L.C: Coming up with that first idea can be the most difficult part of a project. How hard is it for you to find that first spark of inspiration?

C.G: While waiting for the editing of the film to finish I try to get a handle on the picture and come up with themes and concepts. I watch a film a number of times and then work out where the music should be placed and what its function is. This is generally without any specific ideas, just feelings which develop over repeated viewings and are further extended through screenings and discussions with the director.

In an effort to gain a greater understanding of a film, I generally make a psychological chart that shows how the various characters relate to each other. For example, in Moby Dick I saw all the characters as representations of the various parts of Ahab's psychological make-up - Starbuck as Conscience, the cabin boy as (lost) Innocence, Ishmael as Everyman, etc. This helps me get into a film in a similar way that an actor builds a back-story to understand the character. Even the kids' halloween telemovie When Good Ghouls Go Bad had a chart.

If this seems somewhat cerebral, it is accompanied by sleepless nights and the certainty that I'm all used up and will never compose again. This can go on for days or even weeks leading up to the arrival of the locked-off cut of the picture, which is when the composing period proper begins. But at some point suddenly out of the blue the key appears and I know where I am headed. For On the Beach there were two keys just a few days apart: the first was simply that a solo cello should feature (ie. the timbre); the second was the first three bars of the tragic love theme (ie. the language).

Everything becomes relatively easy once I have the secret of the film. After that it is a very straight forward and entirely intuitive process.

L.C: A lot of Hollywood composers produce brief sketches of ideas, and pass these onto orchestrators, to flesh out to full orchestral detail. How do you approach orchestration in your film work?

C.G: I have never understood the process of working with an orchestrator and I say that as someone who has orchestrated many scores for other composers. I don't draw a line between composition and orchestration - it's all the one thing. The composition is finished when the full score is finished. I generally compose my film music onto one or two staves, the barest sketch that maps out the major musical events in relation to that scene. Then I compose directly into the full score (with a sketch pad on the side). There is generally a more detailed first stage for my concert music.

L.C: How does a composer best relate to and communicate with film and TV directors and producers without getting into complex musical terms? How has it worked for some of your composer/director composer/producer relationships?

C.G: I can't see that there is ever any need to use complex musical terms. I think of myself as a filmmaker and so prefer to discuss the dramatic forces, character and structure. Perhaps the one area musical labels are useful is in discussion of style but even that is prone to misleading assumptions. Generally expressions like "it swells here", "goes dark here" or "it picks up speed here" are quite sufficient as long as the focus is on the film. It's my job to interpret that into music.

The film itself tells me a lot but it's vital to talk with the director. Apart from the points I've mentioned, there's also the unexpected. Sometimes I look at a scene and think it's pretty dreadful and doesn't make a lot of sense. Then the director tells me that that they ran out of time on the day and couldn't get some key shot. Can the music help? Sometimes it can (by making it "feel" inevitable that a character got from A to B, for example).

L.C: As music typically comes in the post-production phase of the film-making process, the deadlines are often pushed later, leaving music with very limited time. What sort of expectations are placed on composers in terms of how much music needs to be composed a day?

C.G: On the Beach was 94 minutes of music in 29 days. That's over three minutes a day from blank page to finished full score. There were a couple of bad-hair days which brought it to over three and a half minutes a day. Moby Dick was similar, Good Ghouls was slightly better. I guess that's why some people use orchestrators!

It's becoming more and more common to continue editing even after the music has been recorded. This invariably waters down the music as part of the storytelling arsenal that a director has. What the right hand giveth...

L.C: Film composers either listen in the booth during the recording, or act as the conductor for the session. You always take the conducting route - what are the advantages of taking creative control of the session from the podium?

C.G: After being holed up in my study for weeks on end it's a wonderful experience to make music with people and I wouldn't miss it for anything. Also, I like to stay hands on as I can make adjustments on the fly very easily. And there are nuances that can only be achieved by a conductor.

L.C: You recently composed for Much Ado About Something. How was it working on that project?

C.G: That was done with a small ensemble of six voices (The Song Company) and six cellos and a contrabass (Pro Musica Sydney). It was one of the best days I have had in the studio because it was so intimate compared to a full orchestra. The players feel they can contribute more - everyone is a soloist. I hope I have an opportunity to do something like that again.

L.C: As a film composer, who would be your strongest influences?

C.G: From Williams, Goldsmith and Horner I've learnt something of how to manipulate the notes for the requirements of the film. They are extraordinary dramatists! Herrmann shows me it's possible to be bold in a film, for the music to take charge. Williams is also liberating in his ability to make a film sing. But for musical influences you'd need to look outside of film music: Wagner, Mahler, Vaughan Williams, Corigliano, Adams, Schnittke, Monteverdi, Robert Fripp, Stravinsky, the list goes on...

L.C: Has film scoring changed since you entered the profession?

C.G: Yes, my experiences have coincided with the introduction of sequencing in the late 1980's. This allows a precision in the music's relationship to the film that was previously unheard of - to thousandths of a beat, if required. Interestingly it took about ten years for a successful and distinctive style (culture) to emerge but it is quite apparent now. Not in terms of the notes but in the aesthetic decisions being made. Scores are more blended into the film, taking on the film's shape. It's a director's score rather than a composer's score. Now a director can come to the composer's studio every day and hear a midi mock-up while watching a video and have a profound influence on a composer's every decision. The result, as I said, is a wonderful union between film and music, particularly at any given moment. But it can be at the cost of a certain generosity of spirit and a loss of the bigger picture. It is probably the reason that many contemporary films have wall to wall scores - not necessarily loud, just endless - that the film makers are too close to their material and don't trust a scene will work without music. It is always a relief to see a film with little or no music in it!

I've stuck to pencil and paper because I feel sequencing keeps me out of the picture. The constant repetition of individual scenes desensitizes and stops me searching my mysterious dark pit of emotions that is in all of us. That's the only place that matters. If you're not looking there, inside yourself, for what a character is experiencing, then you are bringing no more to the film than a factory production line would.

L.C: What are your hopes for screen music in future Australian cinema?

C.G: Australian composers are beginning to make a mark now. But as long as film makers see the music budget as a contingency pot that can be dipped into to top up other departments, Australian cinema will be left wanting. It is notable that so many of the successful Australian films have featured music prominently: Moulin Rouge, Muriel's Wedding, Strictly Ballroom, Shine, Priscilla. It's also notable that they featured pre-existing music.

L.C: What does the future hold for you?

C.G: A concerto and a couple of films are in the pipeline.

L.C: Thank you Christopher - best of luck with your future endeavours.