A soundtrack maestro who has created the music for 130 movies, JAMES NEWTON HOWARD admits it may actually be 132. He’s lost count. Among them are such megahits as Hunger Games, Batman Begins, I Am Legend, Blood Diamond, Charlie Wilson’s War, Pretty Woman and King Kong. The eight-time Academy Award nominee will not only accept the Crystal Globe for Outstanding Artistic Contribution to World Cinema but will conduct the Czech National Symphony Orchestra performing his score from Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them at the opening ceremony tonight.
You say a using a pen gives you hand cramps. Has modern technology changed the way you work?
Directors now have an expectation that they can hear the entire score in a mockup version or in a demo form before they have to commit to go onto a scoring stage. For me that’s very helpful. Back in the old days, perhaps a composer would play something on the piano and say, “this is the action, this is where the chariot comes in and the horses fall down and this is the love scene,” and then the director would walk onto the stage and hear it being played by a hundred musicians and would find it entirely unrecognizable and think this isn’t what he thought he was going to get. And then there would be all kinds of problems. So I think the technology is a facilitator at the moment.
Is it easily abused?
Now you don’t need to be a musician to take some samples and connect them in a computer and put a drum machine along with it and to an unsophisticated ear that can sound very impressive but it actually has no content whatsoever. I really love electronic music but the holy grail for me is always the orchestra because you can’t fake it as an orchestra. You have human beings playing your notes. It’s not a sample of some other collective that already succeeded and you’re then borrowing and using. I have faith that good music will prevail.
How does one “write music” for film?
More often than not I start writing before I’ve seen the movie. I’ve read the script, I’ve had conversations with the director and I get and impression of what the colors of the movie might be and what the tone of the movie might be. Is it tragic or is it a love story with a positive end to it? What is the story that I want to tell?
You can read the whole interview in today's Festival Daily.
