All Access: John Powell - Episode 2

[Music] hello I'm John Powell I'm here on Access Hollywood now we can change our lenses and we're talking exclusively and only poodles John thank you so much for inviting me back here to your studio so great to talk again but so last time we did an interview so if anyone is listening go back and watch our we had a nice big long interview about a lot of your individual projects and your background in history but just kind of jump into it um so it's the year 2018 looking back at your entire career up to now kinda how has the industry changed and kind of where it's people or the business or the art itself has to change kind of in the course of your career that you've seen well that there's some great developments I think some bad developments things look at least I don't like but probably okay I think you know technology's changed yeah so everybody now has to do a demo except for John Lee and then if he needs to do a demo he hires an Oscar which is great yeah the rest of us have to sweat at the computer see what else has happened honestly avid has taken over so much that the idea of any film being locked is unheard of right of 57 films I've only ever had one that didn't change while I was writing Wow a lot yeah so that's kind of difficult it's very hard to invest then you know you think oh I'm going to write this scene and then they're gonna change it should I really bother yeah I think musically people have become perhaps more inclined to listen to the temp that's dangerous because you can really hear it I mean it's very useful for composers I've said this before me yeah yeah it makes it an easy job but you know when you just can sort of go through and spot all the movies that were 10 the film I mean I guess I started noticing that we've born when you really suck right hearing your own stuff until they're maybe ahead and noticed as much because it wasn't my material yeah yeah it's probably this just as true so and there's we know there has been a sort of a simplification of film music there's a there's a reason for that simplification in terms of it as a good thing or a bad thing I wouldn't I think it's a okay thing for filmmakers haha as if somebody who likes music I don't really like it because I find it a bit basic yeah to basic you know I'm a big fan of minimalism and the animalism is not as that simple yeah I mean it's simplistic I should say right right you know it's a lot of film music which works extremely well because it sounds kind of like the accompaniment to attune but doesn't have a tune yeah and obviously that works really well specially when you got lots of dialogue right but it doesn't mean that I would never want to put any of that music gonna listen to it it really is background music it's it is because it's become people doing impression of music mm-hmm you know I've been responsible for that I mean I think born was very minimalistic laughter generally so yeah but I was trying to imbue it with some with what I liked of minimalistic music true minimalist music and the function and the structure of of it and I was trying to imbue it with beats that I loved from you know massive attack and Galkin things yeah so I was hoping that it would be interesting music to listen to I know people didn't like it at first because it was very uh normal Kestrel but it's now become the problem with any any kind of simple music simplistic music is it's really easy to do yeah and the people who do it well I picked I think everybody else that comes along and listens to that you know I could do that it's true you could do that but then it comes to the court of the kiss the question of quality I'd say you know Claire de Lune is a simple piece of music but it's one unless it's probably the most sophisticated piece of music ever really yeah yeah and there's very few people actually now who have ever written anything quite as beautiful in that particular way but it doesn't mean that you can come along and you can just flounce around on the piano yeah and make a piece of music that has the same qualities whereas that so I don't know but our job as composers for film is to sort of is to grease the wheels of the story and whatever really needs to happen I guess so you know being a composer part of it is writing music for film and accompanying the the picture part of its also I think being a a businessman and having to negotiate then navigate the waters of this industry as a business so if you get to give a percentage what percent of your job is artistic creativity and what percentage is business well I would say 10% of my time is spent writing the music and 90% of the time just keeping everybody calmed including myself okay but you know that depends on the filmmakers yeah some better than others it depends really on certain film right through and it can be really almost exclusively just being really creative with the filmmakers and other times you really have to be careful how you manage manage everybody's expectations and their their needs yeah what they need versus what the film needs all right absolutely so as you you know progress in your career has your perspective change at all in terms of I guess just your outlook on life as you've grown older and experienced more do you think you've become a better storyteller do you think that age allows you to experience more things and make you better adapt it like channeling emotions do you channel life into your work I mean kind of stuff like that yeah I mean tell me night I was started started out making music to try and channel my own emotions for film obviously you're then trying to find uh sort of a similar or identical emotion to the emotions and characters there right so you look into your own life so the older you get the more experiences you have the more life you have mmm theory you should get better it right the difficulty for me is staying interested in it I'm not very good at repeating myself exactly again kind of a bit bored but and you know the requirements of certain types of music mean that it really doesn't interest me in doing it ever some ever again and some I'll always love to do yeah it just depends on the types of films and what the type of story that they're telling is and I mean maybe one day I'll step outside that but I just have a natural instinct for certain things and perhaps a natural bias against other things and as I've grown older I've just decided that I'm okay with that right absolutely and obviously at the same time of that I'm developing I'm trying to develop out of cinema you know my chops as a writer right now because I think that's probably useful anyway even for my business inside working films so when you're I mean when you're writing for film your main source of inspiration is on the screen in front of you but you're writing a concert piece say like for your piece of oppression Requiem and I mean there was an idea of course behind it world war 1 and but where I mean there's no images I guess were you pulling the music out of my ass no I mean all music comes from every single piece of music over the hood don't let any composer mm-hmm tell you that it's divine that writing other thing that they're inventing anything right nothing is is invented it's everything that's come before that you've ever heard mm-hmm is what you are utilizing to try and tell your own to communicate your own way so I I'm on you know films and the story is there for me I yeah I found that was interesting right doing crushin Requiem and that I had to I couldn't restart until I had my own story so I did work at that a lot and and found an interesting version of what fascinated me about the first world war that Lorraine you know the the complex destruction of the 20th century I felt once I looked at it and studied some very interesting writers books amazing book called a guns of August I'm not Barbara Tuchman about how really it all came I feel it all came down to you know one man having a hissy fit on the night of you know the penultimate night of peace right and making sure that things moved ahead simply because he wanted it yeah he wanted it to happen because he felt it was he worked too hard on the plan and he didn't want to change the planning he'd been looking forward to this and all the kind of human terrible human reasons when you look at it and a perspective that we're all capable of whether were three years old or you know or 76 years old and sitting in the White House I mean it's the same instinct yeah and it's a very human instinct mm-hmm I want and it can bring us into disaster and that was really I think the prime example of it yeah absolutely and I was I always find it great that you know you're you're the self-proclaimed like pacifist and you're examining you know big part of war wars you know he's part of humanity and everything so I thought that was just you're seeing your take on that was interesting Sam well I I'm I'm the pacifist who got stuck on the second world war it's very hard to be a pacifist about the Second World War you can't sit back and go no nobody should have fought yeah I mean it was a madness that had been right but I felt it the Second World War I the only way I could look at it was to look at the First World War and realized that it was annexed it was really an extension of that and the destruction of Germany I've actually Prussia Prussia was basically wiped off the face of the earth in the sense of politically dramatically in the first world war because it was the it was where these the the the aggressors as we see them came from and really they were just the same as everybody else in Europe and they would that's why I like the idea of just blaming on one person it's not really one person he represents all of us alright but the circumstances under which you know the second world have war happened you know you cannot defend them you can't defend it as a pacifist yeah in the you know especially as a Jew you know it's it's it's too difficult to explain and so the First World War really basically ground Germany until they drop into the dust and and they stomped on their economy and and they pushed her they pushed a proud proud country into such a corner yeah that you've got to understand now that it's quite and it is for interesting the second the end of the Second World War when you look at what happened at Germany and Japan and they had so much more of a successful outcome to the end of hostilities if you think about it yeah yeah everybody's economy in those two countries boomed you know eventually and and and has created actually two very peaceful country right yeah so they what they did wrong at the end of the First World War is clearly they learned from the end of the Second World War when it's it's heartening to see that that realization going on and it was not easy I'm sure to achieve that kind of that peace at the end of the Second World War I mean obviously we didn't because we can't immediately to a Cold War but you could see that that the mistakes at the end of the First World War are what damaged our society in the whole of the twentieth century and we still were still suffering from these things everything absolutely talking more about inspiration you know if you work on a film that you're really passionate about and you find something to connect with inspiration might come easier then say you work on something that you could give two shits about you know I'm sure you've encountered films like they can have to name any film in your career but where it's like alright maybe the movies not good maybe like so if you're working on something like that you have a job to do where do you start looking to pull inspiration from her pull emotion from if you're not feeling it I guess from the picture it's a hard word in it and I feel like it's important to understand that I I can't rip myself into when people ask me if that is the film good or bad yeah after I finished it I really don't have any ideas because whichever way it was when I that I knew at the beginning of the film I I would never be able to get through it unless I told myself that it was great yeah and tried to understand everything within it and and and and behave you know in an empathetic way towards all the characters I needed to and get emotionally into the center I film so you are freaking yourself you're acting you're pretending as it were but it's Hollywood absolutely so let's rewind back a little bit and kind of look at kind of your early work when you go back and do you go do you ever listen to your old work do you ever like not really know not less it's actually they'd be on the TV Oh might hear some or if there's something I'm thinking about did I have already written this changing yeah when you listen to your old work do you recognize yourself and that and that music like oh that's me from you know whatever 15 years ago or is it like it's like oh that's exactly I would write it today or do you see it as a different composer or a different person and that music some some of it sounds exactly like I would do it yeah but I was struck by wondering how I did it you know I do have to go back sometimes and listen to things to persuade myself that I can do this and now there are other times you listen to it new sort of forget sometimes it gets written so fast yeah it's like you know this stuff just has to come out real quick and you you know and you forget but I must say I mean and this is this is the terrible thing to admit really is that I generally always listen to my own music and even if I don't know it's mine for a minute I'm attracted to it I rarely hear it and go [Music] okay so that's just my own preference and passing it do you I mean you talk about persuading yourself to do things do you have moments of doubt still like do you ever sit there and go I can't do that's like almost all the time all the time yeah it's very it's it's a it's a massive kind of amount of work that you look at yeah at the beginning and very hard to know how to if you'll get it done how to get it done how to get it done on time and that that fear can be crippling sometimes and so just going back and going okay well I want a minute I'm just looking back I did a film like this yeah and I did another one okay I'm probably will be able to do this that's just yes I think you've managed to be able to do it so she can you survive you're sitting you're alive after a Star Wars film so yes this was the one that I really wasn't sure I mean really I was very nervous about yeah yeah oh well come back a little bit later but on some of your early credits on IMDB um you know the series called stay lucky where it looks like you I think you came in later took over from someone else or so it was that kind of your first big like screen credit what it was a TV TV series yeah it was great to do yeah I think I took over and I think I ended that series yeah and it's a the only TV I did I was ended this year is there something about me sounded too desperate but that was like those pre media ventures and everything right so yeah so then I mean yet others another series like high incident I think what that was he I was here at the Jeffro and I worked on that with you and um going back to this kind of early media venture years was it I you know I don't know if it's different than how it is now with remote control but it was it a competitive environment like as a young composer there working or was it more like there's enough pie to go around everyone's learning no I think it was very competitive and it needed to be yeah you know no I often wonder if I jumped the queue a bit to say I was pretty effective and efficient in getting you know film yeah having arrived here but I did I did hold back in London a little while after hands had invited me I did wait I wanted to kind of get my chops up mm-hmm and I knew there was stuff I wanted to work on just my you know I've always said this to students as well you know you have to realize you've got to become virtuosic on the computer yeah I have to be really fast and efficient and you cannot be sitting around just struggling with the technology of it you have to get over that so you can get the writing to be fluid yeah and there's just too high standard everybody can do it now so I think I I felt I needed to get my chops up right and so I paused a little bit before it came and then when I came I really dug in and and and yeah you could see there was lots of composers of really good composers there and it's not just about you know he isn't just about being musical and it isn't just about being a composer it's about being smart making the right sort of choices mhm I chose very specifically how to write and who would listen to it and making sure that really hands was you know gonna pick me out yeah from the all the other kids all right I mean when you're writing in the kind of that environment because I think there's a skort I really love chill factor that you did with Hans but there was a lot of people on that everyone is ISO like when something like that happens and you get like five six people working on that but but your name is on the on the movie I mean what's the dynamic dynamic there with everyone else it was probably they've probably all thinking why the is his name and yeah I mean it's true and so they probably work hard on things yes yeah and I mean how you know I used to have this dynamic where hands would he he'd come in and you go you should come in and listen to something how he's doing so I've wandered over to Harry's room at hands and we'd sit and eat okay Harry can you play thank you and here you play it for me in it and I'd be realizing I know what has the same which is this is good yeah you need to step up dude so I then go back and I do think I'd work harder and and there's the same I saw Harry come in a few times and what are you working on playing things like that and he'd just stomp out but but most of the time I mean most of the time we love working together it would but you know the truth was it's you know he was very good ya know but it was like it was it was a because I interviewed him tonight we talked about it but it was you guys it wasn't like a it was what we called a shotgun wedding was it kind of you put together when you boot co-composed pants that was haunting you to work dealers in homes yeah oh it was it was Jeffrey Katzenberg well this is the story hands tails identify okay I should be motive but he said no he said I didn't want the two of you Jeffrey wants the two because we both worked on Prince of Egypt yes different I'd worked on the songs and Herod worked on the school hands so he got to know us it's a wedding you put these two together and I think it was it was almost like what the fun of watching a cockfight possibly maybe that's what Jeffrey was thinking and Anne's thought oh yeah this is gonna be really fun so so that's how we ended up together and but it was it was such a great opportunity I think yeah both smart enough to know look whatever our differences are I respected him and he respected me yeah figured it out you know and you continue they mean you did a couple scores together yes I've always worked with Harry yeah yeah I don't wants to our with Harry because it's it's it's it's fun it's a such a different experience so a lot of people don't understand about writing with another composer it's a you know why would you write with another composer Hamill yeah but some writers do it you know in pop music people do all the time I mean what's wrong with being you know slightly stronger on ones that you know so you've got a drummer and you got a guitarist they can write together that doesn't mean that you know you're terrorists can do everything yeah yeah there's a drum machine or I could get in another guitarist but but it's fun sometimes to be with another musician I mean that's what composers are first of all is we are musicians I know I'm not a good one but you know and Harry's a very good piano player and obviously he's saying yeah you know I've got a different background from him but he is he comes from a you know church music more than I do but and yet he's totally much more into sort of EDM and yeah since than me it would appear and I mean his Tony Scott stuff is amazing like an absolute you you never thought it from his background right and he whatever thinking he said he wouldn't touch a computer till he I think he started working with Hans and all that stuff so I mean then he became so fast forwarding but you didn't mention of producing songs and which you've done quite a bit in your career I mean for stuff on happy feet and and Rio so when you are working on a song say it's something like a popular song like happy feet which was kind of redoing a bunch of really famous songs um what's the process on that to make it part of the fabric of the whole moving well are you kind of just reap just tuning it to your sounds are you trying to make it fit are you like stuffing in kind of in into place I mean what's the process there the funny thing was that really when I came out of music college I thought I wanted to be a record producer mm-hmm and then I discovered that I just didn't have the patience for it and I didn't like other people's music you know because you don't get to work on on great songs at the beginning you get on shitty bands who can't play or you know who are brilliant but you don't quite I didn't quite understand it so the you know I was too much of a control freak I think I wasn't mature enough to really be a record producer so when I go into films and then these things came up of doing arrangements of songs I started to enjoy that because I always loved that side of things but the difference was I didn't have to ever make the music work for the music listening audience as it were yeah I always I only ever had to help hit tell the story so I think that's what unhappy feet I was always doing is does this you know it's my role to make sure I could bend and twist the song to to the value of the story at that particular moment and if I couldn't if I would break it then we would we would see okay this song isn't gonna work you know and the lyrical value the the tempo value at that particular moment in this in the film the melodic value the emotional value of doing it faster slow or exactly as it was was so interesting it was it was it wasn't really a great film to do that one I did love that and it was it was a real puzzle to put together I can imagine it took three years yeah and we're songs that you guys wanted to use but then couldn't get the rights to I mean or was it where those songs kind of already very much locked in and no we've played with a lot of ceramic all moments yeah and they just kept coming back to the ones that seem to work you know the opening we had several openings you know my favorite one was when we took a milkshake so you had this female penguin coming out singing milkshake really yeah Pharrell you know and it's such a great song and and the funniest thing was that you know we loved it and everyone kept saying you can't put that in that's too dirty and I would write out the lyrics for them and do do a PowerPoint presentation say prove to me where the dirt is in this very it's not there there was no it's in flight it's yeah absolutely brilliant piece of songwriting it was one of the great songs summer I thinks you know some writers of the UM of all time is Pharrell I mean yeah because it's so it's in the cracks yeah you don't know why yeah any of these things happen with his stuff he's great yeah and I also have you feed a lot of your scores you you love to use choir and I think it's such a big part of your your repertoire and and what does using choir I mean it's going to different be different from every phone but what what do you see is what is that human voice bring that an other instrument does not bring and why do you use it I think one of the reasons I was like the violin as a kid was it feels like a way of playing the voice mmm you know I was used to like players who who sounded it's like Perlman Isaac Stern was really my favorite violinist stéphane Grappelli it was just used to sound to me like they were singing yeah they really when they vibrations I must feel like yeah and and the pitch the way that the pitch slides to notes yeah or doesn't know it so you have you have an awful lot of control over the minutiae of the tuning as well and you're getting away from the piano which is you know equal tuning and I need to the real language of music which is about the complexity of lining up harmonics right so obviously it's that's what I didn't like I would never have been and ended up as a violinist because it's too hard to practice on your own but I love playing with other people yeah so the voices I think my love of voices came from that and it's a it's a it's a shorthand it's a very quick way of getting to a very emotional state for people I think and also there's I find a lot of power and it's like when you have a lot of voices you can feel like the each individual especially the big chorus you go back to Happy Feet the opening kind of chant the I mean that though I mean like it's just you feel that weight and you feel that I don't know there's something that you can't get with like if you did like deep brass or something like that so yeah percussion is another thing you use a lot of course and you're in your act I like mostly your action scores and I think we talked about it last time a little bit how you kind of discovered a love for it with drumline I think was that though yeah the film that really introduced you to well Peter Gabriel oh yeah yeah Gabriel to album I just that was the first album night room a bit I'm hearing it this is amazing the whole world of percussion died yeah realized and yeah I mean drumline was very specific about about the extraordinarily interesting and funkiness of of the possibilities of what was an unheard of to me I mean the percussion is actually a military band which is where you know the drum lines come from yeah you know not noted for their funkiness yeah until you get to this point at which you know people people are fascinating the way that they can take anything and subvert it yeah and they're not doing it to subvert it they're actually just doing because they it leads naturally to that place and yeah if you're brought up on James Brown and then you're playing in a drum line why would you not want to go there yeah you know obviously if you're brought up only on you know military tunes you're not gonna go there yeah it's about it's about different types of music being played by people who don't have the same experience of that of the history of that particular stem of music and then lo and behold it develops mmm this is what all music is always done and when you use it as a kind of action kind of a tool for action you will you find like a rhythm or a beat and kind of then add layers to it or do you figure out the kind of the melodic I don't know if the flow of an action piece and then how do you structure action around percussion I guess this with a question well it's dangerous because it's tough like Italian job or something yeah or born even born it's just I mean born is more minimalism but it's like doesn't get huge I mean the thing about it is is what you set up a rhythm you you set up people's expectations mm-hmm in the same way if you set up a pedal if you set up a harmonic sort of harmonic situation you set up people's expectations when are you going to change Y and it's the same with the rhythms if you have a rhythm that comes in and it's a strong rhythm why is it in there how long will it go and when will it change and what am I supposed to feel because a rhythm both can give you a real active relaxation because you know in okay well this is rolling yeah nothing to worry about so then you can concern yourself with other things as a viewer then there's this other circumstance which is you change it and you if you change it in the right place in the movie you're constantly saying something with hardly changing anything and what you do is just changing the rhythm yeah and that people notice and then they attach to that and they know that you're changing things so then now you're messing with people because you're saying okay when's the next point I'm gonna change mm-hmm because the next point I'm going to change I've already taught you this last three times that I change now I've taught you that when I change something significant it's gonna happen yeah so you must be very careful about it and then and that's where you know to go back to the early questions one of the things is that if the film is changing under you all the time the idea the fastener thing yeah you know and it's it's easier to do it an orchestra with no pulse yeah all with a much more sort of flowing style you can just speed up a bit and you get there you've got groups going you cannot speed them up very careful how you speed them up and you certainly can't slow down unless you want again any changes of tempo mean things because there's nothing else to delay chod for an audience so I became fascinated by what rhythms does to us and our expectations of it nothing that's how I try to use it in zoning board right and I mean if our a you know a director and editor I would want you to write a piece of music and then start kind of tightening the bolts of the picture around it has that ever been where you've got I had a chance to write a piece of music and have it edit kind of fall into place of music or is it always edit changes now I have to change I did change it now I have to change I mean I think you know for instance I mean Chris rouse who's just genius editors ever really did construct the the London Waterloo scene of was it ultimate ultimatum yeah constructed that around basically some of the music from I think probably number one or two and it was very interesting watching that because it does look like it's really very constructed yeah but it really was there the other way around I mean oh he really he started with the music in that case and you know any very elegantly edited it in a way his himself and headed to the film on top of that so I you know it's it's the ideal situation but it's rare yeah it happens I know it doesn't you know you constantly have to just sort of so that again the question of investing in a scene I try and invest and I I always leave things a little slow to tell you June to begin with because I know it's gonna get tighter and then we just speed it up so yeah we taught my born talk about returning to that to that world I mean we're working with Paul Greengrass again I know on this one he had little help with David Buckley but um was it did Paul's musical tendencies change at all since the last time or is he the same old good old paul greengrass with being strict to his Tampin and well yes but the thing about Paul is he understands he and it was understood what people liked about born yeah you know when he walked into the second one he was very honest about you know I like the first job he said I don't really want to change it I'm just gonna do my thing with it yeah and it became his really he really took it over as it worked perfectly into his kind of sensibilities so he very much understood what he needed for that for Jason Bourne and you know and really we just supplied him with kind of the new variants on things that he needed and it was a it was you know he didn't he never wanted in reinvent the wheel and yeah he wanted to bring people back into that world right right from the get-go and was it fun to play around with those old Oh your old stuff and I didn't treat weekend or was it more like it was a sort of it was an archaeological dig me time you know trying to go in differently you know some of those weird and wonderful sort of sounds and things I realized they were just kind of me jamming on a bass guitar through a fireworks the fireworks effects unit and just recording it I recorded hours of it and then I would go in and cut bits of it up and then make samples of it and so eventually we found them original material is like huh this is how I did it was just very kind of very experimental in two places and you know so I appreciated that yeah so last time you mentioned that you can you did take a period where you just really focus on animation and it was and you talked about how you had this aversion to the violence and in film and live-action movies you know performing of putting forth these ideas of you know you want to get information from someone you need a torturer by meaning to stuff like that so but you are kind of embracing live action again now so what kind of droid drew you back um you did a pan and of course Jason Bourne brought you back and then now you're doing solo so what is kind of brought you back to this world um well live the right films yeah you know and there were people I liked working with and and they don't you know none of these films really do that kind of everybody beat the out yeah you know there's lots of beatings but they're all for different reasons yeah they seems to be it's not it's not so much about the warrior sort of the warrior spirit yeah idea that that's what I have yeah action films where I should films there they really are always it's always about who's strongest who's most violent yeah so coming to let's talk about soul over but when we on board with is read before the whole shift with Chris Miller and Phil Lord or was this that you come aboard when Ron Howard came on board like when were you on board with the project um I originally met with Phil and Chris mm-hmm and came on with them and so it was you know it was quite a shock yeah I had no idea were there any like hints of that happening like nor to me but everything I mean I wasn't really that was mature overnight any anyway at that point I just got you know this I got a call from one of the producers who basically said yes there's been a change but you're not necessarily fine and Ron was so gracious he he came on board we had a dinner and and I think he spoke to hands at Sepang yeah so has I think you'll be right so it was it was very it was very good to know that you know I wasn't I wasn't I've been saying no where I got kind of hired by two sets of directors yeah so that was ok but I think the essential thing was that you know I think Kathy Kennedy was was it was confident and alison sherman who unfortunately we've lost now yeah you know sadly you have known for years she was the executive on board no wow she's wonderful actually wonderful it was a terrible there but so it just carried on and one went into shooting and then and then eventually he came out of shooting and we started so um started writing anything at that point or any ideas herself with Nolan Chris the only things I started with filming Chris was some of the source music things that we needed to do and I've gone through a few iterations and one of them does end up in there one scene didn't get you got cut but one of them were used in in the movie which hopefully will make make people so for this one you did get to have a an original theme by John Williams yes so talk about that talk about hey how do you had met John before and not really know very briefly at one little thing no I mean that was the first call I got with you know with Kristen and Phil was the idea is that John will write a theme mm-hmm and somebody will take that theme and you know do the rest of the work as it were are you okay with that and for me that was okay with that that's the perfect situation yeah so I was really I was much more excited in a way about getting to sort of have at least some interaction with job yeah and which I did in the end I mean he was truly wonderful I'm very humble and and he kept saying to me you know you really need me you don't need me you can write your own tunes as well that's very kind of you to say but I think we do and my first role in this movie is to make sure that we have the best music we can yeah so I'd be crazy not to say no no yes yes so so you eventually you know so he wrote he wrote a tune she kind of did a suite and a few a few cues throughout the movie at that time and we demoed them and they weren't fantastic and and then we were really off to the races and and I've taken all of that material and it's everywhere I mean it's running and I mean you'll be interesting to see if people can really sort of pick apart what's what and I mean he's done tunes but also orchestrations that I have used and then I've used his tunes and I've other things with them and I've added things to them and I've used them in different ways perhaps and he he would have thought of I don't know I mean this is interesting I mean he was very generous and one of the things he told me as well as you know don't don't feel so you know honorable that you must constantly honor this sort of the history of the of the music yes you know he was very he was very gracious and saying you know defecate it was just a gig for me yeah you know so so just do with it what you need to do and he was he was very excited to hear he said I'm very excited you said you're so good with sounds and things he said I'm very excited to hear what you'll do with it and so it kind of gave me the sort of confidence that yeah it was okay to you know to to move things into a realm that you know isn't isn't very Star Wars at times but yes at times it's not a Star Wars film it's oh yeah it's a real heist film and there's no you know it's not a film about the force right so the force in it really is love and the complexities of love and there's good there's dark sides to laugh in this your bright side 11 and this there's love that's friendship and there's lung love this lust and there's greed in love you know all those things I think are explored and so we needed you know we needed themes to do lots of other things yeah but we got from John we got some we got the core material so it was John kind of the overarching team theme and that did you right there was there a specific theme for solo that did you write or was John's genre a theme very much what I call is a hero tune from him and and a be part which was I call sort of the longing of hard the searching and used that in all sort of different ways including right in the only titles as well and I did some slightly crazy things to it but it's it is essentially exactly what I think I felt the very first time I heard John play on the piano which is somebody who's searching for a family she's searching for love searching for something and so those two things are really kind of they they are you know they're everywhere and and then I needed a theme that would that would tell the audience that there was that Han had a an image of love and that was different from what he really what love would really come to me and then I needed a theme for a gang yeah and a gang in the sense of also being a family mm-hmm and I needed a theme for freedom and that worked well with one of the characters and I needed a free another sort of another type of theme that was about friendship and through freedom not so much literal theme freedom and and then I needed a tune that wore a motif that would at least always represent the secrets that we keep from each other so everywhere and then and then you have kind of bad guys yeah the Marauders up here so I needed I needed a very exotic theme for them and something that would always we could always help tell the story with it would pop right into your brain every time you heard that so there was all these kind of other things that I did need to help the storytelling in and they all needed but they all needed to surround correctly and be integrated with elegantly the you know these kind of the pillars that John and established 40 years ago in stylistically in in gravitas in seriousness in the Attic but also in drama in in the fun as well yeah and there's a couple of times we took literal sections of his old films which I did for very specific reasons because it's it's a thing I called reminiscence therapy is about this is a film that we all know where it's going yeah and reminiscence therapy is kind of a medical term for looking back helping patients want to move forward by looking back at your life so it was a personal thing as well to look back at my life and look at how much John had influenced me really like even if I did know I didn't know you suddenly as I started to study his schools from from really study than we got I got all of the material and it was fascinating his sketches and how much I have been making from over the years and they're not realizing it I thought I was nicking from somewhere else or I thought I was inventing it but no most of it's from him and so all of the fetishes that I've already established in my own writing you know you could sort of find a lot of them we would really go back to John so I think the score should hope and you know I'm talking here before anybody's heard exactly no one's heard it no one since you've all heard it you might be like well this is what I mutton my pure heart is hoping for yeah you know who knows what people will think of it I tried to do it honorably but also allow it to move forward and the filmmakers wanted the you know the music to move into it forward different and just into a different yeah it's not Lane part of the main thing it's a side story absolutely um in the speaking of criticism how do you how do you handle criticism and I'm not talking about like from a director a producer but yeah the world like do you positive versus negative does it affect you is affect the way like oh my god that they know if you're talking about or like oh now they often they do yeah I mean are these it's it's madness just thinking of people you know what you know this criticism there should be criticism you should take criticism about foreign policy very carefully with kritis of about music you have to take the understanding that people get from music what they what they need and so if they don't like your music you see it says that either you're just not speaking to that particular person but if you get enough people saying that it probably means you're not speaking to enough people at least and so what you think you're saying might not be what you are saying and there may be reasons that you haven't explored so I take criticism as badly as anybody though yeah because it's heart wrenching because you think you've tried but then I think it's important to just stand back and go okay whatever I thought I was doing I may not have been doing yeah I need to think about that you know how can I fix that in the future do I want to be more Universal about what I'm writing ultimately it does come down to though what the film needs and you know some people who hated the Bourne Identity when it came out because it was very minimalistic you know I I would say at the time it was painful to see people say this was rubbish and in comparison with some schools it definitely was not it didn't work the same way so I understand um but I was trying to get something for the film that was unique and did what the film needed so and it even if you do it for films that don't work and the music doesn't work you know I think that the idea is to try and find something unique for each film we'll see on this one what's happened I mean I was trying as hard as I could on first now do you know I know I think everyone has everyone's doing their best work I don't no one's trying I always tell them no one's trying to stuff up no one's trying to do their worst job so I mean but it's it's uh and also it's just it's also opinions too so many people have different opinions different tastes and it's and people taste evolved my tasted old yeah absolutely so it always is always changing so to keep that criticism can be very useful for me thank you so in the future now you coming up hip how to train your dragon through your attorney with joining up with Dean again and and it'll be the final the end of the trilogy I think right is that what the idea was to do a trilogy yes I think so yeah I think I get into trouble when I say about this you know so now I remember I'm Dean I don't didn't publish that like he wants to do a trilogy so whatever Dean says is yes and and that's that's coming up pretty quick you're gonna have to finish yeah sometime in the next towards the end of the the year-end yes yeah Wow so yeah but I think we're pretty done by about Thanksgiving Wow as I saw you had a countdown clock out there oh yes this is better my assistant yes sir his idea of joke we started on solo countdown to basically it was a days hours minutes seconds to the dirt to the point at which I needed to get in the car to go to London in other words you cannot right past this point so yeah when it gets to zero and so we did it it was very effective I mean when you've got 60 days you think oh you know I can take the weekend off you know when it starts to get to 40 and you're looking at two hours of music you're thinking I need to get on with it and then when it's in 14 days it's two weeks to the minute sort of that I've got to get in the car so it was very effective yeah so we finished this one it got to zero and and I went down into the kitchen the other day and he'd started it again for this so that was very very cruel but else in the future I mean you have it you have a concert in June I think Holly wooden hamburgers yeah and yeah and then the malaga malaga festival on the fourth and the seventh of July yeah so and talk about dick do you see yourself doing more not just fill music concerts but also other standalone concerts and concert pieces like that I know that you've talked about writing away from film yes that's sort of the game plan for the next 5 10 years or something very much is - right I mean the concerts are hard for me cause I'm not a performer yeah very good at performing so this will just be a bit of fun to do and people ask you to do them that's very nice of them to ask that we're doing another performance of the Prussian Requiem in Spain so one of those days the fourth is classical pieces by me and probably maybe somebody else and then the seventh is film music and then even on the 10th of August in Lima Peru while doing the pressure work we in there again with with Jose seborrhea who's the conductor as you recording and those are fun to do but I think the writing of it I realized that I really need to write and just I know how to write for the studio so I'm gonna write and record all these things and every year I'll try and do an album of stuff and this will be the first one that comes out and yeah we ever see a CD coming out right here 15th of June I think that's a little hubris hubris perfect about me and and the guy who started the first world war yeah and so let's just to wrap things up I'll do some one of those fine a stuck under that deserted island you know if you're stuck on a deserted island for the rest of your life here your choices if you can only bring one kind of food for the rest of your life what would you pick well I'm so I'm so alcohol what's the second question all right so food to sustain yourself for your life but that's the thing is would it sustain my stuff the food you like to eat and wouldn't necessary sustain yourself so you can catch fish there I mean you could sustain otherwise vegetarian so it'd be maybe um I think swedish fish Slater's fish there you go the rest of your life perfect alcoholic beverage what would you bring one drink for the rest of your question for Reba champagne champagne yeah but good very varied erosion yes know that sweet um favorite movie to watch for the rest of your life babe babe yeah TV show TV shows wist we Wessling a good one yep one piece of furniture a bed a chair a table a bit a bed just a really comfortable B and one artist musical body of work when artists once artists whole whole body composer musician singer-songwriter to listen to the really old I mean I I have you know it could be the first four albums of Rickie Lee Jones or pretty much anything by Ralph Vaughan Williams or almost everything by Debussy or um or anything oh you know all Prince there you go yeah yeah that's really yeah I probably have to say boom Williams then probably be more material to to go through well John thank you so much for your time again it's always great to to chat with you [Music]

Channel: Film.Music.Media

Views: 13,233

Rating: 4.977591 out of 5

Keywords: Film Music Media, All Access, Composer, Interview, Soundtrack, Score, Song, Theme, Behind The Scenes, Video, Film, Filmmaking, Scoring, Movie, TV, Video Game, Music, Film Music, Featurette, Career, Kaya Savas, John Powell, Solo, Solo A Star Wars Story, Han Solo, Star Wars, John Williams, Ron Howard

Id: 7k7CivccTVg

Length: 53min 40sec (3220 seconds)

Published: Wed May 16 2018