Composer Insight: John Paesano

so I'm here with John Paisano thank you so much for giving us some of your your time I think something that people don't talk about often where being a film composer is concerned is something that takes up a large amount of our time which is being a head of department now right you're responsible for major franchises which are major businesses huge amounts of investment what are people looking for in a head of department aside from a great composer who can do great stuff with MIDI and orchestras and all of that kind of yeah it's it you know it's a great question I think the biggest thing that's happened and even even since I got into this business so it's been a relatively short amount of time that this has all kind of happened in and it kind of coincided with the advent of digital filmmaking so to speak when when when we went from film to hard disc recording for shooting film and for for creating movies the whole process sped up everything it's still the same amount of music that had to be written for these films it's not like the time that the timeline shortened an island they go oh well we need 30 less minutes of music from you know we still needed the same amount of music for the same length of film it just had to be done in a shorter amount of time so I think what happened was as as composers we had to start thinking of ways in order to complete our task in a much shorter amount of time than we used to have the composer basically got another job thrown on him and that was I mean like you said becoming a quote/unquote department head I mean even though it says score by John Paisano there's a whole team that works with me on all these projects it's just way too much music to write in in the amount of time that I'm given just for me to sit there and do it all myself at a piano with paper and pencil it just can't get done anymore there's mock-ups that need to happen the days of me sitting down to write a score and having a director come over and me sitting at the piano and saying you see these great videos of John Williams and Spielberg you know or John Williams is playing and the et theme on the piano and Spielberg standing behind them and all this stuff and it's awesome I mean I love it I love seeing that because it just doesn't exist anymore if a studious Fox walked in here and I said well here's what the Maze Runner theme is gonna sound like and you know the the big brass is gonna enter here they would all look at each other and say awesome John and then they would leave and I would get a call probably ten minutes later for my agent telling me that you know someone else is scouring the film it just it doesn't happen anymore I think what's very interesting about what you're talking about is the slightly bitter and twisted composers down at the pub when you're talking about someone else's score the person who's not in the pub they're with us yeah yeah but you had a big team on that as a kind of criticism and it's like that's what the studio is looking for well it's there's different there's different there's all different types of filmmaking there's there's there's you know movies and there's films and there's everything in between yeah you know Avengers is a movie you know Star Wars is a movie you know the English patience a film you know I mean and one's not different than the other but but these Studios these are huge businesses you know these are you know we do we talked about they dumped tons 20 million dollars into these movies there's high output with them there's scoring sessions that are in London and LA it's both places sometimes three or four different scoring sessions are going on at the same time sometimes there's a scoring session happening and the composers got to be in the studio doing changes as the scoring sessions happening sometimes they're doing picture at it's while you're on the scoring stage and you got to get back to the studio that day and rewrite that cue so it can be on the stand the next day people who don't understand that process of it I can understand why they why they think it wasn't all written by one person but the job of a film composer now and I look at it like this maybe foam composer isn't the right term anymore you know we our producers you know it is my job to produce a great score and whether that means me sitting down writing every single note of it or whether it means me finding out who I can the best team I can put together to accomplish what my director and what my studio wants it all falls under the same category and I think that's where film scoring is right now and I mean for better or worse I guess when a studio walked through this door what they don't want to see is a desk with a candle and a quill and a piece of paper because they're gonna Commission 200 minutes of music for you they want to know you're gonna get across the finish line yeah it's almost like they don't even wanna they just they don't care how it's done as long as they're coming and hearing reviews and the music sounding great to them what do they care about you know they want great music they want to make sure that it's thematic and it's checking all the boxes that they want checked what they don't want is they don't want to come to the studio and you going I don't have it that's the biggest problem but again it's such a it's such a personal thing you know I mean there's some directors that might be really put off by this that type of process and when that happens you adjust you know you if there's a film that I really want to work on and I really into it and I really want to work on that type of project with that director I just - how I work with that type of director but if I'm working on a really demanding film with high output and the studio it's very political and the studio wants to hear three different versions of every single cue that day I got to figure out a way to make it happen and that's just the nature of the business and it's not just my department it's it's across the board it's visual effects it's music it's editorial it's it's music supervision it's it's it's everything you know I mean I this just hasn't happened to the music department the music departments a little bit we still kind of the music composed by has created a lot of these conversations yeah you know I think that's what's happened I think you know but listen movie directed by yeah movie produced by every one of these departments has test tons of teams you know behind it so it's it's a little bit misleading I think these days in film but it's it's it there's for me personally there's no more collaborative process in the filmmaking process than scoring the movie it's again it's it's it's it's a it's such a team effort not just from the compositional standpoint but orchestration copyists the players the directors input I mean the director shapes my score more than anybody I mean I can't tell you how many times it's actually one of my favorite parts of the business is doing playback so the director and the director extends to me I just don't like this right here I think we need to do something that's more like you know and he'll like you know give me some example of some score from some movie and I look at him and go are you nuts like this is never gonna work and I'll stay here till 3:00 in the morning banging my head against the console trying to figure out what he wants and then all of a sudden something clicks into place and he was right and it's something I would have never ever done in a million years on my own but I was forced into doing something by some guy who I thought was crazy for wanting me to do it you know what I mean so it's like those little magical discoveries that kind of happen in the process that makes the job rewarding I've worked with big composers they're even doing what their directors want you know I don't think you're ever at a point to where you're just left alone to do whatever you want to do it's always a collaboration process I think even the biggest top a-list guys will tell you it's always a collaboration and that's why these teams exist that's why John Williams and Steven Spielberg have done these many scores together that's why Hannes and Christopher Nolan worked together you know at all times it's it's it's all about that collaboration you know and but that collaboration you know it it's trying to find whatever fits your director the best and whether it's a team of 30 guys or whether it's just you one-on-one it there's no right or wrong answer to it well the sense I get walking into here is that you are faced with in immense amounts of output yeah but you're not a quivering wreck and I think it seems that you've maybe maybe changes when we won't get the ball but it seems to me that you you've you found a way of structuring stuff so it's not it's not a kind of a cancerous part of your life yeah it's uh it's just all about balance I mean we've we talked about that it's it's just you know I talk about how I don't have a writing room in my house for instance because when I go home I I just want to get away from it I try to just you know have that life and then I have this life and I try not to co-mingle them I try to do these things that throw me into some weird wild environment that snaps me out of it and then I can cut you need these like little refreshing breaks every now and then so secret of life is its balance in everything yeah but it is so hard to achieve absolutely you know it's a real struggle if you could go back and tell the composer 10-15 years ago anything what would you tell him when I got in this business I never ever got into it to make money you know like I got into it because I saw a movie and part of the Sun when I was a little kid and I was fortunate enough to come from a family that allowed me to kind of chase what I wanted to do and I was able to kind of have this naive sense of life almost to kind of say um I want to write music for a living yeah 90% of the people in this world don't have that luxury so I was very lucky to be able to even think that way let alone go ahead and do it but you almost if I thought about it too much I would have never done it yeah because it's not you you I would tell someone you never get in this business to make money you do it because you love doing it and honest to god if I was sitting around scoring student films right now for free I probably would still be doing it because it's it's the only thing I really kind of know how to do and I was and I was just as happy when I was doing that then as I was now maybe sometimes even happier you know because it is it is what it is when you do put a deadline on something it because it turns into a job the biggest thing I could tell any composer it's some people make it when they're 25 years old some people hit it when they're 50 there's no one way to do it when you want to become of or a lawyer or there's like this very defined path yeah yeah absolutely when you want to become a folk composer yeah I mean I can remember I mean driving around la dropping CDs off at some guy's apartment and Venice somewhere and then you're on Craigslist looking for a job and then you're trying to get an internship at some other composers I mean it's just like where do you go what do you do how do you do it you know I mean it's it's it's difficult I mean it and it's still that way it's still but even now it's become a little bit more structured but it is it's you just got to be patient and yeah I think you just had the tab that's nasty just to kind of keep going and it's not a race no it's nothing that can be really damaging for your psychology since the the you and I are racing each other no it's no I got my first I got my first feature film when I was 32 years old yeah you know I've been working in the business since I was 19 like it all takes time you know and I think everyone kind of moves at their own pace yeah with that and I think that's why people's careers blossom at different points you know so it is it's a it's a it's a total marathon my agent always tells me that at least it's fantastic thanks so much for Utah no thank you appreciate it real pleasure thank you

Channel: Spitfire Audio

Views: 10,060

Keywords: John Paesano, Marvel Daredevil, Detroit: Become Human, Mass Effect, Composer

Id: DgVawSM3reg

Length: 12min 25sec (745 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 20 2018