Hi, I'm Ludwig Göransson, and this is The Breakdown. I got a call that Mr. Nolan wanted to meet me, and I was I had no idea what it was about, but obviously he's, you know, one of one of the director that's, you know, inspired me the most through through my life. And also his collaboration with with Zimmer being groundbreaking. You know, what they've been doing with cinema and how they've been together, pushing visuals and music. And I mean, I saw I think Batman Begins when I was 19 or 18 in Sweden in the movie theater and was just mind blown when I saw that movie. I was and also because I, I never heard a score in a blockbuster like having such much so much room and really feeling like a character of the movie. And so I was I was I left that whole experience just I think I was like really determined at the time after I saw that it was like, I want to I want to be able to do this. I want it. I want to get in on this. So I got the call. They wanted to meet and and and I drove up to the studio and we had our first meeting in his in his library or studio library. And we were just sitting there listening to music. We were he was I think it was like six hours. We were just listening to music. He played me a bunch of music from his kind of the soundtrack to his life and music inspired him. And and I played a music that inspired me and that that that had a great meaning for my life, to my life. And and we just kind of bonded like that. And then by the end, after six hours, he was like, hey, do you want to do you want to come back tomorrow and read the script from a new project? And it's like, sure, yeah, I'd love to. And that was Tenet. I thought it was going to be more I mean, I did had to go to a destination to read the script and to go to an office. Close the door. I was I was there was a table with the script on and I had read it. And the one sitting probably. Four or five hours, and then we had a meeting right afterwards and I got to ask Chris a bunch of questions, and I had also from reading the script I like immediately, I knew that this is a world and an experience for for for the audience. And even as I'm reading it as a conspiracy, it's an experience that I've never had before. And I knew the audience was in for the same ride, so. I immediately knew that Chris and I have to create a totally unique sound world, that that is going to be jarring and is going to be new and different and a shock because it's an emotion, an experience that you never had before. I was a little bit surprised. How savvy is it? I mean, I know obviously that he knows a lot about music, but he's so interested in every detail of filmmaking, in every detail of the music making. So, you know, I was. I was. I was. I was just blabbing on about, like, you know, site chaining and, you know, Metrick modulations, and he was all he was he was really engaged and he was talking about that kind of stuff. And and he kind of pushed it that conversation further. So I knew that, OK, well, this is going to be fun, but like, we're going to be able to experiment here. And so the next step, he asked me to go start writing music. And I went back to my studio and he asked me to come back like two weeks later. And I went to my studio. I started writing, I wrote about I wrote one track. He was about 12 minutes long. And then two weeks later, I went back to his studio and we I actually had to burn it on the CD because he used the CD player. So I had to, like, go find. Like, my neighborhood is like a city marker, pen and burnable CDs, so I can't just here with a CD and we put it in and you just turn it up to like eleven. And it was so loud at one point. In my first demo, I had this, like, really heavy cytosine beat that is that actually eventually became the Trevor Scott song, The Plan. And as I remember, would that be kicked in like this? The whole house is kind of shaking. And I was looking at it and it was just. And I think he was I think he he definitely was excited about about that music and and we played it over and over again at five, five, six times. And after that, we kind of just that he's we sat down and dissected the whole 12 minute piece, like what instruments he likes, what little phrase he likes and what chord progressions. It's interesting. And where we can push things further. And we met up every other week and I was writing new demos and taking ideas further, further, and this was about three months before they had shot anything. So, uh, so when when they finally took off to shoot in in Tallinn, I think was the first destination, he already had like five, six CDs with my music on it. There's a lot of guitars. There's a lot of sense, there's a lot, but there's also a lot of organic instruments. And but everything is also very heavily manipulated and very heavily derate derailed and ranged so. I think the sound is also very blended together with the sound design. So what's interesting about this is I think when, you know, when people go to see a movie today, you're already expecting to hear a certain sound. You're you're already as an audience member is expect to hear a certain blend of electronics and the cinematic orchestra, you know, and for this one has really turned turned its on its head and. The music and the sound is still heavily manipulated like that, I mean, especially the organic elements, enemy of the manipulated that the synth and tech elements. So most of the times you can't really tell what's what. And for the ear, that's very jarring and it can be shocking to a lot of people because you're trying to hear things to try to put your finger on what it is. But but you can't. There's a lot of hidden music messages in the score and there's a lot of thought put into exactly when things are played backwards and also how they're played backwards because there's so many different ways to play something backwards. You know, Bach played. He wrote music. He he was he wrote inverted music. You know, there's a famous piece called Crab Cannon that you play and then you play down to the page and then you play from the bottom up. So, you know, it's basically an inverted piece of music. But when you listen to someone performing that, it doesn't sound like it doesn't sound like it's reversed, you know, and. I mean, I was interested in both aspects of it, like how can you keep that tradition with writing inverted melodies, but then also in the modern tradition where where you actually hear music and it's actually sounds rehearsed. And but then another thing that's interesting. What if it sounds perverse, but it's actually the real forward playing melody and there's a bunch of that going on in the score. And then I had to I had to figure out completely new ways of recording and recording musicians and recording techniques. And it was a lot of experimentation. And Betty was so, so fun. And I learned so much by doing all this. What was really important to me and what was from the get go is, was, is, was for the music to enhance the story and. I wanted to make you know, I want you like I want you to be able to listen to the music just by yourself and follow exactly what's going on in the movie. And I wanted to say wanted that the action of the music to really follow the storyline of the action on screen. And, you know, there's there's. There's that scene in the movie where. He becomes inverted and he steps in a puddle of there's there's like a puddle of water and steps in and you see the water going up to his shoe before he steps in the puddle of water. That's when I saw that I was like best I want the music to sound like like how that vision is, how that visual is the actually premiere, the Prolog in front of I think it was in front of Star Wars on IMAX screenings last last year. And so we had to finish this scene and this piece of music before the rest of the movie. And this was also one of the early demos that I wrote for Chris. He was like. I can you right, can start writing on some action ideas, and I wrote this piece of music that eventually became reading night talent. So what's the first thing that the tenant starts with is with an orchestra tuning up and. What's interesting is that the orchestra tuning up is it's an actually that's the one that we recorded that in L.A. with that lady there with the orchestra tuning up. But there's also some some sort of uneasy sense going on in the background. So it immediately puts the audience in in the chair where they're like, is this part of the score or is this part of them just tuning up? Or like, where am I? It's such a because it's also such a sound that you're so used to hearing. And it's but it's a little uncomfortable. You can kind of get a sense that something is about to happen because they also cut to these guys sitting in a car. So something is going on and then these terrorists comes in and. You have these big hits coming. And what that is, is it's actually guitars. It's three three guitars playing a very low note, I think I played my eighth string guitar in the back and they're playing a low note and then I pitched it. Down. So this is just how the guitar sounds like. I put some distortion and some reverb on them, and then. I started with this since this little arpeggio. And it's like. This whole thing, this whole since that video is filtered through the whole, so it's like it's it feels like something is coming. It's way of using, you know. Now, like Jaws, but you get the sense of danger coming for you. And when I did this arpeggio, I created a center pedia I. Something that made, you know, I'm always like, OK, well, this is not this is not interesting enough, like, how can I make this more interesting? And because and so I think by accident, I, like, added a beat. I added one. An extra bar to the pattern. And you can hear that in the in the actual rhythm with the drums of the big hits to come in. It's a different rhythmic idea here. Oops. Let me put the filter back on the. So. And it's going to play this. So you try to figure out where we're going be on, you know. They really think of this when I hear it like this, so. Three one one, one two. One, two, three, four. And to me, it's just like we like, you know. I have everything pretty a lot of my headphones, I'm like screaming into my and don't know really where to look, but to me it opens up new ideas to me where you can kind of mess around a little bit with with an even time signatures and and. Interesting rhythmic, rhythmic patterns.
