ScoreMagacine team would like to thank you for participating in this interview, it’s been an honor for us.
STAY is your latest outing and at the same time, your new re-teaming with MONSTER'S BALL director Marc Forster. The film gets released in October 21st this year, and the score is a magnificent blend of strings, smooth piano and your trademarked electronics, all in a very emotional, intimate and fragile atmosphere and mood. Compared to your Monster’s Ball score, we would say that you’ve chosen a more organic approach here. What are your comments on the movie, your musical approach to it and your collaboration with Marc Foster?
There are many subtle/dark visual textures working throughout the film that help the audience feel something is not quite right. To support this mood we felt it was important to create a musical direction for the film that was unique. Marc Forster was very helpful during the formulation of that style. He flew us to New York during the preproduction faze of the film and spent a great deal of time showing us his vision for the movie. We sat in on some meetings with actors, talked with the set designer, the cinematographer, and the visual effects supervisor. At the end of this trip we had a very clear idea of what we were going to see on film. One thing Marc said during this trip was that he wanted us to create a score for STAY that was both beautiful, and something he had never heard before. For a composer this is a dream come true.
The musical direction we chose for this film is a merging of several music styles. We started by creating instruments that would be unique to this score. We spent several weeks programming analog synthesizers, recording and sampling interesting musical instruments, and then shaping these sounds in the computer. The result was a pallet of instruments that we could use in a live setting. The entire score for STAY was recorded live. Each of us worked on our own in the pre-production faze of the score writing pieces that we could bring to the sessions and perform as a group. During these sessions these ideas were brought to life using a very traditional band like method. As a group we worked through the pieces shaping and evolving them so that all of the music had a unified direction and focus. After about three weeks of recording we had over four hours of music to send to the filmmakers.
Our goal was to compose as much music as possible while Marc was shooting. We wanted the editor, Matt Chesse to have our score while he was getting the film from the shoot. We didn’t want any creative dilution caused by a temp score. But more importantly we wanted the film to be an organic merging of our music and the edit. The best way to do this is to give the editor our musical vision for the film as early as possible and let his cut be influenced by that music.
The last faze of the score was completed after the film was cut. We composed various cues that the pre-score material did not cover and were able to go back in and augment pre-score cues that needed a bit more shaping. The final aspect of the score was to arrange and record the string section that was placed on top of our live recordings.
Your previous collaboration with MARC FOSTER, Monster’s Ball in 2001, resulted in a very successful project, both movie and score. Your music for the movie was a rather minimalistic -in approach- work based on the piano and completed with smooth electronic veil, synths, guitars and various sound effects. In many parts, the result was heavily dramatic, powerful and sentimental, especially in the brilliant “Under The Stars” and “End Title” when the film reaches its climax. How did your collaboration with director Marc Foster begin and what do you remember from your work with him? Do you have any future plans on working again with him?
Marc is a wonderful director to work for. He gives us a great deal of creative freedom on his films. We met Marc at the Sundance film festival six months before he had signed on to direct Monsters Ball. He contacted us after he began pre-production. After reading the script we gave Marc our ideas on how we would score his film. He felt we understood the subtle beauty of this somewhat dark story and hired us to score the film. The music was a joy to write. The entire process was a wonderfully rewording collaboration.
We are slated to work with Marc this winter on his next film titled Stranger Than Fiction staring Will Ferrell.
OUR TIME IS UP is short comedy you’ve worked in, directed and written by Rob Pearlstein. What can you tell us about this project and its director? How did you get involved and what’s the music like? We are very curious as to what an Asche and Spencer score for a comedy would sound…
We met Rob from our work in TV commercials. We compose a great deal of music in this field. Many of these spots are quite funny. Rob had a great script and is a wonderful guy. The score we created helps give the film a smart sarcastic vibe, and at the same time propels the idea of time passing. The main character, played by Kevin Pollak, has been given the bad news that he has a terminal illness. The result of that news causes an entire shift in the way Kevin’s character lives and works. The music helps us feel the importance of time, as well as creating a place for the comedy in the film to come through.
Another project you’ve worked at is the 2003 mini documentary series THE ELEGANT UNIVERSE by Julia Cort and Joseph McMaster. How did this come up and did you follow a different composing route for such a different project? How was your music like, in the end?
The people from WGBH Boston called us based on our work on Monsters Ball. They were doing a documentary with the theoretical physicist Brian Greene based on the book The Elegant Universe. Several of us had read the book and were untriged with the idea of composing music for a film about string theory. The directors gave us a free hand to create music that would accompany this mind-bending film. Working the way we always do we created several hours of music wile the directors compiled and shot the footage for the film. The music has a very elastic quality. Using a lot of electronics as well as heavily processed guitars we created a score that is a combination of syncopated rhythms mixed with drifting languid textures.
2003 also met your collaboration with Jeff Byrd on the dramatic tv-movie, Jasper, Texas. What do you remember from this collaboration and what’s your score like?
Jeff Byrd is an amazing man. He has a contagious enthusiasm and energy for his films. Jasper Texas is a film about the horrific 1998 murder of Mr. James Byrd Jr. The music we composed for this film is a dark mixture of traditional southern instruments and ambient musical textures. We also had a chance to work with an extraordinary gospel singer named Robert Robertson. Again we approached this score by composing while the director was busy shooting the film. We gave the editor Jeff Cooper several hours of music to work with during his cut. We are very proud to have worked on this film. It’s a story that needs to be told to a country that is becoming more and more conservative in its religious and political beliefs.
Are any of these scores, except MONSTER’S BALL / STAY commercially released and if not, are there any plans for such official albums?
We are excited to say that the soundtrack for Stay will be reliesed by Varese Sarabande on October 25th 2005.
What can you tell us about the upcoming, yet untitled, ONION movie, to which you are assigned? We know that it is a comedy from Fox Searchlight currently on post production and specifically a feature version of The Onion, a popular website that features fictional news stories delivered in a sharp and sarcastic tone to shed light on various hypocrisies in American politics and culture. Who’s directing? Any cast confirmed yet? How were you brought in this and what music do you plan on writing for this? Did you compose anything already?
The Untitled Onion movie is currently on hold. We finished about 45 minutes of this very funny film. However the studio is in the process of rewriting portions of the script. It is unclear when production will resume. We have been huge fans of the Union since it’s early days as a student paper at the University of Madison Wisconsin. We sincerely hope the film will be completed and released.
How do you usually work for a movie? Do you work simultaneously with the production of the film, or do you usually get a draft or a finished result and work on it afterwards? Do you and the directors you’ve worked with, use any temp tracks during the procedure of composing?
We hate temp music. The idea of working on a film after temp music has been placed against it is very distasteful to us. Music editors should put there CD collections away and go back to what they do best, working on the sound stage with the composers score. We understand why Hollywood continues to temp score and test movies. But that doesn’t make the process right. It muddies the waters and clouds the filmmaker’s opinion of the composers work. No composer wants to rip another composers music off. But often that is the result of working on a temped film. We choose a different path. We give the filmmakers a completely original pre-score to work with. This way early versions of the film have the original score already in place. It takes more time and effort for us to work this way, but the results are well worth it. The extra time we put into this music does not effect the schedule in any way due to the fact that we are doing this work while the director is shooting the film. This leaves us the entire allotted time for scoring the film to address cues that have not been covered by the pre-score material, as well as time to amend and alter work that has already been composed.
What are your musical references today? Where does your inspiration derive from? If we had to speculate, we would assume that you are fond of artists outside the film music area as well, particularly the Rock genre. Do you have the same musical influences and do they ever clash while collaborating?
Together we have a very wide spectrum of music influences. All of us come from varied musical backgrounds and experiences. But at the core we approach the work that we do in a very unified way. Some of the music we are into right now is, The Kings of convenience, The Album Leaf, Jamie Lidell, Steve Riech, Sigur Ros, Seu Jorge, Herbert Howell, and we are big fans of the recent Metallica documentary Some kind Of Monster.
What’s your musical upbringing and background? What music did you grow up with and what studies did you have as far as music is concerned?
I’m afraid that this would be hard to answer based on all of our varied backgrounds.
Does your composing team include other persons as well?
Yes, there are eight of us: Tommy Barbarella , Chris Beaty, Tom Scott, Greg Herzenach, Thad Spencer, Danny Stein, Richard Werbowenko, and Al Wolovitch.
Do you follow the work of any particular film music composers?
There is a wealth of talented composers working in film. It’s impossible not to hear the work that comes from these people.
How is it for you to collaborate and work together? What new elements and basic differences are there when collaborating with someone instead of working alone and how’s the composing procedure? Do you work simultaneously together or do you work separately and bring in what you’ve came up with so the merging can be done?
Collaborating is natural to us. We have all been working together for many years. We have an understanding of each other’s strengths and weaknesses. The true art of collaboration is knowing when to step in and when to step out. For each project we work in different ways. The one thing that never changes is that we decide as a group what direction will work best for each project. Once the direction has been established the method to execute that direction will be clear to all of us.
While not referring to you who originally formed like this, we can´t help but to notice that composer collaborations are becoming something of a trend nowadays, with the most recent and popular example being Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard´s work on BATMAN BEGINS. What´s your general view on this kind of situations? In your point of view, is there something unique this kind of collaborations can offer to film music, something that individual composers can´t?
To use Hans Zimmer in a description of collaboration is quite interesting. Here is a guy who has many people writing music for him who will not get proper credit for the work they do. Asche & Spencer has a very different model then that of Hans Zimmer. We are open about the fact that we have several people working on a project. The benefit to a director who works with us is great. There are more ideas and influences involved in the music. Therefore we can react to a cue from a variety of ways. We are also available to each other for help and inspiration. Several minds working on one project is hugely positive. Could NASA have gotten to the moon based on the work of one individual? Certainly creating a score for film pails in comparison to the task of building a spacecraft that can land on the moon. But the principals are the same.
At what musical style you feel more comfortable at? Any specific musical areas you haven´t tried but you´d like to move in, during the following years?
We like them all. The work that we have done in advertising has given us the opportunity to write in almost every conceivable style of music. We would like to continue to work in film writing music that challenges the traditional Hollywood score.
From all the film music you´ve written, do you have any particular favourites?
What can you tell us about your work, besides film music? We are aware that you´ve provided music for various commercials, what other types of work have you done and is any of this commercially available?
Between films and TV commercial we are all quite busy. We feel very fortunate that we are able to make a living writing music. It´s quite a charmed existence.
Warmest regards.
Thank you for your time, we wish you all the best.
SCOREMAGACINE NOTES: ASCHE AND SPENCER´s latest score release, STAY will be out through Varese Sarabande (302 066 693 2) on the 25th of October, 2005.
For more information please visit ASCHE AND SPENCER´s official website at: www.ascheandspencer.com
5-november-2005
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