Temp music

Randy Thom, the sound designer there. And just this handful of people, we put the movie up on the, because actually this movie was edited on film. This is the last movie I edited on film, actually. So we actually had film. So we projected the movie from beginning to end. And it was like Alan went home that night and started writing. And it was interesting, because I put temp music in when I show the movie to Alan.

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you know, some of his old stuff or other composers' stuff, you know, just to fill the scene out. But when I ran the movie for Alan, like the whole first scene with the feather was silent. And the only music that I put in were the records. When I ran it for Alan, I didn't have any temp music in the movie at all. And he literally came home on the synthesizer and he wrote that opening theme

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And a couple of months after I ran the movie for him, I went up to where he lives up north, and he just started playing me temp cues, and it was just sketches on the piano. And it was just great. I mean, we didn't change a thing. This guy is so complex, Gary Sinise, because he wants to die just so that he can be a part of his own heritage, which is that

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committed to the idea that you would see this totally from her point of view, that we would never cut to the gratuitous, big, giant, flocking visual effects shot outside of the house where you see this massive bird swarm. And there we go. That's the bird. I did this as a temp visual effect, this digital bird flying and hitting the glass. This is now a puppet.

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And we just, it always made audiences jump, even just in the cutting room. And we liked it so much that even Fuse, which did, our visual effects vendor, did great work in the movie. But for some reason, that was one that we just really liked it. So we ended up keeping the temp in the movie. And your temp is actually a 2D bird. It's not three-dimensional. No, it's not. It's a 2D bird. That's great.

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Tina was our gray. Yeah, my girlfriend, you know, I came home one night and I was, you know, I wanted to temp all these shots in the movie. It's sort of how I sort of communicate to my various members of my team what I'm looking for. And so I photographed her using my Canon 5D as a silhouette and then distorted her silhouette and stretched it and made it a little more skinny and alien-like.

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Oliver Stone

I looked for a man with a death's head. Crossing Dollies, I remember we did that at the airport. That was an interesting shot. And Adagio by Samuel Barber sort of came about because we wanted a noble theme, a solemn theme, an austere one. And in the temp dub, while we were editing the film, we cut it to Barber. We asked our composer, Georges Delarue,

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Oliver Stone

French composer who worked with Francois Truffaut to follow this style of this. And he worked very hard, Georges, and worked very difficult hours to match the majesty of Barber, but it's impossible. We ended up using much of Georges' music in the movie, and we'll see that later, but this opening theme could not be matched, so we went with the adagio from the temp job and we left it into the final

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Len Wiseman

on an iPhone first to put it into a cut. iPhones are getting so good that there are 18 lines of ADR that are just additional audio recording of the actors that's done on an iPhone. And I did it on this pilot for Hawaii Five-0 and it was such a condensed post that as a temp I just had a lot of the actors do their ADR on an iPhone. I'd send them the scene and they'd just record it on the iPhone and email it to me.

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Len Wiseman

and it's such a good quality that I used it. And I thought, oh, okay, I can only get away for it because it's broadcast and television, it's never gonna hold up in a feature. And I did it for a temp, had everybody, Colin, Jessica, Kate, Bryan Cranston, Ethan Hawke, John Cho, everybody has iPhone lines that I would just write, they'd email them to me, I'd listen to them, say, can you change this, can you do that, or whatever. And there are about 18 iPhone lines that remained in this final film. Sounds like I should do an iPhone ad.

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John McTiernan

While I was temp-tracking the movie, we used some Aaron Copland. I guess I have since learned the name of the pieces, Fanfare for the Common Man. It just, it just got introduced there. And Alan Silvestri later on parodied it beautifully. And we... It's playing in the background here. In the cutting room we call it Fanfare for the Common Mercenary.

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What is this music? It's so cool. This was a piece of music that John Hughes found. At the beginning, we thought we were just gonna use it for the temp track, but it played so well, we kept it.

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This was an interesting addition from... In the temp musical score, I used "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas." And John Williams said, "What do you think of Mel Tormé rerecording it?" And it was such a great idea. And Mel Tormé obviously is one of the greats, you know? On a par, some people think, with Sinatra and Tony Bennett and those guys. So it's just a wonderful little addition to the film.

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You know, you have temp music in movies before you have the final score. And this was scored to Predator, which is ironic since I've just written the new Predator film that Shane Black is directing. And Shane Black is one of the cops in the car you're about to see. So what goes around comes around. It all comes back.

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Life of Pi, they have used as temporary score, they've used the field theme. And so I'm now in this strange place of having to replace with original score. You've had a weird relationship with Ang Lee because he was using Family Viewing in the first collaboration you had, right? Yeah, and I had to replace it. And that's something that we don't do. You don't temp your scores. And I think

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And then this, we never replaced this audio, but this is me as the announcer of the jazz. Our villain listens to jazz, which is good. I don't think we had that in the script. We just figured after. No, this was in the script, I believe. But then we were going to use somebody. But when we were doing the mix, it was like, I'll just do a temp track and then...

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It's beautifully written. And musically, Howard took his cue from the dwarves, utilising a male choir to take us through Moria. That was Peter, actually. What happened, I remember, we were having lunch at your place, and you and Howard, Fran, were talking about the concept of choral music, especially in this place. I think you'd found some great stuff in the temp track that you'd used, and Howard had really enjoyed it, and...

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I have a screenwriter friend who said, "What has become of this prop?" I think the editor has it. I'm sure Dino has one. This book? - Yeah, there are two of them. Universal maybe has one. I should have one. - Yeah, and I should have one. You and I should have one. Why don't we have one? We could auction it in 20 years. Anyway, talk a little bit about how you got Ralph Fiennes into this cast. Like I said, I went after the actors that everyone told me I couldn't get. "Ralph's never going to do a movie like this, he's a Shakespearean actor." Basically, I sent him the script. And he loved it so much he agreed to fly in and meet with me. I gave him my vision of it. I told him he was not going to live in a haunted house. He told me he was very attracted to the idea of playing a monster who had a soul. That he had some kind of inner life and was not just a bogeyman. He loved the relationship between him and Reba, Emily Watson's character. He loved that there was humanity in this horrible person doing horrible things, but there was humanity in him. Here's a great sequence. We should talk about the way you staged it. This was originally written, if you remember, as an outdoor exercise scene. I said to Ted, "I can't see Hannibal Lecter "even if there were guards all around and they cleared the whole yard, "I can't see him in an exterior location, out of prison." The scene was originally through a fence. A sort of dog run or something, or a big mesh fence. And the dialogue between Will Graham and Hannibal was through a fence. It was an electrified fence. But I said, "Then there's no threat." There's no real threat. And I said, "Why don't we put him on a dog leash?" And I found this location, which is in an actual location for the mentally disturbed. There are mental patients all over this building. This was another case where Kristi would talk to Brett, and then she would send me drawings for the design for this knowing that it might help me as I thought about the scene and wrote it. Kristi had a lot of fun with the look of this scene and so did Dante. Dante did an amazing job because his interpretation put a lot of smoke in here so that the white lights would... Dante liked the way Lecter goes in and out of the brightness so that he almost seems to be a ghost. Which is like evil light as well. He said, "Evil light doesn't only have to be dark. It can be white as well." This leash thing, I love. He meant to use the bolt cutter to enter the house, but he didn't. That shot I did earlier, where you see the line saying, "Do not cross." It was the last shot of the night, and I almost forgot it, but I said, "In this whole scene, when I shot it, I don't remember seeing the floor. "I have to establish it so that the audience knows there's a do-not-cross line." Why is he standing there? The original idea for the scene was that you'd think it was a dream sequence. If you look, it's shot very close. The way you shot Edward's entrance into the room, we don't know at first where he is or whether it's a dream. And here comes Lecter walking towards him with no bars between them. Then we pop out and reveal that he's on a leash. It's a great moment in the film. When I was working on the first draft, I just thought, "This is a scene that's not in the book." Most of these Lecter scenes are not. I thought, "If I were directing this movie, I'd like to get away from that cell for once. "And give the actor a chance to use his whole body. "And have nothing between the two actors." To me, it was really the parallel of the scene with Jodie and Tony at the museum in Memphis, in that big cell that Kristi designed, which was amazing. I needed a set piece as magnificent as that, 'cause that really opened up the movie. I thought you'd be very grateful not to have the Plexiglass between them for once. And to have them be able to move together, walk together. Sometimes just the technical challenges you face force more creativity. It was only his first time. Already in Atlanta he did much better. Rest assured, my dear Will, this one will give you plenty of exercise. I love Will's reaction to that line. Edward's great when he's not saying lines, actually. You know, the mark of great acting is: How interesting is an actor when he's only listening? He's a very good listener. - Jodie Foster is a great listener. She listens with such intelligence and such engagement, and Edward can do the same thing, and so can Tony. It really is a hallmark of great acting. You see that a lot with Ralph Fiennes here. He doesnt have a lot of dialogue. He's listening, thinking and reacting. It's a very poignant performance by Ralph. It's easy to play the monster. It's hard to be the guy who's a horrible monster... It's hard to make the audience care about the character instead of just dismissing them. This is Azura Skye who is one of my favorite young actresses, who was in 28 Days. She had a small part in Bandits and she was awesome. Again, the importance that Brett gives to casting every part, even if it's an actor who only has a one-page scene. You want somebody who looks like they could star in their own movie. If this movie suddenly became about this bookstore, it would be interesting for the next 90 minutes. Even the voice of the girl on the phone, I cast the voice very specifically. Did you drive the studio crazy by waiting to cast some of these parts for so long? Till the last minute, yeah. ...darn it, she never did. I'm just a temp. Linda will be in on Monday. I have to catch FedEx in about five minutes. I hate to bother Dr. Bloom about it because he told Linda to send it and I don't want to get her into trouble. This was hard for timing because it's one shot and it's a lot of dialogue, and I wanted the camera to land at the right place. The camera and the lens that you pick help with the emotion, intensity, and realness of the scene. Is it hard to move in like this without changing lenses and keep the focus? Yeah. Especially anamorphic. The focus on this move is impossible. Mike Weldon was the AC on this movie. He's a genius. Anamorphic is the wide screen? Anamorphic is wide screen, but there's not a lot of depth of field at all. So it's impossible to focus when you're moving into a subject. It's just the hardest thing ever.

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It was very intense. I didn't even think we were going to make it there. Because we didn't even get a traditional work print for the fifth show. It was delivered to us in scenes. It was just the random scenes, yeah. So we never put it together until later, and there was still scenes missing. You had to cut together the original layouts into that work print in order to even have sound effects done. To sound as music. So Eric was doing sound effects, and Jim Venable was doing music to not moving pictures. It would just be boards. And you kind of hear about that sometimes in feature world because they do a temp track.

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I love the music there as well. Again, just wanna say that there's something there, the tone. I wanted something that feels a bit Byzantine. Not just like... There was an Oriental flavour to it. And the whole movie had a bit of that in the architecture. But also Paul Haslinger sort of brought some of that in the music as well. So you'll see, what we did here was that chamber is... It has a look that is very similar. We made sure that there was... You know, that the arches, the seal, the background, the fire pits... ... if you compare the two films, they... It's definitely getting as close as we could... ...with just doing it the way that honestly I'd always wanted to. And we had to make a decision of, okay, do we stick with something... ... that quite honestly I was not ever thrilled with... ...1n terms of reusing a set... ...and not having the image of Sonja that I really wanted... ... that would fit with the story. Or do we get a chance to just now do it properly? And so that's the decision that was made. And I hope it hasn't caused too much confusion. The only thing, Len, is If we had attempted that... ... It would have felt like a shock in the middle of the movie. Something that didn't blend at all. It would have actually hurt it as well. I'm glad we said, you know, let's go for it. Because texture-wise, it was such a different look. What's sad also is that we reused the set again. We still didn't get away from that. We built these big dishes, all this motif to kind of bring it back here. Yeah, right here. This is the chamber when the humans walk in. The great hall. - The great hall. That is that set. And then we brought in other pieces. I remember on the day we just kind of grabbed the different walls... ...and set pieces and made it. It's my favourite set. - A great-looking set. And it's really-- You get so excited when you're able to do that... ...because you go from, what are we gonna do with this small chamber. So you put it in a grand hall. You light it differently. You put the thing. And then you have this amazing set that you didn't have to pay for. We paid for it, but, you know, don't have to pay for it twice. This is one that Dan really pulled out of his butt too. He did this for almost nothing. And at the top part of the ceiling again... ...IS part of this feeling of change from the original movie... . Slightly different design, Forét Bleue did the... And again, It's just... - Did the CGI work. Because also, this has... There was a bit more detail in the design... ...of having a chance to create a lot more in this one. And the other, you know... What I did in the first one, again, you know... . it was an add-on, you know, a last-minute scene. And it's like a little miniature, like a disc. Somebody's just kind of pushing out of the way. A 3-foot model, yeah. I just wanted to mention the two piece of chain... ... that are pulling both ways at one point... ... you saw two minutes ago was actually stolen from Underworld 2. This was a-- William thing. - When William... You mean the two--? - You know who noticed that? That is a great shot. - At the premier? That is such a beautiful shot. Nick De Toth, our editor. - Did he? I really wanted this to happen really quickly. And we have some, you know... I thought it was great. lt was enormously tragic. Beautiful, beautiful effect. And I loved to go... Remember when we did the temp music on this? This was hard music to get. You just gotta hit it right with not being too overboard... ...and not being too dark, because It's still tragic. We did probably five, I don't know, different versions... ...I remember that we were looking at. The one, remember, we had in the temp music... ...Was actually getting... There was something in there we like, and we went to Paul. We said, you know, there's something interesting in there.

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he has turned into something that ultimately, if he sees his girlfriend again, he's going to eat her. So it's not good. And then here's where the music comes in. This is kind of controversial because, you know, very, very controversial, very controversial. During the edit, I put this temp track in and I think, you know, the scene needed it. And then we, you know, everybody was cool with it. And they said, yeah, of course you can do a little music.

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And one of the interesting things that Joe and I have discovered is because I cut without temp music, the movie has its own... Yeah, Chris doesn't cut... He cuts... He finds his own internal rhythm, so he cuts with no music. So when we're watching the film, there's no score. For months, we're watching it without score. And what happens then is that Joe will write a piece for one scene, and you can literally take it and lay it over another scene, and it'll hit all the same cuts. It'll have certain... The movies have sort of a dramatic...

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because we cut with no temp. Yes. The movie develops its own internal rhythm. Yes. And we find ourselves very often taking the same piece of music and it lays almost cut for cut in multiple scenes in the movie. And then here we are. This was kind of a revelation to us, this scene. You remember, we started shooting this. I remember this. We shot completely different coverage of Haley. And the camera was front on. And her hair was down.

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