About this user
Composer/Producer
Here is a very bad copy of the scene in Twilight that uses my music:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-gJCza5uAjo
I don't know how how they were able to massacre the sound so completely just by copying it but as soon as I can, I'll put up a better copy. Meanwhile, if you know of one, please let me know, or post it and I'll post a link.
Despite the desperaate disclaimer, the scene does show how the director used the music to do what music does best, helping her audience feel the conflicting emotions of the protagonists, rather than having to choose one over the other. Only music can reliably do this every tie it is needed. This scene shows how music often provides the real "magic" of the silver screen. The call to use this particular recording was intentional and brilliant. Not every recording of "Claire de Lune" would be able to clearly help the audience feel even one, let alone both of the conflicting emotions that the scene is about (emotionally). Yet this one is able to help the audience feel clearly the conflict between romantic longing and fear and tension. Most recordings of Claire de Lune are played too fast, much faster than Debussy's original tempo markings.
Because of the particular recording the director chose, The track enhances two emotions that might be considered opposites: Romance and foreboding do not grudgingly co-exist, but add depth and character that intensify the actors' already great performances, making them seem even better. (I wonder if there are any composers out there willing to admit "hanging an actor out to dry" if they had something personal against them!? I would ever do something like that myself - cough. Truthfully, I only did it in one movie, after living night and day with a particular actress (on the screen, of course) and "saving" her performance from herself time after time, when she gave the director, the editor and the audience nothing to work with, emotionally, I did it - just that once - nothing bad, I just let ONE moment show. Music is one of the most powerful creative comonent to any film. Knowing what I know about how it can make or break a scene, even change the entire meaning of a scene, draticaly, I'd be very careful to make sure the composer is a veyr generous person, as well as being equipped with the talent to deliver the goods!
Even with a brilliant piece of music, the performance alone makes this Claire de Lune work, when just speeding the same piece up too much, would make other fail. To give you an idea of what it took to make the sound good enough to match this film, and to show you how badly he sound has degraded in this copy, here is the recording set-up:
After twenty years studying with Schoenberg's own apprentice, in my thirties, I felt I was finally qualified to make a recording of mine and my teacher's favorite piece of someone else's music: Claire de Lune. I finally had a piano tha could handle it-specially designed to be able to play light classical pieces as well as stand up to a large syphony orchestra in a live performance.
to enhance the romantic mood and the tension at the same time. Most pianists play Claire de Lune too fast, which is probably why the filmmakers chose mine. Played to fast it would have worked against both of the prevailing emotional underpinnings of the scene - as I said, both romance and tension. But to give you an idea how bad the sound quality strayed from the original ~ I made the recording myself, playing my $100,000 Yamaha conert grand piano, recording it on a Suder 24 track with Dolby SR noise reduction, the same setup used by Shawn murphy i every oe of his brilliant recordings of Alan Silvestri's, James horner's and Danny Elfman's film scores. I even used the same mics he does, that EACH cost $6,000 to have made by the now-deceased-Stephen Paul. Stephen took two new Neumann U87's, the big mic everyone thinks of when they think of studio mics. He once told me, "They are great doorstops and they work OK as paper weights." Just one of the modifications he made to the eight or so mics he made was to replace the 3 micron diaphragm with one that is only .9 microns thick. The diaphragm is what vibrates, ike the human ear drum, and the thinner it is, the more transparent and accurate the sound. Stephen's are the thinnest ever made.
, (Paul McCartney has a pair, as does Jackson Browne and the Seattle Symphony). So you can tell how far the sound has degraded, having been recorded originally with $12,000 worth of microphones, $190,000 worth of recorder and piano and the sveral hundred thousands of dollars Bernie Grundman Mastering Labs used to equalize and master the sound. Whatever they did just sucked the life right out of the beautiful sound we got on that track - he says with the modesty of a film composer!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-gJCza5uAjo
Age
49
Hometown
Big Sur/Carmel
Country
United States
Occupation
Composer/Producer for 30 years, before that was Executive Director of the California Theatre Council; President, Pipeline Theatre (Los Angeles); Creative Director, owner, Creative Communications Group (ad agency, Carmel/San Francisco), Opera Singer, Hidden Valley Opera Company, waiter, China Row (Chinese restaurant on Cannery Row, Monterey); soloist, various churches, performer, various bars, piano bars, and prisons.
Companies
Brian Bennett Music (BMI), 1978 to present, California Theatre Council, 1978 to 1983; represented by Jonathan Simon, London. Music published by EMI Music Publishing and Universal Music Publishing. Writing published by Simon & Schuster.
Interests
Everything.
composermon
liked
yep-all we need is dance - and a symphony orchestra in every town