Y sigue Danny Elfman contándonos sus impresiones...
Q: What’s the non-musical film, Danny?
Elfman: Over the last twelve years I’ve written four scripts: Two musicals, and two non-musicals. Three of them have been in turnaround at various studios. The fourth one I’ve just finished and I haven’t settled it anywhere. It’s a story, oddly, that could have been called Corpse Bride. It’s very weird. I’ve been working on it as long I have Corpse Bride. It’s about a gentleman who lived with a corpse for seven years in Key West, Florida. But it’s a true story. He was named Dr. Von Cosel. It was a huge deal in the 1930s. I acquired the rights to two books almost a decade ago and started writing it about four years ago. When Tim told me about this, I said, ‘Isn’t that funny? I just started working on a thing that also has… a… corpse… bride…’ [laughter] But Dr. Von Cosel’s looked nothing like the Corpse Bride. It was mummified, it was like a paper mache kind of figurine.
Q: (question unintelligible)
Johnson: Well, um, I’ve always worked in stop-motion. That’s the only form of animation I’ve ever had experience in so… One of the interesting things to learn was that Tim’s approach to the final film was much more of a live-action approach. Ultimately, that helped it great deal. He was just, ‘We need to cut this scene here.’ Whereas with me coming from a stop-motion animation background, every frame was hours of sweat and I was just so scared to cut anything. That’s sort of where a live-action/stop-motion contrast helped this film.
Elfman: The band thing actually worked against me when I became a film composer. When I got a first film, I had to, like, unlearn everything I had learned being in a band. I had to go back… for seven years, I did musical theater before I had a band. So when I started Pee Wee’s Big Adventure, I really had to go back in time and try to remember what it was like before I was in a rock band. Writing for a movie is almost the antithesis in a weird sort of way. You have to think 180 degrees in another direction, and so for ten years I was doing both and it was really unsettling. It’s almost like a total brain-reversal every time. In one you’re thinking rhythm and eight bars and four bars and eight bars, and when you’re writing for orchestra you want to un-think that. There’s no verses, no choruses, anything can go anywhere in time and it’s just freedom to move in three dimensions, constantly. I would constantly try to reverse myself from thinking in a band-like way. When I’d hear what I thought were pop-sounding scores, which I really wasn’t fond of when I first started composing, I wanted to compose in the classic style of the masters that I grew up on. Not that I’m as good as them, but that was my inspiration.
Q: With Wallace and Grommet, also a stop-motion animation coming out, what do you think of the possible resurgence of the art form?
Johnson: I think it’s just sort of a lucky convergence of events. It’s really bizarre, actually, that there’d be two stop-motion features coming out within a month of each other. It’s been five years since Chicken Run and ten years since Nightmare. It’s more of a coincidence than anything else, but it’s a really a great thing for stop-motion in general that there is an interest in these projects and hopefully it will spark a greater interest and a resurgence in the technique.
Q: What’s it like working with actors who are not necessarily trained singers?
Elfman: It was very intimidating at first, because I hadn’t ever really done that. In Nightmare, you know, it was — other than Catherine O’Hara and Paul Rubens… we did a trio together, and she had the one song — I did all the other vocals. I didn’t have to really work with anybody else. And now Albert Finney, Joanna Lumley, Paul Whitehouse, Jane Horrocks, and Helena… it’s like, it was very intimidating. I didn’t really know how to approach it. Other than Tracey [Ullman]… she’s just a slam dunk because Tracey’s a song and dance person anyhow and she just walked in and knew exactly what to do in ten minutes. But everybody else, I had to sort of figure out how to talk them through it and how to help them, because they weren’t singers, you know. Finally I think I got the hang of it. I was definitely very cautious. I tried to make them feel comfortable in what they were doing. I experimented in having them sing with the music, and then just the melody — turning off the music, and having them sing. I think, with most actors, they’re used to the rhythm of things in a different way and when the music wasn’t running, when the beat wasn’t there, they tended to get much freer. When the beat was there, they tended to get very metric with how they were approaching it. And I was trying to gear them away from that. I finally figured out that by combining the two ways — having them sign along with the track, then stop the track and have them sing again — then finally they became freed up. It worked well. I was able to take some of the track and non-track versions and put it together and make it work. In the end, I was really happy with all of them. Helena was a doll. Albert and Joanna were the ones who were busting my chops [laughs]. They insisted on coming down together, and they’re big personalities, and so when either one of them was in there singing the other one was, like, haranguing from the other side. I was trying to focus, but like, especially Albert, he was joking and Joanna was like, ‘Hello, hello?’ I’m going, ‘Oh my god. Somebody help me.’
Q: How did you make the puppets’ movements so smooth?
Johnson: Well, it really comes down to the skill of the individual animators. We scoured the globe to get the best stop-motion animators that we could. To their credit, it looks…
Q: Is there some kind of calculation you use?
Johnson: No, it’s just giving them the time and the resources to work at that level. It just comes down to their experience and their talent.
Q: Given that Victor is the protagonist of the film and he does play piano, did he ever have a vocal song as well?
Elfman: He had a song, but it didn’t make the final cut. Things got a little long, and his song got cut.
Q: Did Johnny do the vocals?
Elfman: No, we were just… it was getting to that point when the song was cut. Just before he had to go into the studio — probably much to his relief!
Elfman: Over the last twelve years I’ve written four scripts: Two musicals, and two non-musicals. Three of them have been in turnaround at various studios. The fourth one I’ve just finished and I haven’t settled it anywhere. It’s a story, oddly, that could have been called Corpse Bride. It’s very weird. I’ve been working on it as long I have Corpse Bride. It’s about a gentleman who lived with a corpse for seven years in Key West, Florida. But it’s a true story. He was named Dr. Von Cosel. It was a huge deal in the 1930s. I acquired the rights to two books almost a decade ago and started writing it about four years ago. When Tim told me about this, I said, ‘Isn’t that funny? I just started working on a thing that also has… a… corpse… bride…’ [laughter] But Dr. Von Cosel’s looked nothing like the Corpse Bride. It was mummified, it was like a paper mache kind of figurine.
Q: (question unintelligible)
Johnson: Well, um, I’ve always worked in stop-motion. That’s the only form of animation I’ve ever had experience in so… One of the interesting things to learn was that Tim’s approach to the final film was much more of a live-action approach. Ultimately, that helped it great deal. He was just, ‘We need to cut this scene here.’ Whereas with me coming from a stop-motion animation background, every frame was hours of sweat and I was just so scared to cut anything. That’s sort of where a live-action/stop-motion contrast helped this film.
Elfman: The band thing actually worked against me when I became a film composer. When I got a first film, I had to, like, unlearn everything I had learned being in a band. I had to go back… for seven years, I did musical theater before I had a band. So when I started Pee Wee’s Big Adventure, I really had to go back in time and try to remember what it was like before I was in a rock band. Writing for a movie is almost the antithesis in a weird sort of way. You have to think 180 degrees in another direction, and so for ten years I was doing both and it was really unsettling. It’s almost like a total brain-reversal every time. In one you’re thinking rhythm and eight bars and four bars and eight bars, and when you’re writing for orchestra you want to un-think that. There’s no verses, no choruses, anything can go anywhere in time and it’s just freedom to move in three dimensions, constantly. I would constantly try to reverse myself from thinking in a band-like way. When I’d hear what I thought were pop-sounding scores, which I really wasn’t fond of when I first started composing, I wanted to compose in the classic style of the masters that I grew up on. Not that I’m as good as them, but that was my inspiration.
Q: With Wallace and Grommet, also a stop-motion animation coming out, what do you think of the possible resurgence of the art form?
Johnson: I think it’s just sort of a lucky convergence of events. It’s really bizarre, actually, that there’d be two stop-motion features coming out within a month of each other. It’s been five years since Chicken Run and ten years since Nightmare. It’s more of a coincidence than anything else, but it’s a really a great thing for stop-motion in general that there is an interest in these projects and hopefully it will spark a greater interest and a resurgence in the technique.
Q: What’s it like working with actors who are not necessarily trained singers?
Elfman: It was very intimidating at first, because I hadn’t ever really done that. In Nightmare, you know, it was — other than Catherine O’Hara and Paul Rubens… we did a trio together, and she had the one song — I did all the other vocals. I didn’t have to really work with anybody else. And now Albert Finney, Joanna Lumley, Paul Whitehouse, Jane Horrocks, and Helena… it’s like, it was very intimidating. I didn’t really know how to approach it. Other than Tracey [Ullman]… she’s just a slam dunk because Tracey’s a song and dance person anyhow and she just walked in and knew exactly what to do in ten minutes. But everybody else, I had to sort of figure out how to talk them through it and how to help them, because they weren’t singers, you know. Finally I think I got the hang of it. I was definitely very cautious. I tried to make them feel comfortable in what they were doing. I experimented in having them sing with the music, and then just the melody — turning off the music, and having them sing. I think, with most actors, they’re used to the rhythm of things in a different way and when the music wasn’t running, when the beat wasn’t there, they tended to get much freer. When the beat was there, they tended to get very metric with how they were approaching it. And I was trying to gear them away from that. I finally figured out that by combining the two ways — having them sign along with the track, then stop the track and have them sing again — then finally they became freed up. It worked well. I was able to take some of the track and non-track versions and put it together and make it work. In the end, I was really happy with all of them. Helena was a doll. Albert and Joanna were the ones who were busting my chops [laughs]. They insisted on coming down together, and they’re big personalities, and so when either one of them was in there singing the other one was, like, haranguing from the other side. I was trying to focus, but like, especially Albert, he was joking and Joanna was like, ‘Hello, hello?’ I’m going, ‘Oh my god. Somebody help me.’
Q: How did you make the puppets’ movements so smooth?
Johnson: Well, it really comes down to the skill of the individual animators. We scoured the globe to get the best stop-motion animators that we could. To their credit, it looks…
Q: Is there some kind of calculation you use?
Johnson: No, it’s just giving them the time and the resources to work at that level. It just comes down to their experience and their talent.
Q: Given that Victor is the protagonist of the film and he does play piano, did he ever have a vocal song as well?
Elfman: He had a song, but it didn’t make the final cut. Things got a little long, and his song got cut.
Q: Did Johnny do the vocals?
Elfman: No, we were just… it was getting to that point when the song was cut. Just before he had to go into the studio — probably much to his relief!
1 comentario:
Gracias Fer por tus joyitas, y Feliz Navidad para los presentadores de radio mas lindos del lugar. besos desdes tierras extremeñas
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