Onlinemagazin für Film und Filmmusik

Hello Mr. Gordon. Thank you very much for this interview.

Hi, thanks for inviting me onto your website.

Let’s start with a short look back on your musical career. When did you start writing music? What can you tell us about your musical education?

I had been singing in the Australian Boys Choir for about three years when, at the age of 13, I decided to become a composer. There were probably a number of reasons but it was the music of Britten that I found particularly inspirational. I began absorbing the music of many composers from Monteverdi to Stockhausen, but especially Wagner. It was by daily studying the scores of these composers and reading books like Schoenberg’s Harmonielehre that I developed my skills. I am self-taught, which I sometimes think is a bad thing in that it took me much longer to develop than if I had gone to a conservatorium, and I sometimes think it is a good thing in that I ultimately developed my own individual view of music and its place in the world.

You’re very active on the concert stage as well as in television and film music. Was there ever a point where you had to decide, which way to go? Do you prefer one of theses genres?

I have always seen film as just one area that a composer can work in. It makes perfect sense to me to compose a concerto, then a film score, then a string quartet, then music for a sporting event and I intend to continue that way. Each genre, if we can use that description, has its own demands and stimulations, and each tends to have a different audience with differing expectations of the music and I find that a healthy balance of these genres is very rewarding.

How does composing music for the screen differ from writing a concert piece in your experience? Do you think the one thing influences the other?

Concert music is like designing, building and decorating the whole house; the composer is responsible for every detail of the entire work. Consequently some micro-idea can work as the DNA for the larger piece, small musical ideas are echoed in the greater structure. Composing for film is like decorating a house that has already been designed and built by someone else; you are a sub-contractor and it’s your job to dress it up to their specifications; you can make suggestions but no-one is going to tear down a wall because it upsets your colour scheme! That said I get great joy from film, entering worlds and musical languages that I might never get to explore otherwise. I love working with drama and trying to get into the very fabric of the story and its characters, psychologically, emotionally and structurally.

„Master & Commander“ featured a soundtrack that was a mixture of classical and original music. At the same time you wrote the score with two fellow composers. How did this happen? What was Peter Weir’s musical concept?

We had worked together on a piece called “The Ghost of Time” in 1999 for the Millennium Eve international telecast. When I say “together”, Richard Tognetti and I never met until the performance, while Iva Davies and I met only a couple of times plus a few phone conversations. That’s the magic of studio recording. Peter Weir later heard the piece and began playing it on set to create a suitable mood for the cast while filming. He then decided to put the same composer team together for his score and suddenly we found ourselves transplanted to Los Angeles having to actually compose together for the first time.

Writing music is something very personal. How did the collaboration with Iva Davies and Richard Tognetti work?

We quickly realised that we should play to our strengths as composers, so Iva handled the electronic cues, I did most of the orchestral cues and Richard looked after the abundant source music, classical and folk. Having said that, everyone had an opinion on every cue and changes would be made in consultation. On the rare occasion when there was disagreement we would play both versions to Peter Weir and he would decide on one version or point us in another direction.
You are right, in that (for me at least) composing is a personal journey and so this was quite a different process and experience for me, one where I did not feel as fully engaged as I normally do when writing a score on my own. However, it was a wonderful experience working with those two very talented musicians and with one of the very great filmmakers and I treasure that time immensely.

Let’s talk about „On The Beach“ for a moment, one of your best scores. How did you get this assignment and how did you work out the concept for your music?

After submitting a sample of music, no doubt along with a number of composers, I was asked to meet with the director and was offered the job. It was a very moving film to score since it was about the end of the world and the way in which ordinary Australians dealt with their looming, inevitable deaths. It was an opportunity to write for the solo cello, which is such an emotional and tragic instrument. Interestingly the dark tone of the subject matter made it possible to relish those last moments of joy, a new love affair, a helicopter ride, a picnic, and so on; this gave me so much emotional scope musically. It really was a very deep experience composing “On the Beach”.

Was it ever considered to reference Ernest Gold’s famous score? In which way does the new film need a different approach, if so?

I have never seen the Stanley Kramer film although I keep meaning to. Nor have I heard Ernest Gold’s score which apparently is inundated with variations of “Waltzing Matilda”…I must say I am rather relieved I wasn’t asked to work that into the score!

Your most recent work is the score for „Daybreakers“. For this horror movie you used some very interesting techniques of classical avant-garde music. How did you create these sound collages?

Mostly through the use of augmented canons, if you will allow me to get technical for a moment, where all the instruments or voices perform the same melodic line but at different speeds. This creates an ever-changing texture that nevertheless is harmonically static. I used this concept for the vampires in their daily lives because they seemed to me to be locked into a kind of drug haze which they were (in their dead hearts) very uncomfortable with. There is a sense of ‘this is not right’ about these vampires.

Some cues are almost completely driven by percussion. Can you explain us your approach to these scenes?

Thematically they represent the brutality of the vampire army. Your readers might be interested to know that there are thirty-six different percussion lines in the music. We set up the instruments in the studio and miked them as though we had thirty-six performers. We then overdubbed two at a time with Brian Nixon and Phil South moving around the room from instrument to instrument.

There is also some melodic, even melancholic feeling to some of the cues. In which do they relate to the dark and dissonant parts of the score?

I think you are referring to the music associated with the humans. They are a hunted species, almost extinct, so there is a tragic melancholy in their music. When the main characters reach the relatively safe refuge of the winery in the middle of the film I thought this was the moment to introduce some warmth into the film, even though it is muted and without strength

Would you compare „Daybreakers“ with your first horror film score, „Salem’s Lot“? What is similar with these two assignments, where are the differences in the musical approach? Did you have to sort out some of your ideas for „Daybreakers“ for not repeating something from „Salem’s Lot“?

They are actually very different pictures, requiring very different approaches to the music. “Salem’s Lot” is set in world of Satanic rites and black magic, consequently there is a religious and anti-religious tone to the music, along with fingernails-on-the-blackboard creepiness. There is always a sense of a greater evil force at work in the world. “Daybreakers”, as I mentioned earlier, takes place in a society of drug-induced haziness, mixed with a very brutal form of corporate greed. It is a world where all our moral values are turned upside down and yet it has worrying similarities to our own 21st century lives, such as diminishing resources, the extinction of species and the power of nameless corporate entities. So despite both pictures being about vampires they each demanded very different responses from the composer. There was no real danger of repeating myself as long as I stayed true to each film.

A horror film is always something more commercial than a drama. Do you meet it with the same ambition concerning the purely musical aspects of the score?

To be honest, I don’t really watch horror movies, but I have enjoyed scoring them as they provide great opportunities to compose some really interesting things and explore new textures. And it is allowable at times to not be too inhibited by good taste and breeding!

What can you tell us about your next projects? Any TV or movie film planned? Are you working on something for concert halls?

I also scored the feature film, “Mao’s Last Dancer”, around the time of scoring “Daybreakers” and it has already been a huge box office success in Australia; it should reach the rest of the world during 2010. This film was a wonderful project to work on and I am very pleased with the score both in the film and on the album.
There are a few projects being discussed at the moment but the only one that has been announced is “Cradlewood” which we think will have a dark and rich, ‘late-romantic’ score, but you can never be really sure how the music will be until you are looking at the edited pictures. I have also begun preliminary work on a major work for large orchestral and that should keep me occupied, on and off, for some time.

Thank you very much and good luck!

Good to talk with you. I hope we get to do it again, one day.

Jan Boltze / 15.02.10