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We’d like to talk about your musical style. I think it’s quite difficult to tightly define it as it greatly varies from score to score. You sure love to experiment a lot with electronic sounds and orchestral fusions, with severe brass work and clusters being one of the distinct traits of your work. Also notable is the mixture of traditional cultural music, soaring vocals and natural sounds combined with classical elements and of course you made a name for yourself with your blending of traditional ethnic music and ambient sounds. You also tend to mix New Age effects, ghostly vocals and tribal percussion and experiment with animal and industrial sounds. “Eclectic” one might add about your music…what do you think of all this?
I’m trying to be different on each project. Trying to do the images and the director’s vision justice so that he doesn’t get a soundtrack that sounds like something else. That’s what I strive for all the time, with differing results of course. Sometimes you try to do something and somebody in the process or somebody in the mix stops you from doing it and says they want something else. That’s what I aim to do. I’m a very collaborative person. I believe in vision and striving to bend the boundaries.
Your style has been obviously influenced by your experiences with the group SPK. Did you also get influenced by your medical background in an Australian Psychiatric Hospital? What can you tell us about those years, your work and your relevant background and education?
When I graduated from college with degrees in economics and politics during the Seventies, I went to work as an orderly in a psychiatric hospital in Australia. The last thing I vividly remember is walking through the door and meeting some really weird characters. The place was a little depressing, so I started a music therapy course with three patients and with them formed the industrial rock band SPK.
SPK broke rules and new grounds. A heavily "industrial" influenced kind of music that you composed under the pseudonym of "Operator", with lyrics written by Neil Hill, insisting on the slow mental decadence of the Hospitals. What do you remember about Neil Hill and his sadly demise when he committed suicide a few years later?
We were supposed to go to England and the lead singer, who was in and out of hospital all the time, unfortunately…his wife died of anorexia and he killed himself the day after.
What does ‘SPK’ mean? Are they initials of some kind?
It stands for a lot of things. It originally stood for a group of Germans in Heidelberg called Socialist Patients Kollective. A psychiatrist at the university’s clinic, believed that his patients’ mental disorders stemmed from Capitalism, and the only cure was a Marxist society. When the university tried to fire Huber, his patients organized the SPK, held protests, occupied the hospital administration offices, and convinced the university to retain him. Most patients in mental asylums don’t know what they’re in there for except that they can’t function or survive on the outside.
What could you tell us about you first film Dead Calm? That was the time you were recognized by the Australian Film Industry for that score when they awarded you with an Australian Film Industry Αward for Best Score. An excellent score based in your album “In Flagrante Delicto”…
I happened to be sitting in my publisher’s office the day Phillip Noyce called up looking for someone to score Dead Calm. I was lucky. After about 3 months of experimenting with different directions with Dead Calm, I used something I had written for one of my SPK albums that I hadn’t used earlier and everyone was very happy with it. After winning the AFI Award, I haven’t had a day off since (laughs).
In The hand that rocks the cradle, we saw a musical representation of a more sensible and intimate Revell all with the great, sentimental lullaby main theme...any comments? How was it to work with Curtis Hanson?
It was my first sort of middle of the road Hollywood film. The director was very enamoured of temp scores. It was extremely difficult for me to vary from it. Even a note going up or down when the temp went in the opposite direction became a question. That was the only time, though, I’ve had to deal with that and I learned a great lesson from that. Now I don’t have any problem with listening to temp tracks and varying from it. The only thing I don’t like is when my own music is on the temp track. What tends to happen is if it’s working and I wrote it, there’s a really strong tendency just to write it again and I definitely would rather not do that.
With Win Wenders you worked in Until the end of the World and Farewell, so close! What differences do you spot on working with this director in contrast with collaborating with and on more "Hollywood"- oriented and based directors / projects?
I was very excited to work with Wim Wenders. I love his work, especially Wings of Desire, which I think is one of the all-time great films. I was very familiar with his work before that as well. It was a great experience. The thing I think about Wim is that his film, his life and his passions are really completely connected. There is no differentiation between his life outside of film making and his life as a film maker. I regard that very highly. In a way, his films are a diary of everything he’s thinking in his life. To be part of that is a lot of fun. And in those films, the breadth of what he was trying to do was inspiring.
Your score for Powers Rangers: The Movie had a particularly symphonic approach, what could you tell us about that work?
My kids were young at the time and it was a fun thing to do because they actually wanted to go to the premiere, I think. Or it could have been a friend of mine’s kids, I’m not sure which it was now. It was no problem. I was a little disappointed in that one because we were asked by Fox to go to Western Australia to record. The orchestra wasn’t used to film music and the room we recorded in was very sub-standard. I look back at that and it’s a little disappointing in terms of sound quality. It was a good experience in order to learn how to work that way.
One of your most celebrated scores is The Crow, where you followed a very experimental and ethnic, Eastern and Asian-influenced path (duduk and shakuhachi). What you remember about that film and your work on it? Where are the origins of your interest in that ethnic music? Did you listen to any folk music from those world regions in order to assimilate basic and crucial elements in your work?
The Crow was probably the first really completely open brief that I ever got. Here was a movie set some time in the future with no prescription on what it should sound like. So it was very much fun to bring in all the world music elements with a little bit of jazz trumpet and rock & roll all into the same zone. The thing I think I value most about it was that, unfortunately when Brandon Lee got killed, the movie became even more potent. It was most important to me to write a little string elegy to his character, which made it more poignant. I had to go spend my own money on that, but it was really worth it. I created a string piece with a female singer and an Armenian duduk. It was fun.
Speaking about comics, we have Sin City which caused quite a positive stir in film music world.
Here you scored the segment: “The Hard Goodbye”. Your musical approach is something wild, kidness but also ambiguous. What do you think of both your music but also John Debney’s and Robert Rodriguez’s contributions to the overall “40’s film noir-ish” result? How was it to work with Robert Rodríguez and John Debney and where did you draw your influences from, for the said score?
I didn’t really work that closely with John Debney ; in fact, not at all. With Robert, I went down to Austin, TX and he showed me sketches of themes he had written. He wanted to incorporate those themes, which was actually the Sin City theme, into one or two cues of my segment of the movie. I was happy to do that. I really respect Robert in every way imaginable and as a composer as well. He said that he wanted the three parts of the film, apart from that one theme, to be quite separate. Later on, John’s engineer, Wolfgang Amadeus who also works with me sometimes, called me up and said they were going to do some string sweetening. Would I like to come down and piggyback on the session. I said no, that I wanted it to be completely separate like Robert’s vision. I really like John’s work and it’s nothing personal. I just thought in this case to stay completely apart. It seemed to work fine. I see some people are saying that we must have worked closely together because our work is seamless. That’s a happy outcome.
For my inspiration, I don't listen to film scores: I don't want to end up copying other people. The inspiration for this movie was more stylistic. I remembered movies back in the 1940's, like CAT PEOPLE and I WALKED WITH THE ZOMBIE, these beautiful, black-and-white B-movies. I took my inspiration from what I remembered of this kind of movies.
TITAN A.E; another successful and particularly interesting score for this animated film. Is there any significant difference with the "real" films, as far as preparing, writing and recording a musical score for them goes?
Titan AE was pretty straightforward. I think when you’re scoring animation, unless when you’re what they call “Mickey Mousing,” which is a more childlike approach to scoring, it’s the same as scoring for live actors.
A disturbing but at the same time – hugely interesting area of film music world is that of film score rejections, what’s your opinion on the phenomenon’s rapid increase in the recent years?
The main problem with rejection is that they’re often hiring the wrong person in the first place. They’ll go down the list of people who have written the music for big box office movies or movies that have been nominated for an Oscar and just because that happened, they’ll think that person is better than another for a job, and sometimes you see some of the most ludicrous decisions being made and everybody knows that in about six weeks time, that job is going to come back on the block. It’s upsetting because you wish people could understand who to hire and why and what the chance might be that you could get a better score, a more interesting one. That’s the main reason for it, and sometimes you can have communication problems where a director is fighting a studio or it gets political. And sometimes you get very little time to do something. In the case of « Tomb Raider, » it was ten days from start to finish. I just set up a scenario where we worked around the clock, where I had one studio where they were writing, and one where they were mixing, and another with a satellite link to London where it was being recorded at their studios, and uploading and downloading on T1 lines back to LA for mixing. It was an interesting technical challenge. I didn’t sleep the whole time, so frankly I don’t remember a whole lot about it. The movie did well, and when I listen back to the score, it’s okay.
With “The 13th Warrior”, you continue with your interest for the Ethnic mixtures. What happened with this score? Why was it rejected and what differences did you find with the Jerry Goldsmith´s score?
What happened was John McTiernan, the director, who I had been working with not closely, didn’t get involved in the music very much, and pretty much removed himself from the movie during post production. Michael Crichton took it over, and I don’t think he even listened to my score. When he took it over, i think he just decided his friend Jerry Goldsmith should be the composer and that was the end of that. I never really counted that as a rejection and I don’t think there was anything inferior about that score, and I’m quite happy to still own it.
Goldsmith´s score was good, it was a bit different, more old fashioned than mine, I didn’t think the movie did either of us justice, but that was my final impression.
“The People Under the Stairs”, a score you wrote in 1991, was also rejected. What happened here?
“People Under the Stairs” by Wes Craven is, I think, one of the movies where I didn’t really hit it properly. I agreed to do it with not enough resources, and I wasn’t happy with the work I did on that film. There was a certain amount of money, and then when I saw the movie I realized it needed a lot more orchestra than I’d judged. One of the things we have to do is budget the score as well, and that was one I under-budgeted.
Things got quite “foggy” for you lately, in a good sense in fact. We are talking about your latest project of course, Rupert Wainwright’s THE FOG. Known from his massive hit, STIGMATA back in 1999, he now returns in this chilling remake of the 1980 John Carpenter original. What’s your view on the film itself and its much-talked centre-themed mood and atmosphere? Did you use the original main theme from Carpenter? Were you influenced by it in any way?
It’s a reasonably standard horror movie, with a lot less melody than I would like. Rupert Wainwright’s vision was for it to be kind of natural. “The Fog” is such a natural phenomenon, so I just fit in with the sound effects. “The Fog” is all musical, rather than sound effects, so I took a lot of their space on the overall soundtrack.
I have not heard the original theme, so I cannot say I was influenced by it.
Another medium that’s often not classified in the ‘usual ones’ – although this largely, and thankfully, tends to change in our times – is the Game’s Music area. You had your works in the genre as well, notably with the excellent Call of Duty scores were Activision had you to score the soundtracks for its holiday blockbuster releases "Call of Duty 2" and "Call of Duty 2: Big Red One." If I am correct, this is where you made your videogame debut using a live orchestra…how did you get attached to those 2 projects and what was your working process on them like? Are you a fan of those games, or even a gamer yourself?
The relationship came about because my manager, Mark Devin, was friends with the head of the music department over at Activision and he came to me and asked whether I would consider doing a video game. The question was put to me and I found it very interesting to see how that world worked.
The relationship with Activision was very good. They were very clear and very helpful with what they wanted. They explained to me as well as they could how that world works, with building loops in the music and yet still hitting the key parts of the scenes. It was an interesting learning experience for me.
I’m not a big gamer. My son plays quite a bit and I kind of watch over his shoulder. There was a time when I did enjoy playing the more abstract games like Mist.
Two large-sounding orchestral scores that can be characterized as ‘explosive’, with marching snare drums, tight ostinatos, timpani and generally dense percussion work, syncopated rhythms and antichronisms, vivid brass work and clusters, heroic and grand themes with softer sentimental and melodic moments (like track 5 and 9 from Call of duty 2), female vocals and deep choir work (like the magnificent last part of the 2nd track from the very same score). I must say that I quite enjoyed and was happily surprised by the ‘traditional’ orchestral approach for these two scores, something unfortunately rare in our days, especially for a genre like Game scores. Where did you draw the inspiration for these 2 massive scores and how did you decide to move in this specific approach for them?
Call Of Duty 2 is a game which has the British, Russian and American regiments in different territories fighting against the Germans. In that sense, it’s big action and very grand music of different themes. With the Russians, we know Russian music when you hear it. Then, trying to differentiate American forces from the British without getting into “God Save the Queen” or something like that. In Call of Duty, the other part of it is they’re in North Africa at one point and Italy, so there’s some local color in the music there as well.
Big Red One is more of a personal game where you follow one particular unit that you get to know quite well through different parts of the world. It’s more character based and more emotional personally rather than playing the environment.
It’s sort of a stripped-down music that’s part of the zeitgeist, I suppose. When you’ve heard a lot of military kind of music, it’s a thing that finds itself into the mix. It’s hard to say, really, because I didn’t go listening to anything in particular. I have been asked whether I listened to Band of Brothers or Michael Giacchino’s music and the answer in both cases is “no.” I’d probably find that if I did, there would be some similarities.
Are they going to be any official cd releases of these scores?
Could be. We’re working on it. But nothing concrete yet.
On a different note, we would like to know about what composers are the most interesting for you, who have been your most important musical influence, what musical styles do you like listening to outside work time and what’s your favorite of them all?
As far as film scoring goes, I’m a big Ennio Morricone fan. Anyone who can turn whistling from The Good, the Bad and the Ugly into something really beautiful is okay by me (laughs). Other than that, my tastes are pretty eclectic. I like Radiohead, some Coldplay, and I really like what Bjork does as well. I listen to a lot of electronic stuff, mostly the laidback, chill out, British and French acts. That’s merely for pleasure and everything else is for analyzing.
A very important time in your career was May, 2005 when you were awarded the Richard Kirk Award at the ΒΜΙ Film/TV Dinner, given annually to a composer for his outstanding work and contributions in motion picture and television music. How did you feel when winning this prestigious award and what are your comments on it?
Finally, I got to stand in front of everybody in the room and go, “Hey, I got the award this year,” instead of sitting in the crowd thinking, “Why didn´t I get it?” You wake up one day wondering whether you´ve had a life and now you find you´ve officially got one, and the award that goes with it.
To conclude, what could you tell us about the future? Any confirmed projects, thoughts or dream projects for 2006 and 2007? Do you plan on working further into the Game and Animated movies´ genre in the near future?
I just finished Harsh Times, which is a movie from the writer of Training Day, David Ayer. It´s a feature film with Christian Bale, a very cool movie about a guy who comes back from Afghanistan and having to deal with getting back into society. It has somewhat different styles to it and it´s somewhat hip-hop, it´s really kind of LA music.
I´m also working with Aeon Flux a sci-fi movie with Charlize Theron.
There´s a number of things I´m working on. I´m actively developing a live action show in Las Vegas which is going to be some time off because it requires the building of $80 million theater. So, we´ll see about that.
There is my script about my experience in the hospital. Everyone likes it. I´m really confident that it´s going to be made. The kind of thing I´m working toward is generating my own projects. I have different styles in me that haven´t found an outlet so I´ll generate them for myself. That´s why last year was quite quiet for me. I took a sabbatical to work on those projects.
At the moment, I don´t have any plans to work on any more video games, but I´m certainly open to the suggestion, particularly in a different genre. I don´t like to repeat myself too often. It´s a genre I´m definitely really enjoying.
Thanks a lot for the interview, greatly appreciated. We wish you all the best for the future.
For more information about the composer, enter his official web: www.graemerevell.com
Thanks to Justin Boggan for his Rejected scores website and listing at http://www.rejectedfilmscores.150m.com/
26-october-2005
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