CLIFF REDEKER: Good afternoon, everyone.

Welcome to another amazing Talks at Google event.

My name is Cliff Redeker and I have the privilege

of discussing today the new film out

called "Score," which is a journey through the history

of film composing and the interplay

between the visual medium and the audio.

And we're very thrilled today to be

joined by both the director, Matt Schrader,

as well as one of the composers featured

in the film, Joe Kramer.

So I'd like to invite them both to join me on stage

and we'll have a few questions.

[APPLAUSE]

[INTERPOSING VOICES]

CLIFF REDEKER: Great.

I think you'll have to hit the on

button just on the side there, just

to make sure that we're live.

So I was wondering if you could first tell me

a little bit about the film-- what the inspirations were,

and probably most importantly, since it's

a film about music film composition, how did

you score the score?

MATT SCHRADER: Yeah, we jumped into this as, really, fans--

somewhat educated fans, but not that educated.

And we thought it would be worthwhile to take

a plunge into this topic.

It's something that kind of amazingly

had not been done before as a documentary.

And we had several conversations about a lot of this

and realized there's an incredible depth--

obviously, it's such an immersive,

kind of creative art form in the first place.

But it hasn't really--

hasn't really been dived into before.

And so we actually wanted to try to allow some of the great

examples of film scores throughout the years,

throughout decades-- the really, last 100 years probably--

be the focal point, the thing that we share.

We came into this thinking we probably

don't need an original score.

At the end, we realized we kind of did.

We needed something to at least fill a few different areas

where it made a lot of sense, especially where we're

explaining something that needs something to carry

that just a little bit.

But I think that's largely it.

We wanted the focal point of this

to really be the work over the last many, many decades that

have made a big impact on-- not just musicians,

not just people in film, but also all of pop culture.

CLIFF REDEKER: Exactly.

And I also want to delve a little bit more

into the art form as well.

If you approach it as one of the largest employers of orchestras

these days, it's definitely in the classical tradition.

But at the same time, how did that diverge

from pure classical music?

You have Handel's water music, you

have a few big capital letter composers

that compose for film, that then seems

to have split a little bit.

And now it's actually on the way back,

where you have Nobue Uematsu in concert,

or Hans Zimmer in an auditorium.

So how did that journey happen?

JOE KRAMER: Well, I think what happened

is that we saw a decline in attendance

in classical orchestra concerts.

So city orchestras across America

were seeing radical drops in attendance.

At the same time, the young concert

goers that they were trying to attract

were interested in seeing concerts

with music from "The Legend of Zelda" or "Final Fantasy."

And that's where I first saw it happening,

was with video games.

And so you'd go to a concert hall,

and there'd be the audience filled

with people dressed as Link.

You know what I mean?

And they'd be there to hear the score

from the Wind Waker performed live with a symphony orchestra.

And then at the 20th anniversary of "E.T.,"

Williams did the score live to picture.

And it was the first time I'd seen it done in a concert,

ever.

And it was a huge success and it took a while

for all the studios' legal departments

to make all the arrangements but that became another thing.

And so what we're seeing now, the next step

was doing an entire film live to picture.

And the New York Philharmonic is getting

ready to do four Star Wars movies this fall.

The Hollywood Bowl every summer is doing--

last summer I think they did "E.T." and "Harry Potter."

They're doing two or three movies a year.

I saw them do "2001" live, which was amazing.

John Williams, as the conductor of the Boston Pops,

was always incorporating specially adapted suites

of his film music into the show--

into the shows.

And you saw once in a while, like, "Gone with the Wind"

would be on a program.

But they were usually Pops concerts

that were divided from the classical thing.

And what I would think would be interesting would be,

that in a way, the classic--

they start sneaking a classical piece

into one of these concerts that's video game music.

It wouldn't-- it would be harder to do in a concert where

they're showing the film.

But if you just had a concert where

it was like two hours of music from all the Star Wars movies,

without visual, and then you said,

we're going to throw some Mars in,

some of the planets in there--

[INAUDIBLE] you know.

That could be an interesting way to then reignite kid's interest

in the classical composers.

I mean, the challenge is that the language

of contemporary film music is so radically

different from the language of classical music.

There's a big gulf between the kind of melodic contrapuntal

writing that Beethoven was doing,

and what you're hearing in "Pirates of the Caribbean."

it's like Mitchell Loeb says.

It's Led Zeppelin with an orchestra.

CLIFF REDEKER: And then also I think it separates the art

form, as well.

Like, composing for film has inherent constraints

by definition.

The movie is only so long.

You're tying it into certain clips.

How do you work within that constraint, expand it?

And then if you're doing a suite or re-arrangement,

what's your approach when you cut out the visual component?

JOE KRAMER: Well, Yeah.

People always marvel at how much John Williams

music works on its own terms.

But-- and it's not to put it down, he's sort of-- for me,

he's sort of the pinnacle of the art form.

He makes specific arrangements for concerts.

And they're versions that you don't really

ever hear in the movie the way you hear them at Symphony Hall.

You know what I mean?

It's almost like making a hit single out of a Broadway show,

where the song is never performed that way in the show

but you've made a single of it for the radio.

What was the--

CLIFF REDEKER: How you work within the constraint itself?

JOE KRAMER: So, yeah--

CLIFF REDEKER: You know, two hours--

JOE KRAMER: To me, it's not a constraint.

For me, actually, it's a helpful skeleton

to hang musical ideas on.

So say for example, in "Mission Impossible,"

there's a sequence where Ethan Hunt, played by Tom--

the opening scene where he jumps on the wing

of that airplane and then hangs on to it as it takes off.

You have these sort of signposts along the way

that guide, and for me inform, the structure

of what I'm writing.

So we have the studio cards at the very beginning that

say Paramount Pictures, Sky Dance Pictures, et cetera, et

cetera, Bad Robot.

And then we have the shot of the field.

And then Benji pops up.

And then conversation begins and we're cutting back and forth.

And all of those events become markers

in my timeline in the computer that I use to write my music.

And it becomes sort of a binary process of saying, well,

is it fast or slow?

Is it brass or strings?

Is it light or dark?

Is it funny or tense?

And before I know it, I go, OK, so I've

got to write 12 seconds of funny string medium tempo music--

go.

And then-- and then-- but when you have that--

when you have a set of criteria that you have to satisfy,

you know-- as programmers, you would all know that.

If you've got to make a little applet that

does this specific thing, you've got that.

And in just the same way that you

have APIs built into however you're programming,

and dialog boxes that are built into the OS,

I've got those tricks in music that I

know will let me communicate.

Because what I'm trying to do is communicate to the audience--

essentially, a score is a second language track

that you're hearing underneath the dialogue.

And it's telling the story.

And it's informing the audience of connections

between characters, of where we are in the world,

of how we're supposed to be interpreting what we're

seeing on an emotional level.

And I'm trying to get at your subconscious using a shorthand

that's been developed--

CLIFF REDEKER: It triggers the emotional reaction, yeah.

And of course, thank you for calling programming an art.

We like to think it's an art here, too.

So mission accomplished.

But--

JOE KRAMER: Don't say that.

CLIFF REDEKER: But then I was also curious too,

if you could describe just the general process when you're--

are you approached to score these films?

Like is there-- are there auditions or demo reel?

Like, what's the-- how does it go

from a germ of an idea to you at the piano to you in the studio?

JOE KRAMER: Ideally, what happens is,

somebody has heard music that I've done for another film

and they're just so in love with it

that they've got to have me score

their movie no matter what.

And they call me and say, we want you to score this movie.

That never happens.

What happens is, I hear that they're making a movie

and I go, I think I'd like to try to work on that.

And I-- either I call them directly or through my agent,

we reach out to them and see if they're interested,

if they've hired somebody.

It's not a business that is--

oddly enough, it's not a career that is really driven

by the person who's doing it.

I can't force a director to hire me to score their movie.

And I don't have the means at my disposal

to write and direct and make movies,

just so I could score them.

So I'm sort of at the mercy of the people who are hiring.

And in my experience, that's principally directors.

Studio executives obviously play a part in that,

producers play a part in that.

In the case of "Mission Impossible,"

Tom Cruise played a part in that,

because the franchise is his baby.

But ultimately, it was--

Chris McQuarrie is the director of that film--

that made the decision.

And similarly, I did the score for "Jack Reacher"

with Chris McQuarrie.

Tom-- Chris loved the score, Tom loved the score.

By all accounts, everybody loved the score.

When Ed Zwick was approached to direct