Score: A Film Music Documentary (2016)

"Fascinating, Compelling & Essential for Film Music Fans"

Dogwoof are bringing out Matt Schrader's fascinating and valuable documentary on the art of writing film music, featuring a remarkable number of composers active in the film industry today. 

Composers interviewed include Hans Zimmer, Quincy Jones, Trent Reznor, Atticus Ross, Randy Newman, Tom Holkenborg, Howard Shore, Mark Mothersbaugh, Rachel Portman, Steve Jablonsky, Brian Tyler, Bear McCreary, John Debney, Eliot Goldenthal, John Powell, and Mychael Danna. There are also contributions from directors James Cameron (who delivers a moving account of working with James Horner for TITANIC) and Garry Marshall (in a scoring session with John Debney), and Leonard Maltin. 

There are loads of fascinating nuggets of information. Brian Tyler likes to hide in cinema toilet cubicles to see if people come in humming the music from his movies; Mark Mothersbaugh crams his house with bizarre musical instruments, then when it gets too full he throws them all away and starts again; Hans Zimmer confides that (like so many artists) he has no idea where his ideas come from & he lives in fear that one day they will just stop; Eliot Goldenthal confesses that seeing an advance movie poster with his name on when the score still isn't finished is still something he finds terrifying.

We get to see Bear McCreary demonstrating the hurdy-gurdy, Heitor Pereira using a home-made 'instrument' made out of springy bits of metal to give him the idea for a melody, and the documentary opens with Marco Beltrami using a piano strapped to the top of a building to create new sounds.

Nearly 50 composers provide contributions over the 92 minute running time, but you also get 50 minutes of extras featuring Hans Zimmer, Bear McCreary, Harry Gregson-Williams, Tyler Bates and more. There's also a commentary track from director Matt Schrader, who is to be congratulated for going about putting together this documentary in just the right way. There's no host, no voice-over, just the composers themselves talking about their work and the work of others they admire, allowing little tributes to composing greats such as Bernard Herrman, John Williams (also featured in archive footage with Stephen Spielberg), Jerry Goldsmith and Ennio Morricone. Are there any glaring omissions? Well, it would have been nice to have seen John Carpenter at least mentioned as part of the synthesiser revolution, but very little time is actually spent on pure electronica anyway.

Don't let that put you off, however. SCORE: A FILM MUSIC DOCUMENTARY is essential viewing for anyone with an interest in film music. Let's hope this does well enough for Dogwoof that they bring out SCORE VOLUME TWO (with three hours of extra interview footage) which is already available in the US

SCORE: A FILM MUSIC DOCUMENTARY is out from Dogwoof on DVD and VOD from Monday 2nd April 2018