Arts & Entertainment, Music
Scoring Under Dialogue
Lesson time 09:12 min
Learn how Hans approaches the relationship between music and dialogue, and how music can be dialogue too.
Students give MasterClass an average rating of 4.7 out of 5 stars
Topics include: Coexisting with Dialogue • Perspective
Teaches Film Scoring
From collaborating to scoring, Hans Zimmer teaches you how to tell a story with music in 31 exclusive video lessons.
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There used to be all these rules. You're not supposed to write for clarinets, because they are in the vocal range. Well, I don't think I sound like a clarinet. I don't think I sound like a clarinet. So I think it's just be a little bit mindful. I mean, a lot of these rules about how we're supposed to circumnavigate dialogue come from the days before-- I have the picture running when I'm writing and I pop the dialogue up and I can see if I can understand every word. They come from the time before people actually had-- they had a moviola if they were lucky. But, they couldn't sync. It didn't matter their piano playing to the dialogue. It wasn't until they unleashed the orchestra they found out that it's all a bit loud and a bit stepping all over the dialogue. Most screenwriters, if there are any good, will pick just the right words and just the right amount of words to get that story across. So as a composer, you got to do the same thing. Don't pick too many words. Don't pick the wrong words. It's just what's the story you're trying to convey right now? And it doesn't matter if an actor is speaking our efforts. Well, it doesn't matter if it's a car chase because nothing new can happen until the car chase is over anyway. Nobody can hear anything other than the roaring of cars. Look, it's back to the same argument or the same thing I've been saying all along. Be mindful of the story. So if you're getting in the way of the story we're just being told by the character, you're doing something wrong. If you are on story, if you just stick with story, stick on story, that's your safety net. It doesn't matter that you've just written the nicest and most beautiful piece of music of your career. If it interferes with the story, bin it, chuck it, throw it in the trash. You know the Sherlock stuff is actually strange, because it was a bit of an oopsy, not having everything this close, recording everything this close, and not giving it perspective. So that it became really tough the dubbing engineer. And you just want to have real masters backing it. Because quite simply I think it's not the size of the orchestra or the amount of noise you make that gets in the way, if your dialogue is close if your character is close to you or whatever unclear, and you make your orchestra in the right way perspective is just as effective as turning the volume down. So, I think a lot about the perspective of the scene. Where I want to have the players placed in relationship to the actors in a way. But it's not necessarily about volume it is about perspective. So, if we can make sure that your orchestra your musicians sound further away your ear will automatically go to the clear closely mic'd thing. I mean, just as you're about nine milliseconds away from me right now. You're not in real time because of the distance between the two of us. So, i...
About the Instructor
Hans Zimmer didn’t see a film until he was 12 years old. Since then, he’s scored over 150 films, including Inception, The Lion King, and The Dark Knight. In his MasterClass, the self-taught Academy Award-winner teaches how he creates sounds from nothing, composes compelling character themes, and scores a movie before ever seeing it. By the end, you’ll have everything you need to start film scoring.
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Hans Zimmer
From collaborating to scoring, Hans Zimmer teaches you how to tell a story with music in 31 exclusive video lessons.
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