John Ottman

THE SCORE AND THE BARONESS

During pre-production for shooting the Africa and church scenes, there was a window of opportunity to go record the score that I'd been writing the previous couple months. To digress, I remember when I finally made the shift to go home and write, and how much I missed the guys in the editing room. (And I miss them now.) Composing is even more solitary than editing – especially for me in that I have no music assistants of any kind. Dylan (my first editing assistant), Andrew, (my second/visual effects editor) and Nolan, (our apprentice), were three amazing geeks always around in the other room to keep the inherent humor of the experience in check. In the same room was the hardest working post supervisor on the planet, Isabel Henderson with her loud cackle that reverberated through the hallways.

Having to be in two or more different places at a time, I had to devise a writing schedule and game plan to get through the project alive and not compromise the creative process. If I used the Africa/church pre-production/shooting time to go record the score, then by the time I was finished, I would be have the music monkey off my back, be on hand to edit these new scenes and see the film through uninterrupted. To do this, I would need to score Africa and the church scene before they were filmed. I'd done this with a scene for X2, and simply followed the story on the script pages, writing more music than would be necessary – music I could basically edit with - long phrases, rests, hits, etc. For the church scene, I reprised a somber string version of the end title theme, as a sort of foreshadowing. In addition I wrote some "suspicious music" based upon paranoia that occurred in the church – ending in a big musical moment where the camera was supposed to crane up through a hole in the ceiling, revealing a bombed out Berlin. Well, the actual scene didn't really end up as dramatic as I had imagined, but I had a long piece of music I could edit with. It was a welcome exercise to just write to images in my head as opposed to picture. Both the Africa and church cues were not included on the album, but you can check them out here, below. Naturally, while mixing the music, I was getting dailies from the Africa set sent to me to look at on my laptop so I could answer that inevitable question, "Do you have everything you need? We have to leave the location forever tomorrow."

Download "Africa" MP3 (2.19MB) | Download "The Church" MP3 (5.62MB)

Ode to Expedia

One of the more memorable Valkyrie moments (well, one I can talk about) was when we had to go back to Seattle to record the final bit of score. My conductor (Pablo Heisenberg), music editor (Amanda Goodpaster) and I arrived to the hotel late in the evening to discover we had no reservations. Somehow Expedia dropped the ball. As Valkyrie luck would have it, (we would always say, "that is so Valkyrie") the entire city was booked because of two large conventions. After a couple hours at the front desk computer searching for other hotels, it was revealed to us that there was one place available: The Baroness. It was downtown, convenient, and "near" the hospital. At about 11:30PM, we were oddly dropped off at the emergency room of the hospital. Low and behold, a few feet to the right was ... the Baroness, neon light and all.

John waits for a hotel room	Lo, The Baroness awaits!

The Baroness is a "medical hotel" for family members of the ill and recovering patients needing to be close to the hospital. We found the obscure entrance to the hotel – sort of a low profile door entering into a little hall with vending machines. On the small manual elevator door was a notice about early morning jack hammering and roto hammering that would occur. The notice was kind enough to delineate both types of drilling.

The view from the Baroness

My room was termed a "sleeping room" - about the size of a large closet, a fan that didn't work and a bed a foot shorter than I am. But we were just glad to be in some sort of structure for the night, and decided to go find some food. "Just down the street" became a 15-minute walk at midnight to find an IHOP. As we walked by numerous hotels, we would get out our cell phones to check availability. I remember us finally sitting at our table in silence, looking as haggard as the homeless people around us. I just started to laugh, and it became infectious. No words were necessary, just laughs. But the story doesn't end. Not only did we have a couple days of recording ahead, but we had to be up at 5AM the next morning to have a recording session via IChat with the choir in Berlin to sing the end title music.

The Internet didn't work in the hotel rooms (big shocker there) so we dragged ourselves down to the "lobby" which was attached to a small coffee shop. I sat on a couch in the lobby, "attending" the Berlin choir session. Soon my talking into the computer became distracting to the patrons, so we were asked to sit outside at a freezing table. Soon we were moved up into another hotel room to complete the session. I think back and laugh about the audacity of holding a choir session via IChat, and also auditioning mezzo sopranos to sing this crucial solo - all from a lawn chair on a patio.

Recording the choir in Berlin via iChat in Seattle

The Music Approach

I've noticed that CDs (those albums you hold in your hand to read liner notes, see pictures and such) are disappearing in favor of online downloads. In realizing this, I figured I'd repeat here much of what I put on the liner notes for the album and embellish in areas I was unable to for space reasons. So forgive me if you've read some of this:

Simplicity and restraint was the self-imposed discipline that would work for Valkyrie. No trumpets, very little brass, and simple repeating lines. The concept was to take a modern approach to avoid clichés oft associated with World War era film music while also keeping the traditions of classic scoring alive, which I love. Considering this modern approach, I was concerned that I wouldn't be allowed to integrate my style of film scoring. Fortunately, all four "filmmakers" on the film - Bryan, myself, Chris McQuarrie (the writer) and Tom Cruise – had one thing in common: We worship the films of the 70s – and the masters who scored them. So then I knew I'd have license to do what comes naturally to me, avoid typical drones, and push the envelope by telling a musical story. Never did I imagine there would be 100 minutes to write. (64 min. on the album.) But once you light that musical fuse on a film like Valkyrie, it's hard to put it out. Unfortunately the scoring budget was designed for that old $17 million film that we were supposed to make, which got us a small chamber sized string section and not many days to record. (More on that in a second.)

The album exposes details not heard in the film because the score was intentionally designed to often be mixed under effects as a subtle thread. It was my concept to heighten the realism of the film by allowing the natural sound design (that I also like to help create) to be heard. Quietly twisting under words and bringing out story subtleties is difficult music to compose. This sensitive type of scoring requires very careful mixing in the final dub. A cue that's slightly too loud will no longer work; but too soft, the scene becomes passive. Fortunately, as the editor, I was there to be the fox in charge of the chicken coop – to make sure the balance was as intended.

Even though much of the music was designed to be atmospheric, I wanted even the most delicate textures to tell a subliminal story. Even in protracted tense scenes, a tender, sometimes painfully quiet yet lyrical orchestra was the idea – as opposed to a drone or some sort. This approach helps the audience feel there's a lot more going on under the surface – because there is. One example is when Stauffenberg brings the re-written Valkyrie order to Hitler's residence for him to unwittingly sign ("Getting the Signature"). The scene is over six minutes of dialog. The music had to sneakily pull the audience along as Hitler gets closer to signing the order, the cornerstone of Stauffenberg's plan. Recording in the chapel at Bastyr University in the thick of the woods (about 40 minutes outside Seattle) can be a beautiful acoustic environment, but it comes with its hazards – especially with very quiet music. When the sun sets, the windows begin to crack. So there had to be many takes on the quiet cues. To give the illusion of a larger string ensemble, the strings were recorded two or three times (doubling and tripling). This, of course, tripled the likelihood that the windows would crack, someone's chair would creak, a foot would hit a music stand, or a page would be heard turning. And all of it happened. Fortunately with pro-tools digital editing, you can piece together a cue from multiple takes. Just as with everything in film, the score itself can be an illusion as well.

The motifs are brief. For Hitler, a quick unsettling orchestra cluster, with a simultaneous heart beat and metallic twang keep his disturbing presence alive. Plot-orientated sequences were driven utilizing an "echoing" bass pizzicato and violin ostinatos motif underpinned with synthesized elements, one of which was, well, my mouth. I couldn't find or design the chugging sound I was hearing in my head, so I literally whispered "chug a chug" into a mic and then placed it through a filter. It became part of the rhythmic texture in some cues, i.e. midway through the cue, "Bunker Bust." While editing another scene where Stauffenberg and his partner build a bomb in a back room, I was in a rush to temp it with something. So I grabbed that microphone, yanked out a pad of paper and tapped on it with two fingers. I put this on two tracks in the Avid, delaying one a few frames to create a delay effect. What came of it was a little drum loop. Of course, we all got used to it, and it was used in the final score behind the orchestra. (Late in the cue, "July 15".) Another brief motif suggests the weight of the mission via dark string chords "modernized" with a drum loop ("To the Berghof"). Larger cues utilized balls-out drum concussions using tree branches, a log dropped on the floor, taiko drums, bass drum, slap stick and timpani. Percussionists love slamming stuff, and I think they enjoyed themselves. I love recording live percussion. There's just nothing like it reverberating around a room. (Besides I hate programming synthesized percussion – it's such a pain in the ass.)

The ultimate destination for the score is the final scene ("Long Live Sacred Germany.") The most weighty exercise was to make the gradual transition from thriller to emotional tragedy, being mindful not to "Hollywood-ize" this historic event. This emotive cue had to feel like a pre-existing piece placed over the scene, ala Adagio for Strings, yet it had to morph with the changing events on screen. Peppered within this cue, as well as other cues in the score, are subtle nods to the end title piece, "They'll Remember You," which is the music honoring the conspirators.

What Are They Saying?

On the heels of an emotional ending, end title music has great power and responsibility on how the audience will be left with the film. There had to be something different from the emotional scene preceding it, reflective and somehow uplifting. A purely instrumental approach didn't seem to rise to the occasion and would feel too much like what just preceded it. As I struggled with the piece with my co-writer, Lior Rosner, it hit me that making it choral would help it stand apart as a poignant resonance. I wanted lyrics, not oohs and ahs. But what would the choir be saying? Any lyrics would have to be an allegory to the film. But God knows I can't write lyrics. Then we got lucky. A friend of Lior's found the poem, "Wanderers Nachtiled II", by the classic German poet, Goethe. The poem talks of birds in the forest falling silent, with the last phrase being, "soon you too will be at rest." I got chills and we began adapting the melody to the lyrics. There was one problem: neither of us spoke German. We thought we had done a bang-up job, until I presented the mock-up to Bryan one night. As fate would have it, he was with a German friend. After the piece finished, the German guy looked confused and frustrated. Clearly, what sounded good to us didn't make much sense to him! We had split up language phrases and stretched out words as to sound awkward to anyone speaking the language. We were so concerned that it sounded musically beautiful we had no idea we were trying to jam a square peg into a round hole linguistically. This of course caused alarm bells to go off, and I re-assured Bryan that the lyrics would be fixed and passed through linguistic experts so he didn't ever have to worry about Germans having a problem with it. So we did just that to save the piece. My conductor contacted German language scholars, and we put our heads together to ensure it was making sense with the melody. As it turned out, mere hours before the orchestra session, eighth notes were added and quarter notes stretched to accommodate the lyrics correctly. Just in case, we also recorded a purely orchestral version of the theme with a solo cello carrying the mezzo-soprano's lines. It's an interesting rendition of it, but there's no comparison to the choir. In the end, the German choir (Rundfunkchor Berlin) gave it their seal of approval, beautifully singing the piece, featuring mezzo-soprano Sylke Schwab – all monitored via IChat from the lovely Baroness.