First of all, I’d like to thank Cormac Donnelly, who kindly offered to contribute to Designing Sound by doing this great interview for the GoldenEye 007 games. Let’s read!

On November 2 Activision released their re-imagining of GoldenEye 007 on the Nintendo Wii. To mark the event we thought we’d not only have a chat with Steve Duckworth, Head of Audio at Eurocom working on the new game, but also take a trip down memory lane with Graeme Norgate who worked on the sound and music for the N64 title. First up Graeme gives us some insight into game sound circa 1997.

DS: How did you get involved with GoldenEye 007 and what was your role on the game?

GN: At the time the project started – early 95 – I had been at Rare for just under a year. I was
excited by all the projects they were working on and wanted to be involved in everything, I think at one point I was working on 5 games at once, one of which was Goldeneye.

I’d been to talk to the project lead Martin Hollis to look at what the team had produced and knew I’d do whatever I could to get onto the project. I’d worked with him previously on an arcade coin op fighting game “Killer Instinct” so we had already built a good working relationship.

DS: What was your involvement with the games pre-production?

GN: Audio wise, I was in the dark for a good while as to what the N64 console would be capable of. We had two projects at Rare for the new console and I was – at the time – solely working on both of them. I’d have meetings and talks with the audio coders at Silicon Graphics (who were designing the console) and reports varied enormously about it’s audio power. As time was getting tight, I decided to write the score using hardware synths and samplers with a view to converting them to whatever format we’d end up using for the system.

DS: At what stage of the dev process was audio given consideration?

GN: It’s easy to forget how far technology has come in the last 15 years, and back then, memory was tight and processing was laughable by todays standards. Being a first generation project on a new system, we were just dipping our toes in to see what we could get away with.

In the end, I had 700k for music data and instrument samples, and about the same for sound effects… basically, all the data could have fit onto a 3.5inch floppy disk….so it was a, let’s say, a creative challenge cramming everything in.

DS: The game is full of weapons, vehicles and a vast number of locations. What was your approach to gathering the sounds for the game?

GN: I did a lot of research. By that of course, I mean, I watched a lot of action movies, but if you’re being paid to watch films then I’d say we should call it research or people start getting upset.

As I’ve said previously, it was a learning process for all of us, and for audio, it was more a case of what I could get away with to fit the sounds into the cartridge. Sample Rates suffered, Sounds were edited down as much as possible… a far cry from what I have to play with today.

I would love to have had the opportunity to revisit those sound effects and give them the experience I’ve gained and polish they deserve… Eurocom
better bloody do a good job!

DS: Music has always played an important role in the Bond films and it’s equally as important to the game. Can you give us some insight into the scoring process?

GN: We (that’s myself and Grant Kirkhope) were told we had licensed the Bond Theme and could use that, so we went to town with the themes and went for as many variations as we could think of. It’s a great piece of music to get your hands on, so many fantastic hooks, from the beginning guitar theme, to the string progression, to the huge 60s brass arrangement, right up to the ending stabs and electric guitar chord…. I certainly wish I’d written it.

Being in house composers, we had the luxury of having the game as it was being made available in our rooms. So we could load up a level and get a real feel for the location and game play.

DS: Were you involved in the implementation of the games sound? How was this achieved?

GN: It was a case of me making the sounds and then talking to whichever programmer had the time to implement the work. Goldeneye was a huge project and had a very small rookie team. It had 4 programmers in total. That’s crazy compared to the projects of today… I believe the game I’m currently working on has a team of over 400 people not including outsourcing companies involved in many parts of the games development. We had about 10 core people on the team so, going back to the start of the answer, I had to bother the coders politely until they put in the sound and music.

DS: GoldenEye is often cited as one of the great FPS’s, what are your thoughts on it’s legacy?

GN: I’m very proud to have worked on it, it’s opened a lot of doors and, without it, Free Radical Design would never have existed, nor Timesplitters, and I really did enjoy working with that company and those games.

I’m amazed it’s still talked about. For any game to be remembered, let alone played even a year after it’s finished is rare. Games don’t have a shelf life like most other mediums.

I will watch a movie made 50 years ago, listen to an album from 30 years ago, but play a game from an older generation? It never happens. You spend 3 years working on a project, it gets a production run, if it doesn’t sell out they get pulped and that’s it… there’s no dvd release, no collectors edition or directors cut. So, to be in a position where I can say I worked on Goldeneye and people actually remember it is incredible. Even though EA tried to kill the legacy by releasing a dreadful game of the same name about 5 years ago.

As I said before, Eurocom better not fuck this up.

So, no pressure then. Steve Duckworth gives us the word from the audio team at Eurocom.

DS: Can you give us some insight into the audio teams involvement in the games pre-production/development?

SD: We started working on a demo level last summer. After that was approved, we moved into full production about a year ago. The demo level was later adapted and used in game as the Outpost multiplayer map.

DS: Did you re-visit the GoldenEye N64 when prepping for the game? Does the Wii game reference the original game in terms of it’s sound?

SD: There are nods toward the original N64 game, E.g. the alarm on the dam, some of the doors on the facility will sound familiar, the armour pickup has the same kind of feel as the original and the sound that plays on the player’s death. Players will also hear the over-the-top bullet impact sound that play as you sink fire into the enemy. But we aren’t using the original samples; all the sounds are newly created and freshened up for this version.

DS: The game ties in pretty closely with the Bond franchise using original actors for dialogue. How was it recording and integrating the various actors into the game?

SD: The actors were all recorded separately, even in different studios (and on different continents!), so the studios had to liaise to ensure they were using similar mics to get the same sound between sessions.  Some sessions were even simultaneously motion captured to give us facial animation data for accurate lip sync. We then put the voices in the right ‘spaces’ for the game using offline processing and baking reverbs into the wavs.

DS: Bond composer David Arnold is also writing the music. How does his cinematic score fit with the game? How does it enhance the game play experience?

SD: The music adapts to combat situations, heightening the action. Once the enemies have been dispatched, it returns to a more stealthy feel. This is not the case on all levels though. At some points in the game there is no opportunity for stealth (e.g. Archives), so the music becomes all-out action. Additionally, there are certain cutscenes that have been specially scored.

Stylistically, as you’d expect, the music has a very Bond-esque feel to it. It’s a combination of powerful orchestral cues with electronica, a style that David Arnold is excels in.

DS: Given the close ties to cinematic Bond how did you set about sourcing FX for the game’s many locations, vehicles and weapons? Did you have access to any FX elements from previous films or games?

SD: Sadly, we didn’t get the budget to fly out to exotic locations like Dubai. We rely a lot on libraries, but don’t use them ‘straight from the tin’. We do a lot of manipulation and combining of sounds from all sorts of places to come up with the finished article, including recording our own foley and sweeteners onsite in our purpose built recording studio. The only sounds from the Bond films we were allowed to use were the vocal sounds that Daniel Craig recorded in his ADR sessions. We were also given permission to use Baron Samedi’s laugh from Live And Let Die.

DS: What was it like implementing sound for the Wii? Can you give us some examples where your sound implementation enhances the gameplay experience?

SD: There are a few examples. If you break stealth by alerting a guard, the sound becomes tense, even a little eerie. We’ve done this by cutting low frequencies from the mix, changing the music and ducking ambience, leaving the player in a limbo state that can go either way. They then have a few moments to neutralize the enemy and if successful we go back to stealth and the mix returns to normal. If the player doesn’t manage to silence the threat, then the enemy calls for backup, which is signaled by a big you’ve blown it stinger, and Action music kicks off to accompany the sudden influx of reinforcements. It’s all dynamic, so the player can choose how they want to play. This creates a lot of tension-and-release moments in the game where the soundstage is changing from moment to moment. The sound of the environments also helps with this ever-changing mix. We use a combination of in game reverbs, offline processing, and dynamic filtering to recreate the effect of moving between these places and reflect how sound behaves over distance. If you check out the Zukovsky’s Club level (a new location in this version), you’ll hear some pretty nifty occlusion based simulation going on with the main Dance Floor music – when you open the dance floor doors and hear the club track hit you with full fidelity and environment processing, it makes for a very immersive moment.

In a shooter, gun sounds are extremely important and we spent a great deal of time getting these sounding right. Each gun has a basic set of shot samples which are processed to sound close, medium and distant perspective – the shot then switches between these sample sets based on distance from the player. Added to this, we mix in different reverb samples depending on whether the gun is fired in an enclosed space or out in the open – when indoors, the reverb layer is made up of close early reflections, to give it a ‘boxy’ sound, but when the same gun is fired out on top of the Dam for example, it has a long rich echo to give it more space. Also, the player might be using the same weapon as the enemy, so to help differentiate the two in the mix, when the player fires, the samples play in stereo (whereas enemy shots collapse to mono), and an additional layer of sweeteners play such as mechanism and LF punch.

Generally, on the Wii, you are limited in terms of memory. We negated this limitation, somewhat, by using dynamic loading of sounds throughout the game. For instance, if the player reaches a point of no return on a level, this is a good opportunity to ditch the sounds that were only used at the start of the level, and load in the ones used later on. We also load in weapon sounds on the fly as Bond picks up new guns. This enables us to maximise the quality of the samples.

DS: The Wii supports Dolby Pro Logic II surround, did you test the game with this in mind?

SD: Yes, we always work in surround, and check back to stereo for compatibility from time to time. Surround systems are very affordable nowadays, so there really is no other way to work. The cutscenes were also mixed in surround and where appropriate, ambient sounds are also encoded with surround elements. All the sounds in the game are positioned in 3D, so you hear bullets whizz by, helicopters flying overhead, and debris smashing all around you -  it all helps to put the player in the thick of the action.

DS: Can you sum up the Goldeneye sound experience for us?

SD: Like Daniel Craig’s portrayal of Bond, it’s edgy and gritty.

Many thanks to Graeme and Steve for taking the time to answer our questions.

I’m happy to announce Aaron Marks as our October’s guest on Designing Sound. A multi-disciplinary audio professional with background in music composition, sound design, field recording, and more. Author of “The Complete guide to Game Audio” and teacher at The Art Institute of California. A very kind person ready to share lots of cool things with us this month.

Bio

Best known for his book, The Complete Guide to Game Audio, Aaron Marks is not only an outspoken advocate of great audio in games, he is an accomplished composer, sound designer, field recordist, voice over artist and owner of On Your Mark Music Productions based near San Diego, California. As if that wasn’t enough to keep him busy, he is also the lead author of the book, Game Audio Development, and is part of the audio production faculty at The Art Institute of California – San Diego teaching the art of field recording and sound for interactive media.

Music has always been a part of Aaron Marks’ life – but it wasn’t until 1995, when his overgrown hobby became On Your Mark Music Productions, that he began selling it to the world. Aaron started with the Southern California radio and television scene composing jingles and scoring public service announcements. Although he set his sights on Hollywood, he fell headfirst into the game industry instead where his sound design and voiceover talents also exploded – leading him to music, sound design, field recording and voiceover credits on over 120 game titles for the Xbox and Xbox 360, PlayStation 2 and 3, Wii, Dreamcast, CD/DVD-ROM, touch screen arcade games, iPhone/iPad, Class II video slot machines, Class III mechanical and video slot machines, coin op/arcade, online and terminal based video casino games and numerous multimedia projects.

Through the years, Aaron has written for Game Developer Magazine, Gamasutra.com, Music4Games.net and the Society of Composers and Lyrists. He wrote an accredited college course on game audio for the Art Institute Online, is a member of the AES Technical Committee for Games, was an AES Game Audio Workshop chairman, was on the launch committee for the Game Audio Network Guild (G.A.N.G.) and is a popular guest speaker and lecturer at game related conferences and academic functions.

Aaron currently divides his time between his love for all things audio, his family and their eclectic menagerie of farm animals.

About OYM

On Your Mark Music Productions is a provider of music, sound effects, field recording and voice overs for the video game, television and film industries with clients such as Codemasters, UbiSoft, Konami, Universal/Vivendi, Activision, Microsoft and Electronic Arts. In operation since 1995, Aaron Marks and his cast of creative characters, have provided audio for over 300 combined projects and proudly continue the pursuit of the ultimate soundscape. With the recent addition of composer, arranger and orchestrator Mark Scholl, OYM rounds out their sonic arsenal and offered services with 2 Emmy Awards, 15 years of live touring and performing experience and a premier drummer/percussionist.

Awards

• GANG Award, Best Game Audio Article, Publication or Broadcast – The Complete Guide to Game Audio
• GANG Award, Best Game Audio Article, Publication or Broadcast – The Use and Effectiveness of Audio in HALO: Game Music Evolved

Selected Works

• The Complete Guide to Game Audio, 2nd Edition – author
• Game Audio Development – lead author
• bittosHD, bittos+, bittos-e, bittos – composer, sound designer
• Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising – field recordist
• large variety of video casino gaming devices – audio director/composer/sound designer
• Sprint Mobile network daily audio news segments – voice overs
• Colin McRae’s DIRT – voice over direction and recording
• Tom Clancy’s ENDWAR (PSP/DS) – composer
• The Settler’s – Traditions Edition – composer
• The Settler’s II – 10th Anniversary – composer

On Your Mark Music

SoundWorks Collection has published a fantastic game audio profile, featuring the team behind the sound of “HALO: REACH”.

In this exclusive SoundWorks Collection game sound video profile we feature the talented sound team behind “HALO: REACH”, the blockbuster prequel to the best-selling Xbox franchise of all time.

Bungie Studios Audio Director and Composer Marty O’Donnell and Sound Designers C Paul Johnson and Jay Weinland discuss the creative and technical challenges for creating the ultimate gaming experience.

New year, new month and of course, a new special. This time we’ll have a lot of knobs, crazy recordings, synths and a very noisy January, with Richard Devine. We’ll have interviews, articles, videos and very cool stuff, stay tuned!

Bio

During the past three years, Richard Devine has remixed top Warp artists like Aphex Twin and Mike Patton (Faith No More). He has released 4 full-length albums on Schematic, Warp, Asphodel, and Sublight records and has performed his own ear-tearing music mayhem worldwide. Based in Atlanta, Georgia he has done film score work for Touchstone Pictures (with John Hues & Kyle Cooper). He has also collaborated with BT (Brian Transeau on movie “Look” Directed by Adam Rifkin, Wieden & Kennedy, AKQA Inc., and have done sound mangling/programming for Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails, composed and designed commercials for the Nike Shoe Company and worked with various companies doing sound design for Audi, BMW, Ford, Lincoln, Mercury, Scion, Coke, LandRover, Lexus, Peugeot, Dodge, HBO, Nestle, Nike Japan, McDonald’s, Sprite, Sony, Spike Television network and XBOX (Halo2 and 3 for Microsoft International Websites.

He has also worked with Konami gaming division for the Dance-Dance Revolution game. In 2007 he signed a deal with Sony Media to release his first two Sound Effects libraries, “Pulse” and “The Electronic Manuscript” which won 2009′s best sample library by Remix Technology Awards. in 2008 Richard launched a new sound design company “Devinesound” which was nominated the Cannes Lions Award for the work with Microsoft Gaming division for the Halo Believe Campaign.

In conjunction with TV and film work Richard also has done programming and sound design work with some of the biggest audio companies in the world. His work has been featured on new software and hardware titles from many innovative companies such as: Alesis, Access Virus Keyboards, Akai, Ableton Live, Apple Computers, Arturia, CamelAudio, Native Instruments, Izotope software, WayOutware Softare,Eventide Effects Company, GRM tools, Korg, Clavia Nord, DigiDesign, Openlabs, Universal Audio, Hartmann Neuron synthesizers, Stanton Magnetics DJ Company, Roland, Propellerheads, Yamaha and M-Audio Division.

Official Site
MySpace
Twitter

Composer, musician and writer David Toop talks on this video about his interest on digital generated sound and the impact of that on experimental music, his love for the sounds and music making and his work on Laptop Orchestra.

About David Toop

David Toop is a musician/composer, writer, and curator. He has written four books, currently translated into eight languages: Rap Attack (now in its third edition), Ocean of Sound (included in the Observer Music Monthly’s 50 Greatest Music Books Ever), Exotica (a winner of the 21st annual American Books Awards for 2000), and Haunted Weather. His first album, New and Rediscovered Musical Instruments, was released on Brian Eno’s Obscure label in 1975; since 1995 he has released seven solo albums.

Vía Synthopia | Rare Frecuency

I wanted to thank Composer Joseph Stephens for taking time out to do the following Q and A.

DS: Director Jody Hill talked about particular 1970′s films (“Taxi Driver” and “Shampoo”) influencing “Observe and Report;” Did they influence the score too?

JS: No. “Taxi Driver” music was never referenced…or any other film for that matter. Our score is very loud, very in your face. Ronnie, the main character, has a lot of pent up aggression and we wanted the music to be a bit of a window into that side of his personality; an aggressive foreshadowing, a turbulent insight into his internal struggles which is sort of the antithesis of “Taxi Driver”, which, musically, is very brooding, understated, and repetitive. Where “Taxi Driver” went for the narcotic lull of New York jazz, we went for the pounding drums, walls of feedback, and razor fuzz of punk and rock n’ roll.

DS: How did you discuss music with Jody? Did you converse in musical language?

JS: Jody Hill and I talked a lot about the music while the film was still shooting. Conceptually, we had a strong idea of where the score was going from a very early stage. While I don’t think either one of us really spoke in musical language, we did have a clear understanding about each others musical ideas and tastes. When I described an abstract wall of interlocking, subverted guitars playing only feedback for Ronnie’s arrest scene, he got the picture, just as his description of “The Kiss” (dictating hope; describing that ray of sunshine, that perfect moment which suspends and changes everything and doesn’t seem to want to end) was succinct and very direct. The language of music is pretty universal and has no set guidelines when you know what you like and don’t like and you can communicate your ideas clearly.

DS: How hard was it to develop a theme for Ronnie? How did it have to change over the course of the film?

JS: Ronnie’s main theme occurs at two distinct points in the film. Both points center around his honesty and innocence. The first is at a psychological interview. He tells about his dream of becoming a cop. We wanted the scene to sound sweet and honest and we wanted the audience to get on board with Ronnie’s perception of his place in the world, despite what a sociopath he sounds like in reality. The second time we hear this theme is when Ronnie goes to the police station for his first day on the job. The same theme has an uplifting, driving, and “things are finally changing for the better” feel. Here we need the audience to, once again, get behind Ronnie and pull for him. He seems so happy and proud of himself in both scenes.

It actually wasn’t that hard to develop. The “First Day on the Job” cue was one of the first pieces written for the film. It was actually submitted as a temp idea with the vocal melody as a place holder for another instrument to be added later. However, the vocal had a certain feel and hook that paved the way for many of the other cues and ultimately lead to the overall feel of the score, (that feel being very melodically vocally driven). We wanted to explore that same Ronnie melody at different points with the psych interview being a logical place to revisit.

Joseph Stephens(left) and scoring engineer Bob Engel(right).

DS: With “Observe and Report” using a lot commercial songs, how hard was it to make your cues blend in?

JS: Not that hard. This score sounds like it was performed by a band. I used instruments that are traditionally found in rock n’ roll music; guitar, vocals, drums, bass, keys, etc. Much of the score was recorded and mixed at Mitch Easter’s studio, Fidelitorium, which is primarily known for recording bands, not film scores.

There are also a couple “fake songs” in the film; Songs that I wrote and performed exclusively for the film but are meant to sound like pre-existing material from some other artist who licensed the music for use in the film in the same manner that Patto, The Yardbirds, and The Band licensed their music.

There is also the cover of the song “Where Is My Mind?” which was performed by one of my bands; City Wolf. As well, as the end credit song “Babyteeth” by my main band Pyramid.

With me singing “fake songs”, cover songs, and an original song; using the same drummer, recorded at the same studio as the score, it was easy to blend into the other licensed commercial songs throughout the film.

DS: Did this film have a temp score and if so how did that affect the composition process?

JS: We did use temp score here and there. When
I saw the first cut I knew I had to get in there fast because they were editing to temp, interchanging temp, becoming attached to temp, etc. I must say that I’m not a fan of “temp love.” Some of the temp worked really well but some didn’t. After I saw the cut I insisted I get a copy and get to work. The director and editor are close friends of mine so I got involved much earlier than traditional composers. Also, this being my first job with a major studio, I wanted as much time as I could get to work on this. I got home and started sending two or three cues a day, basically facilitating my own temp score. I threw as many ideas at them as I could; trying to get the temp out of picture so they would start editing to my music and become attached to original score. The temp that did remain served as a guideline. I didn’t particularly like following these guidelines but when the temp is working well it can be very useful…and sometimes hard to fight.

DS: Having also composed for HBO’s “Eastbound and Down”, in what ways did your approach to writing differ covering a feature verses a 30min episode?

JS: We were on a tighter deadline with television. There were six episodes that each had different time frames. So I moved much faster. I recorded everything for “Eastbound and Down” from my home – strictly “out of the box.” The instrumentation was different. I used mandolin, accordion, lots of synths, and female vocals. There was also a significantly smaller budget so renting a professional studio was not economical. Granted the cues were less grandiose so a studio wasn’t really needed but this certainly affected my approach. I had to pay closer attention to my mixes because I didn’t have a sound engineer or $15,000 monitors to fall back on.

In terms of difference in approach, the “Observe and Report” score was very guttural and raw; Lots of vocal passes and loud guitars, the writing was very traditional and basic, and at times more loose in large part because the score has that rock n’ roll feel. There were a lot of happy accidents. The pulse and instrumentation is very familiar and accessible. I think that comes somewhat naturally to me. Same with the TV show, though with “Eastbound and Down” the music went with jokes a little more, although some were quite serious in tone. “EB&D” cues were also shorter.

There were a couple cues on “O&R” that were massive. One had something like 150 drum tracks. Also some cues took a few passes before we got it right. With “O&R” I worked hand in hand with a music editor who helped tremendously in keeping me up to date as the picture cut changed and editing cues as needed. I couldn’t have done it without him. I did not work as closely with the music editor on “EB&D” though she was also great.

DS: How does composing music for a film differ from writing music for a band? What do you like more?

JS: The ultimate difference is that writing music for a band is essentially writing music for you. You are your own judge. What works and what doesn’t is not up to anyone other than you. When you’re happy; when you can say “This song sounds perfect to me”…that’s it. You’re done…next song. Certainly you want to push yourself and strive for excellence, but other than band mates, you don’t have that many people looking over your shoulder or waiting, sometimes impatiently, for the product. With film scoring, everything passes through a variety of stages of approval. It’s sort of like putting the music under a microscope. “The director loves it but the producer doesn’t think it works.” It gets a bit dissected and whittled down…in a good way. When you’re scoring something, you’re making music for someone and something else so you can’t cling to things. It’s all subject to the approval of others. You have to work together and you have to roll with the punches.

There’s also the obvious difference of using pictures. Scoring works in tandem with action on screen, dialogue, editing, sound effects, etc. In many ways, these elements do a lot of thinking and decision making for you. Cues have to be of certain length and tone. It has to interplay with a lot of factors that are out of your control. You have to listen for room to move and watch for interference.

I haven’t worked enough as a composer to know whether I like it more than writing music for myself. Composing can be very stressful, but it has big rewards. There is truly nothing like hearing your music up on the big screen. It’s very unique. However, writing for a band comes from and is channeled back directly into your heart so it’s hard to compete with that. I’m very lucky to be in the position to do both.

A more consistent blogger than I, Carter documents a ton of his work, HERE and was kind enough to log a little Q and A time for us.

DS: How was “Edward’s” on screen piano playing handled from a score point of view? How is on screen performance normally approached? Have you ever had to compose for an actor just performing gibberish with an instrument?

CB: They shot Edward playing before I was working on the picture, and the actor, Rob Pattinson just improvised (he’s a musician, fortunately). I think Rob hoped they’d keep his version, but it seemed clear that the final music should be thematic to the film. I tried to write something that wouldn’t be obviously wrong for his fingering, but it wasn’t perfect. The director wanted to re-shoot the scene so that he could play along to the final music, and ultimately the studio paid for this. (You may want to read the whole story on my web page, HERE.)

DS: Why did you decide to feature the guitar and piano so prominently in the “Twilight” score? In the composition process, how is the decision to feature any instrument over another reached?

CB: The Edward character plays piano in the book “Twilight”, so it was always going to be important, and I settled on that as a solo instrument in the Love theme. The steel-string guitar was used for its fragility and warmth, which seemed appropriate at the start of the relationship between the lead characters. Later in the relationship, nylon string guitar is used for its more subdued, rounder quality.

DS: In a tailored-for-teens movie like “Twilight” where popular licensed music is an important factor, do you find it hard to get enough screen time for your musical point of view?

CB: It wasn’t a problem in this film, but sometimes it certainly is. In this case, the director wanted score for most of the key scenes, and there were no places where songs pushed out score.

DS: As a composer, do you battle with temp love (something we in the Sound Editorial department deal with constantly)? Do you ever have to mimic other scores because filmmakers are too fond of the music in the AVID tracks?

CB: I do battle with temp love all the time, unless I can convince the director not to use temp. In the case of “Twilight” I started giving the director synth sketches early in the hope that they could replace the temp, but she worried so much about whether the executives would understand the sketches that she didn’t use them until so late in the game that new problems were created (see my web page for the Love Theme problem). Generally I refuse to do the “mimic” thing, and I’d rather they just license the temp if they love it. Sometimes they do (as in “Three Kings”) but mostly they don’t.

DS: How do the Coen brothers approach the score in their films? What is it like working with filmmakers with whom you have a two decade long relationship?

CB: There’s no easy answer to this question. The working relationship is, of course, simplified because we have a working language. Still, every film is different and it’s just as difficult to find the musical answers with their films as with any other.