How to train your Dragon John Powell composer talks about scoring a new film

It would have been a ridiculous scene if it had not been so dangerous. John Powell, the composer behind the new Remake live from Universal de How to train your dragon And Wickedwore a unhappyly adjusted gas mask on his glasses, not keeping smoke at all outside, and he groped around his property, trying to do everything he could to save him from hell.

And yet, the most present thing in his mind was to modulate a certain musical signal for the Dragon score that he worked for a few hours earlier.

It was at the beginning of January, and palisades fires in Los Angeles had just struck. Powell, one of the greatest composers working, was in the middle of Dragon And initially not paying attention to warnings. After all, he had been living in the palisades for over 20 years, had seen fires start and be extinct, warnings issued and canceled. But it was different, the situation degenerating on time, then at the minute. He covered vents and holes around the house, cleared the paths around the house and desperately tried to use pool pumps to spray the house, but could not bring them to work.

Powell was exhausted, panicked. However, he could not stop thinking about the score. “When I write, it is very difficult to get me out of this brain set,” says Powell The Hollywood Reporter. He admits that he could be more than a little neurodiver. Most composers are probably, he thinks. How can you work and rework a music bar for hours at a time?

It was only after persistent and more and more alarmed texts and calls of his son that he released. “I can’t do this to my son,” he thought, “I can’t die here.”

Thus, with only his two poodles and a rescue driving of 12 teraoctets containing each piece of music he had ever written, Powell Hightail took him from his house at the top of a hill, to Sunset Boulevard and the past houses engulfed in raging fires.

About 30 of the 60 houses on its street would burn. His house was spared, although he has still not returned to live there because he is corrected for the damage caused by smoke, burned fences and other loss of goods.

In the days that followed, Powell did not drop the music in his head. On weekends, he was installed in a studio in Santa Monica led by his colleague Hans Zimmer, working on the score. After all, he only had a month before an orchestra should not record the music. “It was not as if I could call Universal and say, can we move the registration dates and the mixing dates and the release date?” I am responsible for making sure I make music in time, ”explains the composer.

Apart from that, in the weeks that followed, working on the score has become a balm of the horrible consequences of the fire and its own housing situation, while it was moving from Airbnb to Airbnb. “You have just done the work in front of you, and it becomes the most important thing at that time, which is slightly sad to say, but it is a useful thing in this kind of circumstances,” said the composer.

Powell, born in London of a demanding father who was a session player, has composed dozens of scores since 1997, when he moved to Los Angeles. Initially, a large part of his work consisted in collaborating with other composers (he worked with Harry Gregson-Williams on the first Shrek Film and with Zimmer on the first two If Fu Panda movies). He has also become a top scorer for filmmakers such as Doug Liman and Paul Grengrass.

But it was his score for DragonThe 2010 DreamWorks animated film which had a lasting impact with film fans. The music, intimate and explosive, anchored and arrows, was inducing goosebumps and transcendent, giving an emotional resonance to the fear of becoming a friend with a dragon or the gross thrill of setting up one. (During the recent first of Los Angeles of the live version, public members broke out in applause and applause when the indices “Test Drive” and “Astrid Goes for Spin” were launched during beloved sequences.) Hollywood, also noted in approval, giving it the first of his two Oscar nominations for his music in the original film.

It is so full for the Dragon A world that when the filmmaker Dean Deblois has decided to tackle the work responsible for transforming his animated films into a live film, Powell was the first he called.

“I told him to dissuade him, if he thought that the remake was a bad idea,” recalls Deblois. “But John saw the same potential as I did; he thought that if we were doing a live version with love and respect for the base of fans, it could end up being a nostalgic hug for existing fans and a whole new experience for a new generation. So, he said:” If you are, I am. “”

For the new DragonPowell had the unique task of revisiting his own work, made up more than 15 years earlier. Some would look at work and think it would be easy, just cut and stick. But that turned out to be incredibly difficult, because he had to honor what the director and writer Dean Deblois, a live film including the narrative tones and the film techniques – like the edition – were different from the first film.

“Everything, tempos, keys, orchestration sons through things slightly differently. Different rhythms, different approaches, accent different in places, ”he says. “It just took a lot of massage, management and warming. I feel like I have done about three months of sanding. ”

Powell was already one step ahead of the animation notation division compared to live action. He worked on DreamWorks animated films, including the first ShrekAnd recalls that Jeffrey Katzenberg, then, said to him and Gregson-Williams, that they should treat animation as a live action.

“He didn’t want what was considered to be the animation clichés at the time,” recalls Powell. “The clichés of animation music changed over the years, but at that time, he said that he did not want us to have him too, as he called him, Disney,” said Powell. “I think it’s insulting for part of my favorite music of all time, but I knew what he meant. It had to be a little more straight ahead. ”

However, it posed challenges. Each time a camera moves, and why and when behind it is a new potential signal, a new note.

The orchestra recorded music to Air Studios Lyndhurst in London, with Gavin Greenaway manager. The composers rarely perform their own recording sessions, but Powell went behind the podium to conduct the choir sessions. For a period of three days in March on the stages of the score of The Fox Lot in Century City, a choir of 60 people sang the choral texture while the scenes took place on a large screen behind.

For reasons that have to do with the economy, including what some call restrictive contracts with the music Union Federation of Musicians and a tense relationship with studios, a good part of the work of rating of films in Los Angeles not only in London, but Vienne, Bratislava and Sydney. Powell hopes that AFM would offer new options that would give musicians and choices of studio tariffs that could include buyouts instead of residues. “The musicians here suffer from the same thing as workers from other regions of America: you can do their job cheaper in other countries,” he notes.

He was able to do the choir work on the notation scene thanks to the conduct of the session itself, thus saving the studio of the costs of the drivers and by bringing the artists to fall under the rules of the Guild of the actor of Screen.

But he recognizes that the rating orchestras are unique; You cannot just waltz in town and go to the nearest Philharmonic. On the one hand, reading sight, the ability to play the first or the second blushing with partitions, is a must. The same goes for juggling one ear in one helmet and the other used to hear the rest of the whole.

“It is a fully different game of skills, and if we lose it in Los Angeles, it is very difficult to bring it back. So that’s what makes me nervous, ”he admits. “I can’t wait to have another score to bring back here.”

Years ago on The Fox Lot, Powell had one of his greatest professional heights and the most embarrassing moments, both involving the legend of marking John Williams.

Powell worked with the man behind Star Wars,, Jaws And Raiders of the lost arch In 2018 Solo: a story of Star Wars. While Powell scored most of the film, Williams was led to work on a theme for the title of title, who was one of the only leading people of the original films who did not have his own musical theme.

He was delighted to “spot” the film with Williams and the filmmakers, spotting being a pre-compose moment when we watch the film, the stage stopping by scene to have an idea of ​​the question of whether music should be there or not, his goal, where he would start and end. Powell calls for this process “the director’s interrogation”, because he wants to know why a director made the choices they made in the film, in order to be more in tune, figuratively and literally, with what this person tries to accomplish.

“I did it, what, 63 times before Solo But watching John do it too is an education, “says Powell.” It is much more elegant and subtle on this subject. He is not as accusing as me, but he still chose all the important information we needed. »»

He stops to think about what he said, then adds: “I mean, fundamentally, he spotted it, and I listened like a student. It was like spotting the film with Yoda. ”

He said that working with Williams let him question his capacities as a composer, but also with an understanding of the human being behind the legend.

“I realized how far I was from what he was doing, then I was able to work with him and speak to him and see his generosity and his kindness, and I finally had to arrive at the conclusion that he is a composer, exactly like the rest of us,” notes Powell. “It’s just better.”

However, that did not make him feel less embarrassed when a few years later, he and Williams were on the steps of Fox working on their respective films, he on Call of natureWilliams on Skywalker climb. Williams seemed to have decided to visit the moment to say hello to Powell and a recording engineer. Powell had been there a few days earlier to work with an important orchestra on majestic orchestral sounds. That day? He recorded 12 banjo players.

“He said” So what are you doing there? “And I said,” I record 12 banjos “. He didn’t say it, but I could see in his eyes, he looked at me and it was like,” why would you never do that? “”, Remember Powell. “I want him to be able to enter while the orchestra played something giant and beautiful just so that he knows that I was not only the guy who made 12 banjos.”

To judge by DragoThe N-Office of N and the base of the fans, the banjos are the most distant things from the ears of the public. No violation of the banjos.