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[HOPE AND FEAR] : BEHIND-THE-SCENESPost-production: planning the music |
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On 21st April in his home Composer Dennis McCarthy watches the on-line cut of [Hope and Fear] on a 9 inch video monitor screen.
Dennis McCarthy: "People laugh at me for doing this, but I want to see the show for the first time under the worst possible monaural conditions with a little screen that cuts off the edges. This way I see what everybody who owns a TV sees. If I looked at it on a big studio monitor, I'd see too much-hand movements and stuff. I don't want that. I just want to see the action. I also don't read the script because it would mislead me. 'Scriptitis' would set in. I can't be paying attention to the scriptwriter's intentions. I have to concentrate on the reality of what's on the screen. I don't want to 'tip our hand' with the music. For instance, I didn't know there was a problem with the alien until the characters found out. Now I'm surprised right along with the audience. Otherwise I might subconsciously have written to it. I have to be very careful so that I have no preconceived notions."
Dennis McCarthy and Music Editor Gerry Sackman walk into Dawn Velazquez's office on the Paramount lot for a "music spotting session". The purpose of the meeting is to discuss the musical cues that Dennis McCarthy will write. He will not fill the entire background with music, of course, as periods of silence are extremely effective in drama and continual music would become irritating for the tv viewer. Dawn Velazquez operates the fast-forward control box for a 32 inch monitor. Each participant
calls out the time-coded frame numbers for points he or she thinks a musical cue should start. Although they have not discussed the episode in advance, each person calls for the "ins and outs" of the same eighteen cues, as they know each other's minds so well.
While they watch the on-line cut, Dawn Velazquez explains to Dennis McCarthy where the yet-to-come special-effects sounds will be loud ("I'll use a lot of brass," the composer notes) and what is expected to be on screen during an optical hole ("So I'll assume the timing to this is correct," he says). Certain other things are taken for granted.
Dennis McCarthy: "We never interfere with dialogue. And we like emotional scenes to play themselves, so we wait to come in with music after them."
Dawn Velazquez: "Of course, when the ship shakes, we play music."
At the end of the meeting, the list of eighteen cues times out at a total of 21 minutes 20 seconds of music. The longest cue includes Scenes 96 through 107, the last action scene of the episode. There will be no silent moments during the action. While some cues are as short as 5 seconds, this one is 4 minutes 26 seconds long, and is so long that it will be easier to record it in two parts. Gerry Sackman says: "We'll probably break it when Janeway enters the Dauntless bridge. That way it'll be 2 minutes and 2 minutes. It's nothing anyone will notice, but a 4 minute action sequence is too much to record at one time."
Dennis McCarthy says he will not start composing for another week. Gerry Sackman, however, must start his work that afternoon. "Part of my job is to develop a set of guidelines from these cues for Dennis to compose by. I'll give him the exact frame where a cue is going to start and then time it for him, seconds, tenths of seconds, where the dialogue starts and stops, where the action starts and stops, important shifts in dialogue, where the emotion is. It's all mathematics."
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