Thursday, November 6, 2003, Murch’s Journal
Harvey is here talking to Anthony about the usual issues: Inman death shot (saying it looks like a “police blotter”); and Ada voiceover. Tim said that they were talking about Anthony shooting something new for the transition after Inman’s death. What will happen? Read this in four weeks and tell me. I will be in Toronto evaluating the release print master, hopefully. Endgame decisions.
Chapter 12. Finding the Film You Have
FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 7, 2003—LONDON
Miramax is in the final stages of preparing a major marketing campaign for Cold Mountain and making commitments to buy TV, print, and other kinds of advertising. There’s a lot at stake: the prestige of the studio, its Oscar prospects, and recouping its 100 percent capital investment in the movie. This end of moviemaking has always been one of Miramax’s strengths—acquiring what had traditionally been considered hard-to-market independent, international, and dramatic films, and creatively promoting them into profits at the box office. Movies such as The Crying Game, Il Postino, The English Patient, and Shakespeare in Love, among others, were rolled out to great success, in part because the Weinsteins are great marketeers.
But Cold Mountain isn’t a small, quirky, low-budget foreign film. It’s a big picture with big needs, and marketing it will be no easy matter, even for the Weinsteins, who now get ready to spend perhaps $30 million—a figure nearly half the Cold Mountain production budget—on promotion and advertising. Some anxiety is brewing, as the studio must decide once and for all how it’s going to pitch the film to the public. Murch hears about these rumblings from Minghella: “Apparently Bob [Weinstein] called Anthony after a screening in New York,” says Murch, “and said, ‘I like it, Anthony, and it’s really good and everything, but just what’s it about? I enjoy it, but in the end, what is it about? It’s not a war film; it’s not a love story. That’s the problem. What is it about?’”
It’s disheartening for a film director to hear those kinds of questions so late in the game. After all, Miramax read the screenplay early on, saw dailies during production, and screened every assembly of the film. The conversation reminds Murch of a story, perhaps apocryphal, about Louis Mayer of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, who once hired violin virtuoso Jascha Heifetz to play music for a film. But Mayer was mixed up, and thought he was actually employing pianist Vladimir Horowitz. Says Murch: “Heifetz said he didn’t play the piano. But Mayer told Heifetz, ‘No, I hired you to play the piano, not the violin. So play! I want you to do what I hired you to do.’”
“It’s the same kind of thing,” Murch continues. “’I want you to be what I want you to be. I don’t want you to be what you are. You’re a musician and your name begins with H, so why can’t you be what I want you to be?’”
All good film editors (or at least the ones who continue to work) know their boundaries. Distribution and marketing are matters beyond Murch’s expertise and immediate concern. He has to finish mixing this film in one week and there is still no music for the opening sequence leading to the big explosion, and no final decision about introductory subtitles—what they will say and where they go, or even if they go at all. Questions also linger about the transition at the end of the movie from Inman’s death to the coda at Black Cove Farm years later.
Fer Bos, Cold Mountain music editor.
Murch enters De Lane Lea, led by his dog Hana, as usual. There’s a lot of activity already underway in the anteroom outside Studio A. This airlock chamber between the exterior world and the sound mix theatre consists of a desk, a phone, and a small couch. Producers, directors, and sound editors come out here if they need to have a conversation in peace or take a call without interrupting the mix. For the last two days, however, this tiny space has been turned into a makeshift music-editing studio. The two music editors, Fernand (“Fer”) Bos and Allan Jenkins, have set up shop here with their Macintosh laptops, extra hard drives, and rented video monitor. Wearing headphones and sitting on shipping cases, they’ve been trying to come up with alternate musical openings for Cold Mountain.
Bos is T-Bone Burnett’s music editor, and Jenkins is Gabriel Yared’s music editor, so they normally have separate responsibilities—source music from the period and scored music composed for the movie, respectively. The music editors’ work involves attending to initial recording sessions in the studio, getting that material edited into mixable tracks, and providing it to Murch, who re-records it onto the movie soundtrack. Along the way they help to prepare rough sketches so the director can review, evaluate, and begin choosing which music should go where.
Walter stands and listens as Bos and Jenkins play new opening music they’ve worked on together that combines source and score. Anthony sits a few inches from the TV screen, watching and listening to a conflation of Gabriel Yared’s original composition played by the London Symphony Orchestra, and Sting’s “My Ain True Love”—first as instrumental, then sung by Alison Krauss. Two music editors have collaborated to create a synthesis of disparate melodies—not typical of the way movie music is edited. This spontaneous partnership arose out of necessity, and it’s one that Bos and Jenkins have eagerly embraced.
Allan Jenkins, Cold Mountain music editor.
Inman and the Confederate soldiers are in the trenches. A violin and cello duet abstracts the theme from Sting’s song.
“Need a shirt, son?”
“That’s Ma Oakley’s boy,” Inman says.
“He can’t be old enough to fight, can he?”
“Morning, son.”
“Got some boots and jackets. Want one?”
“Yeah, thanks.”
The string duo that has been playing underneath this scene continues in the clear.
Minghella says he’s not too happy with this version’s lack of development—the music doesn’t follow the rising tension of the sequence. Bos stops the scene. Brows are furrowed and the tension is manifest. “What are we going to do?” asks Minghella. “This isn’t working.”
After a second or two Murch makes a suggestion: “What if we got a cello to start adding a rhythmic element to it, so a pulse began to appear—taking those musical ideas and energizing them.”
With that, the session breaks up. Anthony has a few minutes before meeting with Harvey Weinstein, so he goes off with Allan Jenkins. At this late date, there’s no time to record anything new. They must find supplementary musical elements by scavenging from Yared’s music.
Murch and the others go into Studio A where the mix continues.
A while later Eddy Joseph gets a cell phone call inside Studio A from Tim Bricknell, Minghella assistant. Joseph sits bolt upright and even pales slightly. “Okay, I’ll tell them,” he says. When Murch finishes the bit he’s working on, Joseph speaks up: “That was Tim. Harvey and Anthony are coming over.”
“Here?” Martin Cantwell, one of the sound editors says, incredulously.
“Yes, they’re walking over from Goldcrest.”
Before anyone has time to tidy up the place, the door to Studio A swings open. Weinstein, in black pants, black T-shirt, and black suspenders, walks in, followed by Minghella and Miramax executive Colin Vaines.
“Good morning,” Harvey says to the group. He and Minghella take their seats on the blue couch at the rear. Anthony suggests that Walter play reel one, beginning with the explosion. Hana leaves her customary spot under the mixing board by Walter, trots over to Harvey, and as before, jumps up on his lap.
The lights come down and the last half of reel one plays. The sound and mixing crew haven’t had the luxury of sitting back and listening to their work on the battle scene for a couple of days, so this is an unexpected opportunity to simply be spectators. When it’s over, Weinstein is exuberant: “Great, sounds just great. I really understand the relationship between Oakley and Inman.” He speaks with a deep, growly voice, but it’s friendly, with a twinge of we’re-all-in-this-together camaraderie, humor, and irony. “Now help get my tuxedo ready for March!”
�
��For my funeral?” Anthony asks under his breath.
“No way!” Harvey says.
Eddy Joseph jumps in to ask Weinstein about the controversy that’s raging about banning DVD and video screeners from being sent to Academy members during Oscar season. Weinstein had recently taken a strong public position against the ban.
“We’re fighting it.” Harvey says. “The studios can’t say anything, the executives will be fired. But they can’t fire me.” He pauses. “Well, they can, but...” He trails off. “Okay, thanks, everybody. Thanks, Walter. See you soon.”
And with that Weinstein stands up and departs Studio A with Vaines and Minghella.
By that afternoon Fer and Allan have a new version of the opening music for Minghella to listen to. Anthony sits down again in front of the small monitor in the anteroom. The roar from the battle being mixed inside Studio A assaults the room every time someone opens the door, so Minghella puts on headphones.
For this version Fer and Allan found a drone of bass and cello; it’s from an improvisational take T-Bone Burnett recorded with the players in Nashville. The editors also made a key change in Pro Tools to better connect the score to the song. They added a snare drum and timpani to the end, and used a French horn solo from Yared’s score. “I like the horn,” Anthony says, taking off the headphones. “It sounds like a bugle. Very nice. It’ll work.”
Fer and Allan are beaming. “It’s like composing,” Fer says after Anthony leaves, “but you take the melody as written and compose with it.”
Within the hour, Murch starts mixing in the new music. First he listens to it all the way through to get a sense of its flow, dynamics, and emotional contours. But it does not begin auspiciously. Images are up on the screen, but the powerful speakers are silent.
“Where’s the sound?” Murch asks.
“I don’t know,” Simon says. “Martin?”
There’s confusion as the mixers try to figure out why nothing is happening.
All of a sudden the voice of one of the actors breaks through:
“This poor boy’s from Alabama.”
“He’s a long way from home.”
Then the music begins, with a sonorous bass violin followed by a long, mournful, Irish-inspired violin and other strings. The cello and the violin play the theme from “My Ain True Love.” Krauss joins in, humming the melody. There is an ominous string tremolo on the cut to the explosives being set underground. Distant horns (Minghella’s “bugle”) play over an expansive view of Union soldiers lying in wait, on their bellies. The solo violin ascends. More ominous string tremolo. The French horn again, more humming, and then the kettledrums speak of impending battle. The strings shift into a minor key. The snare drums roll and, just as the music builds to a near-overwhelming climax that leads into the explosion, it ends.
“Great,” Murch says. “Very good.”
He plays the sequence again, this time punching buttons in and out on the mix board to hear one track at a time, isolating individual instruments so he can take command, like a symphony conductor, of the elements he has to work with. The sound editors and two other mixers relocate to the couches at the back of the theatre. Like a jazz soloist, Walter has the stage to himself.
He plays the three-minute piece again and suddenly the instruments seem more concentrated and integrated; he puts reverb on Alison Krauss’s humming; there’s more presence to the string tremolo; the horns sound stronger; and the final crescendo shimmers throughout the theater for seconds after the music ends.
Murch makes two more passes: the high end gets sharper and cleaner, Krauss’s humming becomes more ethereal and is “placed” to the left side of the theater, and the horns get bigger.
When Murch is finished, Matthew Gough, one of the sound editors and co-mixers, turns to Fer and Allen: “You guys made that from bits and pieces? It’s brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. It sounds like it was structured to fit everything.”
“It’s a Sting/Gabriel Yared collaboration,” Fer says, laughing.
“They’d love it if they knew,” says Allan.
“Let’s leave it for tonight,” Walter says, getting up from the board.
Matthew still marvels: “Very clever knitting.”
“Let’s go out and celebrate,” Allan says with a smile.
And so they should, since a big hole is now filled. Tomorrow, Murch will confront two remaining unknowns: the opening subtitles and the closing transition.
On the way home, Murch muses about the breakthrough with the opening music: “Sting’s music—it sent out its tendrils once it was in the film. It originally had a brief little job to do, which was to accompany the montage of Inman walking. Now it’s the music that underscores the beginning to the explosion, and then takes us out of the explosion into the charge. Major moments.” Using a film’s components in unplanned ways, transforming original intentions, happens frequently during post production.
“The English Patient begins with a shot from a roll of inserts or cutaways that Anthony did as an afterthought on the last day of filming—cinematographer John Seale wasn’t even there,” Murch says. “Certainly the cameraman who shot it, if you tapped him on the shoulder and whispered, ‘You are now shooting the opening image of the film,’ his hand would have begun to tremble. Unbearable Lightness of Being also ends with a second-unit shot—the point-of-view through the windshield on the Czech country road fading to white. That’s the last image of the film, but it was originally just a utilitarian shot. It’s a question of getting these animals on board Noah’s Ark—the raw material out of which the film winds up expressing itself—sometimes in very surprising ways.”
Discovering a film’s hidden secrets means finding the film you have, rather than the film you think you have.
Friday, November 7, 2003, Murch’s Journal
Harvey came to visit the mix and listened to the battlefield from Inman emerging to the end. Pronounced it very good. We didn’t finish changes to reels one & nine. Plan for card over rabbit shot abandoned because too complex.
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 8, 2003—LONDON
It’s another full ten-hour day of sound mixing at De Lane Lea. Today, among other tasks, Murch incorporates new ADR from Nicole Kidman recorded last night over high-speed Internet lines between London and New York. At the CFC lab, Minghella reviews new trial prints made from the digital intermediate. Afterward he and his wife, Carolyn, come into Studio A. Anthony and Walter arrange to return to the Old Chapel in the early evening so they can figure out the opening subtitles and the closing transition in the last reel.
By 7:30 p.m. most of the sound crew has drifted off, one by one, having made Saturday night plans. Tonight will be the peak of Guy Fawkes Night celebrations, even though the official holiday was Wednesday the 5th. Earlier, Eddy Joseph asked the mixers what they were going to do if Murch decided to work past 6 p.m., the end of their ten-hour shift. “He’ll have to run it himself,” said Matthew. Which Walter now does. He is operating the mix alone. Only Fer, Allan, and sound editor Simon Chase remain, seated at the back in case they are needed. Walter works with new ADR of Ada’s voiceover for the final scenes of the movie and with music that goes under the Inman death scene.
Anthony watches and listens. Carolyn is asleep with a book folded on her lap. Hana lies next to her.
It’s just after 8:00 p.m. when Murch finishes what seems to be a last pass on the music. “Curfew,” Anthony announces from the rear couch.
Walter stands up. “Tell whoever,” he says to Simon, “I’m walking away from the board. I think I did everything I was told,” meaning he saved all his work to the mix board’s computer, as instructed.
Walter, Anthony, and Carolyn exit De Lane Lea and are immediately engulfed by the ruckus of Soho Saturday night. They thread their way through crowds that fill the sidewalks and cluster outside the pubs until they get to a car park near Leicester Square where Carolyn has left her Mercedes. As she drives up to Hampstead, Anthony is very excited, not about the new music for Co
ld Mountain, but about soccer. The Portsmouth Football Club, his perennially losing home team, just beat Leeds. He phones to share the euphoria with his brother, who watched the match with the rest of the Minghella family.
On arriving at the Old Chapel, Murch strides upstairs and back to the realm of picture editing. The clock is ticking. They must finish tonight.
Final Cut Pro includes sophisticated graphics and titling functions, so Murch can try out subtitles over various shots. Last night he and Minghella had come back here after sound mixing to work on the text. For the first subtitle they agreed on: “Near the end of the Civil War, Northern troops lay explosives under the Southern defenses.” And for the establishing shot of the battlefield, “Siege of Petersburg, Virginia. July, 1864. Southern troops await attack.” To finalize the subtitles, Minghella invited all the assistants to come into the edit room to give their opinions. The group spent over an hour debating various modifications and rewrites. Now it was time to lock the subtitles into place.
Murch strides upstairs and back to the realm of picture editing. The clock is ticking. They must finish tonight.
9:30 p.m. Walter tries placing the second text card in a moment of black while Union soldiers roll barrels of explosives. Walter provides his own sound effects as he tries this position. “Rumble, rumble,” he says. But there isn’t enough time to read the text before the next shot comes on. Murch moves the subtitle so it comes up over the image of the barrels. Minghella has come upstairs. He likes this. One decision made.
Murch goes to work on what he’s calling “the bridge shot”—getting from a close-up of Ada and Inman, who lies dying in the snow, to Black Cove Farm several years later. Miramax executives feel a high-wide shot of the two lovers from above now looks like a crime scene photo and are considering paying to have it reshot. Originally, an upward-moving crane shot was used, but the grips couldn’t stabilize the dangling camera, and the jiggling made part of the shot unusable. Now it’s time to see if there are alternatives.
Behind the Seen Page 36
