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Interview

Cinezik : Could you tell us how did you come to film music industry?

Jeff Toyne : By the time I reached my final year of high school, I had decided on a career in music. By the time I was in my second or third year of my undergraduate degree, I started to see that the type of music I was interested in writing had a place in film, and my path appeared to be a career in film music. Following my Master's degree in Music, I attended the now defunct Mancini Institute in Los Angeles, where they were interested in what it meant to have not just a career in music, but a life in music. That solidified it for me. The following year I went back to LA to study at USC, and started scoring films in Hollywood.

How did you get involve on "Shadow in the trees" project?

I was introduced to Chris Smith, the writer/director of Shadow in the Trees, by a mutual friend at UCLA, where he was finishing his undergraduate degree. Chris heard my demo, and when we sat down to meet for the first time he told me he was excited by the high production value of the tracks on my CD. He asked me how much I thought it would cost to score his entire film (then 100+ minutes) with that same level of quality. I had purposely left any tracks with orchestra off the demo that I gave to Chris, because I knew that he'd shot the film on a shoestring. When I quoted him a budget that I thought I could use to score his movie by using only instruments that I could play and my own studio sounds, he was delighted to tell me that he in fact had three times that amount. I immediately urged him to get more, because even though he had a music budget nearly equivalent to his shooting budget (that's right! unheard-of), he still didn't have enough to record a full orchestra for the entire movie. We used every trick in the book to stretch his budget into an orchestral thriller score. It was a great experience working with Chris, I look forward to doing it again soon.

If I tell you that parts of your Score for "Shadow in the trees" sounds me like Chris Young (Jennifer 8, murder in the first...) or Brian Tyler's music style (Frailty, the 4th floor...), some other say James Newton Howard (for Shyamalan movies and especially "The Village")...what do you think about these references?

It's a real honour to be compared to those composers, and a coincidence that I've actually met all three! I studied with Chris Young at USC and "The Gift" was my first chance to work on a Hollywood film score. I've done orchestrations for Brian Tyler on a couple of films: Rambo, AVPR and Eagle Eye. It's not a complete surprise that my score was compared to James Newton Howard's score to The Village, that soundtrack was used a lot by Chris in his temp score, so I also decided to use a gifted violin soloist, the (then) concertmaster for the Vancouver Symphony, Mark Fewer. I was later thrilled to meet James Newton Howard at the Sundance Composer's Lab in 2007, (and actually had a chance to play the main title for him).

What are your musical inspiration or your "mentors" (composers or other artists)?

When I was attending the Henry Mancini Institute, John Clayton came in to speak to the composers, and he said something that always stuck with me. If you put good energy out into the world, it will come back to you, in ways that you can't imagine. As a composer, the way that you put good energy out into the world is by writing music that is true. I've always tried to do that, and I've felt that energy come back to me, in surprising ways. As a film composer, I find musical jumping-off points in the characters, the setting, the story... every project is different. What I like about film composition is that you are given lines to colour inside, a context within which to be creative, and a chance to be a part of an artwork that can become larger than the sum of its parts.

Do you practice any instruments?

I played the piano and took private lessons since I was about 5 years old, I played trombone in school since the 4th grade, and I began playing guitar in high school. Nowadays I mostly play piano and guitar, though I did make a modest living as a trombonist for a year after my Master's Degree. I like to change the instrument that I write with from time to time. I believe, as Marshall McLuhan said, that the medium is the message.

Could you tell us more about your work as an orchestrator for Edward Shearmur or Klaus Badelt? What did you learn from them?

I worked as an assistant for Ed Shearmur for almost three years, after I graduated from USC in LA. He was very linear about the musical responsibilities that he gave me, so it wasn't until the third or fourth film that we worked on that I had an opportunity to orchestrate. I learned a great deal from working with Ed, and from working with orchestrators Bob Elhai and Brad Warnaar. One of the lessons that I learned, and one of the most difficult things to do as an orchestrator, is to decide when a composer wants, needs, or is even interested in the orchestral score having anything more than exactly what is already in the MIDI demo mock-up that is prepared for the director. Orchestrators don't do anything that a composer can't do themselves, most composers really enjoy orchestrating. The time demands of the scoring process just don't allow the composer to write out their own scores, at least not all of the scores, and that's where orchestrators come in. It can be difficult to know how much of a musical shorthand, if any, a composer is using when they make their demos. Klaus' demos are a good example, because they are so detailed. He was very generous, and took some time when we were working on Premonition to show me some of his tricks for programming great mock-ups.

What could be your favourite musical "playground"? (Documentaries, Video Games, Cartoons, Fantastic-Drama-Comedies...movies?) What is your vision of actual film music industry?

I definitely feel more comfortable writing for feature films and episodic television than for cartoons. I would enjoy working on a video game that felt like a film, and they are becoming more and more that way. On documentary films that I've worked on, I've been the most successful when I played scenes in a more ‘cinematic' style. It can be a challenge to write music that doesn't have at least some emotional quality to it. I see the film music industry changing rapidly, and there are many challenges facing composers. Most of the film composers that I know are very resourceful people, adept at creative problem solving, so I'm hopeful for the future.

 If a Director wanted you to collaborate with an other composer, what could be your reaction? and which composer you'd like to work with?

Film is a collaborative art form; to be working on a film, I am already collaborating with many artists - actors, writers, designers, and we're all following the director's vision. On most film scores there are many musicians in addition to myself who make valuable contributions - performers, engineers, editors. I would only hope that any suggested collaboration with another composer would be complimentary, in that they would bring to the table skills or experience that I didn't have and vice versa. In that way I'd be interested in working with performing artists, I've always wanted to work with the Barenaked Ladies, I've always been a fan of theirs.

Could you tell us anything about the competition between new generation of composers like you? What can make the difference to be the chosen one?

I feel there is always room in Hollywood for talented, affable composers. The competition I've come across has always been friendly, but it is relatively abstract, as composers are very unique and usually work in isolation. I think there's a balance between humility and being true to one's self that is necessary in today's climate. A new composer has to be able to let go of his ego when learning the ropes, yet always hold onto the thing that makes him/her unique, and ultimately stand out from the crowd. From my perspective, the playing field is getting pretty level as far as technology is concerned, tools nowadays are making it easier to sound pretty good. So I think it really does come down to having some good social skills and being able to get along well with the people you work with. That, combined with some good old-fashioned luck, makes the difference.

What about your recent works as "Within" or "Ten years later"? Are there any commercial release with MovieScore Media or else? How did you get in touch with MovieScore Media?

I didn't get in touch with MovieScore Media, they got in touch with me. A friend of mine, Scott Glasgow, had released an album with them, and I think he may have let them know that I was working on an orchestral score, which at the time was their primary focus. The soundtrack to Within will be available very soon on iTunes.

Could you tell us more about your work as an Orchestrator on "Rambo", "AVPR" or even "Eagle Eye"?

Those are all Brian Tyler scores, of course, I was brought in by one of Brian's long-time orchestrators, Bob Elhai to help out on a couple of cues. Brian's approach to making demos is unique, he plays most of the instruments himself: guitars, percussion, piano, and even the orchestral samples are recorded live to ‘tape', they aren't programmed one note at a time in a MIDI sequencer. As a result the demos sound amazing, and have life and breadth, but they are a great deal of work for the orchestrators to transcribe all the notes from audio rather than convert MIDI files. One of the great things that I was asked to do for Rambo was a transcription of the Jerry Goldsmith main title from the first film, which was just an amazing exercise, there was so much to learn from doing that.

Interview réalisée par Xavier Ducamp

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