Immersed in the atmosphere of a dark movie theater, where all
you can see are flashing images projected onto an enormous screen,
it’s often easy to forget that movies are actually multimedia
projects.
Tonight at Schoenberg Hall the 50-member UCLA Wind Ensemble will
demonstrate that it’s not always what you see but what you
hear that can really make a film what it is.
The ensemble will be performing the live film score to director
Scott Gill’s documentary “The Mars Underground”
in conjunction with the film’s U.S. premiere.
The concept for this live performance initially began with the
ambitions of James Dooley, who composed the film score for
“The Mars Underground,” a documentary that deeply
explores aerospace engineer Robert Zubrin’s vision of a
manned expedition to Mars.
Dooley, who has previously worked with renowned film composer
Hans Zimmer on several box-office hits, including “Pirates of
The Caribbean,” “Hannibal” and the Dreamworks
Animation film “Madagascar,” decided to take on
“The Mars Underground” as a bit of a pet project,
hoping to have the artistic freedom a large studio production often
does not allow for.
“There’s different value to be found in different
projects,” Dooley said. “Some you do for experience,
some for clients, some for financial reasons, and some you just
choose to do because you are personally attached and personally
very interested and involved. This film was one of
those.”
When composing on a studio level, music must be precisely and
subtly embedded into the film so as not to distract audiences from
the movie itself. Dooley lamented the secondary position that music
must take in a film context and anticipated a medium that will
allow for both the film and its score to be recognized with equal
acclaim.
“I do film scores for a living and the problem with this
is that once a film releases, the music kind of dies with it and
doesn’t really go on beyond the film unless it’s those
few pieces like the “˜Star Wars’ theme,” says
Dooley. “There are a lot of us out here trying to make really
great music and most of it doesn’t get heard beyond the
occasional airing on cable.”
Frustrated with the deterioration of film music, Dooley decided
to invigorate both film music and the concert experience itself by
setting live scores to the film, all in the concert hall
atmosphere. This is where the UCLA Wind Ensemble enters the
scene.
Dooley got in contact with conductor Thomas Lee of the UCLA
Music Department, who immediately took on the project with
resounding approval, making this the opening concert for the wind
ensemble this year despite both the technical and compositional
difficulties of live score performances.
“This is the first time that we are doing something like
this. It is a nice change of pace (since) it is rather unique in
any concert setting, but just the sheer logistics of undertaking
such a production is a lot of work,” said Leo Sakamoto, a
graduate associate conductor of the wind ensemble.
In addition to the film score, which Dooley had to reorchestrate
and condense into a 20-minute score from the film’s original
70-minute soundtrack, tonight’s concert requires a level of
absolute technical precision that is often overlooked or excused
for traditional concerts.
However, the members of the wind ensemble are assured that these
difficulties only add to the dynamism of the innovative concert
experience.
“It’s a bit scary (because) we have to rely on a lot
of technology to make this work,” said Rick Espinosa, a
composer who belongs to the wind ensemble. “There are two
laptops that must be synchronized, synthesizers that must be
trouble-checked, and then there’s the issue of … lining up
the music with the film correctly.
“The worst thing imaginable is for the music to still be
playing after the film, but we are excited about this and hope the
added excitement will help us draw a crowd.”
As this is the wind ensemble’s first attempt at a
multimedia performance, the members hope this opening concert will
expose the music department and its audience to new approaches to
the traditional concerts usually held in Schoenberg Hall.
“I’m not saying that this will be the norm for
concerts, but it definitely opens the door for progressively
innovative productions for (our) other concerts,” Sakamoto
said. “It shows students and others that the music department
is not only upholding a fine musical tradition, but (we) are
searching out new frontiers and fresh ideas as well.”
And beyond showing the merits of film composition, Dooley hopes
the concert will show students that Schoenberg Hall can offer more
than reinterpretations of classical music.
“We’re just trying to show that no, not all film
composition is dead. And no, not all music in the concert hall has
to be from some European guys who died two hundred years
ago,” he said.