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Interviews - James L. Venable
For
those who may not know you, care to do a quick rundown on your
background in the industry?
I started off composing music for anything that I could. This
included student films to travel logs, industrials, anything.
Anybody that wanted to me to write music I’d do it. My first
paying jobs after doing those kinds of things was writing music
for what would be considered kind of ‘ghost writing.’ I would go
in and cover cues for these composers that were doing different
animated shows. I would come in at night and work all night, and
then they’d come in and critique my cues. I learned a lot that
way.
After a couple years doing that I was fortunate enough to have a
chance to be part of the audition process for The Powerpuff
Girls, and that led ultimately to me getting that show. So I
would say that was my sort-of break into the industry. And I was
really lucky because Kevin Smith happened to watch The
Powerpuff Girls. So when he went to do his cartoon Clerks:
The Cartoon, he invited me to come in and do what I did for
The Powerpuff Girls. That’s basically what he asked me to
do. He said “whatever you do for that show I want you to do it
for my show.” So that was really cool. And then I even got more
lucky when Kevin went on to do Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back,
he and Scott Mosier invited me to do the score for that, which
was amazing as a first live-action film experience. I got to
have an 80-piece orchestra, three days of recording at Paramount
Studios, a choir, pretty much anything I needed for the score or
I could have. It was amazing.
From there that led to a relationship with Harvey and Bob
Weinstein, and I did a number of movies for Miramax, including Scary
Movie 3 and Scary Movie 4. I was fortunate enough to
get invited back to do Kevin’s films like Jersey Girl and
Zach and Miri Make a Porno. I’ve done a decent amount,
and I’ve actually got to do a horror movie called Venom
which I really, really enjoyed. That was sort of a departure
from a lot of the either comedic music I had been asked to
write. It was interesting for Scary Movie, even though
those were comedies the score was serious, so that was kind of a
neat opportunity to write horror in a lot of different genres.
To date I’ve done a lot of comedies, although lots of music I’ve
done for the comedies has been serious. My most recent feature
film was I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell, which is
available now on DVD, based on the book written by Tucker Max.
And actuallyJustice League: Crisis on Two Earths was my
most recent project.
How did you get attached to Justice League: Crisis on
Two Earths? Was there a specific project that drew the creative
team’s attention to you?
Chris Drake introduced me to everyone. He had started the music
for this movie, he wrote the main title which I think is
amazing, and had started the first several cues in the movie.
Due to personal reasons he had to step off the film and he
referred the team to me. I’m really grateful to Chris Drake
because I got an opportunity to write for all my favorite
super-hero characters simply because he recommended me. That’s
how I got involved with Justice League: Crisis on Two
Earths.
While comparable to your work on Samurai Jack, this is
quite a shift from your recent projects, which include the likes
of Clerks 2 and Zack and Miri Make a Porno big-screen flicks. Is
it a jump to go from a romantic comedy to a straight-up
superhero slugfest? How do you adapt to drastically different
projects?
Is it a jump to go from romantic comedy to super-hero slugfest?
Well, yes it is because in general romantic comedies they don’t
have huge epic fight scenes and the music tends to be a little
more along the lines of supporting either the emotions on the
screen or the comedy on the screen. Those films were
live-action, so that brings in another element of how I approach
the music. With a movie like Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths it was really cool because
there were some definite opportunities to write some epic fight
music, which is great. There was actually plenty of
opportunities for that. So much so it took a bit of doing to
score the scenes without repeating myself. That I found to be a
very cool challenge.
The projects I’ve done in the past, like The Powerpuff
Girls and Samurai Jack, all had big fight scenes in
them too, so that wasn’t too much of a stretch. But another kind
of a unique thing was scoring the dialogue and any kind of
expositional type of thing happening, and finding ways to create
the right tone and not getting in the way of what was being said
or ways to support whatever was being conveyed to the audience.
I found that to be a really cool challenge.
Really, as far as adapting to drastically different projects, I
think every project- whether it is comedy or big action epic
kind of film or whatever it is - there is sort of a tooling up
of the machine, if you will. There’s just that time when I have
to sort of spend time deciding what sort of music is going to
fit the film the best. This also involves discussion with the
creative team, getting their ideas on what works and doesn’t
work. That helps. A lot of it is narrowing it down to the
language musically we’re going to use, and then sort of figuring
out how I’m going to get that voice. Am I going to use samples,
am I going to use synthesizers, am I going to use both? Is it
going to be an orchestral score, or it is going to be a score
where I do it all out of my studio and give it an orchestral
sound? But is it going to be out of various samplers and that
kind of thing or is it going to be recorded live, am I going to
bring in live players or will I be the only live player? All of
that stuff comes into play when adapting a project.
What type of influences did you bring to the board when
working on your score for this project. Who did you look at,
what did you watch, when coming up with the Crisis score?
Probably the biggest thing I watched, or I should say listened
to, was the spotting sessions that Chris had done with the
creative team to get their input. It’s interesting that even
though I had done a lot of comedies, a lot of the time the music
is serious. I had scored a movie called Superhero Movie
and that kind of brought a lot of the superhero vocabulary into
my toolkit, if you will. So a lot of the devices and things that
I had studied for that movie I brought to this movie because
really - it’s the Justice League and there’s all these amazing
superheroes all over the place.
So, as far as who did I watch and listen to, I didn’t have a lot
of time to research it ahead of time. I spent most of my time
watching the movie itself and letting it inspire me and also
listening to what Chris had done. I wanted my contribution to
the score to match what he had done on the main title and the
first few cues. Really I just kind of ran with that. My cues
started with the first big fight. So, there was the thing of
figuring out the language of these fights going to be. Is it
going to be big orchestral a la John Williams or is it going to
be more fun electronic stuff like a la The Powerpuffs
Girls, though it’s never going to go quite to The
Powerpuff Girls place.
So we sort of worked out my first cue and got feedback from
Bruce Timm and we sort of landed where we ended up. We
definitely wanted to pay homage to the large epic superhero
music, but he definitely wanted it to be not too heavy and not
too dark. So it was sort of like giving it more energy and less
about weight.
Can we expect any prominent themes in the score? Will
Superman get his grand heroic cues, for example? Did you leave
your mark on some of the work Drake did for the score?
There are themes in the score. It’s interesting with the Justice
League there’s so many superheroes and so many characters it
almost undercut everything to score each superhero individually,
but there were some stand outs. I guess the Owlman and Batman
had their tone since they had their clash in this movie, and
then the Justice League and the Crime Syndicate had their sort
of themes. Chris had done a really good job of establishing
those so I tried to incorporate those as much I could. And then
I kind of went with more general action stuff, good guy/bad guy
type stuff, and then there’s also some thematic material that
accompanies Owlman’s point of view and his goals and agenda. So
I tried to score that as well. In other words, I gave that a
theme.
Were there any scenes in particular that you found hard
to wrap your head around to score? On the opposite end of the
spectrum, any moments that stick out as your favorite to put
music to?
Really none of them were really hard to wrap my head around.
There were some challenges in that some of the fights were
really epic and really long. I don’t mean long to watch, I think
they fly by from a viewer’s perspective, but as a composer, to
keep energy going for many, many minutes in a row. If you can
establish the energy and keep it going the same for too long
then that energy sort of loses its effectiveness. To find ways
to keep the dynamics going up and down and playing the arcs of
the different fights and events that were going on and at the
same time keeping the energy up without keeping to “samey” that
was probably the biggest challenge of the movie.
The moments that stick out as my favorites were the Owlman
battle with Batman and also the latter third of the movie, which
really offered the most enjoyable scoring moments for me.
Are there any big super heroes you’d like to compose
music for, or did you get your wish here with Crisis?
I’d love to score any music for any of those heroes, and I’d
probably welcome the opportunity to score for them individually
where I could really get into their character. So yes, I think
Justice League: Crisis on two Earths does offer a
composer an amazing opportunity to score for these classic
superheroes, the Justice League having all those heroes
together. I would welcome the opportunity to score a movie with
each of them individually, if that is what I would wish for. I
think I did get to score for all of my favorite superheroes, I
just wish I could get into them each individually. So I would
welcome the opportunity to score each of their individual
movies. And the villains. I actually really enjoy scoring the
villains, too. I think that’s where you get to go to all those
meaty, dark places. Owlman was one of my favorite characters to
score for.
To wrap things up for the time being, any final thoughts
on your work on Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths? What else
can we expect from you in the future?
Right now I am on hiatus from film composing and I’m using the
time to work on my next record. It’s been about six years since
my last record, which was a CD called “Holding Space.” My next
big project is my next release and it’s hard to call it a
record. And it’s not a CD either. It’ll actually be a DVD - an
experiential DVD home theatre immersive experience. That’s my
goal for this next project of mine, and I’m hoping to have that
done as soon as possible. I’ve already written a lot of the
music, but this project is sort of a multi-media project. It’s
definitely a challenge for me because it’s involving music as
well as visuals. I’m very excited about it, though. It’s also
involving getting into the whole 7.1 audio for the Blu-ray and
I’ll be composing the music in the 7.1 format. In other words,
I’m thinking, as part of the composing project, in terms of the
sevens speakers and one sub. So I’m very excited about it and
I’m really kind of glad to have this time to put into that
project because it is something I’ve been wanting to do for
years.
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