THE CORE
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Christopher Young Descends to THE CORE Part One

With the release of THE CORE two weeks ago, Christopher Young's musical development has reached a new complexity. A self-conscious composer, Young has never taken himself or his work for granted. While finally shedding the horror-composer classification he'd been labeled with since his early successes, which included such notable genre scores as HELLRAISER, NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET 2, THE FLY II, SPECIES, and others, Young nonetheless confesses a love for the genre and has an inescapable affinity for scoring terror tales. The fact remains that Young has managed to craft or concoct more than two decades of compelling and intensively atmospheric film music. Poised to join the A-List after composing such big films as ENTRAPMENT, SWORDFISH, WONDER BOYS, and THE SHIPPING NEWS (some feel he's already made it), Christopher Young continues to exemplify contemporary, serious film composing at its best. With THE CORE, Young's latest large-budget effort, an epic sci-fi/disaster/end of the world fantasy, the composer delivers powerful action music on a massive yet intimate scale and more complex style than he may have hitherto displayed.

Young had [IMG3R]worked with THE CORE's director, Jon Amiel, on three previous films (COPYCAT, THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO LITTLE and ENTRAPMENT), and in fact has the longest standing working relationship with Amiel than he has with any other director. Each of these films has a very different score, and one of the elements that has made Young so successful is his ability to morph himself (and/or his music) into different patterns and styles for divergent projects.

On THE CORE, Young was able to attend several days of filming in British Columbia. "This was the first time in my relationship with [Amiel] that he wanted to include me in that end of things," Young says. "But, when push comes to shove, nothing means anything until you see the picture, so even though he was kind enough to hire me during pre-production, it wasn't until I was actually handed footage that I was able to really start thinking about it."

In those early meetings, Amiel had described to the composer what he thought he wanted, which prompted Young to go ahead and write some themes based on the director's descriptions "But then when I saw the actual picture they all very quickly became meaningless," Young notes.

The director had in his mind what the finished images would look like, but that of course is difficult to convey to someone else, especially when those visual impressions are so important to providing inspiration to the composer tasked with providing just the right kind of music to enhance them. "Films like this are so thoroughly dependent upon special effects," says Young. "When we were sitting down and looking at the film originally a lot of it was just blank leader, with descriptions of what was going to be there. Amiel's conception of the score was that it avoid being too bombastic and self-important. He told me, 'I don't want the score to have that excessive pomposity that some of these disaster movies have.'"

Difficult not

The core group from THE CORE: Hilary Swank, Aaron Eckhart, Delroy Lindo, Stanley Tucci, Bruce Greenwood, and Tcheky Karyo

© 2003 Paramount Pictures

Despite the grandiose effects and earth-shattering nature of the story, Young discovered that much of the film's drama is, in fact, intimate. The majority of the film takes place inside of a ship that burrows through the earth, for example. "The first third is getting prepared for the journey, and then the second two thirds are them actually traveling to the center of the earth, so a lot of it has to do with them inside of the ship," says Young. "In the original JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH, they're walking through these caverns and levels, and they get to the Lost City of Atlantis. You've got these worlds that the music can address. But in this case, it was kind of like your basic submarine movie! Originally Jon's thoughts were that he didn't want it too big. He wanted it more intimate because it is a very personalized story. I think there's more heart and more character involvement on a realistic level than there are in some of these other disaster movies. That did change, ultimately, by the time I walked in on the stage; at its maximum, the orchestra was nearly a hundred pieces, with choir overdubbed on top of that, so it is massive in moments."

A self-made expert on horror film history and horror film music, Young was, of course, well acquainted with Bernard Herrmann's monumental film score for the original 1959 JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH, and he was aware of it as he was conceptualizing his score for THE CORE. "I knew I had a tough act to follow," he says, "but fortunately they didn't have the Lost City of Atlantis or the salt flats or a giant chameleon."

And despite similarities of concept a descent into the center of the earth - THE CORE is a far different film than JOURNEY was. "The one thing that Herrmann didn't have to deal with that I had to deal with constantly was that there was a sense that time is running out," says Young. "In THE CORE, the mission is not for science, it's to save mankind, and so they're rushing to get to the center, and so, much of the music has pulse to it. There's a lot of ostinatos, a lot of action music."

Young, who is perhaps more of an atmospheric composer than a thematic one, has crafted a handful of themes that tie this score together. "It is thematic," says Young. "There are definitely some leitmotifs that do appear numerous times. It's like things I've done in the past, but what I've been told by those who know my work who were there at the sessions, it's a step up. That's their take on it, anyway. It's much more harmonically and contrapuntally complex than stuff I've done in the past, and I did that consciously. I tried to make the music interweave, in a way, that I have never done before."

To an [IMG4R]extent, that is part of Young's growth as a film composer where he is right now versus where he was five or ten years ago but partly it's simply a reaction to the film he's been presented with. "I thought the film had the potential of embracing my growth as a composer," Young says. "But I would have to say that it was my conscious effort to display whatever development I may have had as a composer. It's interesting. One of my percussion buddies who I was working with on my student films came up and said, 'You know, I hear really tremendous harmonic growth from you in this movie!' And I said something to him, instinctively, which may have truth in it, and that was, 'No. You know what, John? This has always been there, but I've always been afraid to use it, to a certain degree!' It's like it's been there but I've never felt comfortable enough in getting that complex, only because I was afraid it would end up on the cutting room floor, and if, in my case, if the pictures have gotten better, I'm more and more reluctant to be experimental and try stuff and make it heady. You know, with the state of movies nowadays, there's sort of the idea that the safer it is, the better it is."

Horror and science fiction films have always been the places where composers can get away with being experimental and going over the top, and in that sense THE CORE may have come along at the right time to allow Young to express that complexity and evolve a little bit as a composer, or as he puts it, "To allow part of my personality, which has been dormant, to come out of the closet."

"Yeah, I've definitely grown, and maybe ten years ago, five years ago, I might not have been able to write the same score, but I know that something like it was dying to be expressed, but I hadn't really had the opportunity."

Years ago, early in his career, Young had suffered from the experience of having the score he wrote for the 1986 remake of INVADERS FROM MARS an effort he was personally very proud of and satisfied with - thrown out by the filmmakers and replaced with a new score by somebody else. "That messed my head up and made me think twice about being radical," Young says. "Now that I'm trying to branch out to do all different kinds of movies, I feel like I've really got to make sure I deliver what they're looking for!"

Our interview with Chris Young will be concluded next week.

For more information on Christopher Young, see the composer's web site at http://www.christopher-young.com/.

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