John Ottman Joins the Fantastic Four

By: Randall Larson
Date: Thursday, July 14, 2005

John Ottman has risen to an impressive prominence over the last several years, while also avoiding that traditional Hollywood pitfall typecasting. He's managed to score a continual variety of films from scary horror films like URBAN LEGENDS: FINAL CUT and GOTHIKA and HOUSE OF WAX, to psychological thrillers like HIDE AND SEEK and CELLULAR; from broad comedies like KISS KISS BANG BANG and EIGHT-LEGGED FREAKS to the super-hero adventure in X2. With three big super-hero scores to his credit or coming up moving from the X-MEN sequel to FANTASTIC FOUR and due to score Bryan (X2) Singer's SUPERMAN RETURNS next year, Ottman may wind up flying into his own pigeon hole a super-hero movie composer. But, with each film vastly different than the other and each score taking on a different tonality, that may not be so likely. Ottman is also slated to score Bryan Singer's remake of LOGAN'S RUN later in 2006.

I had the opportunity to interview Ottman by telephone while he was working on SUPERMAN RETURNS in Australia (Ottman, also a film editor, is editing SUPERMAN RETURNS as well as composing it, tasks he also undertook on X-2, URBAN LEGENDS: FINAL CUT, APT PUPIL, and THE USUAL SUSPECTS). We spoke the day before FANTASTIC FOUR opened, about his approach to scoring superhero movies and contemporary big-budget action films.

X-MEN LIGHT: JOHN OTTMAN DOES THE FANTASTIC FOUR

Q: What were your initial impressions of scoring another superhero team film after X2?

John Ottman: I embraced the concept of being pigeonholed in that category! [laughs]. I don't know that that's actually happened yet it's only been a couple superhero films, but it's a place that I wouldn't mind being in. I love writing big scores, and I thought FANTASTIC FOUR, from what I had heard and read about, would be something I could really let my hair down on and not have to ride any sort of fine line like I had to do in X2. I thought it could be a more balls-out superhero film.

Q: How did you get the job to score FANTASTIC FOUR?

Ottman: I used the connections that I had on X2, which was also a Fox movie. I called the head of Music, I called the producer on the project, Ralph Winter, who had also produced X2, and I called the Music Supervisor, Dave Jordon, who was also represented by my agent. They rallied to have the director, Tim Story, meet me. He did, and he saw how enthusiastic I was. I said to him, "just, imagine X-MEN, but light!"

A lot of times when to meet a director there's a leap of faith if you don't have a whole repertoire of music behind you that's exactly what they're looking for. With FANTASTIC FOUR, I knew they wanted something lighter, and I didn't really have a lot of that. I mainly had X2 which was tinged with a lot of seriousness and darkness. When you really want a job badly you just wage a campaign and try your best and the campaign can get nasty, too, because the competition finds out about it. There was some intentional rumor spreading when I was being considered for FANTASTIC FOUR - "John's going to be too busy doing SUPERMAN, he can't do this," and I kept calling back, saying "no, that's not true. , I'm sticking around until it's done, don't worry about that!" Fox was very nervous, knowing that I had SUPERMAN coming up and I kept trying to reassure them that I wasn't going to just ditch them and leave and not score the film. I think other entities were trying to worry them.

Q: Not having been familiar, as I'm told, with the comic series, what did you do to prepare yourself for this film?

Ottman: I read the script months before I saw any cut, and that really helped me start thinking about things. I also went on the Internet and looked up the characters, since I didn't know anything about them, and I needed to know where they were coming from. I was also, latently, thinking about it a lot, even while I was scoring another Fox film,

HIDE AND SEEK. I remember I was down in the dumps one day, because HIDE AND SEEK was a dreary kind of score it was something I enjoyed but sometimes you want to have your fingers hit the keyboard and do something different for a change! Doing that, I just stumbled across something one evening I put a French horn patch up on my computer, just for the heck of it, and began plodding away on some keys just to take a break from writing creepy cues for HIDE AND SEEK. I discovered some chords, and I thought, "these are kind of cool. I wonder if these might work for a theme?" So I saved the file, put it away, and then forgot about it. Then, when I had to start working on FANTASTIC FOUR, I revived the file and listened to those chords, and they ended up being the main crux of the theme.

Q: How would you describe your initial approach to FANTASTIC FOUR? What was the specific voice you wanted to convey in this score?

Ottman: I wanted it to be heroic and have a lot of humanity in it, because these are people who have all been changed. The humanity mainly reflects around Ben Grimm, because he's the one who can't change back at will and he's the one who has the most regret about what's happened to him. I wanted there to be a general theme that reflected all the characters, and then for Dr. Doom I turned the theme on its head. His theme is essentially the same theme, but in a darker, brooding, minor chord style. He's really part of them but he turns dark, and I felt he should have some connection to the Main Theme. Ben Grimm has his own Americana Theme, which I used to build sympathy for the character when he's thinking about what he used to be, which was an astronaut. Those are really the two major themes. Other than that, there are just little motifs that reflect the characters.

Q: How did you interplay the themes as the characters change and interact through the course of the story?

Ottman: I start sprinkling the theme in a little bit here and there as the film develops. It really starts as they begin discovering their powers, and you start hearing small reflections of the Theme. If you're really not listening hard you may not recognize that it's the Main Theme of the film. It starts growing more and more. As they become more developed, the Theme itself becomes more developed. I used their Theme in funny ways, too when they're becoming celebrities I used it in a bombastic way when all the flash bulbs are going off and they arrive at the Baxter Building.

Q: I've heard there have been some changes to the film since you originally recorded your score.

Ottman: They re-edited the whole thing after I scored it. I have not seen the finished film yet so I don't know what they've done to the music my music editor said some of it's hamburger. Apparently the studio wanted a lot of changes and so the film was

re-edited and shortened, so all the places where it used to breathe with the music, suddenly it's all truncated, so the music feels too much. My music editor told me they had to axe some cues, so I'm not sure what the score's going to sound like in the final mix. Another thing that's really interesting is that they originally had two very lengthy opening title sequences that were dropped. There was this three-minute sequence that was completely animated to the theme of the film, which was a dream come true for me. It was this nice, big, animated, extravagant super-hero opening, but the studio was unhappy with the first title sequence, so they had another company do different version at the 11th hour, something like two days before they started dubbing the film. The studio hated it, so they axed it, and they threw out the opening title completely. The movie just starts with a 15-second title card and then goes into the film! My music editor, Amanda Goodpaster, had to take some piece of music I had written for something else and throw it over the top of the film.

Q: I'm assuming all this stuff is happening after you're long gone from the project?

Ottman: Yeah. And some scenes were still being shot while we were literally in the middle of dubbing the movie. We're recording and they're still shooting some sequences! I wrote music to what I imagined would be the scene they were shooting! Then I wrote variations and ins and outs and Amanda pieced it together and I still don't know what to expect when I see the movie! It's funny, Jerry Goldsmith always said once you deliver a score it's out of your hands. What they do with it afterwards - just don't agonize about. You'll just be unhappy!

Q: What is your approach to scoring action scenes in a film like this? You've always been pretty adept at keeping dissonant battle music under control and not let it get out of control. How would you describe your style of scoring action scenes in films like FANTASTIC FOUR?

Ottman: I have a style of doing things and it stays the same pretty much with every movie I do. The type of music will be different for every movie, of course, but my approach is usually the same, and that is to try to score things in a thematic manner. Even if it's an action scene, it has to have something to do with the character who's in

the scene. I score from the character's point of view no matter what's going on, and I think that automatically creates a sort of romantic style when I do action sequences. Even in an action sequence, there should be something else going on under beneath the surface, and I try to bring that out. For instance, one of my favorite moments in FANTASTIC FOUR although I don't know how it's mixed of what happened to it since! was when the Human Torch is flying through the city near the end of the movie. It's his fanfare at full throttle, coming full fruition, with choir and everything. So, instead of just doing straight action music, I made it thematic. That's what John Williams would have done!

Q: You're not just scoring the obvious, you're scoring the subtext too, which is the character you're seeing and all that's transpired with him prior to that moment.

Ottman: If you don't care about the characters, you can see an action sequence and be glazed over and really not be invested in it at all. As a composer, if you can remind people what the stakes are and who the character is, I think they'll be more engaged in the action.

Q: How much music did you write and record for the film?

Ottman: I recorded about 90 minutes of score, which includes extra music for scenes I hadn't seen yet. My music editor tells me there's probably about 65 minutes of music in the actual movie, though.

Q: How large of an orchestra and what instrumentation was used on this one?

Ottman: I think we had 98 pieces. It was your standard orchestra layout. We had 8

horns, 4 trombones, your normal woodwind accompaniment, and a lot of strings. We had four of five percussionists.

Q: How did you integrate electronics?

Ottman: Barely at all. I think there's just two percent electronics in this score, mainly for when they're discovering their powers. I had some sort of quirky, gurgly sounds going on there. And I have a couple metallic sounds I did for Von Doom when he changes into Dr. Doom.

Q: What was your toughest challenge on this score?

Ottman: The constant picture changes. I would deliver the score and then they'd make more changes. I kept thinking, "okay, this is the last time they're going to change this scene, so I'll actually rewrite it again, for like the fifth time." And I'd think, "okay, from this point on, there's no way they can change this scene again, and then after we record it, they change it! So the biggest problem was just in constantly changing cues to fit the ever-changing picture.

Q: How well does the Varese Sarabande soundtrack CD resemble your original score?

Ottman: I'm pretty happy with how the CD came out. Even though it's just half of the score, I think it really represents it well.

Q: How closely did you work with director Tim Story on establishing the musical tone and presence in the film?

Ottman: Tim was great. He really believes in sitting back and letting you do your thing. He has a point of view but he also doesn't become an iron fist over you. He really trusted my approach and I appreciate that in a director.

Q: If there should wind up being a FANTASTIC FOUR 2, would you be interested in being involved?

Ottman: Of course I would love to do it. My fantasy has always been to write a sequel to my own work, and that's one of the reasons I was bummed about X-MEN 3 being pushed aside, because I was looking forward to doing a sequel to my X2 score. That was really going to be exciting process for me, because I had set up all of these themes to be expanded upon later. I would love to do that for FANTASTIC FOUR if there ever is a sequel.

Q: In addition to your affinity for scoring super hero films, you've also done quite well with horror scores like GOTHIKA and HOUSE OF WAX and HIDE AND SEEK, which tend to be very dark and somber and scary. What's your take on scoring that type of film?

Ottman: The score basically has to be more psychological than it is "horror." HIDE AND SEEK, for example, was a really difficult score because it had to ride so many fine lines. For Dakota Fanning's character, the music has to reflect that perhaps she's a bad seed, but you want it to simultaneously reflect the pain that she lost her mother, while at the same time the music has to be unsettling for the audience. Having the score doing so many things at the same time was the difficult part of that score. Again, though, the more I could score it from the characters, the scarier it would be.

Q: What can you say about SUPERMAN RETURNS? I know you're just starting to editing the film now, but do you have any notions about the music yet?

Ottman: All I do know is that there will inevitably be some John Williams music in the movie. It's tough, you can't get way from it and I don't think we should, completely.

The real struggle with conceiving of this score when that happens, which is of course way down the line still is that this film has to have some respect for the original and it really does have a sort of reminiscence of the original but at the same time it's got to be its own movie. It's evolved into a new modern franchise, and the score has to tell us that. The score has to say, "look, we recognize this is Superman, but at the same time, it's going to move on." Now, what that means with John Williams' theme, I'm not sure yet! I have the feeling we'll probably use the theme itself and then all the surrounding score will be something original.

Q: It's almost like you need to acknowledge it, because it's expected, but then get past that and do your own thing.

Ottman: Yeah. I just have to remove my ego from the picture and do what feels right. So many of these sequel or remake movies come out, and they don't use the original themes, and as a movie fan myself, I always get upset when they don't. So I have to really put myself into the position of the fan, and ask if I would be really pissed off if I saw this movie and didn't hear that familiar SUPERMAN fanfare?

Q: When do you actually begin scoring SUPERMAN RETURNS?

Ottman: Not for quite a while. We have a pretty good post-production schedule on this. The film's not due for release until June 30th of next year, so I wouldn't be recording probably until; April, so probably won't start working on it until, maybe, February.

Q: With you doing the editing on this film also, do you think it will be easier, or have less chance of changes and new cuts?

Ottman: There will definitely be less chance of surprise changes, but it's never easier, because it's next to impossible to do both tasks, especially with a film like this which is laden with CGI, and the inevitable studio changes and so forth - to be the guy making those changes and the guy writing the score, it's definitely not easy and it definitely takes my time from writing the score away from me. I do have another editor on the project with me [Elliott Graham, who co-edited X2 with Ottman] who will be pulling the weight when I'm off scoring, but nevertheless as the lead editor, I'll be yanked back and forth constantly.

Q: Is it tough writing music to a sequel of somebody else's score? You've written sequel scores to X-MEN, URBAN LEGEND, HALLOWEEN H20, and now SUPERMAN RETURNS.

Ottman: I sort of see those films as my own, especially X2. I definitely iterated the attitude of Michael Kamen's theme from THE X-MEN, but I really now consider that score a John Ottman score because I concentrated more on my own themes. SUPERMAN RETURNS will be different, for sure, because this will not just be in the same attitude, but this will be using actual overt-isms from John Williams.

Q: Knowing John Ottman I am sure it will still be a John Ottman score!

Ottman: Somehow, somewhere in there! It's going to be a weird scoring assignment. I just don't want to be another Ken Thorne [Thorne adapted William's themes into a score for SUPERMAN 2/3]. I want to be able to write a score for this film that isn't just rehashing old cues from SUPERMAN 1 I think that would actually belittle the movie and, frankly, make it laughable,. For more information on John Ottman, including additional insights and perspectives from John about his scores, see his web site at www.johnottman.com

Recommended Soundtrack sources:
www.buysoundtrax.com  
www.intrada.com  
www.screenarchives.com  
www.footlight.com  
www.arksquare.com/index_main.html  (Japan)
www.intermezzomedia.com/  (Italy)
www.moviegrooves.com
www.moviemusic.com

For questions or comments, contact the author at Soundtrax@cinescape.com