John Ottman's Arachnid Overtures Part Two

By: Randall D. Larson
Date: Sunday, July 14, 2002

John Ottman is unique in the world of filmmaking in that he has, at various times, served as a composer of film music (LAKE PLACID, SNOW WHITE, HALLOWEEN: H20), a film editor (THE USUAL SUSPECTS), and a director (URBAN LEGENDS: FINAL CUT). He recently returned to the world of composing with the score for the new Dean Devlin/Roland Emmerich science fiction mini-spectacular, EIGHT LEGGED FREAKS. Today we continue our chat with Ottman.

Over the last ten years, Ottman has built up a reputation, as a composer at least, for scoring films that are either dark subjects, such as SNOW WHITE: A TALE OF TERROR and HALLOWEEN: H20, or very quirky subjects like GOODBYE LOVER and THE CABLE GUY, combining the worlds of horror, suspense, fantasy, and idiosyncratic humor. "That seems to be the specialty niche I've put myself into, and I feel very comfortable in that dark yet quirky world," says Ottman. "It will be interesting now to go straight dark again, and see if I can excuse my humor from the project, because I tend to like movies like that because I can put my sense of humor, which tends to be a little wacky, into my work. If I have to play it straight, it's a little hard to be reserved."

Ottman tends to work very closely with his directors, and EIGHT LEGGED FREAKS was no exception. Detailed mock-ups of the developing score were provided to Dean Devlin, to insure that the producer was comfortable with the sound and shape the music was taking. "I always want to go to the recording session with the [filmmaker] having heard every note I've written, down to every flute trill," says Ottman. "I want there to be absolutely zero surprise when we come to record. I think Dean was actually shocked when we got to the scoring session, because apparently he can be very persnickety and can cause some delays during the recording because in the past he hasn't heard detailed mock-ups. They told me this was the smoothest scoring session they've ever had because, basically, he was just hearing those synthesized renderings orchestrated."



More and more directors are expecting to hear detailed synth mockups of their film scores versus hearing just a piano rendition of a theme or two, as in years past. This is a process that is requiring composers to produce fairly detailed "temp scores" of their composition, electrically orchestrated via synthesizer, to show directors and producers how the music is shaping up and make sure those directors and producers are comfortable with it before attempting the final recording and to avoid any unexpected disapproval from the director. "Personally, I could never sleep the night before the recording session if I didn't know that everybody has heard the score already!" Ottman says.

It's a situation he got to experience in reverse on URBAN LEGENDS: THE FINAL CUT, when he was director and composer and film editor. There are a handful of successful director-composer hyphenates in the business (John Carpenter, Frank LaLoggia, Alejandro Amenabar, Mike Figgis) and one might think it would make the compositional process simpler, since it's one person doing both tasks. In reality, Ottman finds the circumstance as much a curse as a blessing. On being an editor-composer, the plus for Ottman is that, "I know the film more intimately than anybody on the planet, so maybe I'm going to produce music that's a little deeper. But the big minus is that there's no time to write the score! The composer is usually brought in a couple of months before the editor's done with his cut, and if you're the same guy, it can be a killer." Being both director and composer is even more difficult, Ottman found out. "I was suddenly thrown into the position that most directors are in, which is one of complete insecurity! I had temped the movie with other soundtracks, and it was working great, but then, as the director, I was terrified to go away from the temp score. The composer side of me wanted desperately to change it, but the director in me kept telling me not to! It was a very schizophrenic experience! It was very difficult for me to have the courage to pull myself away from my own temp score and do something different."

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Horror films have developed their own language over the years as far as what composers do to create music that can truly horrify and enhance the terror and shock on screen, from the jaunty monster dissonances of the past to the electronic ambient scores of modern terrorfilms. While Ottman recognizes that some instruments can do this better than others, he finds it to be most successful when the music derives from the main characters of the film. "To me, the more the audience identifies with a character and the more they believe the situation, no matter how outlandish it may seem, the scarier it's going to be. And that, going back to HALLOWEEN: H20, has been the tactic behind what I did there. The core of that whole score was Laurie Strode, the character, and her growing through the film to the triumphant ending, so I created a musical story where you're pulled in and you actually believe the ludicrous world that you're watching. If you're watching a movie and you don't really believe the scenario you're in, then you're less likely to be scared. That's always been my point of view, and therefore my music tends to be a little less over-the-top for horror movies."



When humor is involved, as in EIGHT LEGGED FREAKS, it can be tougher to walk that fine line between straight suspense and quirky humor. "The difficult thing about EIGHT LEGGED FREAKS or a movie like LAKE PLACID is that there really are no characters," Ottman says. "The ones they have are just cardboard figures, and there's not a central enough character that takes you from A to Z in the movie to pull from. In LAKE PLACID, there were no human characters to care about, there was just a crocodile and even the crocodile didn't have a problem that I could pull some drama from! When there is absolutely zero backdrop to the characters, it's a very difficult thing for me to come up with thematic material. EIGHT LEGGED FREAKS was a little different, but only because the spiders had such a quirky personality that I was able to do this theme that applied to them, even without them having any inner strife!"

Ottman's latest film score is for a (need we say it) quirky comedy called PUMPKIN, about this uppity sorority girl who falls in love with a retarded boy. "PUMPKIN is definitely also riding a line," says Ottman. "In fact, PUMPKIN probably rode the finest line of the year. It could be laughable if the music was too sentimental, but if the music were too disturbed, it would be too screwy. It had to explore the humanity of the film without making it into a joke. And the film's a very strange movie, that's what I liked about it, and so the score's very eclectic. I also have this very stuffy sorority music, which is really outwardly pompous and is very funny. It's a mixed bag, which I really loved."



Looking ahead towards X2, the in-production X-MEN sequel, Ottman hadn't yet decided on his musical approach when he spoke to us. That will come to him during the process of editing. "I tend to want to go away from the typical superhero comic book/fanfare kind of score and do something a little different, but still push the buttons because it is a popcorn film," Ottman says. "But maybe that's what needs to happen, because there is a sort of pathos to the X-Men; it's all about the inner turmoil about being different and the beauty of being different at the same time. But of course you can't compose a real downer score for a movie that's a comic book film, so that, again, is going to be another fine line in and of itself."

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