Taking Score for STARSHIP TROOPERS 2

For many years now, William Stromberg and John Morgan have been highly respected names in restored film scores from Hollywood's Golden Age. Through an outstanding series of Classic Film Scores on the Marco Polo label, restored musically by Morgan and performed by the Moscow Symphony, conducted by Stromberg, this professional partnership has rescued many rare scores from oblivion, previously unrecorded works by Franz Waxman, Bernard Herrmann, Max Steiner, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Hans Salter, Roy Webb, and many others.

But they're also composers in their own right. Stromberg provided an outstanding score for the 1997 atom bomb documentary, TRINITY AND BEYOND (Morgan provided additional music, as did Lennie Moore and Edgardo Simone). Morgan has scored a number of low budget science fiction and horror films over the years, including THE AFTERMATH, FLICKS, EMPIRE OF THE DARK, and others. He and Stromberg collaborated to score the TRINITY sequels, NUKES IN SPACE and ATOMIC JOURNEYS (all three scores are available on CD at www.buysoundrax.com.)

Their latest original collaboration is the score for STARSHIP TROOPERS 2: HEROES OF THE FEDERATION, the directorial debut of visual effectsman Phil Tippett. I recently had the opportunity to interview both of them regarding their work and their experiences scoring this new film. Here's what they had to say:

John Morgan: From my earliest memories, I have been around music. My parents had a lot of opera, operetta, and classical symphonic records, as well as a piano, which I started lessons at a very early age. When KING KONG appeared on television in the mid fifties and played all week on our local channel, I was very impressed with the music and this really piqued my interest in film music. I always had noticed it and slowly would recognize the styles and methods of Steiner, Herrmann, Waxman, Newman and others. I also was fascinated with the music from the Universal horror films, which years later paid off when we did recordings of the music of Salter, Skinner, etc. Like many others of my era, I would tape on reel-to-reel music portions from films broadcast on television.

William Stromberg: When I was born in 1964, my [IMG2R]father was a filmmaker and had quite a collection of classic 16mm film prints, so my earliest memories are of the smell, look, and sound of film. I can remember being very affected by the music that accompanied movies like KING KONG, MYSTERIOUS ISLAND, and THE ADVENTURES OF DON JUAN. I used to sit at the piano for hours and mimic the music I would hear. Lucky for me, my dad was good friends with John Morgan who was a film composer. He hired John to write music for his first short film, Ray Bradbury's A SOUND OF THUNDER. I was about seven-years-old at the time, and he would take my brother Robert and I down to John's for meetings and we would usually hang out in the pool. Often though, I would look over John's shoulder to see what music he was working on and I became really interested in how to write music. As soon as John realized I was serious about music he started making film music tapes on reel to reel for me to listen to at home. I soon had quite a collection that I played thunderously loud all the time. Because I just loved the thrilling sound the French Horns make in The Giant Crab sequence from MYSTERIOUS ISLAND by Bernard Herrmann, I started playing the Horn in the school band and orchestra. This helped me get a firm grasp on reading music notation and following a conductor and how orchestration works. When I was 15, John invited me to hear his first feature score, THE AFTERMATH, as it was being recorded with a nice sized orchestra. I was so overwhelmed by the experience that I absolutely knew what I wanted to do for the rest of my life.

John Morgan: I renewed my army friendship with composer Bruce Broughton and during the next few years, orchestrated a great deal for both Broughton. I actually made my living at this time through orchestration. Lots from Fred Steiner too and Fred recommended me to Alex North, where I orchestrated several cues of his for that television adaptation of DEATH OF A SALESMAN. My first feature films was a low-budget fantasy film called THE AFTERMATH. I was to do Jim Danforth's TIME GATE, which never was completed. Jim recommended me to Steve Barkett, who was in the final editing for THE AFTERMATH. We recorded it in Los Angeles with a 40-piece orchestra. What a thrill, although I shamelessly overwrote. Writer/director Nicholas Meyer heard my music and I did the score for a radio drama he directed called THE TRIALS OF MRS. SURRATT. This lead to Nick asking me to compose music for STAR TREK II: THE WRATH OF KHAN. Unfortunately, Paramount didn't share Nick's enthusiasm and it didn't happen. It remains the single biggest disappointment of my career. I also did music for Randy Cook's feature directorial debut: DEMON IN THE BOTTLE, which was produced by Charlie Band and Full Moon Productions. It was a fun movie to do, although we had no money and had to use a small group of instruments with synthesizers! (Since Randy has won two Oscars and most likely a third one, I am fantasizing that he will let us rerecord the score for full orchestra.) Right before doing STARSHIP TROOPERS 2, I did a score for a 90-minute Cinerama documentary CINERAMA ADVENTURE. Bill wrote half the score and we share credit. The original plan was to provide a synth temp score for some preliminary screenings and then record the full score with the Moscow Symphony Orchestra. Unfortunately, the production ran out of money and to my bitter disappointment, the synth score is still there!

William Stromberg: I would like to forget some of my early work, but since I am self-taught and have no formal university music training, all of my earlier work was a valuable education. There is no better way to learn the film music business than to just get in there and do it. You learn very quickly what works with a film and what doesn't, and how to deal with filmmakers who often don't understand music at all. I learned a lot about conducting large and small orchestras and how to synchronize everything properly to picture. Two of my earlier scores that I found most enjoyable were not horror/sci-fi, but one a comedy and the other a drama. The comedy was called ODDBALL HALL, which is all set in Africa with Don Ameche and Burgess Meredith. The film was light and fun, about some old-time gangster jewel thieves hiding out in a little village. This allowed me to write bouncy orchestral music, some based on African tunes. I remember being influenced by Walter Piston's composition, The Incredible Flutist, at the time, so I think some of it sounds like that. The drama was called KILLING STREETS and starred Michael Pare' playing twins. It is set in Lebanon and involved a violent kidnapping and rescue. It was directed by a very fine young director named Steven Cornwell, the son of writer John Le Carre'. The score was very dark and, being set in Lebanon, very ethnically appropriate. I'm still very proud of that score.

John Morgan: The Atomic Bomb films are really Bill's projects. I wrote about 25 minutes for TRINITY and we shared credit on the two sequels and I wrote almost half. It was a great experience because we were free to do what we want, had the 90-piece Moscow symphony and a full choir. Who could ask for more?

William Stromberg: Scoring TRINITY AND BEYOND was [IMG3L]a great experience for us. Giant orchestra and choir what a way to work.  I wish I had written a little more of it myself, but working with John, Lennie Moore, and Edgardo Simone was terrific. We've all been friends for a long time, and when I ran out of time, I had to hand cues out to them to compose and orchestrate based on thematic material that Lennie and I had come up with. Pete Kuran the director is a great guy to work with. While we were composing he was still acquiring new bomb footage left and right, so often he would say "just make the cue last about 5 minutes and I'll cut the scene to your music later." What a dream for a composer, and for me conducting, since I wanted to perform the music free-timed, meaning no picture and no click track banging in our ears. This allowed the music to flow much more naturally. I think the Herrmann influence will always be in my music no matter what I'm writing, since he is the one composer I admire above all. I can't help it. Of course, I'm trying to find my own voice in this business, and with the exception of the Fat Man Bomb motif, which I kind of borrowed from the Titans scene in JASON AND THE ARGONAUTS, the rest of the score is quite original, if I may be so bold.

With ATOMIC JOURNEYS and NUKES IN SPACE, I wanted to do something a bit different from TRINITY, so I decided to share credit with John and we scored them more like 50's sci-fi films. I always liked the beefy brassy style that Paul Sawtell and Bert Shefter came up with for films like KRONOS. John is great at writing that kind of music. I also love Danny Elfman's work for films like MEN IN BLACK, and especially MARS ATTACKS. When I had to come up with this kind of spirited Travel music which takes us from event to event, I decided to give it a 50's sci-fi/Elfman rolling along feel. When you have this jaunty quirky music accompanying scenes like a happy family going for a joy ride in their brand new '57 Chevy  and having a picnic right near a Nuclear test site, I think it really points out the absurdity of it all.

How have your experiences in restoring classic film scores (horrors and dramas alike) benefited your own scoring efforts on films like these?

William Stromberg: When you reconstruct or study, in great detail, the music of these great composers of the past, you really learn what  works for the orchestra and for the film. Whether it's Steiner, Herrmann, or any of the composers that we've rerecorded, I always pick up some little orchestration idea here or there. This is a blessing and a curse. After you study their music, you come away feeling like you want to try harder to write real and more complex music than is fashionable these days. Too bad film music in general isn't considered more of an art form instead of a business. I understand this, but it seems to be getting harder and harder to express yourself as a composer in film. I guess we have to figure a way to get 15 to 20-year-olds to appreciate fine music. Up the quality of music for video games, which seems to be happening, I guess.

John Morgan: On the classic scores we have had to orchestrate, it is like a college education on that particular composer. I have learned more about music and drama from orchestrating the music of Steiner, Friedhofer, Waxman, Salter, Young, Korngold and others than my formal music education. and I assimilate into my music things that really move or impress me.

How did you get the assignment to score TROOPERS 2?

William Stromberg: I think Pete Kuran may have helped on this one by recommending us to Jon Davison and Phil Tippett. Apparently they had been following our careers anyway, both with the reconstructions and our own composing.

William Stromberg: Only slightly, as this film is quite different from the first one. However, we did use a small paraphrase from the Basil Poledouris score. There is a very poignant moment in this film where one of the leads realizes she has to leave her commanding officer behind to overwhelming odds, and we thought we should quote one of the more powerful themes from the first film. Although this character had nothing to do with the first film, it just seemed right. I've never seen the TV series.

John Morgan: Bill and I read the script and went down to Sony and viewed some of the filming. The script (and film) are very dark, but I was excited because it was sort of a THE LOST PATROL (a John Ford 1934 film scored by Max Steiner) type of situation where a group of people are getting killed or taken over one-by-one. For a composer, the opportunities were great: Battle music, creepy music, monster music, tender camaraderie music... it has everything. I was just hoping we would be allowed to provide music that really contributed to the film, rather than just being musical wallpaper. Luckily for us, both director Phil Tippett and producer Jon Davison felt the same way. They know classic films and classic scores and the contributions music can make to filmed drama.

John Morgan: We tended to compose [IMG4R]thematic motifs for situations, rather than actual characters. We had, of course, the Trooper March, but also a recurring Psychic theme, a Camaraderie Theme, and a couple of motifs for the bugs that could be used alone or together, depending on the dramatic circumstances. The binding musical ingredient is often the harmonies and instrumentation rather than melodic manifestations. Depending on the sequence, these themes could stand on their own, or be combined with other appropriate themes. In many ways, this score is operatic in the sense that it covers over 80 minutes of the film's 90 minute running time.

John Morgan: A large orchestra of 90. We had three flutes, three oboes, four clarinets, three bassoons, eight horns, four trumpets, four trombones, two tubas, two harps, piano/celeste, huge percussion section and strings. The woodwinds did their normal doubling of Piccolos, English Horns, Bass Clarinets, and contra bassoons. So it was a nice traditional large symphonic orchestra.

John Morgan: Time is money and this project had very little of either.  But the music budget wasn't unique, the entire film was done on a shoestring, relatively speaking, but I think everyone working on all facets of the film wanted to do a great job and make it work. It was a challenge, but very rewarding artistically. Phil Tippett had an impossible schedule for the live action, as we did for composing. We tried to keep up with the editing of the film and did the final reels of the film in just over a week before actual recording. We orchestrated our own music, and ended up doing some composing and orchestration at night in Moscow after the day's sessions. A lot of the music required millions of notes and, of course, all the parts had to be copied for the players, so it was quite a hectic production. But that is part of filmmaking today. Rarely do you have enough time, but you get it done. It's part of the job.

John Morgan: The film was temp-tracked with music from all kinds of things. Stylistically, it was all over the map, but there was something in it that Phil liked. Mostly the tone or mood, so we did our thing with our thematic material. Some cues Phil was very specific on what "hits" he wanted emphasized, other times he left us alone to do it. We were able to "demo" about two-thirds of the score on synth for him and then ran out of time and we were on our own, although we had a lot of notes from Phil regarding this and that. It was an extremely good relationship.

William Stromberg: Start earlier on the project if possible. I could have used two more weeks. I think one of the most challenging things for me was to keep the score cohesive between John and myself and deal with that eclectic temp track. It made it a little harder on us than it should have. The temp tack really is a great way for a director to convey what he wants, but when it works incredibly well, it's so hard to compete with. The most rewarding part for me is standing in front of the orchestra conducting our music and seeing a thumbs-up come from Phil standing in the recording booth and knowing all is going fine.

John Morgan: Bill and I orchestrated our own music. The time frame was impossible. We scored the last third of the film in little over a week. It was a huge orchestra and Bill and I wrote millions of notes, so just getting the orchestrating done was quite something. The most rewarding thing for me is always to hear the orchestra play your music. That is the real pay off. Although I haven't seen the completed film with the sound mixed, I hear our music is a major player and was dubbed at a nice level, which is always a worry for a composer. Music with a film that has loud sound effects can be a real disappointment for a composer when everything is said and done, but Jon Davison, the producer, assures us that we may have lost some battles, we won the war.

William Stromberg: I'm sure we will be doing more classic film score reconstructions, and I've got one small film lined up. A film we did called OTHER VOICES will be released on DVD this month. It turned out very nice. And we've just finished mastering a 73-minute CD for TROOPERS 2 that Varese Sarabande is releasing in May or June.

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STARSHIP TROOPERS 2: HEROES OF THE FEDERATION opens on April 10^th in the USA.

For more information on TRINITY AND BEYOND, NUKES IN SPACE, and ATOMIC JOURNEYS, see: http://www.vce.com/atomcentral.html.