Roots of Documentary Scoring

[Robman2]

General background...

 

Prior to Rod Serlings, voice over on the original National Geographic B & W series, Anarctica, the under bed genre was more or less, scoring to picture or canned music in between dialogue.

 

Frank Baxter's, Bell Telephone hour stuff comes to mind.

 

I had the honor to be in Walter Scharff's Master Class at UCLA Extension some years back.

 

That he and RS co-opted to create the modern TV documentary form is a story.

 

Walter, very much pre silent era, and a huge talent, had the gig.

 

His logo, "The Theme" to Nat-GEO still rules a thousand versions later.

 

Walter had the striped print, and Rod's cadence, which apparently was too staggered, stepped whatever.

 

They had tried numerous versions but it was nearly impossible to set meaningful music between his voice takes.

 

Finally, Walter asked Rod to let him, write a score to picture.

 

He washed the print scenery in dramatic score, lush and Walter never played commonly to what was on the screen he always approached it with a true dramatic flair.

 

Once the score was done, they had Rod start over, and Rod's cadence, fell onto the timecode, wherever, as it did they ducked the tracks of score.

 

I was at a session for Tarzan, by Bo and John Derrick some years back, the composer has a brilliant score for the elephant charge, Walter cautioned we students, not to play exactly what appears in picture, in other words, don't use thundering timpani for such a stampede.

 

John and Bo, stopped the session, made the composer re-write the secne, with...yep you guessed it, timpani.

 

Interesting.

 

Walter also told us about the score for Dr. Zhivago, aparrently it was a hugely Russian-essque one, and there was some fall out between the film makers, and the composer.

 

They tossed that composer and the score, and rushed in Maurice Jarre to whittle out Lara's theme ad nauseum.

 

If you ever see that movie, it amost a Lar loop.

 

FWIW.

 

R

[John Sayers]

One of the first duties I had in a studio was operating the carbon arc 35mm film projector that beamed the picture via a mirror onto a screen on the rear wall of the studio. The projector was synced to a bank of 17.5mm recorder/dubbers behind the control room. In the studio they'd record music to picture. But this was rare as it was very expensive and most doco producers couldn't afford it.

 

For doco work they usually had a small ensemble with the obligatory Oboe and recorded a series of differing moods and atmospheres that the editor selected for each scene - this was also the technique for TV series where a whole stack of music was recorded in a couple of days for a 13 part series.

 

Then in 85 I joined the team to make the documentary series Beyond 2000 (Beyond Tomorrow in the US) as audio director. They broke the belief that the Betacam was only a news camera and that you could't afford original music for each episode. They had Murray Burns (keys) and Colin Bayley (gtr) of Twilight Music create original scores for each episode and plenty of it too. 16trk 1/2" Fostex recorders hooked up to Macs and midi sequencers. The combination of info-tainment with fast editing, driving music and heaps of post sync sound effects became very popular as a doco format - Mythbusters is the latest product in this format from now executive producer John Luscombe - who was the director and created the original Beyond 2000 format. It's also mixed by Mark Tanner who was my tracklayer and later became my mix assistant. I taught him

 

cheers

john

[The Lurker]

Rob:

 

I was asked to compose the score for a movie based on Walter Sharf's life and music. The film would be driven by the music, and I would be using his source music as part of my subsequently semi-original score. Walter, his family, and his publisher were championing the film.

 

They flew me out to LA to meet him. Because he was in his 90s, I figured the meeting would be kind of awkward. In fact, he was engaged, funny, full of life, not awkward at all. It was great. At one point he alluded to John Williams (who he taught) as "that nice young man." Compared to 90+ year old Walter, John, at 70+ is a young man!

 

Walter Sharf's music spans not only the history of film music, but the history of film itself, from silent films, to classics, cartoons, and even the Love Boat. He did everything.

 

I met his family and spent time at his apartment. We talked alot about music, how he would read a film and decide what it needed or didn't need from him, his experiences with artists like Barbara Striesand ("I taught her how to sing in a film") and Michael Jackson (he wrote "Ben"), "Willy Wonka And The Chocolate Factory," etc.

 

Unfortunately, shortly after I returned home, he died and the film got put on the back burner. But it was an honor, as you say, to have gotten to know him.

[Robman2]

He allowed me to join into the class, even though my skillset was not up to the level of Don Davis, Peter Berstien, Duv Scharff and the other talent in the class.

 

I schlepped the video player from his car, and he let me be absorbative.

 

He wouldn't allow us to score using an instrument and he had many many tales from the business.

 

Now that's tough, my dad could write and orchestrate but couldn't read, so I also had to gain that quality although never in a churn it sort of way, like you folks.

 

I still have the scores, with Walter's comments written in scoring ink.

 

A few metaphors: "Charts are for navigation of ships, the music written for pictures is called a score" He had a yacht down in the Marina, and spent many hours there. He also had a writing studio on Woodly near Ventura Blvd.

 

I studied for a year and a half and one time, a heavy hitter asked why he never played the versions of assignments we wrote, out loud for the class.

 

He could feel the emotion merely by reading the score.

 

His answer was one of the best tales, during the Hitler era, Ernst Toch (protegee' of Ravel) was forced to flee the occupation of his native land.

 

He was hired by one of the studios to do orchestrations. As time went on, he eventually was given a project to score and conduct.

 

Apparently, during that session, a renowned composer walked through and gave a listen, he felt compelled to suggest that Toch's piece was less then remarkable so to speak.

 

The image I have is some jodhpur'ed monacle wearing scion, was jealous and became catty in front of the entire orchestra.

 

Walter said that Toch, was devastated, and never put a baton to picture again, he was crushed and that is why Walter never gave comparisons to us, other then simple private critques hand written on our work.

 

He also referrd to Elvis Presly as "That nice young man", Walter scored all of the Elvis films as well.

 

His story about how every cstudio in town was loaning out to a competing studios, their orchestrating talent, to flesh out Gone With the Wind, the man was a kick.

 

He also had little support for computer music, until Vangelis scored Chariots of Fire, as if it were a real dramatic event.

 

I still get a laugh whenever someone plays, French, Paris etc, using an accordian or concertina, Walter maintained that in France, the street music had always been string quartets and the like.

 

In life we meet some folks who are remarkable in their verve.

 

I wrote the LA Times a letter upon W's passing, but it was not picked up because the Times rejects Word documents, it took a week to get routed back as undeliverable.

 

I really liked this man, as a mentor.

 

Rob

[The Lurker]

Rob - these days I've gotten caught up in other projects, but if the Sharf documentary starts to take off again, I could PM you and see if you might be interested in getting involved. Aside from me, all of the "players" in the project are in the LA area.

[Robman2]

Cool...

 

Who was driving the project, production company or film buffs???

 

R

[The Lurker]

Hey Rob

 

Actually the main driver is his publisher. For them it's part labor of love, and part business: the publicity from the film would help them repurpose some of his catelogue.

 

-T.L.

[Robman2]

I see,

 

Thanks.

 

R