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 Banner by Wes Vance |
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When Elia Cmiral first became interested in composing motion pictures, he didn't expect to be scoring so many pictures in the horror genre. In 1988, Cmiral first gained notice with a trendsetting score to the indie hit APARTMENT ZERO. A decade later, he received his big break by scoring John Frankenheimer's intelligent actioner RONIN. Since then, Cmiral has scored countless of films in every genre, his credits include STIGMATA, WRONG TURN, RESIDENT EVIL: APOCALYPSE, PULSE, and many more. With the release of the AFTER DARK HORRORFEST, Cmiral has composed scores for two of the films in the fest with completely different sounds, the traditional score in THE DEATHS OF IAN STONE and a more electronic pulse in TOOTH & NAIL, proving his versatility as an artist in a vastly underappreciated medium in films. Cmiral took a few moments out of his schedule to enter the Crypt to discuss the two scores, his career as a composer, and a unique insight into the challenging profession in this Colonel's Crypt exclusive.
COLONEL’S CRYPT: What is it about music that inspired you to make it a career, particularly in scoring motion pictures? ELIA CMIRAL: I started writing basically for theater, not for films. I wrote a couple of scores for my father’s theater group and I slowly moved on to a more eclectic media which are movies and I started my career in Sweden. CC: You first gained attention for writing the score to APARTMENT ZERO. How did you get the project and how was the experience? EC: APARTMENT ZERO, well, it was the right place at the right time. I met the director and producer, they needed a composer and in ten days I wrote the whole score. CC: You were a student at USC while writing the score? EC: It was shortly after I finished USC so for me it was from a nice, convenient time at school to the madness of the real world. It was very challenging, not only the time, having ten days to write everything, but also in the score they needed. They needed a score with an element of coming from Buenos Ares, Argentinean Tango. It’s a very special type of music which at the time I didn’t know anything about. CC: Do you have a particular interest in the horror genre, mainly with the horror films you’ve scored? EC: Frankly I’m not really a big fan of horror movies myself, but after scoring STIGMATA I was offered more suspense and horror movies. Frankly I didn’t choose it myself but I enjoy it because I found with horror and thriller you can write very contemporary, interesting music, very modernistic, and it can be a very interesting score. CC: With that said, the soundtracks you composed for the two films in the AFTER DARK HORRORFEST were two completely different scores. THE DEATHS OF IAN STONE was a more traditional score whereas TOOTH & NAIL was more electronic and ambient. Do you have a particular preference? EC: I always try when I get a movie, I come with an idea and go inside the movie, what the movie needs, what is missing when I see the movie without music. Music is actually another collaborator coming into the plot. Is there anybody missing here, and who is it? With THE DEATHS OF IAN STONE, it was very interesting, I loved the story. I felt it needed a classic, traditional score to support the plot, because the plot wasn’t really a horror movie. It’s a tale of redemption, a love story. TOOTH & NAIL is very apocalyptic. It’s about the future and what might happen if we run out of oil, what would become of society. It was a futuristic challenge and I felt it needed that ambience. CC: I’ve always felt that composers are one of the most underrated and underappreciated talents in film. Could you explain how you are presented with a project and how much time you are given on a project? What is the biggest overall challenge in creating a musical score? EC: I call it an eagle down in the trenches. There are a lot bullets flying around your head when you choose this type of career. The time in creating a score is shrinking. It used to be about fifteen or twenty years ago, you would get one and a half or two months. Today you’d be really happy if you got five weeks. To try to write a huge amount of music for the picture, meaning not your pleasure but for something else, you have to create 55-60 minutes of music in five weeks, it’s very challenging. CC: Your big break was in composing RONIN in 1998. Now I had read that you had auditioned to compose the film and I was wondering how do you audition as a composer for a film? EC: It’s not unusual to do a so called demo to audition for a picture, especially when you haven’t had that big of a career. People don’t know you and don’t know what you can write so they give you a piece of the movie and they expect you to write something, make a demo, marry the film with the music, and show the music with the producers and director and they decided that it fit. I understand producers and directors ask for you, but from my point of view as a writer, it’s unfair, so they try to emulate orchestras faster. We only see five or ten minutes of the movie. Even if you see the whole movie, a score is not just one scene, a score is like a script. It has the development of all the scenes. It’s an arc from the beginning of the movie introducing the characters and the main theme to the end of the film when you know what happens. It’s very unfair, here’s the main thing, how about the rest of the movie, what about the other ninety minutes of the movie? Sometimes they give me just a script, that’s even worse. Writing music with a script, a script is one form but it’s not the movie. The movie is acting, editing, lighting, camerawork, a lot of aspects. The exact way how I write, how everyone writes, is that we are writing for the entire movie. We are writing up to its music without any connections. It’s not easy. Writing up the music without any of these connections, it’s not easy to do it. I think it’s easier to write the whole score. CC: Who are some of your favorite musicians? EC: Oh boy, there are so many. I have a couple of heroes of course, John Williams, Jerry Goldsmith, Elmer Bernstein, and many others. Every composer has a couple of scores that I love and they have some weaker scores. These people really have no weak scores. CC: Where do you think the film industry is heading in the next few years, especially the role of composers being that soundtracks and the new digital medium of recording music are getting more popular? EC: That’s a good question. I think if I know the answer, I would go there. I think at this moment, nobody really knows. I think today with the new technology, cheaper, faster computers, everything is getting smaller and more accessible for newcomers, it is opening doors for many people that would never have a chance to score movies, and maybe even a musical. Everybody can get a laptop and a couple of sample libraries, copy and paste something into the movie. In some cases, it can work, but I don’t call it scoring, it’s not writing, writing is something different. I think it’s going to be similar like today. There’s going to be real writers that will write for orchestra, I think orchestra will stay. The power of the orchestra is irreplaceable. There are people that will use collages of sounds and ambient tones with rhythmic pulses. It’s going to be the same really, I don’t see much of a change. CC: What gives you more satisfaction, working on a project or finishing a project? EC: I’m writing from the beginning to the end. When I’m starting, it’s really exciting because I know how important the moment to decide what thematic group I find for each character and the whole movie. Now I know my truck and I just run so to speak. Then when I’m mixing and working with my engineer, I do additional changes and I’m fine tuning my score and it’s very exciting because I can add and change things. Maybe there’s too much here or too little there. Then to go and mix the music with the sound of the movie, it’s so enjoyable. CC: What is next for Elia Cmiral? EC: There are many things on the horizon, but I am superstitious so I can’t really talk about it. There are some interesting projects, both in film, concert, and ballet, and all the projects are going to be very projects. CC: What would be the ultimate dream project for you? EC: There are a couple of dream projects. I’ve always loved ballet, I’ve written three ballets. To me, ballet is an ultimate form of music married with movement, so I love ballet. No dialogue, it’s a beautiful form. That’ll be one dream project, a full length beautiful ballet with a great company would be great. In the film world, I would love to work again with a director of the size, knowledge, nobility, and supporting power that John Frankenheimer had. That’s something I never ever learned in a short time so much as I learned from him. Going through the writing process and showing him my ideas, visiting him every couple of months. I was very close to him, spoke to him every day, coming to my studio, flying to London. The whole thing was so rewarding. That would be my dream. The third one is to score a good movie with a really good cast and good story because there’s nothing more inspiring than writing for a movie and seeing such great actors, like in RONIN with Robert De Niro. The music just flies out of me. CC: I leave the last word to you. EC: I am very happy that you like my effort on these movies. I am writing for movies, I am writing for the audience, and every time I get an e-mail from those appreciating my work, it’s very much rewarding, and it keeps me going on and on and on no matter what. CC: Thank you very much for your time. EC: Thank you so much Scott for having me here.
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