I love being able to build a song...
...out of more sounds than I can physically play.
Well, I've been approached before about music for film.
I never thought it would really work. I'm so busy with the band.
We're on tour a lot.
And if we're not on tour, we're often working on an album.
So, you know, usually, I just turn-- I turn stuff down before I even see it.
Paste it in there.
I was going through ideas of people who had a hip-hop background...
...but also could bring rock or could bring electronic elements to it.
And I was listening to some tracks just for pleasure...
...and came across one of his remixes that I was a really big fan of.
And I played it against some of the scenes...
...the rough scenes that we had, and it just felt really good.
I immediately said, "Okay, well, I want somebody who's experienced...
...not only in this process...
...but somebody who's got a classical background, can arrange...
...can do some of these things that I really don't know a lot about...
...but it'd be faster and probably more fun...
...if I have somebody who's experienced."
And Joe stuck out because of the work that he did on TRON with Daft Punk.
I generally call myself a composer, but I've started to realize...
...that the hat I wear is almost more of a producer...
...not in the traditional sense of a producer...
...but I've kind of started helping out artists...
...in a way where I help translate between what they're doing...
...and either a film score, perhaps, or the orchestra...
...or acoustic instruments.
I'm almost a translator like that.
I worked so hard on that one, like, that filter.
I wanted it to feel like when you draw the knife out, there's this release.
- Hey, what's that-J? The chirpy-J? - That's your snuggy beeps.
We would take the sounds, essentially, like, if you can imagine...
...just a keyboard full of sounds...
...and we used those as the template for the film.
Bring snuggy beats in, but as soon as it--
- Everything else stops, we take it out. - It's out.
Think of it in terms of painting, this was the palette.
This was like, where you choose certain colors...
...and you mix everything from those colors, and you omit certain colors.
It's a really big, hard-hitting movie, so the score needs to be pretty epic...
...pretty hard-hitting, but it's also very claustrophobic.
We're inside a tight space, and these guys are trapped...
...so we can't really go big with the orchestra.
So the natural thing...
...was to start focusing on the electronic side of things.
- There it is. - That's so funny.
One thing that we immediately decided to do...
...was to stray away from electric guitar...
...because it seemed too obvious.
- Yeah. - And then I think I'd:
And we also limited the use of anything organic...
...like strings or piano, something like that.
Those are only used in the moments...
...when you're getting a little bit of Rama, the main character's--
When he's talking about family or feeling something about family...
...you get those elements.
If it's not that, then everything is very, like, brittle and digital.
Elsewhere in the movie, though, we chose certain sounds...
...and those sounds were connected to characters.
We created a bunch of sounds...
...that then became the foundation for the score.
For example, one of them is kind of an alarm sound, a siren.
It's made of a sample with some, like, distortion and some delay on it.
And that echoes around in the movie...
...when this spotter, this kid, alerts the bad guys...
...to the presence of police in the building.
Rather than a real security alarm going off, you hear this music.
And it's this little, you know, vibrating alarm sound.
We liked that so much.
We liked how it kept fitting so well over different pieces in the movie...
...that we would bring it back whenever that--
We needed that tone and we were referencing that kind of tension.
And in order to use something like that, you have to let it evolve.
So in some cases, we were pitch-shifting it...
...and creating chords with it.
You'd get this nice minor chord, but it's made from the sample...
...that's already established as the identity...
...of the police-pressure situation.
One of my favorite scenes is this moment...
...when Rama is kind of taken in.
They're at a panic moment. They're running from this machete gang.
He's kind of made friends with this guy who lives in the building...
...and the guy, he lets them in and he hides them in this little--
In between two, like, panels in his wall.
Well, the machete gang catches up with them, and they start--
And the leader of the gang...
...starts, like, basically stabbing his, you know, sword through the wall.
We keep talking about how it's like:
"How did they do that final cut when his--?"
It like cuts his face like that and you can just see it...
...like push his head to the side. It looks-- I mean, it really looks good.
But it's tense. It gives me a stomachs-ache.
One of my favorite cues in the film is-- We call it the machete standoff.
There's the hallway, it begins in the staircase...
...we wind up in the apartment and finally they're outside.
To encompass the character of all those environments...
...we had to build the music in a way that it had several different levels.
And every time we reached a new level...
...the music changed and the music grew...
...or the music maybe stepped down, so that it could grow even bigger.
And there may be three or four different kinds or music...
...not only many different kinds of sounds...
...many different layers of percussion, but there are--
We end in this funky apartment with green and red lights.
It looks like a club, so Mike said:
"What do you think about a dance beat?
What about four-to-the-floor?" And I couldn't agree more, so we just--
We were able to just open up some old drum machines...
...and some old synthesizers, and just go to town.
Once we had the basic outline of the score...
...and all the music composed...
...we sent QuickTime videos to the director in Indonesia.
And he was able to watch each cue individually and give us notes.
At the end of this whole process, he sent a bunch of notes...
...as we only had a few weeks left to finish things up.
And I told Joe, like, "He's heard almost--
He's heard almost so little at this point...
...that he could potentially come in and say:
'I don't like these two sounds...
...you've gotta take them out everywhere they appear.'
And that would change, like--
He could pick out sounds that appeared in eight scenes...
...and we'd be forced to, like, really backtrack."
Luckily, at that moment in time...
...he sent us, you know, an e-mail with a bunch of notes in it.
And half of the notes in the e-mail were like:
"This is F-ing great. I love this," you know, really funny.
That's a machine sound.
I knew we were on the right track when the scenes we were working on...
...started getting bigger and scarier. I'd bring my friends in...
...I'd have them watch something and they'd actually jump in their seat...
...because of a little combination of a sound...
...and some silence that we added.
Soto watch that happen, to watch those pieces come together...
...is by far the most rewarding experience for me.
In this movie, I mean, we've got, like, over 50 minutes of music.
It's a ton of music.
And for him to basically hand over the keys to the car and say:
"Just go for a joyride," was pretty, you know, unusual and pretty fun.
- That was nice. - Something different.
And it's a lot of fun working with a picture...
...where the picture challenges you...
...and kind of takes you outside of your comfort zone.
Because I grew up writing for orchestra and writing for chamber music...
...and here I was writing a dance track, so that was a lot of fun.
That was a lot of fun to be challenged like that.
I could tell that they've obviously become...
...you know, close through working on this movie together...
...and have really enjoyed the process.
And whenever I come in to, you know, review stuff with them...
...and meet with them, they're always really happy and having a good time.
It just makes everything go much smoother in the meetings...
...and obviously in the work that they're doing.
So if you guys don't--? That's awesome.
- That sounded-- Is that damage? - Yeah.
I'm hoping to score another film.
I really enjoyed it and I'm looking forward to doing another.
This was really, to me-- I'm sure the director wouldn't want to hear this...
...but it was totally an experiment.
But it was, because I had never really done it before and I got through.
And looking back at it, it was really enjoyable. And I think...
You know, I look forward to doing some more.