What was really fun to shoot?
None of it was fun.
None of it?
No, there's moments where you kind of--
When you get something done quickly...
...and the performers are all on the same page and they're going at it full...
...and when you get that shot in like four, five takes, then you feel great.
You're pumped up and excited to go ahead and do the rest of that scene.
Like, the most amount of takes we did on something was about 40.
And it was a quick turnaround and a knee to the face.
And it took us 40 attempts to get it.
Then what was the hardest?
The worst was the scene where we go through the hole in the floor.
When we go through and the whole shoot-out process.
The reason why it was so hard, though, wasn't because of the actual shots...
...or what was happening in the scene.
It was that we needed to get a studio set...
...that had enough room to build two stories in there.
And there were very few studios in Indonesia where we can actually get that.
And they were all booked out.
So we had to use an indoor badminton court in the middle of nowhere.
So we built this two-story set inside this court.
And it was a tin roof.
The heat in Indonesia's pretty hot at the best of times.
- My gosh. - It went up to 40 degrees...
...42 degrees in there. Like, Celsius, sorry.
- Yeah. - When we were in that environment...
...we were dropping like flies.
We were all starting to get close to passing out.
The guys with the SWAT team uniform...
...they had the SWAT team jacket and the helmet, gloves, everything.
And they had to run around the room and get shot at and jump out of the way.
So we ended up having to shift it to a night shoot...
...to get it to drop down in temperature.
How did my name come up regarding the score for the movie?
When Sony picked up the rights, that was one of the first conversations.
So we were still, like, only two months into production at that time.
And then they sent us a list, and your name cropped up.
We were really happy, when the footage got sent to you, that you responded to it.
I know about your background from Linkin Park...
...but what made you want to go off and do a film score?
That was really the rep from Sony who called us, said:
"Here are a couple examples of your own work...
...that we heard and we think would fit really well."
And the three things they listed were my Fort Minor record...
...and two remixes that I had done.
All three of those things I did completely for fun.
You had complete freedom in the creative process as well.
So I thought, "Well, if what they want is what I naturally do just for fun...
...then maybe this is gonna be a really fun project."
ls there a scene or a track that you guys are most proud of in the film, then?
You know, there were a few scenes that we attacked early.
Like, the drug-lab scene was one.
The alarm scene, when the SWAT team is first, like, in a real--
In the building and the spotters hit the alarm.
If we could get those right...
...it was gonna be one of the most challenging scenes.
And if we could do that then we could do anything.
Were there any cues that we did for The Raid that...
...when you finally heard them, you went:
"That is, like, really close to what I imagined it'd be"?
Well, the one thing I actually really love most is the final fight.
And you do this really interesting percussion piece on there.
It kind of links to the way we do music for silat and demonstrations in Indonesia too.
Where it's like the percussion almost goes along...
...with the movement, the fight scenes.
So, like, each block, each hit has a certain sort of exclamation point.
That was something I really loved. And the way it built and built.
I don't know about those demonstrations, but what I do--
What that reminded me of is every year for New Year's Day...
...in Little Tokyo here--
I'm half-Japanese. In Little Tokyo, they do, like, a celebration.
And part of that celebration is they do, you know, karate.
They do kendo, they do taiko drums. And they mix all that stuff together.
Whenever they do it, there's always music playing.
There's a lot going on. And I think--
Thinking back about the piece, I think it has a little to do with that.
- Yeah, yeah, yeah. - There's something about...
...the fighting form feels very, like, natural.
And then the music feels very organic and natural.
- But we mashed it up with digital stuff. - Yeah, exactly, yeah.
What I liked about it is that you have this...
...traditional element to it, but then it's modernized too.
It's a mix of different styles and inﬂuences.
Well, I'm glad you liked it.
There was the scene where the guy jumped off-- Got thrown off of the...
- The atrium. - And comes down on his back...
- ...and breaks his back. - Yeah.
That was apparently-- I heard that was a pretty stressful day.
Now, yeah. The first day of that was stressful.
We did two different days on that.
We designed the stunts in a way that we could do them as safely as possible.
But obviously, certain things will go wrong along the way.
And so the way we did that shot was we did it in three separate shots...
...and then stitch them together. The first shot, there's a wide shot.
We throw him over and then the wire controls his path...
...so he lands on crash mats.
But then the second and third shots is we put the wall back in...
...the camera's locked, and we just raise him up one meter away...
...drop him on his burn so his back comes down one side.
On his back so his legs come down the other.
- And then it's all folded. - The three get stitched together.
So then, yeah, his back can look like it completely crushes.
But when we did the first shot, the wide one...
...obviously he's on a wire to control his path.
The guys pulling the wire, when he leapt off, they pulled too hard.
So instead of coming down on an angle, he went straight across...
...and smashed the back of his head against the wall on the other side.
The impact meant they lost control of the wire, so they dropped him.
- Then they dropped him. - Then he was falling down.
Because of the impact, he came down on a trajectory.
He missed the crash mats that we put up and landed five meters down on concrete.
It was a heart-in-mouth moment. We all rushed outside to see how he was.
And we have, like, a paramedics team and, you know, ambulance on standby.
And we really needed them that day. So they came in.
Got him up onto his feet eventually and then sent him off.
Four days later, he came back and did the shot again.
- That's crazy. - A hair-raising moment.
The challenges of doing something like this is that...
...that part of me that does hooky, memorable...
...in-your-face music kind of thing so naturally...
...I have to be really sparing with that when it comes to doing a score.
It didn't take too long to get there, but you should've heard the first--
The first demos, you might as well just turn the movie off.
Because it's like, every time-- The music is so distracting.
I'm just writing hooks and things, and I'm going, "Oh, my God.
This is, like-- I'm ruining this movie right now."
For the first, like, three or four days.
You have a theme that crops up three or four times throughout the film.
Which ties in nicely, then, to the final end-credit song as well.
I saw some footage of the film and then I wrote to nothing.
I wrote, like, on my laptop. Actually, I left for tour.
And so I wasn't watching anything. I was remembering the feeling of the movie.
And I was writing a bunch of different themes.
And when we found that one that felt like the sense of the whole film--
Not just one element of the film, but it really felt like the movie.
And rather than using something, like, in a traditional form...
...where you've got, like, the notes are the theme...
...we started using it as the sound is the theme.
It's almost a little bit more sound design than it is score.
But it's kind of a mix of both.
Halfway through the process...
...of making the music for the film, we started talking about:
"if we're going to put it at the end, what if we start putting some vocals on it?
Who would we call? Who would we reach out to?"
And I just randomly got in touch with Chino.
We were just, like, e-mailing about something else or something.
And I asked him about it, because he has this--
Although he's known for the Def tones, he's done a project called Crosses.
And when I heard the Crosses stuff, I thought, "That's it. He's got the voice."
He came to my studio, and I'm telling you, we knocked that thing out...
...from scratch-- Like, we had nothing.
--Till it was done, in like three hours.
- Maybe two hours. - Right.
It was crazy. For me, it's one of the times...
...when a song comes together that easily...
...it's kind of like there's a magic to it.
You just know it's, like, the pieces are all there...
...and everybody just kind of knows what it's about.
We did end up basically taking those sounds...
...and turning them into multiple themes.
Yeah, because that's one thing I really like about it, is that...
...it's very identifiable in the way it's used in the closing credits of the film.
But then there's moments where you take that theme...
...and you kind of manipulate the sound of it...
...to create different atmospheres and tones.
The gentler version at the beginning.
Those moments between him and his wife.
It gives a more emotional feel to the scene.
Then we have it again before he's about to go out into the corridor.
That's kind of defined more as a sort of...
...building up the hero character of what he's about to do in his journey there.