Hollywood Road

Back in Los Angeles, Murphy only rested for two days, and Hans Zimmer, who was in charge of the soundtrack, called and informed that part of the soundtrack had completed the sample.

An excellent film needs an equally excellent soundtrack to set off the atmosphere. If the two can be perfectly combined, the effect of one plus one is far greater than two. Many movies in the past and now have proved this point countless times , so Murphy immediately gave up the vacation and told Hans Zimmer to meet in the professional studio in the Fox Building.

Both parties are veterans in the industry, and there was no unnecessary nonsense when they met. After a simple greeting, Murphy said directly to Hans Zimmer, "Let's start now."

"Yeah." Hans Zimmer nodded and told his assistant, "Alex, let's play."

The soundtrack sent is mainly divided into three aspects, involving the three most important characters in "Dark City", namely Magician, Jay Rachel and Chris Dann.

Murphy, Gal Gadot, and Kara Firth, the three film producers, pricked up their ears and listened carefully to the original soundtrack played by Hans Zimmer's assistant.

The first thing to play is the main soundtrack of the magician. Just like what Hans Zimmer told Murphy, he used a lot of depressing electronic sounds to highlight the restlessness and extreme evil brought by the magician.

Although he is completely a layman in music, not to mention very professional knowledge such as composition and creation, but Murphy has been in Hollywood for more than ten years and has shot and produced so many movies, so he still has a certain understanding of film soundtracks.

Full of depression is the distinctive feature of this magician theme soundtrack. It uses a seemingly incongruous monophonic transposition, combined with the special sound effect produced by an electronic synthesizer, directly giving people a strong auditory stimulation.

Hans Zimmer obviously used a lot of cold timbre to create a dark atmosphere of the soundtrack, many dissonant chords and almost crazy weird melody, plus an unusually rich electronic element, and even an analog stopwatch countdown and explosion-like The sound effect is integrated into it - the mixing of various timbres not only makes the electronic sound effect describing the magician not aurally weak, but also makes the emotion more full and real.

After playing the magician's main soundtrack, followed by Chris Dann's background soundtrack, this soundtrack inherits the tone of "City of Chaos", but is richer and more gorgeous, the violin keeps marching a sixteenth note The bow-hopping performance is strong and powerful, and combined with the sense of urgency created by the percussion instruments, it also shows an unstable and uneasy mood, just like Chris Dane's thought that he may fall into the abyss at any time.

Coupled with the long notes stretched out by the strings, it is completely a release of passion. With the accelerated theme of Chris Dann with a strong sense of rhythm, it is full of movement.

This soundtrack combines the effects of electronic music and orchestral music, which is quite commercial and full of modernity.

Murphy has collaborated with Hans Zimmer many times, and it is clear that this practice often appears in many works of Hans Zimmer. The soundtrack uses a large number of electronic sounds and fast transitions between orchestral music. This transition is quite fast and difficult to detect. Let the music go smoothly.

The last one played is the background music of the heroine Jay Rachel. This soundtrack uses a lot of beautiful piano solos and a lot of theme variations. It is clearly divided into two parts, just like Jay Rachel's ups and downs. life is the same.

However, even in the bright first half, the piano melody of the soundtrack uses a series of cool notes, the melody is quite divergent, and seems to tell a poignant story.

The room returned to silence, Duke turned his head to look at Gal Gadot and Kara Firth, and asked, "How do you feel?"

"I think it's good." Gal Gadot now also has considerable professional ability, nodded, and whispered, "Hans Zimmer has always been of a high standard."

Kara Firth also showed a look of approval, "It's very brilliant!"

Hans Zimmer was at a distance from them,

Looking at Murphy at this time, he knew very well that Murphy was the one who really had the decision-making power.

Murphy asked the assistant named Alex to play the three soundtracks again. After thinking about it for a while, he said, "Hans, I am very satisfied with the soundtrack. You should complete it as soon as possible, and the latest should be the end of February next year."

"No problem." Hans Zimmer stood up immediately, "I will finish it on time."

"Okay, let's stop here today."

Murphy stood up, shook hands with Hans Zimmer who came over, and said, "I'll wait for your good news."

After sending Hans Zimmer away, Murphy was not about to leave. In the editing studio next to him, Jody Griffith was leading several assistant editors to watch all the shots. He went over to have a look .

After discussing the editing with Jody Griffith, Murphy left the Fox Building. In the next few days, he would come to the editing room on time to deal with some preparations before the official editing. More than 80 special effects were shot in real scenes, and fewer shots were processed by CGI. While asking the colorist to color the shots, editing was also put on his work schedule.

Heading into November, Murphy and Jody Griffith began roughing out the film to turn more than 1,850 minutes of footage into a coherent action-crime film.

Although some special effects scenes that need to be synthesized by CGI have not been added, those shots that only need to adjust the background and light have been basically completed. After the rough cut picture style fully meets Murphy’s requirements, how to maintain the overall style on the basis of Editing the whole story more tightly is what he and Jody Griffith need to do most.

The theme of the film is dark and heavy. If the slow rhythm of "Heat" is dragged on, Murphy believes that "Dark City" will hit the street and make 20th Century Fox vomit blood.

"My request is very simple, use concise and sharp editing to form a strong narrative tension, and bring out the dark and heavy theme of the film!"

The dark style of commercial productions, thanks to Murphy's efforts, has finally become a genre of mainstream North American films since "Man of Steel". It is definitely a new thing at present. In the past ten years or so, it should be They will not be outdated, but there are not too many stories that can carry the dark style, and based on the existing content framework and style restrictions, all commercial movies will become dark and dark, and the dark style will be completely eliminated from large-scale commercial movies. , are unrealistic.

However, to a certain extent, the visual effects of Diablo's style are easy to make people tired.

In fact, what is more likely to make people tired is the process of watching movies. It is precisely because of the dark outlook on life, the pros and cons come and go, and the repeated contests. .

This kind of movie is not like the commercial movies with light comedy features of Disney and Marvel, which makes people feel like "eating popcorn". However, dark movies like Murphy also have their own advantages. , it will not be as monotonous as popcorn, forget the taste after eating, but can continue to touch people's nerves.

Of course, from another perspective, darkness is not a universal style, let alone an element that every director can play with. The former "Dark Knight" is certainly the pinnacle of the dark style, but In "The Dark Knight Rises", the dark style is reduced to the point where little is better than nothing.

There are certainly commercial considerations in this, but the restrictions of this style itself on movies, stories, and characters are also a huge factor.

There are also some people who believe that Diablo is a high-profile and high-level movie style, and it cannot be compared with commercial movies in the general sense-especially those superhero movies in which superheroes team up to fight.

In fact, even in Murphy's own eyes, whether it is a dark style or not, this matter has nothing to do with the style, but only the personal choice of the studio and director.

For example, it is not difficult to adapt some superheroes of Marvel to darken, but Marvel did not do this in the past, because the style of such movies is very different from the style of Marvel comics and the entire series.

More importantly, not everyone will like dark-style movies. Movies are just a way of entertainment for most audiences, so in general, shooting seemingly advanced and uniquely styled movies is often not It cannot satisfy the mainstream audience, especially the underage audience who occupy a considerable share of the market.

Nowadays, in the increasingly important overseas film market, the audience's perception of commercial films is "blockbuster high-tech special effects".

Therefore, when "The Dark Knight" was released, audiences were more willing to regard it as an independent movie rather than a superhero movie.

Kevin Fitch, the head of Marvel Pictures, once said this-the movie "The Dark Knight" does show the difference between a comic and a movie and the potential of a movie. But I don't think audiences will simply love this kind of dark, gritty film. Therefore, we did not shoot "Thor" and "Captain America" ​​into dark films like "The Dark Knight".

These words, even in the eyes of Murphy now, may not be unreasonable.

Movies are always diverse. Disney and Marvel are sticking to their own style, and Murphy is also sticking to his own style. Unless the inherent style doesn't work, he won't make changes easily.

Compared with Murphy who plunged headlong into the post-production of "Dark City", Gal Gadot has to control the overall situation of Stanton Studio. As the daily work leader of this leather bag company, several projects currently invested by the company , such as "House of Cards" and "Game of Thrones", etc., should be paid attention to in time.

And after Murphy gave an outline for "Fifty Shades of Grey," she was still thinking about how to run the project. .

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