"(GENTLE PIANO)" "SAM SIM:" "There's a certain kind of magic that happens when you put music and film together." "And I think they can really make and break a drama." "JIM O'HANLON:" "What music can do is just subtly underscore or gently guide us in a certain direction or, I think, sometimes give us a sense of how to read a scene." "What I think music shouldn't do is put a great big red arrow on, you know, "sad moment!"" "or, "happy moment!" or, "funny moment!"" "That's where it's tragic." "But neither should it just be wallpaper." "SAM:" "The skill is to pitch it just right, so that the audience is taken with the drama rather than ever thinking too intently about what the music's doing or how the music is perhaps manipulating emotions." "We've tried to be really precise and go, "OK, do we really need music here?" ""What do we want it to do?"" "I've been writing a whole bunch of sketches and ideas, putting them in sampled form, so that it gives Jim and George a chance to hear what the recordings may eventually sound like." "And they've been putting those sketches into the cuts as they're working." "We've basically started a dialogue of, um... what they think is working and a whole style for the series." "Since we started, we've just spoken a lot about what we don't like about certain period adaptations and what we do like." "One of the things I felt about Sam's stuff is it didn't sound like, you know, period classical." "It felt very fresh and contemporary and I guess that's what we're trying to do with this Emma, is make it have one foot in the period and one foot in today." "That's what Sam's music felt like." "It had a foot in either camp." "SAM:" "We've certainly talked a lot about how we want to make the music very fresh for this, and do something that you don't normally hear on this kind of period drama." "Our conversations so far have been how we can push the music into a slightly new arena, but without alienating the audience." "It's about saying, this is Emma, this is how I see it as a piece." "I think it's colourful, it's vibrant, it's energetic... it's witty, it's funny, and Emma is all of those things herself." "And so it's about saying to Sam," ""Can we find a way for the music to enhance that?" ""To also be colourful, vibrant, energetic, witty..."" " There you have your buzz words!" " (BOTH LAUGH)" "In the spotting session, we'll watch the film through and we'll work out which points we think need music, and what that music has to do, whether it's... excitement, emotional, pace, and so forth," "and we work out where the music's gonna come in, where it's gonna come out." "Then we'll talk kind of thematically about the whole programme and what's required of the music." "We talked about the first bit, which is your own." "We'll end that just before she thinks, "How am I gonna tell Harriet?"" "to punctuate that moment." "I could take the beginning of the new cut... the new cue, just to pick up from the last few frames of this shot." "Yeah." "Yeah." "So you still have that kind of moment's pause but then you'll..." "He'll ride the transition." " How am I going to tell Harriet?" " That could work really nicely, but it could also..." "I mean there's a deliberate separation there of a new day and a new mood and allowing the... the picture that we've got, which is very optimistic, to take us into a new energy." "So whatever way we do it, it's important it doesn't feel like two cues, it feels like a cue that ends and that we come into a new day, but leaving room for getting to Emma being" "thoughtful and morose and mournful at the window." "I think you'll just have that feeling that rocks over the cut and then you'll see the picture before the theme actually starts." "Yeah, let's have a look, let's try it." "How could I have been so stupid?" "How am I going to tell Harriet?" "(UPLIFTING MUSIC)" "JIM O'HANLON:" "I've just been looking at episode two and the music we have on episode two is a mix of sort of guide temp music that we've got from soundtracks of other films and quite a lot of Sam's stuff" "that, for instance, he has written the odd cue for us in advance, or stuff we've taken that he's written for episode one that we've tried out there and said, "Look, this isn't absolutely dead on," ""but it's this sort of style."" "We got Sam on before we started shooting, so he was down on set, he wrote the three pieces for the ball." "What often happens at the sound-spotting sessions, which is pretty much the composer's first time viewing the material," "Sam has seen rushes, he's seen assembled scenes, he's seen assembled episodes and we've kept talking." "So that's been terrific having Sam on that early, from that point of view." "SOUNDTRACK:" "Miss Woodhouse..." "So this is..." "Emma going to tell Harriet that Elton has proposed to her." "Um... the temp we've used there is quite dark." "And I think it should be quite dark." "I've got very specific second-by-second, or frame-by-frame notes about what we want the music to do, how it can help, how it can turn." "What Sam is doing so far has been to really capture and enhance and express in music those truthful, messy, slightly... difficult emotions and complex emotions, rather than sort of going," ""I know it looks bad, but everything's going to be OK,"" "and a little sprinkle of fairy dust which is, you know," "I think the wrong way to go." "SAM:" "When I leave the spotting session, I'll probably... go back, sit at the piano, make a few sketches, just jot down a few ideas." "And then, hopefully, build up a sense of what areas will need..." "Try and create a sense of the overall music for the entire episode." "From there I'll go to my studio and start writing for specific scenes as we go." "(ORCHESTRA TUNES UP)" "Here we go." "(SOLO PIANO BEGINS)" "(STRINGS JOIN IN)" "Emma's Theme is melody-led." "There is a lot of kind of playfulness in it." "There is a slight kind of feeling of melancholy." "But what's most important for me is that as a melody," "I can manipulate it and bend it into... whatever situation Emma's in." "When Jim and I decide that there is a specific moment where we think this a main theme moment, or Emma's Theme moment, then I can play it and manipulate it in several ways." "Here in London, we're very fortunate to have some of the best musicians in the world." "And it's really quite breathtaking how they're presented with music they've never seen before, they've never had a chance to rehearse, and they often just play it straight off, first time." "When you hear it, and you can react to it, you go through a very subtle, formative... trying to work out how to get each note and each phrase working as hard as it can for the picture." "And that can be anything to do with volumes or expressions." "Obviously we've got to work out how the music ebbs and flows behind the dialogue, and that kind of thing." "Can we have bar 3 in the violins, pianissimo, more of a crescendo up to the MP, on the downbeat of 4?" "Then the harp in bar 13 can shine out a little bit more." "We're overegging the pudding a little bit here, so if we can change from bar 9, to basically, piano and just a little crescendo, but make a very crisp finish halfway through 10, please." "(SPEECH INAUDIBLE)" "It's fantastic in this day and age, with television budgets as they are, that we do have the opportunity on this to get a decent orchestra to perform it." "Really nice dynamically - love it." "We're covered for that one." "Now on to 1 M16."