On the one hand, it shouldn't be surprising to hear John Ottman praise the films of the seventies, because for several composers - John Williams, Jerry Goldsmith, Michael Small, and David Shire, to name a few - that decade not only gave them opportunities to write some of their best work, but expand their technique and draw from classical, experimental, minimalism, or electronic mediums for modest and big budget productions.

Williams' Black Sunday (1977), Goldsmith's Coma (1978), Small's Klute (1971) , and Shire's The Conversation (1974) will always remain favourites as well as scores worth studying because their distinct construction is inspiring for filmmakers, composers, and editors. The tone and style of The Usual Suspects (1995) reflects that same emphasis on plot and characters, but Ottman's editing and score were also part of a fine collaboration with director Bryan Singer and writer Christopher McQuarrie.

In Valkyrie (2008), Ottman re-teamed with Singer and McQuarrie, and served as the film's sole composer and editor in the trio's first film together since The Usual Suspects.

Mark R. Hasan:  In your collaborations with Bryan Singer, you’ve edited and scored increasingly complex productions, and I wonder if it’s become a little bit easier to balance those major roles as composer and editor, and are better able to apply your organizational skills with greater precision, now that you’ve done quite a few really huge budget films.

JO:  To tell you the truth, because doing both these tasks is not the norm in the business, it really hasn’t gotten any easier. In fact it was probably the hardest on Valkyrie because we continued to tweak and edit the movie for the longest time.

We had scenes that we hadn’t shot yet that we were owed very late in the game, and we were doing that while I was trying to write the score, and I had to write music ahead of time before I saw the edited scene.

I was constantly torn in a million directions when I was trying to write the score, and I was the only editor on the film; I didn’t bring a second person on, so this was probably the hardest job I’ve had. Literally was reduced to tears because of time for this movie, and then as you get old, of course you need more sleep, and it becomes even more difficult. I used to be able to do this with three hours of sleep a day, but there’s no way I can do that anymore.

MRH:  For Valkyrie, I wonder if you did any musicological research, and if you drew some inspiration from the restrictive atmosphere that existed for composers under the Nazis at the time?

JO:  I did a lot of research on the characters in the movie to find out their background and who they were – mainly the conspirators in the film – because I firstly approach music from an emotional point of view, and I also knew that, even though it was set in World War II, it’s basically a suspense thriller.

From the first moment that Bryan Singer and I talked about the music, we were on the same page, in terms of ‘Lets not make the score like Winds of War (1983); let’s make it a thriller score,’ so I just figured that I really wouldn’t be required to call on anything that I would call cliché (musically) from the period.

Even in the big moments in the movie, I avoided snare drum for militaristic things, and I used logs being dropped on the floor and totally different things. We didn’t want the film to be clichéd at all; we wanted to be historically accurate, of course, but the score gave Valkyrie that slightly modern edge we were looking for.

MRH: That approach reminds me of the seventies scores written for those suspenseful, historically driven thrillers that came out at the time, and the big wave of war films.

JO:  You’re feeding me the exact next comment about the score. The funny thing is, Tom Cruise, Brian Singer and screenwriter Chris McQuarrie and I are all pretty much in the same age group, and we all believe that the films of the seventies were the greatest films ever made, and the scores of the seventies were the best film scores, so I knew going in that (knock on wood) there wasn’t going to be too much of a battle, in terms of going the seventies score route, which is what I normally do anyway. That’s where my sensibilities come from, but then I write stuff that doesn’t feel dated; I find a way to update it for today.