{"id":690,"date":"2010-10-20T00:56:17","date_gmt":"2010-10-20T04:56:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/?p=690"},"modified":"2010-12-27T20:40:10","modified_gmt":"2010-12-28T01:40:10","slug":"elia-cmiral-2007","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/?p=690","title":{"rendered":"ELIA CMIRAL (2007)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Return to<\/strong>:\u00a0Home <\/a>\/\u00a0Exclusive Interviews & Profiles<\/a> \/\u00a0Composers<\/a><\/em><\/em><\/em><\/p>\n

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Although Elia Cmiral continues to score a diverse mix of films \u2013 his recent work include\u00a0Bluebeard <\/strong>for director Kevin Connor, and\u00a0While the Children Sleep <\/strong>for Russell Mulcahy \u2013 the composer has been very busy writing distinctive, chilling music for several horror films.<\/em><\/p>\n

Alongside career highpoints such as\u00a0Wrong Turn <\/strong>and\u00a0Stigmata<\/strong>, Cmiral adds two new potent fusions of orchestral and hard rock sounds for a pair of shockers picked up and distributed as part of the After Dark Horrorfest series, which tours theatrically before making its way onto home video.<\/em><\/p>\n

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Mark R. Hasan<\/strong>: Dario Piana (The Deaths of Ian Stone<\/strong>) comes from a very different background compared to Mark Young (Tooth & Nail<\/strong>), and with Dario\u2019s film, I wonder if you find there\u2019s specific stylistic preferences towards a score when you\u2019re working with a European director.<\/em><\/p>\n

Elia Cmiral<\/strong>: Since I\u2019m European myself, I found it very easy to work with Dario\u2026We have very similar historic backgrounds \u2013 he\u2019s Italian and I\u2019m Czech \u2013 and music is so well connected in Europe. Dario is also himself a musician (he played rock guitar), so he was very easy [to work with]\u2026 He was very supportive as well as Brian Gilbert, the producer with whom I work on\u00a0Wrong Turn<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

MRH<\/strong>: And I guess in the case of\u00a0Tooth & Nail<\/strong>, Mark Young was a much younger director, because this is his third film.<\/em><\/p>\n

EC<\/strong>: He did a couple of movies in North Carolina , but this was his first big movie. I had to show him how I work\u2026 but he was very supportive, very enthusiastic, and extremely well prepared. I think he was one of the few directors who came with pages and pages of verbal descriptions of the score. He already had a structure of the score \u2013 what kind of themes, what kind of music he expects for certain groups of themes \u2013 and my job was to fill all these requests with notes.<\/p>\n

MRH<\/strong>: That\u2019s unusual for a new director, but I guess because of technology you have directors that have done their own scores for their early films, whether it\u2019s a feature length or short film, and I guess the technology\u2019s makes it easier for them to simply draw from sound samples and compile the score, but when it comes to dealing with an established composer, it\u2019s a very different relationship, not just because you\u2019re dealing with another person, but with someone from a totally different and specialized professional background.<\/em><\/p>\n

EC<\/strong>: What\u2019s interesting with both directors \u2013 Dario and Mark \u2013 is they didn\u2019t use any temp track. There was no music at all. You just mentioned that nowadays directors can manipulate sound, they can go to different libraries, and they can relatively successfully score the movie themselves, but a written score tailored directly for a movie is a different thing, and neither of these movies had temp tracks to show me where to go<\/p>\n

MRH<\/strong>: I guess that must have been refreshing for you\u2026 There were no music references. It was basically a discussion of ideas and concepts, and then you were allowed to go and create your own work.<\/em><\/p>\n

EC<\/strong>: Right.<\/p>\n

MRH<\/strong>: I guess what temp tracks allow directors to do is, if they\u2019re unable to articulate specific emotions, even in a musical way, they can say \u2018Here\u2019s a piece of music I like,\u2019 and I guess that allows you to ask \u2018Okay. What qualities of this cue appeal to you,\u2019 which, for example, helps you understand whether a director likes strings, or long melodies, etc.<\/em><\/p>\n

EC<\/strong>: Exactly. It\u2019s very helpful. I did one project this year with a friend of mine. He\u2019s a music editor and was temping the whole movie. [Because] he spent so much time with the director, when the time came and I started work on the movie, he could tell me all the details of why the director liked this piece of music, why the producers didn\u2019t like this piece of music\u2026 so he was laying out everything so easily for me.<\/p>\n

MRH<\/strong>: For the two films you scored for the After Dark Horrorfest, were they offered to you simultaneously, or did one sort of happen to follow the other?<\/em><\/p>\n

EC<\/strong>:\u00a0The Deaths of Ian Stone <\/strong>I did at the beginning of this year\u2026 and\u00a0Tooth & Nail <\/strong>I finished just before the festival, so they were not connected at all.<\/p>\n

MRH<\/strong>: Even though some films in the After Dark series weren\u2019t specifically made for the festival, they had modest budgets, and I wonder if it\u2019s sometimes difficult to meet a director\u2019s demands, or has technology helped augment a score that\u2019s supposed to have a large scope within tight budgetary confines?<\/em><\/p>\n

EC<\/strong>: Well, yes and no. I would say technology definitely gives me more tools, but I wouldn\u2019t say technology makes it easier; I think it slows the process down because I think it\u2019s much easier to write for the orchestra, knowing that I have a small amount of electronica, rather then the other way around.<\/p>\n

MRH<\/strong>: You raise an interesting point. Because of your experience in writing for orchestra, you\u2019ve a better idea of how things will sound; it\u2019s very instinctive: you write it, you group the instruments, you rehearse the musicians, and you record it. With electronics, it seems to require a lot of searching and finding and testing and refining, and you keep fiddling around until you get something that sounds close.<\/em><\/p>\n

EC<\/strong>: That\u2019s absolutely correct. When I\u2019m writing, I\u2019m writing directly to computer using my orchestra samples to imitate the orchestra sounds, so in the end, I\u2019m basically close as to how it\u2019s going to sound with an orchestra. Even if I can hear it in my head, for the purpose of demo-ing for producers and for the director\u2026 I can present pretty close to the orchestra\u2019s sound, so they have an idea how it will be.<\/p>\n

With electronica, you\u2019re fiddling and fiddling and changing and processing and editing, and it takes forever to get something original. I\u2019m either developing completely original sounds, or if it\u2019s existing in a library I heavily process the sounds \u2013 mangle them beyond recognition.<\/p>\n

MRH<\/strong>: Directors tend to spend months editing and refining their films, and when they\u2019re at the mixing stage and they get to watch their film with original music for the first time, their movie suddenly comes to life again.<\/em><\/p>\n

EC<\/strong>: In my experience, all directors are really surprised and thankful for what I brought \u2013 the emotional part of the movie \u2026Even after it was previewed and demoed so many times in my studio together with picture, when they see it mixed on the stage with a real orchestra, they say \u2018Wow, that\u2019s fantastic,\u2019 and of course that\u2019s part of my reward: to see my work supporting the movie and the director\u2019s ideas.<\/p>\n

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For more information on the After Dark Horrorfest, click <\/em>HERE<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

The soundtrack for Tooth & Nail is available online and on CD from <\/em>Lakeshore Records<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

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Additional interviews with Elia Cmiral include his work on\u00a0Habermann<\/a> <\/strong>& Forget Me Not<\/a><\/strong>, and\u00a0Pulse<\/a><\/a><\/strong><\/a><\/strong>.<\/em><\/p>\n

All images remain the property of their copyright holders.<\/em><\/p>\n

This interview \u00a9 2007 by Mark R. Hasan<\/em><\/p>\n

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Return to<\/strong>:\u00a0Home <\/a>\/\u00a0Exclusive Interviews & Profiles<\/a> \/\u00a0Composers<\/a><\/em><\/em><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Return to:\u00a0Home \/\u00a0Exclusive Interviews & Profiles \/\u00a0Composers . Although Elia Cmiral continues to score a diverse mix of films \u2013 his recent work include\u00a0Bluebeard for director Kevin Connor, and\u00a0While the Children Sleep for Russell Mulcahy \u2013 the composer has been very busy writing distinctive, chilling music for several horror films. Alongside career highpoints such as\u00a0Wrong […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[26,22,27,4212],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8nuyW-b8","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/690"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=690"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/690\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2015,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/690\/revisions\/2015"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=690"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=690"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=690"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}