{"id":854,"date":"2010-10-20T14:45:52","date_gmt":"2010-10-20T18:45:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/?p=854"},"modified":"2010-12-27T20:29:40","modified_gmt":"2010-12-28T01:29:40","slug":"john-ottman-2000-the-3-faces-of-john-ottman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/?p=854","title":{"rendered":"JOHN OTTMAN (2000) – “The 3 Faces of John Ottman”"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

Urban Legends: Final Cut<\/strong> marks the feature directorial debut of editor\/composer John Ottman, the British Academy Award (BAFTA) winning editor, and accomplished composer of\u00a0The Usual Suspects<\/strong> (1997). A graduate of the USC film school program, Ottman has spent the last few years building up a substantial resume of film and television scores in various genres, and edited director Bryan Singer\u2019s 1998 film,\u00a0Apt Pupil<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Though Ottman was Singer\u2019s first choice as composer for the recent and highly successful\u00a0X-Men<\/strong> film, Ottman\u2019s busy schedule and contractual obligations with his debut feature prevented him from taking the high-profile assignment, and though he regrets missing the plumb opportunity,\u00a0Urban Legends: Final Cu<\/strong>t offered the fledgling director new professional challenges, frustrations and creative highs \u2013 an intense learning experience that will no doubt serve him well in his next directorial venture.<\/p>\n

A sense of humour is mandatory when you\u2019re asked to direct a slasher film \u2013 a genre that has a tradition of pushing the limits of bad taste, violence, and the patience of various censor boards. After the success of\u00a0Scream<\/strong> in 1996, the last 4 years have shown it is possible to make a smart, funny and satirical movie with plenty of scares (in bouncy digital surround) that play on an audience\u2019s most primal fears.<\/p>\n

For a while Ottman had been dropping hints of his directing aspirations, and his efforts finally paid off in a casual meeting with the people at Phoenix Pictures, the studio behind\u00a0Apt Pupil<\/strong> (1998) and\u00a0Lake Placid<\/strong> (1999). As Ottman, explains, \u201cI just wanted them to know that down the road it would be fun to direct something, and then halfway through my sentence, they whipped out a script and said, \u2018How about this?\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cI was sort of caught in midstream \u2013 I didn\u2019t know how to react. I said, \u2018Well what is it?\u2019 They said, \u2018Well, it\u2019s\u00a0Urban Legends 2<\/strong>\u2018, and I think I kind of reacted the way you do when you get some socks for Christmas from your grandmother or something. I wasn\u2019t sure how to react to it.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt first I was sort of against the prospect of making my debut with a teen horror film, and I thought, because of the association with [The Usual Suspects<\/strong>]\u2026 people would be sort of aghast that\u2019s what I was doing. But then I read the script and I thought it was fun, because of the filmmaking thing, and the film school thing, and saw the value in using the genre to show that I could do different styles of filmmaking all in one film that I may not get the opportunity to do in a more independent venture.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ottman worked closely with screenwriters Paul Harris Boardman and Scott Derrickson, and though the script went through many revisions and rewrites, the final product basically reflects a modern satire of film school life. Film students \u2013 whether housed at multi-million dollar campuses or in the basement of an aging edifice \u2013 are a curious lot, and the screenplay reflects the egos and dreams of grandeur which still motivate many to learn, produce, and hopefully eke out a future in Film.<\/p>\n

The first\u00a0Urban Legend<\/strong> (1988), set on a college campus, played upon classic scare stories that have become part of urban fear culture: the boyfriend who disappeared while taking a pee, while his worrying girlfriend is terrorized by a strange rapping on the roof; or the babysitter, who discovers the threatening calls she\u2019s been receiving are coming from inside the house.<\/p>\n

The sequel begins as a handful of mature film students pitch their dream thesis to stuffy department professors, and follows their efforts to produce the career-making epic\u2026 for a student budget populated with bad actors and principle photography constantly halted because of a fetishistic murderer in a fencing mask.<\/p>\n

Though\u00a0Urban Legends<\/strong> goes through the obligatory body count, a major character in the movie is the film school. Shot on location at Trent University in Ontario, Canada, the campus resembles a small, isolated community, surrounded by dense, verdant hills and an eerily calm river.<\/p>\n

Like many horror films, the first\u00a0Urban Legend <\/strong>movie used more traditional Gothic locations, and Ottman clearly wanted to give the sequel a more institutional look. Trent University\u2019s lean, angular edifices and organic layout would give the sequel a different flavour, except a major set piece was missing \u2013 the bell tower.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe liked the university so much that I convinced the studio that we could build the tower, and my production designer said he could build the tower for a certain amount of money because he was thrilled to shoot there.\u201d<\/p>\n

The tower is seamlessly featured in a major sequence in which the killer chases the heroine to the top, and a few dead classmates are discovered along the way, dangling here and there.<\/p>\n

\u201cI tried to milk it to death, even in our short timeframe for the film. I really wanted to shoot a lot more of it, and it killed me [that] we had to cut a lot of scenes out. We had one scene with 150 extras one day, and a crane shot going down what I call the Odessa Steps \u2013 because there were these long steps that we went down \u2013 but it was just all character exposition, and the audience wants to see someone die, and you can\u2019t stack up too much exposition in your first act because someone desperately wants to see someone bite it.\u201d<\/p>\n

The slasher genre in many ways is the most rigid and the most unforgiving: there has to be a body count, and there has to be grisly violence once in a while. Unfortunately, story and character are often sacrificed in favor of thrills, and the result can be a great rollercoaster ride, but one that fades into memory pretty fast.<\/p>\n

The first murder in the film \u2013 involving a girl who wakes up in a bathtub of ice, missing a kidney \u2013 starts the film with some gruesome shocks, and contains the most disturbing imagery.<\/p>\n

\u201c[Originally] the first death was the suicide of Trevor, which is off-screen; you don\u2019t even see it, and that\u2019s what I liked about the script because it wasn\u2019t the typical thing \u2013 it\u2019s like you hear about this death and you\u2019re not sure it happened \u2013 but the audience needs something more tangible, so we added our new character in the beginning of the show.\u201d<\/p>\n

Though somewhat at odds with the overall tone of the film, the sequence does kick-start the movie with a visceral punch, and owes a great deal to the elaborate death montages of Italian director Dario Argento.<\/p>\n

Best known for the landmark thriller and horror films\u00a0Profondo Rosso<\/strong> (1975) and\u00a0Suspiria<\/strong> (1977), Argento\u2019s victims are generally chased through cavernous, labyrinthine locations, and are generally dispatched to Heaven with a throat slashing or hanging \u2013 but not before the victim\u2019s head artfully crashes through a pane of glass.<\/p>\n

Though he admits to not being familiar with Argento\u2019s work, Ottman\u2019s direction of the first murder is very much in tune with Argento\u2019s fetishes (as is the subsequent bell tower sequence), and inadvertently satirizes the cat-and-mouse interplay of\u00a0Suspiria<\/strong>, tossing in some barbed wire, decapitation by window, and a hungry dog with an appetite for fresh kidney.<\/p>\n

The sequence fulfills the requisite opening shocker for the movie, and once dispensed with, Ottman is able to use his editorial experience to structure his film with peaks of violence and valleys of character development.<\/p>\n

Though billed as a teen slasher,\u00a0Urban Legends: Final Cut<\/strong> does contain more straightforward dramatic scenes, and it\u2019s often these integral moments of character and plot information that reveal a director\u2019s competence. Just letting a scene play out sounds so simple, and yet some directors have little patience for narrative dialogue and emotional reaction shots.<\/p>\n

Rather than resorting to the kind of choppy editing that characterized End of Days<\/strong> (1999) or attention-deficit construction of\u00a0Armageddon<\/strong> (1998),\u00a0Urban Legends<\/strong> lets the actors think a little, react naturally, and speak their lines with more conviction than normal in a slasher film; this more traditional approach makes the eventual shocks all the more effective, and once in a while morbidly witty.<\/p>\n

One key sequence involves a student director\u2019s worst nightmare: saddled with the most incompetent actress on the planet. Played to the hilt by actress Jessica Cauffiel, Sandra is a buffoon of epic proportions. When asked to emote sheer terror for her student director for a scene involving a ridiculously disemboweled pooch, Sandra goes through various rubbery gesticulations with unbearable ham-fisted energy; a noble tribute to the kind of surreal acting in a Dwaine Esper movie.<\/p>\n

When she returns to the abandoned set one night, she\u2019s confronted by the killer, and becomes the star of her own snuff video, with a generous nod to Michael Powell\u2019s\u00a0Peeping Tom<\/strong> (1960). Unlike the opening shocker, the sequence and the elaborate viewing of the footage the next day contains little gore, and offers another effective route, under the reins of a knowing director, to create terror without being graphic.<\/p>\n

As Ottman relates, \u201cThere are sequences that I\u2019m proud of. One of them is Sandra\u2019s death [when her classmates are] watching the dailies, because you\u2019re watching someone die, but you know they\u2019re dead already, so it\u2019s a passive experience, but you have to make it somehow feel suspenseful, but you already know that she\u2019s dead\u2026 So editorially, I\u2019m pretty proud of the way that I put that together with the shots of the projector shining and shooting different image sizes off an actual screen. We shot her in 16mm, so you got the little holes on the side of the screen, and the close up of [Sandra’s] eyes, and so forth.\u201d<\/p>\n

Unlike\u00a0Halloween<\/strong>\u2018s Michael Myers or\u00a0Friday the 13th<\/strong>\u2018s Jason Voorhees, the\u00a0Urban Legends<\/strong> killer is a film geek, and quite proud of it. Sandra\u2019s death reveals more of the killer\u2019s arrogance, and in a later scene with the film\u2019s heroine, he moves, from producer and director of his own slasher fantasy, to composer. Trapped under a grand piano in the campus soundstage, the killer strikes the same keys, underscoring his\/her elaborate murder plot.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was one of those situations where we actually were in overtime, and I suddenly though of this idea where, \u2018Don\u2019t just go and finder her \u2013 Just stand there and play the piano.\u2019 And one of the producers who was our watchdog (who was really the guy to pull the plug) said, \u2018You know what? This is so great that I\u2019m authorizing you to go into overtime.\u2019 So we all knew it was a cool idea, and it sort of ends up being a strange homage to myself by being in a scoring stage.\u201d<\/p>\n

Having composed music for the return of Michael Myers\u00a0(Halloween H:20<\/strong>), a killer crocodile\u00a0(Lake Placid<\/strong>), the poor, waifish Snow White (Snow White: A Tale of Terror<\/strong>, in 1999), and a cable technician with too much time on his hands (Cable Guy<\/strong>, in 1996), Ottman gave his own feature film another rich, orchestral soundtrack.<\/p>\n

Horror scores are often little gems that most people don\u2019t notice at first \u2013 and that\u2019s actually a good thing \u2013 because it shows the music is doing what it\u2019s supposed to do: scare you to death. That\u2019s the score at its most functional level, and yet a well-crafted soundtrack will also reflect the film\u2019s moods, the characters\u2019 fears (and unbridled lust), and add some emotional subtext to the moments when a bimbo or thick-headed jock isn\u2019t being chased by an ax-wielding lunatic with big comfy boots.<\/p>\n

Urban Legends<\/strong>\u2018 music is characteristically creepy during the stalkings, murders and corpse discoveries, often using a large orchestra and some avant garde writing. Ottman periodically incorporates a lilting theme to evoke the confusion of a traumatized child, something that adds more depth to a scene, and polishes the film overall.<\/p>\n

Now that John Ottman has advanced from composer to editor to feature film director, the next hurdle will be Hollywood\u2019s perception of who Ottman is. In an age where singers act, producers direct, writers produce, and composers edit, there should be room for another multi-talent.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy aim is to have my cake and eat it too, and that is to keep scoring films,\u201d clearly Ottman\u2019s first love, \u201cAnd direct films that I score.\u201d<\/p>\n

On February 6th, Columbia TriStar Home Video will release Ottman\u2019s film on DVD in an anamorphic transfer. In addition to a featurette, the DVD will include deleted scenes (with a partial section of the \u201cOdessa Steps\u201d sequence), and a running commentary from John Ottman, in which he touches upon his role as director, editor, and composer.<\/p>\n

Ottman\u2019s own enjoyable website, dubbed \u201cThe Asylum,\u201d (http:\/\/www.johnottman.com) offers some candid production recollections, a still gallery, and soundtrack highlights from\u00a0Urban Legends 2: Final Cut<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

.<\/span><\/p>\n

.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a9 1998 and 2001 (revised) Mark R. Hasan<\/p>\n

To read a 2008 interview with John Ottman regarding\u00a0Valkyrie<\/strong>, click\u00a0HERE<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Visit John Ottman\u2019s website\u00a0HERE<\/a>.<\/p>\n

.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

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

Return to:\u00a0Home \/\u00a0Exclusive Interviews & Profiles \/\u00a0Composers. . Urban Legends: Final Cut marks the feature directorial debut of editor\/composer John Ottman, the British Academy Award (BAFTA) winning editor, and accomplished composer of\u00a0The Usual Suspects (1997). A graduate of the USC film school program, Ottman has spent the last few years building up a substantial resume […]<\/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":[26,22,45,4212],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8nuyW-dM","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/854"}],"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=854"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/854\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1989,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/854\/revisions\/1989"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=854"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=854"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=854"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}