{"id":16158,"date":"2013-11-23T06:42:05","date_gmt":"2013-11-23T11:42:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/?p=16158"},"modified":"2013-11-23T11:14:16","modified_gmt":"2013-11-23T16:14:16","slug":"interview-canadian-composer-pianist-heather-schmidt-savours-the-challenges-of-writing-for-hollywood","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/2013\/11\/23\/interview-canadian-composer-pianist-heather-schmidt-savours-the-challenges-of-writing-for-hollywood\/","title":{"rendered":"Interview: Canadian composer-pianist Heather Schmidt savours the challenges of writing for Hollywood"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"(Rolland<\/a>
(Rolland E. Proulx photo.)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Torontonians might be forgiven for wondering what happened to Heather Schmidt. She burst promisingly onto our stages as both a pianist and composer with the advent of the 21st century, but has been curiously absent for the last couple of years.<\/p>\n

The Alberta native who called Toronto home for many years has been leading a new and fascinating life as a composer for film and video games in Hollywood, while still pursuing her original passion for concert composition and playing the piano.<\/p>\n

Schmidt is about to enjoy a little flurry of attention in Toronto, providing a perfect excuse to catch up.<\/p>\n

On Sunday at 7 p.m., one of her local champions, pianist Christina Petrowska Quilico, performs Schmidt’s Piano Concerto No. 3<\/em> as part of an excellent programme of works by Canadian women composers presented with the Koffler Chamber Orchestra at the Music Gallery (full concert details here<\/a>).<\/p>\n

\"Nebula<\/a>Next Thursday marks the launch by the Canadian Music Centre of Nebula<\/em>, an album of nine pieces for solo piano written and recorded by Schmidt for the Centrediscs label (you can find all the album details, including audio samples, here <\/a>— event details here<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

And, if everything goes according to plan, Schmidt will be the composer behind a new project being unveiled next spring by dancer-choreographer Peggy Baker.<\/p>\n

In the meantime, Schmidt is very busy with her new career as a composer for film and video games.<\/p>\n

On one hand, this is not a stretch for an artist who has always put emotional communication first (her concertos and solo pieces hearken back to the big, bold, virtuosic expressions of the Golden Age of the piano). On the other hand, it’s a completely different way of thinking about music.<\/p>\n

“My music is emotionally driven, which is one of the reasons it was easy for me to transition into film music,\u201d says Schmidt on the phone from Los Angeles. “Long ago, people told me they could imagine all sorts of images when they were listening to my music.”<\/p>\n

Now the scores are being put in the service of other people’s images. There’s a lot less freedom involved. Ego needs to be left at the door. And flexibility is everything.<\/p>\n

\u201cUnlike a concert commission, where they say go write a 10 minute piece for cello and piano, and you come back with a piece for cello and piano and that\u2019s it, with film music, the timing needs to match the timing of certain scenes,” Schmidt explains.<\/p>\n

In the case of a film, the music is slotted in once the director has prepared a working cut. With video games, the musical support needs to be a bit more flexible, because each player makes their way through the game at a slightly different pace.<\/p>\n

Video games used to deal with the timing issue by relying on short, looping motifs. \u201cBut we\u2019re reaching the point where the producers want more interesting music,\u201d says Schmidt. \u201cA lot of it needs to be composed in a way that it can loop, but players are getting more savvy and more sophisticated, so they don\u2019t want to hear the same loop over and over and over again.\u201d<\/p>\n

And unlike a concert commission, where a composer can pretty much write what they want, a score for the screen is at the mercy of the director’s tastes.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn film music you never get carte blanche,” says Schmidt matter-of-factly. \u201cYou are usually given very specific yet simultaneously very vague directions.”<\/p>\n

Sometimes a director wants the music to sound like a particular song, or like the soundtrack of another movie. \u201cThe problem with a lot of directors is that they\u2019re not versatile in musical language, so how they define the language may not make sense initially, and you have to do some exploration to develop what they mean,\u201d the composer explains.<\/p>\n

Another interesting twist in writing for movies is the presence of what Schmidt refers to as a \u201ctemp score,\u201d which an editor has inserted into the film for the director\u2019s rough cuts. As Schmidt relates, \u201cWhat ends up happening is so-called \u2018temp love,\u2019 where a director gets so used to hearing the temp music that they end up wanting that \u2013 but it\u2019s music that they can\u2019t use in the film because they don\u2019t legally own it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Temp love is great when it helps frame a constructive discussion between director and composer. It’s not so great when this temp music is exactly what the director wants to hear \u2013 \u201cwithout it being a copyright infringement,” laughs Schmidt.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a very strange process. Besides the skill of writing the music itself, writing for film requires a whole different collaborative element and experimentation.\u201d<\/p>\n

Film composers also rarely get as much time as they would like. “The music is the last thing to get done,” says Schmidt of most projects. A typical feature film grants the composer four to eight weeks, “but when you have 100 minutes of music to write, that’s not a long time.”<\/p>\n

That makes speed a particular asset, as well as an ability to know exactly how to use every compositional tool as efficiently as possible.<\/p>\n

Schmidt recalls how she used to incorporate the emotional element in her concert pieces almost unthinkingly as part of a larger musical development. But now, in film, she needs to be hyper-focused.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith concert music, you’re writing that 10 minute piece and you can do anything you want in those 10 minutes,” she explains. “With film music, I get a scene where at exactly 1 minute and 37 second there has to be a peak, a climax, when someone opens a door, or something happens. The music needs to sound completely natural, like that was the way it was always meant to be. It can\u2019t sound unnaturally calculated for the music to climax when the door opens, but it\u2019s timed to a hundredth of a second.”<\/p>\n

And then, after the composer believes they have produced a golden nugget of unsurpassed beauty, the director can come along and say they don’t like it.<\/p>\n

Or, as Schmidt tells it, \u201cWhen you\u2019re writing concert music, you usually can\u2019t imagine it\u2019ll work any other way\u2026. In film music you can write a scene that you think is the most beautiful and appropriate thing, and someone will come along and say change it.<\/p>\n

“Forcing you to change forces you to come up with things you would not have explored. Some of the suggestions you don\u2019t like. Others make you to look at other options which may actually sound better than the original, and that you would never have found otherwise.\u201d<\/p>\n

In other words, Schmidt believes that turning toward the commercial side of the music business in Hollywood has also made her a better composer of concert music. It’s like getting paid for going to school — even if the hours are probably longer.<\/p>\n

+++<\/p>\n

In case you need a reminder of Schmidt skills as a concert pianist, here she is playing the Op. 17 Phantasie<\/em> by Robert Schumann:<\/p>\n