Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/832212
34 CINEMONTAGE / Q2 2017 MS: That's something that has to be entered into with respect and a sense of service. You want to understand the composer's aesthetic and try to service it while at the same time, of course, serving the film. The music has its own language, logic and heart that beats — and so does the film, but the film is obviously the master. You have to be very keen with following the direction of the director while guarding the composer's aesthetic, which is why he or she was hired in the first place. They are two polarities between which you operate as a music editor. CM: Can you differentiate your work for Chris Nolan from that for Mike White? MS: Oh, man. Obviously they're both very specific, but Chris can articulate what he wants really well. He's been known to sit on a plane for 10 hours listening to different musical ideas or sounds, even just to get the right sound for a character or for an event in the film. Mike is very specific also, but he jumps around. He's almost a little neurotic in that sense, but he has a super-keen sense of what works for the film, and he's a truly original thinker. I can get into something where I'm so sure that it works musically and I'm so proud of what I put together, and then he points out — oh no — it doesn't work. When he tells me why, it's like, of course! Well, that's what directors do. They see things from a different angle and that's what makes this whole dance interesting and fun. CM: What were the needs of Beatriz at Dinner? The whole film is a really delicate emotional balance, right on the edge. MS: Mike wrote it and his longtime ally, Miguel Arteta, directed. Miguel had directed some episodes of Enlightened too, but I didn't work with him much at that time; my main work was with Mike. They had a nickname for Beatriz — "Brown Amy" — because she was so much like Amy in Enlightened. It was also very delicate work. We meet Beatriz, see her workday and then her experience of how we are selfishly ravaging this planet. You can't score that with a heavy hand. The approach that we brought from Enlightened seemed appropriate for this as well. There seemed to be natural places where music should play, but I think Miguel also had to tell us to hold back and not play music in certain scenes where we otherwise might have. Just let the moment speak. And when we did score a moment, he wanted us to score Beatriz's inner emotions, like when Strutt passes around the photograph of the rhinoceros he killed. That was about feeling the dread as the picture is on its way to her. We haven't seen anything yet, but we're feeling what she's feeling: "I don't want to see the thing, but it's being passed around so I'll have to look." Then she has her first outburst of the film. Those kinds of things are really just following Beatriz and being inside of her, speaking her voice. CM: What's the greatest way that you've seen technology change your work itself ? There's a benefit to every technological advance, but usually a detraction as well. MS: In the end, I think it's a benefit. The first obvious detraction is that, with all this power, you can try more things. Which means that you're tempted to go into the work with less of a thought-through vision. Then