Music can have a huge impact on film.
It can really guide an audience through a story, I think.
I think the role of music in a film is often to enhance moments...
...and actually sometimes supply moments with emotion...
...that might not otherwise be there.
I mean, music for me, particularly, is such an important part...
...of the whole experience for the audience.
It's the soul of the film, ultimately.
You feel when you enter this score you're being enveloped...
...and taken to another world.
We don't hear the music on set...
...you hear the beat of your own heart.
And so when you see the film back, it takes you on an emotional journey...
...that you might not have imagined at all when you're playing the scene.
Composing an orchestra score for film is a labor-intensive process.
I mean, if we could ever figure out how many notes the orchestra...
...actual notes they play in the minute of very active music.
I never counted it up, but it would be probably in the thousands...
...just for one minute of music.
When you're writing a score, you acutely aware...
...of what's driving the scene, the score, to the sound effects.
You're selling worlds that are totally illusionary, you know.
You have to have sound effects...
...to make it feel like what you are watching is actually real.
The sound effects, it drags them in.
It changes the perception of what they're seeing...
...how they are viewing the film, how the story's unfolding too.
The sound effects compete for our attention.
Dialogue competes very much for our attention.
The wedding of the dialogue and the sound effects with music...
...brings us into a world of magic for a colorful piece like Harry Potter.
The Harry Potter films...
...have taken such a wide scope of emotion and situations...
...and all these amazing colorful characters.
You know, I think the music of the films plays a huge part...
...in kind of bringing all that out to the screen.
These films demand a composer who is sort of happy in a big landscape.
You look for someone who has the best possible take...
...on the requirement of that particular book or film.
And I think that each of the composers have brought different qualities...
...and have helped make these films what they are.
Normally, my entry into the postproduction process of filmmaking...
...comes when a film has been pretty much edited and I can see it.
I would prefer not to read the script...
...because one forms all kinds of visual preconceptions.
You really have to look at a film and say, "How should that film sound?
What kind of noise should it make?
What are its textures?"
It's what I normally do.
I tend to just concentrate on character study.
Study the performances and study the characters.
My background is writing music for theater and performing in theater.
Hogwarts, Hogwarts. Join in, right?
If I get the opportunity to visit the set...
...and see actors perform, I'll really grab the chance.
My mother was a writer, so I just love stories.
I think the story is essential to me. Absolutely.
So if I take anything on, I must see the script.
I would take the script and I'll absorb it...
...like a kind of blotting paper...
...and forget that I read it in a sense, and then it becomes part of me.
And then it becomes part of the music and with any luck, the process.
It all begins to work.
In the beginning phases of scoring a film, we want to try...
Particularly a film like this.
We want to try to create themes that will represent melodic identification...
...if you like, of certain characters or places.
Rather like opera...
...the tiny motifs that can represent the character very quickly.
The first Harry Potter film was such a rich opportunity for multiple themes.
The theme for Harry...
Thanks.
Anytime.
There was also a theme for Diagon Alley...
...and a theme for the Hogwarts School.
Coming back to it for Chamber of Secrets.
Gilderoy Lockhart.
He has a silly little piece that accompanies his action.
Weekly's Most Charming Smile award.
Both for his lectures...
...and then in more dramatic form for the dueling that he does.
That music is almost kind of like an old-fashioned tango.
You would expect a fop like this...
...might move to the rhythms of a tango...
...and give him the kind of slightly exaggerated, inflated posture...
...that a tango dancer would assume.
The third Harry Potter film...
...there were a few off-the-edges experiments in that thing.
"Aunt Marge's Waltz."
We thought a grand, oompah-pah, blown-up waltz might be fun to do.
Action.
When you think of a waltz...
...we think of that as being light and floating.
Oh, Vernon.
This is a waltz that is a bit leaden.
Fun to do.
Cut.
For the character of Voldemort in Goblet of Fire...
...Patrick decided to write this quite menacing, very simple motif.
It's like a scale that just ascends.
It's like music from hell.
Because he is a character from hell, he's the unmentionable.
It's like opening something up, you know.
And also what it's saying is, there's more...
There's a feeling, hopefully, in that of things to come.
I was obviously very keen right from the opening title...
...to establish thematic material that links him right from the outset...
...because his evil spirit pervades the whole movie.
Clearly he's possessing in many ways... Mentally or psychologically.
He's possessing Harry Potter.
Very often, the simplest tunes for these characters...
...are the hardest ones to come by.
To speak directly in three to four notes...
...requires a lot of careful editing and a lot of work.
We did a lot of work on Umbridge.
But I've read all about Umbridge way before I had to do this...
...so I knew just how nasty she was.
What I wanted to do in her theme was to make it irritating.
I mean, really irritating.
Interfering all the time, just getting into everything.
Spoiling things.
It's quite a fun theme.
I want it to be that theme you can't get out of your head...
...and you wish you blooming well could.
The Luna piece is just about the strangeness of it all...
...and of her.
So the music was very wispy in the sense of trying to...
...make it almost paper-thin transparent.
So almost nothing was happening, but these tiny things were happening.
And then you listen to The Half-Blood Prince.
And some of the darker themes...
...I've just gone for completely spooky, nightmarish sort of music.
And actually almost gone out my own comfort zone.
Typically, a composer will see the film first...
...and then take measurements from the film...
...and decide where the music will go and where it won't go.
And that's the normal process.
That was the case of Harry Potter, except for one significant deviation.
Before I had seen a frame of film, I got a call from Warner Bros...
...saying that they were gonna do a promotional reel of Harry Potter...
...for which they had no music, and would I create some theme...
...some music that might be used?
So, what I wrote was what became "Hedwig's Theme"...
...which I wrote sight unseen.
And when people at Warners and others heard the music...
...they felt it is perfectly appropriate for the film.
I was happy to say.
I remember first hearing "Hedwig's Theme"...
...it was so clear that this was it.
And it felt so appropriate, especially majestic and magical.
His agent told me that John wanted me...
...to get a copy of the music ahead of time.
And that's kind of a flag that goes up...
...you know, that says:
"It's gonna be something I need to look at."
If he says, "I think you should take a look at the music."
You better look at the music ahead of time.
Because nobody in the orchestra is sent music in advance...
...normally for film sessions.
And when the violins first turned up to the recording session...
...and then they saw "Hedwig's Theme"...
"Oh, no." Notes, black.
You know, lots and lots of notes.
And suddenly there's a flurry...
...of everybody sort of practicing very hard.
Well, the opening has this gossamer celeste...
...and the celeste was a little keyboard instrument...
...that makes pearly sounds.
It's like a piano, but it's even more magical than that.
Somewhere between a piano and a glockenspiel.
It's able to play very quick notes also...
...all across the keyboard very quickly, as a pianist would do, or a violinist.
It seemed to me a good tool...
...to create this ambiance of the preparation of flight...
...or the magical ability to escape gravity into flight velocity...
...as a bird would do.
John, he didn't talk about it a lot ahead of time.
Usually on the recording day, he'll say, "Well, here's what I was thinking."
Randy, you know, at the end...
...where you have the two little notes, the celeste 127.
- Right. - Slow it with me.
Okay.
As though all of that drama hadn't happened.
But pretty much the music is self-explanatory, you know.
So it says synth celeste, and it says solo, and it says misterioso.
So he doesn't want it on the real celeste.
And there are real celestes around, and they're wonderful instruments.
But he wanted something a little different.
Reminiscent of a celeste, but on a synthesizer.
Here's just a celeste sample.
I wanted something to add to the celeste sample...
...that would be a little more...
It would make it a little more ringy and mysterious and...
But still keeping kind of the purity of a celeste sound.
The instrument I was using was a DX7, which was an early FM synthesizer.
The basic place it starts is it gives you a sine wave.
Because a sine wave is a very warm sound...
...doesn't have any overtones on it.
Now, that doesn't sound very good for...
Might sound like early video game or something.
So I blend this with the original celeste sound.
So I hear a little bit of that original bell sound...
The steel-bar sound of the celeste, but with this sine wave.
And that's basically the Harry Potter... "Hedwig's Theme" sound.
Do not touch that.
My role on a film is to balance the music and the effects.
And in general terms, sound can give so much to a scene.
I can film you against a white wall...
...and dependent on the sound I add to that scene...
...I could put you in a different place, I could put you on a different planet...
...in a different country or a different time of day.
Then on something like Harry Potter, of course...
...there's a whole world to be created.
The process usually begins with reading the book.
There are invariably always descriptions of sound...
...of how things sound in J.K.'s books.
Given that everything starts from that point...
...it makes sense that sound should also.
You read the books and we examine those in detail at times.
But the books and the films are not the same thing.
There are several layers of it.
There are kind of the reality sounds, like doors opening and closing...
...trains, cars.
And then you move on to the stuff that we don't know what it sounds like...
...because it doesn't exist.
Like what happens when someone waves a wand...
...or what happens when a Patronus appears.
There's always a need to have a kind of two-tiered sound-effects collection.
So you got this sort of quirky collection of weird things that don't work...
...or they are a bit squeaky, or they make very peculiar noises.
And then there's this sort of other world, which is the Muggle world.
Which was what everybody hears.
We're not in Hogwarts or the world of magic...
...we're in a studio in Watford.
So you have to re-create using layers of sound...
...the creative image the director is trying to get across in the film.
We didn't want to rely on conventional ways...
...of telling a story that is told with a sound.
We weren't interested in swooshes and whooshes...
...unless the physics of the moving object...
...actually demanded that that be there.
So the trick was, how do you make it sound magical...
...but not sound like anything they've necessarily heard before?
A lot of sound checks now have a lot of kind of synthesized sounds...
...and a lot of artificial... Just purely artificial sounds made by a computer.
But we tend to stick a lot more to organic sounds.
It's about rooting what you do in some sort of reality.
So there's an element of truth to it somewhere.
In a film like Harry Potter...
...you need to make viewers believe that what they're seeing could actually exist.
In the first film, the Quidditch match...
...they don't really wanna use jet whooshes or anything like that...
...anything that was mechanical.
We have to try and find something else...
...that gives a feeling of movement and power.
So we got a lot of cat litter, and we set some microphones up.
And then just whooshed our hands up and down it.
So you get phoosh, phoosh kind of sounds.
There's the Apparating, that's just utter chaos.
Pig sounds.
We had deers.
Because the visual is doing such a violent shift.
You have to make something that is gonna shock people as much as that.
And so the philosophy that we all try to maintain...
...is recording your own sounds as much as you possibly can.
Ninety-five percent of what we source is recorded for the film.
So it's individual. You won't hear it in any other film.
That's something that we've all embraced.
We've all gone out and bought recording kits...
...so that we can get whatever we can, whenever we can, wherever we can.
Go and record it, put it into the scene.
And then you got ingredients that are fresh and original.
They've never been used on another movie.
And I think all my holidays have been ruined by me going out...
...recording strange insects, dogs, animals, bikes, cars...
...anything that's different, interesting, new, fresh.
I have to go and record it.
Stay in formation, everyone.
Don't break ranks if one of us is killed.
Coming into Potter...
...painting big scenes is very important.
The flight down the river...
...it took ages, but it was important to get that scene.
To have that lift.
Action music.
That's something that's a pivotal part of the film.
In Harry Potter, sometimes the music...
...is directly amplifying what you're seeing.
Ginny.
To hopefully help amp up the sense of excitement.
For "The Basilisk"...
...the orchestra actually becomes part of the action...
...in a way that dance music would in a ballet.
Swords swipes are accentuated with brass and cymbals.
When Harry delivers the blow...
...there's an orchestral chord of the death-grip kind of chord...
...from the orchestra to accompany this.
Very often other scenes are more subtle.
The music maybe perhaps is asked to reflect the mysterious quality...
...but give an edge of maybe love or romance or anticipation or sadness.
What's very important to me throughout the Harry Potter films...
...is that they're not just like every other fantasy film...
...rather, they're not just all action, there are some big emotional moments.
So for those moments of reflection...
...and self-discovery or teenage angst, it's important...
You know, it's important that the composers hit those moments...
...as much as they do the action sequences.
That is a different challenge, particularly for music...
...to sneak into what characters are thinking...
...rather than what they're doing.
The "Harry in Winter" stuff, that scene otherwise would just be me...
...kind of trudging through snow, looking a bit cold and unhappy.
Because the music is so beautifully written by Pat Doyle...
...it makes it a very emotional moment...
...in a way that it might not otherwise have been.
Oh. Um...
Harry...
...I'm sorry, but someone's already asked me.
And...
Well, I've said I'll go.
It's a very, very beautiful piece of music...
...and it's very reflective of how Harry's feeling...
...in his fourth year at Hogwarts in the story.
Fine. No problem.
Okay. Good.
Harry?
Our actors in Harry Potter are pretty expert people.
And I think what we're doing is adding a dimension to them...
...either to their inner state...
...or, in a very general way, to the atmosphere that we're in.
Professor Dumbledore's office has a kind of sound to it...
...a kind of scent to it.
An atmosphere of authority and of wisdom, if you like.
Is there something you wish to tell me?
Our character of Dumbledore, beautifully played by Richard Harris...
...may not be helped by the atmospheric music...
No, sir.
...but it might be an aid to framing the kind of ambiance...
...that he or she may be appearing within.
Very well then.
Off you go.
When you're dealing with one of John's scores...
...it's based completely on the actor's performance.
So when you are seeing John's score...
...interacting with the film for the first time...
...when you're in that room with the symphony...
...and you're watching the rough cut of the film on-screen...
...and you hear everyone playing...
...you're actually seeing an extension of the performance...
...an extension of the scene.
It creates a feeling in the audience that I experienced...
...what these characters are experiencing.
In film, the most interesting element, I think...
...is what you don't see on the screen.
The psychology that sometimes only music can imply.
Music can allude to things.
You could have a scene where it looks like...
...there's something kind of positive going on between characters...
...but the music's saying that there's actually something troublesome brewing.
That's one of the things I always loved about sound.
It's sort of incongruous.
You can turn an audience quite quickly, sonically...
...into feeling uncomfortable using sound.
Quite often with Voldemort, we crept in low-end and whispering...
...and things like that well before you actually saw him.
Then you start hearing this sort of Parseltongue.
And it sets the scene immediately.
You could hear a sort of hissing, kind of echoing sound.
And it just really, really sort of pulled you in.
The sounds of the space quite often do a good job...
...of giving you a sense of the character's personality.
Mrs. Umbridge comes in with plates with kittens all over them.
Good evening, Mr. Potter.
When everything was in order and she was happy...
...they were purring away and it was lovely sounds...
Then when things got slightly uneasy, the sounds of the kittens would change.
And it was subtle, but it made a difference to her environment.
The first time the Dementors appear is in HP3.
And they always preceded their arrival by ice or freezing.
When the Dementors show up, the ground freezes.
What I ended up doing was taking old-school ice-cube trays...
...and recorded them opening with the lever.
And it makes this very, very peculiar, subtle little sound.
And so making things freeze creates a mood and an atmosphere.
Atmosphere is...
Sometimes, on films, don't tend to go a lot further than just air and wind.
But on processed atmospheres, they play an enormous part...
...in creating the world.
- That's still, burgh. It's okay.
Cats are not that funny.
That is good. Donkey is good.
I think in Harry Potter, sound is as important as music.
And action.
We tried to keep a lot of scenes without music.
Meaning that everything would rely on the source sounds.
It was about how we would create the tension just through sound.
When the Knight Bus turns up...
...the music was not dominating at that point...
...so you get a chance to sort of add little quirks to the sound.
That scene is a very small and sort of unassuming scene in many ways.
But right away, its possibilities were obvious.
You hear the buzzing of the halogen street lamps.
It was a little insistent zzzz.
Breeze. Distant, distant traffic.
So Harry is very isolated. He's alone.
It feels cold.
And it's sound that does all of that.
The squeaks and the runabouts.
All kind of slightly creepy fairground sounds, you know.
It was all about suspense, you know...
...making the audience wonder what was happening.
Was Voldemort there or not?
And then you have this bubbly, fun vehicle coming in.
It does take you through an emotional journey...
...in a very quick space of time.
We were discussing what we were going to do with the Knight Bus.
欢迎乘坐骑士公共汽车 Welcome to the Knight Bus.
And I said, "Well, what about if we go on with the part a little bit?
And we go a little acid jazz."
It's going to be a bumpy ride.
John is a terrific jazz pianist.
Somebody with a tremendous command of the vocabulary of jazz.
What did you say your name was again?
I didn't.
And it was so much fun, the scoring of that.
He had that big, huge brass band.
The biggest brass band I've ever seen in my life.
Playing all this music that is funny. It's spooky.
It's really bizarre, that piece of music.
John brought in saxophone.
There was an accordion.
You get this wonderful squeezy noise when the Knight Bus does this.
Mind your head.
We recorded with the orchestra. I thought Alfonso would tear his hair out...
...and say, "What's this crazy thing?" He loved it.
It was the quintessential piece of silliness.
For the Quidditch World Cup scene...
It's the Irish!
...Patrick came up with the idea of writing a kind of Irish jig...
...because of one of the teams being Irish.
So he wrote this very simple Irish fiddle tune.
And we recorded the Irish fiddle line first.
But not with one fiddle, obviously.
It was the entire... All the violins of the London Symphony Orchestra.
I said, "Don't be too wonderful.
And do it without any vibrato or any kind of... Make it dry...
...like real fiddlers do."
Then Patrick said, "Can we track it?"
Which means can we get them all to record it again...
...on top of what they previously recorded.
So we had like another 30, 40 violins over the top of that.
All playing this one sort of Irish jig line which you'd normally hear with one violin.
So the impact of that was quite amazing.
That was a great opportunity, you know, to write a piece of Celtic music...
...which is really where I come from.
I'm Scottish, although my name is Irish.
And my background is sort of Ireland twice removed.
I was brought up listening to a lot of Celtic music.
I think Patrick always brings his heritage to his music, actually.
Good luck, Anthony. Really?
Now, something like Harry Potter...
I think if you listen carefully...
...you can hear a Scottish composer in there for sure.
Keep us in check.
He was saying more Irish than Scottish.
That's my concern.
There's some cues that have... You'd call them Scottish snaps.
But I didn't consciously think, "Oh, I'll make this Scottish."
But clearly being brought up in Scotland...
...you know, it's part of my early musical DNA...
...and it comes out whether I like it or not.
Oh, I've been a musician of various kinds...
...including a classical guitarist and a composer.
And I've written for ballet.
I used to love blues.
I used to be a blues guitarist when I started out.
And that's a major inspiration to me.
I just wanted to write a romantic piece, give them their beautiful moment.
Quite poignant and gentle.
So the music felt to me like it wanted to be that kind of simple...
...romantic, love-story kind of piece.
I sort of thought of a continental film, somehow.
It felt like it should be like if something came out of Italy or France.
That's how I played the guitar piece.
And then I just fit in a few instruments around it to build it.
But basically it's based on a simple guitar tune.
You feel for these two people...
...who are clearly in love, and they feel awkward.
They don't quite know how to get together.
And the music with its beautiful simplicity...
...is a wonderful accompaniment to that.
Good foley kiss there as well.
Foley is a part of the sound process...
...where we go into a studio and we re-record everything you hear.
We cover every sound effect...
...ranging from footsteps, cloth flapping, dragon's wings...
...everything that happens in a film, we'll try and copy within a foley stage.
Putting a wand down, standing up out of a chair...
...sitting down in a chair, holding hands.
We create an additional soundtrack to go with the original sound...
...and to go with the sound that editors have created...
...sound designers have created, so that they have a whole arsenal...
...of sound basically to work with for the final mix.
Everything you could imagine that you would need for a movie...
...is probably in this room.
Bicycles, bird cages, bits of wood, swords, axes...
...bags full of different kinds of cloths and jackets...
...pots, pans, metal boxes, wooden boxes, suitcases...
...I mean, everything you could possibly want.
This, for instance, a piece of multi-cable, was from the giant spider.
And we used this to add to the hairs on his legs...
...because it's got such a lovely, creaking kind of hairy noise to it.
It looks like a small piece of plastic plant...
...but when it's very close to the microphone and twittled...
...it sounds like a million small spiders climbing over things.
This is just a combination of various different things...
...you might find outside the Weasleys' house...
...a pile of wood or something like that.
Over here we got a great big rock pit that came in handy for the dragon pit.
This is snow.
So we make it up with industrial salt.
It's a very fine salt and a rough salt...
...which gives a really nice crunch on foot.
So that sounds like nice deep snow.
And if you wanted to add...
Do you know that squeaky, crunchy element of snow...
...that people identify with snow?
We use corn flour in a pillowcase here.
And you just give it a little squeeze with your toe.
So here we go, I'll do Harry.
There's a slight hill there he's coming down.
He's walking quite quickly and he's plodding.
So, what I do is pick that up in the way I walk...
...add a little bit of Harry's character to the way I walk.
It does sound more dynamic and slightly more organic...
...if I'm feeling what Harry's feeling at the time.
It sounds sort of dramatic to say it that way, but I think it does help.
I'm gonna do Hermione now.
And although, again, we're still in snow...
...and they're wearing very similar shoes, just as a character change...
...I'll change my shoes into something a bit lighter.
And make her a little bit lighter in the snow.
So she sounds different to Harry.
I love the Harry Potter movies. They're all completely different.
And they all bring something really exciting...
...as a foley artist for me to work on.
I can be a dragon one day...
...and Harry Potter just shuffling along the corridor another day.
And neither of them might get used, but for me, I still get to do it.
So it's great fun.
I wish you could've seen him in his prime.
Magnificent, he was.
I think Potter should be very rich in diversity, in ideas.
Just magnificent.
I'll introduce all sorts of influences from different places.
Farewell, Aragog, king of the arachnids.
For instance, the folk boundary from Aragog's funeral.
I felt it had to have a lament on the fiddle.
The scene where the Durmstrangs...
...enter Hogwarts for the first time...
...Patrick did this sort of very upbeat, very contemporary piece.
Lots of slamming, harsh sounds.
It's like a contemporary, pop drum loop.
Terrific. It was a marvelous rehearsal.
When we were going to establish the new year at Hogwarts...
...we have the idea of involving a choir.
And we had the kids singing...
...and there's some toads that are doing like some of the rhythms.
And we were thinking about what would be the text.
And I said, "Well, there's the 'double trouble'...
...that is part of one of the witches' scene in Macbeth. "
And when I suggested that...
...John Williams races at me:
"Okay, this is the one. This is it."
And it was so extraordinary, what he did, that that actually...
That became the tagline when they were promoting the film.
And the poster is "Something Wicked This Way Comes."
I remember particularly watching the trailer.
That was the beginning of it.
Sirius Black has escaped from Azkaban Prison.
He's a murderer.
I remember that being really kind of eerie...
...and ominous and exciting and dark.
And that really getting me, like, excited to see it.
Something wicked this way comes
You think it's quiet now.
It's not normally like this.
- Rolling. - Slate.
Take to 14, 50, take three.
I'm recording the sound...
...what happens in front of the camera, dialogue mostly.
We have to elicit cooperation of different departments.
Start off with the costume, the fabrics...
...and making sure they don't rustle.
Making sure they got places to hide radio mikes.
If their shoes are clumpy on the floor.
For example, the scene in the courtroom...
...the floor is the wrong sound.
It's wood, but it's supposed to be marble.
So we have to try and eliminate the sound of the footsteps...
...so we can add the sound of footsteps on marble later on...
...to kind of meet the reality of the Potter world.
Cornelius, I implore you to see reason.
As with all stories, you wanna hear what people are saying.
Do you like that, Hermione? It's a lovely color.
So understanding people...
...and being very clear about the narrative...
...through complex scenes is a quite difficult path to tread.
Here we have a lot of noise to contain, special effects, noisy cameras, lighting.
All the usual stuff you get on a film set.
Background action.
Weasley, Weasley, Weasley.
Ron seems to be enjoying himself.
Apparently, it's his lucky day.
It's a hard job, especially on the Harry Potter set...
...because there's usually so much going on.
It's really hard to make sure you get a clear reading of the lines.
Father and I are in the minister's box.
Don't boast, Draco.
And if you don't get a clear reading of the line...
...you end up having to redo it in a studio later on.
I'm gonna run you in from where we started the last loop.
So you keep the continuity of it, all right?
ADR stands for "automated dialogue replacement."
It's something that 99.9 percent of directors loathe.
Because what they get on the performance...
...when they're shooting is what they want.
And then to go back in and re-record the actor...
...to deliver that line with the same passion...
...and the same conviction. It's very difficult.
Is the mic in the right place for you? Seem to be going in early.
The Harry Potter cast are very good at it.
They've had to do it from a very early age.
So we're gonna get a little shot. Just quite exactly what bit we're doing?
- That's the bit we need. - Right.
We do some strange things with them.
If there's any fighting going on or running along...
...we'll have to re-create that in the theater.
I need you to sound pretty out of breath.
They run on the spot and they get a bit out of breath.
And then they go into the lines and they do it like that.
Goblet of Fire, that was a particular challenge...
...because it was such a big film.
There's so much action in it.
Let go.
You know, there's wind machines, huge crowds of people.
Keeping them quiet the whole time while the actors are doing...
...delicate dialogue scenes is pretty difficult.
We must have done 70 percent ADR, which is a lot of ADR for a film.
There were underwater scenes.
Quite often you can do that with any number of the sound crew.
Just go, "Okay, I'll stick my head in the bath and record something."
But Dan Radcliffe was right up for it.
He said, "No, no. I'll do it."
They got sort of a plastic crate and filled it up with water...
...and then they had an underwater microphone.
And then I stuck my head in and said the line.
I had to say, "But she's my friend too."
And with a mouthful of water.
It wasn't actually as hard as it looks...
...it was just a kind of very odd thing to have to do.
I've worked with a lot of actors who said, "No, get somebody else."
But he comes in and he just jumps straight into it.
But she's my friend too!
I think for any composer, actually, it's quite a lonely existence.
You tend to sit in a room, working on your own around the clock.
And then suddenly you get to the recording sessions...
...and there's, certainly in the case of Harry Potter...
...there's 95 people sitting there.
A normal-size string section for a movie I suppose would be...
...eight cellos, maybe six even, these days...
...eight violas, 22 violins.
On Harry Potter, we had 18 first violins, 18 second violins...
...15 violas, 14 cellos, 10, 11 basses.
It was massive.
Very exciting.
And certainly for Harry Potter...
...it was the number of musicians that you need...
...to support those kind of visuals and those images...
...and certainly special effects.
If you have a really big orchestra...
...Abbey One is the biggest room you can get.
It's got a lot of height, a lot of breadth to it.
So the sound can really be rich.
It can be dark. It can be expansive.
It's a really wonderful studio for a big orchestral sound.
Abbey Road has a unique decay characteristic...
...in the sound, that when you hit a note and stop...
...and just reverberant vibrations that happen are...
I mean, it's...
It has a wonderful sound to it.
There's all the history that goes along with Abbey Road.
And so however that plays into the mix, I don't know.
You can leave it up to metaphysicians as to how that adds to the sound.
I believe it does.
A recording studio can very much affect...
...the sound of what's being recorded.
Abbey Road has a very kind of traditional...
...almost like a concert hall orchestral sound.
But actually the music for Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire...
...was recorded at Air Lyndhurst Studios in Hampstead.
It's a converted church.
Air Lyndhurst was... Certainly worked for Harry Potter.
It works very well with strings.
Patrick Doyle on recording sessions, there aren't too many nerves.
I think he still loves the idea of hearing his music...
...you know, being performed for the first time.
And I think for any composer, actually, to hear your music being performed...
...it's always exciting.
If I'm enthusiastic, then you'll be enthusiastic, I think.
It is not that I deliberately do this. It's that natural way I feel about it.
I am very enthusiastic about the job. I love doing it.
It's working with live musicians that make it all worthwhile...
...and he always seems to revel in that.
Someone said, and I wish I knew who said it:
"It's the biggest toy in the world."
No matter how difficult the process is...
...the opportunity for an orchestra to play your music is a great privilege.
It really is.
I never tire of it. Never tire of it.
The toughest challenge on Harry Potter is not to be the person who gets it wrong.
There's always such attention.
There's always so much to be recorded in a short amount of time.
It's actually, I shoot from the hip as I see it, think on your feet...
...and move very fast and change your ideas and be malleable.
Actually, if I wonder if I could ask you to start:
Could you start that please?
Peter, are you okay on the previous take for the first half?
Nick turned to me and said:
"Jeff, let's quickly write in some trombones.
Just stand up in front of the orchestra and say...
...trombone one, I want you to play E for two bars...
...then I want you to move to F.
I want it to start piano and crescendo to mezzo forte...
...and trombone two, you play this thing."
We do it fast.
We have confirmed the 10 high-security prisoners...
...in the early hours of yesterday evening, did escape.
There's so much weighing on minutes and hours...
...you're spending in the scoring session.
The magnitude of everything we do is so important to so many people.
And that is quite scary. There's no way you can get around it.
Notorious mass murderer, Sirius Black.
It is just that important.
Bellatrix Lestrange.
So there's quite a lot of fear.
When I was conducting the "Possession" theme, I was shaking.
You know?
And yet underneath it was an extraordinary feeling...
...of something wonderful happening that I hadn't experienced before.
This very strange atmosphere developed in the room.
It is the most important part of the film.
Harry.
And for some reason, it has a line which just completely moves me.
Which is a moving build to the point where he finds the love of his friends...
...which repulses Voldemort.
And people were slightly weeping instead of playing.
It had this just incredibly moving effect.
You're the weak one.
And you'll never know love or friendship.
You couldn't do that on your own.
You need all those musicians to feel it.
We may make four takes, four recordings of a certain scene.
And the difference between take two and take four...
...may be the difference between notes and magic.
The performance of orchestras in films...
...when they are infused with some magic, like a great live performance...
...it will do something for the film, I firmly believe.
Just take it at nine, people.
If you turn the lights out...
...you don't see, turn the vocals off, all you hear is the orchestra...
...you realize you're hearing a world-class performance.
Virtuosic performance, it supports these scenes...
...these characters and locations.
The action of flying and so on.
The orchestra is flying with them.
In Harry Potter, it was only something that was read through books.
There was no music involved at all in Jo Rowling's writing.
So for the first few films, the score was incredibly important...
...in kind of establishing Harry Potter as a series.
And what was great about John Williams in the early films...
...is that he did what he does best...
...which is to give a story gravitas.
It's, "Take this seriously."
Here is the music for you to take it seriously.
John Williams' score elevated the picture.
You close your eyes and you listen to John's score...
...and you're transported to another place.
You need to hear a few notes...
...and you're on the train to Hogwarts. Or on a boat across the lake.
And Nick and Patrick took that lead and ran with it.
No, no, no.
The "Hedwig's Theme" I used...
Because I think it's the most famous theme.
That's John's theme.
It's obviously...
All right. What key we in?
I changed his chords, which I hope John didn't mind.
Taking the thematic material, varying it, coloring it in different ways...
...and tossing it around the score.
But rewriting John Williams is a dangerous thing to do...
...because he does it best.
And it's very, very hard to find another way in.
But I think it's a great theme. So I just love working with it.
And I have used it in very dramatic scenes.
Just play a couple of phrases of it.
And they'd often be at Harry Potter moments.
An interesting thing, because John Williams wrote the piece of music...
..."Hedwig's Theme," about Hedwig...
...and the joy of that, the first time we see the owl fly.
But I think over time, it's sort of just been adopted in the minds of everybody...
...who's watched the films as being Harry's theme.
When you hear the first few bars of "Hedwig's Theme"...
...you instantly know it's gonna be a Harry Potter trailer.
This is a Harry Potter film...
...or this is something related to Harry Potter.
It's instantly recognizable, and it stayed all the way through.
It is very, very powerful music...
...and it's seemingly managed to capture the imagination of all our audiences.
I think if an audience can leave the theater...
...and carry some of the musical themes with them...
...that's a plus.
I think I get the most pleasure out of the fact...
...that the younger members of the audience...
...when they come to me, are able to sing the themes...
...or play them on their instrument or in the process of learning music...
...from what they hear in the Harry Potter films.
And when I can go out and play a concert with the orchestra in Boston...
...or whatever city I do, and play Harry's theme...
...and the children, particularly young people, know the material...
...that's the kind of reward and success from this...
...that at least for me personally, as a musician, is the most meaningful.
That kind of connection with the young audience...
...is open to us in the Harry Potter series.