Exclusive! Wendy and Lisa interview part 1!
House Petrelli: In the scoring process, how much is recycled and how much is custom-composed for the episode?Wendy: Well, that’s an easy answer. We have not reused one cue in the three seasons that we’ve done. We can’t, because each scene is so specifically composed that if you reuse anything you won’t be hitting the right spots on the characters. So when we go in and listen to the cues when we’re trying to spot the episode, they’ve inevitably thrown a cue in there that works but it’s for the wrong character. So we haven’t reused, and we’ve never wanted to. On Crossing Jordan we were able to repurpose some romantic cues, but again, on this show we don’t, and also I think it helps keep the integrity of the feeling we had from the first season.
HP: Yeah, I just saw a tweet on there about how you’re trying to keep that alive.
W: We’re trying! We’re trying. We see this so closely from beginning of script to final dub stage, and yeah, it’s been frustrating for us to see it go in and out and up and down in its... what’s the word I’m looking for...
Lisa: Well, because we’re fans of the show I guess you could say sometimes the storylines go places you wish they wouldn’t, or sometimes different looks or characters, or sometimes the show gets into a struggle... We’re sort of the last line of defense. And our executive producers even say that to us once in a while at the spotting session. A lot of things happen with budget cuts and things like that where they don’t have enough time to shoot certain scenes the way they want, or to spend the money on special effects. With a show like Heroes a lot of times you want to do a lot of special effects, but that gets expensive.
HP: Sure.
L: So sometimes they’re forced to make do and create a lot of stuff in the editing room, and then we come along and they say, “Okay, we got this as close as we could to being really super scary, or really a lot of tension, or very emotional, and you guys need to help us push this in whatever direction is needed.”
HP: So you’re really creative partners in that way. They will come to you and say, “Hey, make this darker,” or whatever.
W: Absolutely.
L: Yeah, definitely. And like Wendy was saying, they’ll temp a piece of music in there that works for the mood but not for the character, and we’re really particular about the sounds and themes we’ve created for each character, so every show is from scratch. We just have to do it, and we’re working frickin’ overtime!W: And this last episode that we just finished about 45 minutes ago? Had the most music in the entire season. 40 minutes. The show is only 42-1/2 minutes long!
HP: Right... which episode were you doing?
W: 25. The last one.
HP: The last one! Ahh!
L: Mmhm. Yeah!
HP: I am so scared for one of my favorite characters!
W: Oh my god, I’m not gonna say a word.
HP: I know, you can’t.
W: But I will say it’s the best show of the season, I think.
L: Great show. The last two shows are going to blow you away.
W: Yep, they’re fantastic.
HP: Well, everything since 19 is like... ooh, wait a minute... 19...
W: A lot better. But when you get to 24 and 25 you’re gonna be like “I can’t believe it’s over and they actually got back to the original season.”
HP: Hot damn!
W: It’s great. It’s great. We were really excited, jumping up and down and hugging Tim Kring.
HP: Oh yeay!
L: Hugging him and punching him.
HP: (laughs) I was gonna say, I’m not sure which I would do.
L: Exactly.
HP: Oh man. Well, how long does a typical show score take to complete?
W: It was 40 minutes, so we were here like 12-hour days for a handful of days. Most likely we’re doing about 35 minutes of music and it takes about three days to do but it’s extremely focused time in the studio and we don’t leave this room. You might see us tweeting but that’s between loading sounds and micing something.
HP: Right, trying not to break computers...
W: Exactly.
HP: (laughs) I read your tweets! I know what happens in there!
L: It’s true! It’s all true!
HP: People actually read those things, can you believe it?
W: Yes, I do!
HP: (laughs) Oh, here’s one that both I and “Flyboy Patrick” wanted to know, and that is who decides on the more commercial songs like “Eyes” and “The Chain” that have been inserted in there and that work so beautifully.
W: I think that was probably Allan Arkush completely.
HP: Really! So he really wanted “The Chain” in there for that Sylar scene.
W: He did. He actually went home and went through all his... he had something there before, but then went home because it wasn’t working. The guy’s a music historian, he’s incredible, I’ve never met anyone like that. And he just went through his stuff and said, “You know what might work?” And he put that up against it, and sure enough it was a match made in heaven for him.
HP: It really was. That answer surprises me, I figured you were in charge of all the music start to finish.
W: Not the needle-drops.
L: It’s funny, because with that song in particular we got a lot of compliments, but I felt bad because it wasn’t us who made that decision. They knew that in the script it was supposed to take place in a particular year, and so Allan got to thinking what songs might be popular during that time, and Sylar was having flashbacks in the diner, and so maybe this song would be playing in the diner. And then the bass line sounded like it might be a little bit spooky, so Allan thought, “Oh, this is perfect!” And the way we were able to morph it into the score bits worked really well. So it’s Allan Arkush.
W: If anything, I’m the one that says, “Let’s not use the needle-drops.” I’m the one that poo-poos all of that because I don’t see songs in the show. I don’t think they work, personally.
HP: That depends, though, like “Mustang Sally,” obviously, was working there. And I don’t think “Eyes” was the original choice for that pilot, right?
W: No, it was not. It was not, but I didn’t mind the song in the pilot. But there’s been a few in there where I’ve been like, you know what? Let us score this scene because it’s a big montage scene where there’s not a lot of dialogue in there, it’s just recapping at the end, or an epilogue at the very end that ends up being these beautiful montage shots with Mohinder speaking over it. And I just feel that it’s really important Heroes music and you need to be in that headspace when you’re listening to the recap and the dialogue, because hearing a song takes away from it. You end up listening to lyrics, or it takes you out, or it ends up looking more like a music video than it does the actual show. And I’ve always been, “Yeah, let’s not use that.”
HP: There was one moment in the entire series where that stood out to me as, “Oh, that song isn’t working there, but I don’t know why.”
W: Do you remember what it was?
HP: I don’t. I want to say it was Peter driving away when he was stuck inside that other guy, but it was more recent than that...
L: Oh, I know what it was, it was Sylar and the sidekick guy...
W: The little kid.
HP: It could have been. It was a car driving down a road away from the camera and you’re up in a crane shot looking down.
L: Didn’t we end up scoring that? Because we said it sounded terrible there.
HP: There was a needle-drop, as you say, and I was like, “Ah, that’s really out of place.”
L: Because we did score it, and then on the dub stage they put the song in it at that exact spot.
HP: Ah, maybe that was it, but they ruined it!
W: Yeah... see? See? (laughs)
HP: Speaking of not removing things, I want to talk about Shankar for a second. So does he do live stuff just for the show, or do you have a huge library of samples of his, or what?
W: We have him come in and sing then make samples.
HP: Ah! Well, that’s handy.
W: Yes. Depending on the storylines we’ll have him come in and give us different emotional variations of his classic “Heys” in certain keys that we use, and we spread him out on all the keyboards, and that’s what we do. At this event we’re gonna have him sing all this stuff live.
HP: Are you? At Heroes for Autism?
W: Yes.
HP: Let’s talk about that! What’s going to happen?
W: We’re gonna open with some Heroes music. We’re gonna perform the stuff live with some great musicians, and then from that moment we’re gonna go into the band and start playing stuff from the record and have guest appearances from people, and it’ll be a great night.
HP: You’re going to have people fainting. I know Jen the Fangirl in particular, who’s 1/3 of House Petrelli, is going to, like, need a change of clothing.
L: Fantastic. Well, we’re really excited about it, because we had a piece of footage created for our performance. It’s like an eight-minute performance piece for all three screens of all the most beautiful shots from the three seasons.
HP: So you’ve got the new CD coming out that is the actual soundtrack that people actually really wanted from the first one.W: Exactly.
HP: What happened with the first one? Why did it end up being just kind of a collection of music from the show, sort of?
L: Yeah, and not even.
W: We were against it from day one. We thought it was a big mistake. We had pitched putting out our CD, and as a matter of fact, that first season me and Lisa and our engineer Michael had made a gift for everybody by taking the first... I think by Christmas we had done something like 12 episodes, and we made a beautiful CD of all of these cues and gave them out as Christmas gifts as a way to say we want to release this stuff. It’s too good to not release.
HP: Yes, yes, and the fans are going, “Please! Let us have it!”
W: Everybody was really excited about it, and then the show just started getting bigger and bigger that year, and I think that it might have been... you know, I don’t want to be pejorative about this, but I think there was a bit of “Oh, let’s capitalize on as much as we can.”
HP: Yeah.
W: And they decided to get artists to do original songs for the show and put it out. And both Lisa and I were “Ay, god, this is just not a good idea...”
HP: And you were right.
W: You know, I don’t think it really worked.
HP: And looking at the album on iTunes, pretty much the only track that’s getting downloaded is “Fire and Regeneration.”
W: That’s why they came to us seven months later and said, “Okay, we were wrong, let’s put something together.” And we were like, “See...?” So we went ahead and put together this incredible compilation of all of the best cues and turned each character’s music into like an eight-minute piece.
HP: I can’t wait. I cannot wait to get this. I wish there was a Nathan cue, but I’ll live.
L: Nathan and Peter share sounds, so there’s stuff in there. You’ll hear the relationship.
HP: Oh, that’s nice.
W: You’ll hear that.
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