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Learn to compose film scores from Hans Zimmer!


Jay

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Tell a story with music

 


Hans Zimmer didn’t see a film until he was 12 years old. Since then, he’s scored over 150 films, including Inception, The Lion King, and The Dark Knight. In his MasterClass, the self-taught Academy Award winner teaches how he creates sounds from nothing, composes compelling character themes, and scores a movie before ever seeing it. By the end, you’ll have everything you need to tell your story.

 

 

https://www.masterclass.com/classes/hans-zimmer-teaches-film-scoring

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Yeah, I've seen these around. They've gotten some pretty big names...Werner Herzog, Aaron Sorkin, Dustin Hoffman, Annie Leibovitz. It's a pretty neat idea, doesn't look like the worst deal in the world either. $90 for 6-7 hours of video lessons and extra reading materials, never expires. Supposedly they give feedback too occasionally. Dunno what the actual academic quality of the lessons would be like.

 

When I first heard of it I wondered what the off chance would be that Williams would do one ;) but of course Hans is a more likely choice.

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17 minutes ago, BloodBoal said:

"Learn how to compose film scores with Kevin Spacey"?

 

That's the discount price one, along with Hans Zimmer Teaches Acting - MasterClass. $40 package for both.

 

https://www.masterclass.com/classes/kevin-spacey-teaches-acting

 

Dude, they should make a TV series where Kevin Spacey is a film director like this, just teaching all his wisdom, but with a good plot. Or instead of a good plot, just Kevin Spacey.

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18 minutes ago, Cantus Venti said:

 

 

That's the discount price one, along with Hans Zimmer Teaches Acting - MasterClass. $40 package for both.

 

https://www.masterclass.com/classes/kevin-spacey-teaches-acting

 

Dude, they should make a TV series where Kevin Spacey is a film director like this, just teaching all his wisdom, but with a good plot. Or instead of a good plot, just Kevin Spacey.

The blurb for the Spacey class on the site:

Kevin Spacey asks you to engage in the craft of acting in his first ever online class as he teaches you the approach that has won him two Academy Awards.

 

I wonder if I should sign on. Academy Awards will be a surefire thing after these magnificent 5 hours of this masterclass.

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2 hours ago, Incanus said:

The blurb for the Spacey class on the site:

Kevin Spacey asks you to engage in the craft of acting in his first ever online class as he teaches you the approach that has won him two Academy Awards.

 

I wonder if I should sign on. Academy Awards will be a surefire thing after these magnificent 5 hours of this masterclass.

 

If you're competing with everyone who took his class, it's going to be difficult. There'll only be a 20% shot at an oscar.

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Just one or two disparaging remarks in this thread so far? Somehow, I had expected far more, given the Zimmer history of this place.

 

I think this looks great, and although I don't have the dough to buy it, it's certainly something I would have loved to see. Sometimes, Zimmer can be a bit full of himself (with elements of fake modesty), but he's one of my favourite composers of all time, and it's always a pleasure to hear him talk about his craft. Here's a long Q&A I attended a couple of years back (in Krakow), with lots of interesting comments:

 

http://celluloidtunes.no/celluloid-tunes-22-hans-zimmer-qa-in-krakow-7th-international-edition/

 

 

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2 hours ago, Bilbo Skywalker said:

5 hours to learn ctrl+c and ctrl+v and tonne told to only ever use D minor? Seems excessive. 

 

That better Thor?

 

Yeah, that would be more in line with the JWFAN anti-Zimmer mantra.

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Then your experiences are certainly very different from mine. And I'm not talking about the behaviour towards his fans, but towards him and his music in general.

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You must be smoking weed again. No Zimmer hater is ever going to get under my skin. But that this forum is generally hostile towards the composer is fairly obvious, I think (at least the threads I've seen over the years).

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4 minutes ago, Thor said:

You must be smoking weed again. No Zimmer hater is ever going to get under my skin. But that this forum is generally hostile towards the composer is fairly obvious, I think (at least the threads I've seen over the years).

 

You don't read all the threads here, obviously.  There are plenty of people here who love Zimmer's music, and plenty who don't.  Just like there plenty who love Giacchino's music and plenty who don't.  Probably true for every composer.

 

Heck, there are three threads dedicated to his Interstellar score, one of which has 35 pages of discussion

 

http://www.jwfan.com/forums/index.php?/topic/23268-hans-zimmer-started-on-interstellar/

 

http://www.jwfan.com/forums/index.php?/topic/25261-a-guide-to-hans-zimmers-interstellar/

 

http://www.jwfan.com/forums/index.php?/topic/25233-interstellar-live-to-projection-royal-albert-hall-london-30th-march-2015/

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Thor, you don't help the cause by demonizing the place.  Looking at threads from the distant past may reveal a far more toxic atmosphere, but for the most part, modern JWFan is quite tolerant and indeed open minded about Zimmer.  The few most vocal whiners are easily shrugged off, and one need not even mention the occasional passers-through who drop the old "ZIMMER SUX LOL!!!!!111" routine.

 

In other news, check out how pretentious my language sometimes gets in the Interstellar analysis.  Sweet fancy Moses.

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7 hours ago, Prerecorded Briefing said:

Thor, you don't help the cause by demonizing the place.  Looking at threads from the distant past may reveal a far more toxic atmosphere, but for the most part, modern JWFan is quite tolerant and indeed open minded about Zimmer.  The few most vocal whiners are easily shrugged off, and one need not even mention the occasional passers-through who drop the old "ZIMMER SUX LOL!!!!!111" routine.

 

In other news, check out how pretentious my language sometimes gets in the Interstellar analysis.  Sweet fancy Moses.

 

Well, maybe the place has changed recently on this issue, I don't know. I don't read as many threads as you guys. But I've always felt the majority has been Zimmer-critical. In fact, in most cases it's the minority who has stood up to defend him (people like Kaya and myself, for example), and I've found myself just dropping out of threads altogether because it's become tiresome. It doesn't really have anything to do with 'demonizing', it just describes a bias (or anti-bias), that's all. Just as you would describe FSM as a pro-Goldsmith board.

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We could get on with the discussion without any more detours to accusations of Zimmer persecution and valiant minority charging to his defense here when the forces of darkness at unfair JWFan try to smother them. Or we could make fun of Kevin Spacey's acting lessons again. Because that is rather fun.

 

Such internet classes are not a new thing but someone like Zimmer doing an extended course on the subject is certainly new and interesting development. I imagine other composers like Christopher Young would probably be game for such workshops or online courses.

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You know, for a bunch of people who like to stand on a soapbox and give your thoughts and insights on other people's works, sometimes in rather long-winded fashion...you all talk quite a bit of smack about people sharing thoughts about their own work!

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5 hours ago, Thor said:

 

Well, maybe the place has changed recently on this issue, I don't know. I don't read as many threads as you guys. But I've always felt the majority has been Zimmer-critical. In fact, in most cases it's the minority who has stood up to defend him (people like Kaya and myself, for example), and I've found myself just dropping out of threads altogether because it's become tiresome. It doesn't really have anything to do with 'demonizing', it just describes a bias (or anti-bias), that's all. Just as you would describe FSM as a pro-Goldsmith board.

 

You mean Koray, not Kaya.  Two VERY different people.

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  • 3 months later...

Nice little interview with Zimmer for Inverse promoting his Master Class online lessons
 

Some quotes I found interesting:

 

Quote

I spent months trying to come up with something for Ben. The Batman that I know and the one I learned is the one that Christian did, and Ben plays it differently. And I can’t quite shake that off. For me, the Christian Bale character was always completely unresolved. It was always about that moment at the beginning of the first movie, where he sees his parents getting killed. It was basically arrested development. The Ben character is more middle-aged; he seems to be grumpy as hell, but I didn’t feel the pain that I felt in Christian’s performance. And it was that pain that made me interested.

 

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I think the next big trend — and it really is happening already — is just people writing far more individualistic scores and breaking new ground constantly. If you listen to people like Johan Johansson, the borders between film music and popular music and classical music, all those walls are just coming down. And the walls between technology and people who went to music academy as opposed to people who are just incredibly passionate about music, all those walls are coming down. Look at what Johnny Greenwood is scoring. He’s in Radiohead, but he’s one of the greatest film composers out there. He’s a composer-in-residence at the BBC. There’s a guy who is comfortable in all fields.

 

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I’ll give you an example of something I’d love to do over: As Good As It Gets, the Jim Brooks movie. When we previewed it, there wasn’t music over the first scene, so people didn’t know it was a comedy. And Jack’s outrageous performance, like putting the dog down the garbage chute, all that stuff, you could just hear a collective jaw drop from the audience because they didn’t know if it was funny or just the most brutal thing they’d ever seen. And I put a little bit of music at the beginning, just to let them know it was a comedy, and I wish I hadn’t. It was great when it was unmitigatingly tough.

 

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