Jurassic Park 3 Don Davis Text Interview

[scallenger 481]

I popped in my Jurassic Park 3 OST the other day because I was curious to see if the enhanced content still worked on a modern computer. Turns out it still does, at least on a Windows 7 64-bit. I primarily wanted to access it to extract a couple video files (a trailer for a JP3 game that never came out, and the first trailer for the film that was by far the best). However, I also noticed a text interview in the enhanced content with composer Don Davis. While short, I thought it was worth preserving just in case there comes a time the next modern computers wouldn't be able to access it. So here it is, transcribed below:

-A CONVERSATION WITH COMPOSER DON DAVIS-

Q: How did you become involved with composing the music for Jurassic Park III?

A: I had the good fortune to be recommended by John Williams.

Q: Describe working with John Williams. How does the new music incorporate and build upon his original Jurassic Park themes?

A: John Williams and I met in the cutting room and we looked at some completed sequences of Jurassic Park III, and discussed what the approach to the underscore would be. He made all the sketches from Jurassic Park and The Lost World available to me for this project. As I began to study his sketches, I started to realize what a unique challenge this was going to be. His music is structured with such amazing integrity that I knew it would be a huge challenge to approach the standard he had established.

Q: How does the new music differ from the music from the first two Jurassic Park films?

A: Well, the tone of the third film is a bit different from the first two... it's a bit darker. A few new characters were introduced which required some new thematic material, so every scene that referred to the immense sacrifice the Kirbys were making for their son was scored with this new material. In addition to that, most of the action sequences and under dialogue sequences occasionally have a loose reference to Williams' music from the other two movies, but otherwise are essentially free composed. And, a few of the key sequences that involve situations that revolve around the Dr. Grant character (who returns from the first Jurassic Park) are scored verbatim with John Williams' Jurassic Park themes.

Q: Describe working with director Joe Johnston. Did you spend any time on set, and did that influence your score?

A: I did spend some time on set and during that time I had the privilege of speaking with Jack Horner, who is the paleontologist on the set in an advisory position, and we had some interesting discussions about Spinosaurus and Velociraptor. I also began some creative discussions with Joe Johnston at that time, who has been an extreme pleasure to work with and has been very accessible and collaborative.

Q: Describe the challenges of composing the music for a blockbuster action film like Jurassic Park III. Was the process similiar to composing the score for The Matrix?

A: The process was definitely different from The Matrix, since in this case I was expanding on the concept that was established by John Williams in the previous films, whereas The Matrix was tabula rasa. The big challenge in Jurassic Park III was knowing that my music was going to be compared to the music of the brilliant John Williams, and that was daunting. The challenge on The Matrix was going to be as inventive and creative as the filmmakers were, which was, again, a daunting challenge.

I actually didn't know Williams met up with Davis in the cutting room for the film. And I am a bit perplexed that Davis though JP3 was a darker film than the previous two. LOL.

[Muad'Dib 1,800]

I actually didn't know Williams met up with Davis in the cutting room for the film. And I am a bit perplexed that Davis though JP3 was a darker film than the previous two. LOL.

He was probably ordered to say so, maybe to gain more interest in the film. Although in some of the early scripts it was definetly going to be more violent and the T-Rex vs Spino fight was to be somewhat longer so maybe he was talking about that. And yeah, it's quite cool they sat together to watch a cut of the film.

Thanks for sharing!

[scallenger 481]

You're welcome! Yeah the Spino VS Rex fight was indeed meant to be longer and actually used animatronics. I think they are still VERY briefly used in the final film for that scene, but they filmed a lot more of it with them (one extra shot is actually in one of the early trailers).

[Thor 7,465]

JPIII is much "brighter" than THE LOST WORLD, for sure.

Thanks for the clip from the CD-ROM. I had forgotten there was CD-ROM material on the soundtrack.

[crocodile 7,984]

There is also a couple of Soundtrack.net interviews where he's mentioning the score:

And then you did Jurassic Park III. There was a rumor floating around that James Horner was going to do the score, and then when you got the gig, there was a rumor going around that either Horner picked you for the project, or John Williams did. So which one, if any, was right?

The second one. Apparently Spielberg wanted Williams to do it, but since Spielberg was directing A.I. and they were both happening around the same time, it was pretty obvious that Williams couldn't do two things at once. I suspect he wasn't too interested in doing the third part of a franchise that he said goodbye to some time before. I think Steven and Kathleen Kennedy looked to John as to who they should get. Williams discussed it with Mike Gorfaine, our agent, and my name came up and Williams thought it was a good choice. As far as Horner being involved, I asked Joe Johnston if Horner was ever considered, and he said no. So I know that Horner was never signed, and Joe says that he wasn't considered - and I would imagine that Horner wouldn't have been interested anyway, because he's been a major composer for a long time and he doesn't need to do a project with someone else's themes.

Was it required that you use Williams's pre-existing themes?

It was never a matter for discussion. But I considered it an honor, really. Putting myself in the position of someone in the audience, I would have wanted that continuity, you know, seeing Jurassic Park III, I want the Jurassic Park themes! I was listening to both of his scores quite a bit to get into the whole language that Williams used, so that it would be as consistent as I could make it.

You even seem to tweak Williams' themes just a bit...

Actually, I had to extend or shorten some of those themes to hit particular beats in the film. The first one is a fly-over on the island, and I had to extend the music to fit so I could get this particular motif over the shot of Tea Leone. I didn't really want to do that, since I felt it was stepping on ground I didn't want to step on, but eventually I came to the conclusion that it had to fit the picture. There are actually parts in the first two films where it's pretty clear that Williams was extending and compressing to hit certain beats.

The action cues are pretty intense, including one of my favorites from the scoring session, "Clash of Extinction"...

I've got bad news for you. In the dubbing, it was determined that the "Clash of Extinction" sequence would work better without any music. It appears on the album, but not in the film. To be honest, the film was a bit over-spotted, and Joe seemed a little nervous to not have music everywhere. In the final analysis, I think we spotted too much music, so when we dubbed, there was some judicious excising, which happens pretty often. I believe that in the original Jurassic Park, the T-Rex attack on the kids in the car was underscored - but the decision was made at the dub stage to remove the music - and I think it works.

In addition to removing my music, they also cut out about 20-seconds of footage from that sequence. What they cut out was a bunch of shots of the two dinosaurs standing off - the animatronic shots. I'm not sure I agree with that decision, I thought the animatronics looked great - but it's not my call to make. I guess Joe felt that in the final analysis, when the two monsters see each other, what are they waiting for? Just fight!

While at the scoring session, I noticed that you took a lot of time to walk the orchestra - in sections - through the very complex action cues. Do you intentionally torment the orchestra with this difficult passages?

<laughs> Well, I have a technique of rehearsal when it's a difficult cue; especially if it's brass heavy. If I just keep the brass rehearsing and rehearsing, then by the time we put it on tape they won't have the endurance to play through it. So usually we'll read down a cue, and if there are any big glaring problems in the brass I'll work on that first. Then I'll go through the strings and work out the kinks. The nature of string instruments is that they have different hand positions. There are various ways of going from one position to the next, so if there's a complicated pattern that the strings are going to do, they need to figure it out in advance - they can't sight-read it. So that's why with certain passages I'll go below tempo - so they can work out those patterns, and once they have it worked out, then they do it up to tempo. There are 30 violins, so it's a matter of getting them in sync as well.

What were the final specs of the orchestra?

It was a 104-piece orchestra, and a 60-person choir. There wasn't anything outrageously different about the orchestra. The brass section was a little bigger; I had six trombones: three tenors, a bass trombone, and two tubas that doubled cymbassi, and also eight French horns. I had four trumpets, three oboes, three bassoons, four flutes, and four clarinets. It's certainly a full orchestra - thirty violins and seven percussion. Joe wanted a pounding sound for the Spinosaurus, so I had a pair of timpani - two timpani players that each had eight drums. That was pretty raucous really! <laughs> Other than that, it was standard percussion - nothing exotic. Sometimes that sort of thing is warranted and called for, but more often than not it seems like a gimmick to me. Some whoopdie-doo rattle drum from the island of Burma to get your point across.... I don't really subscribe to that.

In addition to Williams' themes, you did write your own themes as well...

In the course of the film, these two estranged parents come together to help rescue their son - so there's this bond between them that I felt needed to be expressed musically. Whenever there's a situation that involves them reminiscing or something like that, I felt that that theme was appropriate, and I didn't think there was anything from the other two films that I could use to represent that. And they are new characters to the franchise, so that would help give this picture a bit of uniqueness.

What do you think about the comparisons that will be made about your score and the Williams scores?

Well, first of all I am satisfied that I did a good job, and Kathleen Kennedy and Joe Johnston indicated to me that they were satisfied, and that's what they pay me for! So I feel that the mission was accomplished. I haven't heard from John Williams, whether he was happy or pissed. I was hoping that he would be flattered and pleased - I don't think he's heard it yet. Outside of that, my wife and my mom like it.

Have you read some of the online reviews of the score?

They're hard to avoid. There's one review that was very complimentary, and that was nice to read. There was another review that was less complimentary, and I thought it was basically idiotic. You know, what control do I have over what idiots say? <laughs>

And here as well:

What are some of your film music influences?

The obvious ones are still there, you know, the Goldsmiths and Williams are pretty hard to dismiss. But it will actually be interesting to see what happens when these composers actually do pass. I think it would be interesting checking out exactly what their legacy is going to be when they are gone. I mean, we've really only been able to assess Stravinsky after he died. His legacy certainly still continues, but so will Boulez's and even Williams'. The nature of film scoring is such that trends and fashions have a lot more to do with it then they do with concert music. So, it will be interesting to see, once John Williams is no longer with us, how his legacy will play out. Even now, I think that there is some negativity associated with any attempt to expressly deal his legacy, unless one is scoring Jurassic Park III or doing what Bill Ross did on Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. It seems that it isn't fruitful for film composers to try and build on that legacy. In fact, building on any sort of legacy, or lineage in film scoring seems to be frowned upon. I'm not really sure why that is, that shouldn't be the case.

Right, because there are some aspiring film composers are seemingly trying to write like John Williams or "be" the next John Williams. I guess that's just not the nature of the industry or of the direction that film music is going.

I'm not so sure that younger composers are trying to be like John Williams because if they are, then they're failing! <Laughs> But I think possibly it has more to do with the infusion of popular music on film scoring - and record type composers aren't really geared towards the "John Williams" type of thought pattern. I think one thing we're seeing now, in spades, is that since the record industry is crumbling fast, due mostly to Napster and the proliferation of on-line piracy, many record / songwriter-type composers are getting out of the record business and they're trying get films to score, and they're getting them. In addition to that, film directors and producers at this point in time have grown up in a rock music culture and orchestral music is becoming more and more foreign to them. So I think for that reason, to try and perpetuate the John Williams legacy is going to become difficult.

In your first interview you did with SoundtrackNet, you talked about the first The Matrix, and you've done more films since then. Tell me about Jurassic Park III, in which you had to deal a lot with Williams' material. What's it like having to deal with someone else's material and trying to copy it and make it fit with the film?

Well, in that case, it was pretty daunting, because when you casually listen to John’s themes, they don't sound that complicated or unusual, but they are unusual, unusual in that they are unusually good! He got me all of his sketches from the first two Jurassic Park movies and I just started looking through them and I said to myself, "Jesus, what have I gotten myself into!?" <Laughs> There's such integrity in his music, and it's very subtle integrity, you know, just the integrity of the line. Every line that he has in there is so rich with potential harmonic information. So, I'm going through it and it's like, "Man, I don't know if I can hack this!"

You also came up with your own "family" theme for the movie, which was more of a romantic idea...

Well, I guess more romantic than the other things that [Williams] had written for that show. Romance wasn't explored that much musically in those films because it wasn't explored that much in the action. But, Jurassic Park III, you know, it's kind of a dumb movie, but I thought it was kind of interesting the way they came up with the premise for going to this island again. The deception that the Bill Macy character came up with to get Grant to go back on the island was kind of interesting in that he and his wife were divorced but they're really still in love with each other. And you know, they were motivated to do pretty extraordinary things because they both loved their son, which was a fairly rich premise on which to base a score. So, that was kind of a weird situation, kind of couched in this big popcorn movie that really didn't make too much sense except that we got to see more dinosaurs!

Right, which called for a lot of action music.

Yeah, well, I tried to justify everything I did by comparing it with something Williams did in the first two. I didn't want to go off on some weird tangent that had nothing to do with the other two pictures.

Karol