Hero - Short Film Score - Walkthrough Pt.19 - M6 (Part 4)

In today's post we have a look at the climax of that cue which at the same time is the climax of the movie. In a way, this sequence is the conclusion that the entire movie has been working towards. I mentioned already in several instances what an enormous joy it was to have been given the chance for the music to be the protagonist of that sequence. From the beginning on, the filmmakers planned this entire movie with the music as a lead character and this sequence is the culmination of that concept.

The sequence of today starts at 11:49 in the video.

All the previous parts of this series are available here. As always, Midi, Score Sheet and Orchestral recording attached at the bottom of the post.

For this sequence, I had one spotting note:

• brother theme played out, start with strings, get more heroic, both heroic and tender

So the emotional target was very clear. This is the moment where the older brother becomes the hero for the younger brother and at the same time we circle back to the conceptual idea of the movie to show the scenes in the imagination of the kids. We get the clear "standard" western shot of the hero riding into the sunset so the music clearly needed to take a turn for that sweepy wide shot western sound and at the same time incorporate the theme for the brothers.

Here's the recording of the sequence that we're talking about today:

https://soundcloud.com/robin-hoffmann/hero-m6-bar36-54/s-fFQrZzSBpEj 

We're coming from a clear C chord in the bar before setting up a strong V to the F in bar 36. I remember that I was first trying to make that theme work with the original harmonisation: 

However I felt that the descending bass line did not create the necessary heroic lift that this sequence needed so I went for a reharmonisation. The most drastic change actually happens to the second chord which instead of a V (with the third in the bass) becomes the iii. I felt that especially this harmonic progression creates a strong "western" association with me with an emotional quality of wide prairie lands, which might be a personal thing but subjectively is quite often used in such a context.

You might have read my post from last week about reharm strategies to accent "butter notes" which I do here as well. The first note is the 9 over the tonic and in the third bar there is a #11 over the bVII.

As  I wanted to create maximum "sweepyness" with this sequence, a lot of the instruments play relatively long notes. The basic setup of the orchestration is:

• Melody in octaves on High Woodwinds and High Strings
• Sustained harmony in Horns/Trombone/Tuba
• Side line motifs on long notes in the Horns
• 8th note arpeggios on Celli/Bassoons

This is a relatively "expectable" way to treat a passage like this. I wanted to keep a small degree of rhythmic momentum going so I went for the celli/bassoon arpeggios. Otherwise I would have coupled them an octave below the violas which would be the "John Williams way" of treating such a thing. He very often in such sequences has Vlns, Vlas and Celli playing the melody in octave unison and double basses providing the bass notes in the string section. The reinforcing upper harmonics of the lower octaves create that lush string sound and besides, you need quite a few instruments to make the melody stand out in a passage like this, so accumulating most of the string section on it is in general a good idea in this context.

One word about these little horn side lines in 37 and 39. Again, I went for "butter notes" (for instance the 9th in 39) to create that emotional depth that I was aiming for here and tried to create some musical consequence by having that motif gesture appear twice. The horns and trombone chords sometimes overlap into each other which in a setting like this is done quite commonly and you also don't need to fear that the harmonic backdrop will unbalance because you overlap a few notes (unless these notes are not all the third of the chord) as the tutti quality is so prominent here that this will not be noticeable.

In the repeptition of the theme, I change a few colours around:

• The trumpets take over the theme
• The high strings create sustained high harmony
• The high woodwinds take over harmony in repeating 16ths (with short rest for breaths)

I was on the fence for a while whether to put all three trumpets on the melody as it forces all of them up to the high concert c which is not a comfortable range for a 2nd or 3rd trumpet. However, I knew the players in Prague don't have fixed hierarchies about who plays which chair so all of them are basically "full range" trumpet players. For a regular concert orchestra I would have decided against that and would have split the theme out in octaves. Harmonically and thematically the two passes of the theme are identical (I forgot to mark the C7/G in bar 40 above), so I felt the need to change the colours a bit in the repetition.

I like this multi divisi device on the high strings (JW also uses it in the Jurassic Park Main Theme) that just hold long note chords as this introduces a lot of harmonics into the upper range of the frequency spectrum creating a lot of "sparkle". In spite of the divisi, it is not running into the danger of sounding overly thin as again the harmonics keep reinforcing themselves and they take a harmonic backdrop function anyway without needing to be excessively present.

I wanted to create a bit more momentum so I added these pulsing 16th chords in the woodwinds (+Celesta) which look quite dramatic in the score sheet but really play just a minor role in the perception. Still, it adds a bit of momentum to create a slight push in dramaturgy.

One word about the string runs in bar 43: As you can see I take the voicing from bar 44 as target and add a run before that that reaches each note of that voicing by going over the diatonic scale. This creates short moments where there are chords over the sustaining harmony that don't really fit but this is more of a musical gesture than a harmonical statement so none of the clashes are really audible.

After nearing the end of this passage, we agreed that we would want to use that western feeling to transition into the credits so I needed to find a pivot moment where I can switch to the more "horse riding adventure" western music that needed to follow. I used the last dominant of C7sus4 to switch to double time in 4/4 and effectively double the tempo so I would have a transition into the next sequence. Bar 53 shows the title of the movie (in a classical western way) so I needed to accent that and used a sequence of V-I's in 53 to spontaneously modulate towards Eb in 54 as I felt that we were long enough in F and needed  a new set of pitches for the credits.

I use an arpeggiated Csus in 51/52 in the high strings and woodwinds to create enough momentum for the new section.

With this passage we end the movie and switch to the credits. Other than in many feature films where the music in the credits contain cues from the score, we decided in this case to write "new" music for the credits to have a bit of an emotional "afterglow" after the last scene. We will cover this part in the next post.