Questions for Ken Winokur

Past chats with our guests.
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Questions for Ken Winokur

Post by SSO Admins »

Back in May, I went to the Maryland Film Festival to see a screening of Josef Von Sternberg's silent gangster drama Underworld with a live score by Alloy Orchestra.

The movie and the score were simply brilliant. I was entranced for an hour and a half, both by the film and music.

After the show was over there was to be a question and answer session with the members of Alloy. The first question was absolutely idiotic, something about whether they weren't allowed to show machine guns on screen or some such nonsense. I was waiting to jump in with my question, which was utterly brilliant, when the fire alarm in the theater went off and they started evacuating. While the audience was filing out the Alloy members went over and started packing up their instruments.

Ignoring the threat to my personal safety (it turned out to be a false alarm) I walked up and introduced myself to Mr. Winokur, who I had emailed with a bit back during the heyday of the newsgroup alt.movies.silent. We talked for 15 minutes or so, during which I not only got to ask my question, but asked him if he'd be interested in appearing as a guest star for the month of July.

He accepted,obviously. I am very pleased to present Ken Winokur, the first musician and composer we have had, and also the first guest star that I actually asked to participate in person.
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Greetings

Post by Ken Winokur »

Greetings! It's a privilege to be asked to chat with you all. I just want to let you all know that theres a good deal of Alloy Orchestra materials up on the web that you can access if you want to see or hear our work. Unfortunately, most of it is older silent film scores (most of our newer ones haven't been released as DVDs).

Alloy's website:
alloyorchestra.com
This is the best source for tour schedules, general information and tons of pictures of films

Video chips are housed at:
alloyorchestra.blip.tv

Audio clips and some photos are at our Myspace page:
myspace.com/alloyorchestra

The one example of our new work is a 10 minute ciip (audio only) of our newest score, UNDERWORLD. This will give you an idea of the direction our new work is taking.

Anybody got any questions?

Best,
Ken
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Post by movieman1957 »

Thanks so much for being with us this week. I've always found interesting the differences (or what seemed the differences) between composing a concert piece and composing for film.

Could you explain the process and what challenges, if any, film composing presents?
Chris

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Questions:

Post by Ken Winokur »

I have a few minutes this morning, so I though I would start things off with a couple of questions of my own:

"Ken, what is Alloy Orchestra currently working on?"

Thanks for asking, Ken. Alloy is currently in the middle of composing a new score for Josef von Sternberg's THE LAST COMMAND. It's an amazing film that won Emil Jannings the first ever best male actor Academy Award, and was nominated for best screenplay.

We started working on it a few weeks ago, and have gone through the film scene by scene and improvised ideas onto tape. We're now going through and, again scene by scene, working on each piece of music - getting a set structure, writing transitions, orchestrating supporting harmonies or melodies, etc.

This is our second von Sternberg movie. Last year we premiered a score for UNDERWORLD. We've been working closely with Paramount Pictures. They have created a new print for us to use for touring of both LAST COMMAND and UNDERWORLD.

We premiered UNDERWORLD last October at the NY Film Festival. I can't tell you where the premiere of LAST COMMAND will be (they keep it a secret until the weekend of the performance), but we will be touring extensively with it. There will be shows in:

Baltimore - Sept. 4
New York Film Festival - Oct 4
Detroit Institute of Art - Oct. 24 - 26
Cornell Cinema - Nov. 7 & 8
Pittsburgh Filmmakers - Nov. 16

There will be numerous other shows over the next year. Check out the Alloy website for these shows.


"Ken, what other performances are you doing this summer/fall?"

Here's a list of upcoming shows:

August 6
Brooklyn NY
BAM Cinematek (Brooklyn Academy of Music)
SPEEDY
http://www.bam.org/events/bamcinematek

August 7
Huntington NY
Sponsored by Hunntington Arts Council
Chapin Rainbow Stage in Heckscher Park (outdoors)
PHANTOM OF THE OPERA
http://www.huntingtonarts.org

August 9
Washington DC.
National Gallery of Art
UNDERWORLD
4:30 PM
http://www.nga.gov

August 29 – September 1
Telluride CO
Telluride Film Festival
Film TBA

September 4
Maryland Film Festival
Baltimore
THE LAST COMMAND

September 6
Rome Georgia
Rome International Film Festival
PHANTOM OF THE OPERA
http://www.riff.tv/

September 8
Waltham MA
Brandeis University
CHANG
Outdoors on Campus
8:10 PM

October 3
NY, NY
New York Film Festival
Walter Reade Theater
THE LAST COMMAND
http://www.filmlinc.com/nyff/nyff.html

Other fall shows (which I don't have all the information about yet) will include:

The Detroit Institute of Art
Chicago Cultural Center
The Oriental Theater in Milwaukee
The Mary Ripma Ross Media Center in Lincoln NE,
Hot Springs Ark. Film Festival
Webster College, St. Louis
Cornell Cinema, Ithaca NY
Hamilton College, Clinton NY
Colgate University, NY
St. Petersburg, Russia
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Film scoring vs. concert composition

Post by Ken Winokur »

The big difference between scoring for film and for a concert, is that with a film the music is never the primary focus of the audience attention.

With talkies there's always the problem of writing music that is quiet and unobtrusive, whenever somebody is speaking.

With silents there are less restrictions, but you still have to keep the music tied to the film. It's our goal to always support the film and the director's ideas for a particular scene.

We do find that the really good silent films have a very musical structure. By following the mood or energy of the film, we end up with a composition that usually has a good eb and flow - one that makes sense even without the picture.

Film scoring doesn't have to be quite as complex as concert compositions. We are only partially responsible for keeping the audience interested and amused. Silent films tend to be somewhat slow in their editing. This leaves lots of openings for the orchestra to insert musical events - this keeps the flow of the film going and keeps the audience interested.

Watching silent films without music (particularly a live accompaniment) can be quite dull. Truly silent presentations are missing about half of the content.

Ken
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Post by moira finnie »

Good Morning, Ken, and thanks so much for joining us.

I've noticed that you and the Alloy Orchestra often perform outdoors accompanying silent films as well as in concert halls and theatres. Do you prefer one over the other acoustically/artistically and how different are the audiences in those venues?

When you mention that you've noticed that there is a musical rhythm to silent movies, I wondered if you ever know what musical accompaniment might have been played for a particular scene in any of the films that you've scored? Is it better creatively not to know such details?

Thank you in advance for your answers.
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Process

Post by Ken Winokur »

Could you explain the process and what challenges, if any, film composing presents?

Rehearsal (on LAST COMMAND) starts in 12 minutes. I'll see how far I can get on this topic.

Our process:

I'll skip over the challenge of choosing a film, and perhaps come back to that later.

Once we've designated the next silent film we're going to work on, I get a copy of the film on video or DVD and transfer it to my computer (Mac pro). I capture the film into IMovie (or directly transfer it if it's a DVD) and then sink it up with a new set of tracks in Digital Performer (our audio recording software).

The guys come over to my studio (I have a loft in Cambridge, over a Chicken Slaughter House - with a big sign out front - "LIVE POULTRY FRESH KILLED) and we watch the film through. By this time I've already seen it quite a few times, and often will have had a chance to storyboard the film before the guys even watch it. My storyboards basically outline all the scenes in the film and major events that we'll have to score around.

After watching, Terry, Roger and I will start going through the film scene by scene, improvising musical ideas and recording them (in sync with the picture on the computer). We work quickly doing this. This is probably the most fun part of my job - it's just pure creativity. When we get an idea we're happy with, we move on the next scene.

We just completed this process with Last Command. We worked 6 days (about 4 hours a day) and got through the end of the movie. We wrote most of the basic themes we'll use for the film. But the themes are very simple at this point, and the harmonic or rhythmic accompaniment isn't really there yet. There are no transitions between scenes, and little complexity to the basic themes.

Next we'll spend much of the rest of the summer (we usually compose in the summer to get ready for a fall tour) improving the score. We'll write counter melodies, transitions, choruses etc until we're convinced that we've done the best we can.

Then we'll start rehearsing. Even at the rehearsal stage we continue refining the score.

By the time we premiere the score, we've probably been through the film 40 times.

Each of us writes his own parts. We listen to each others contributions and make suggestions. Roger (our keyboardist) helps me enormously in writing my clarinet parts (I'm really a drummer at heart). Our collaboration is something we're quite proud of. It's quite unusual in film scoring to have this kind of collaborative effort. Usually film scoring is done by a lone artist/genius, with the help of an arranger or orchestrator. We got used to this type of collaboration in our old rock/jazz/performance art ensembles.

I think the collaboration gives us added depth and interest. We all have different backgrounds (Roger did music conservatory, Terry was a rock drummer and leader of an old time country band, and I did lots of avant guard projects, and studied Africal and Latin percussion). We have all played in rock bands and done just about every type of music imaginable.

The challenges:

The big challenge is always to make music that supports the film. We call the film "our conductor." We watch the film throughout the performance, and it has many of the cues that tell us to move on to a new piece of music. We always try to help the director tell the story. So when there's a romantic scene, we play romantic music. We try to follow all the cues, and add a few sound effects to keep the music tied to the picture.

The challenge is when the film is doing something that we might not want to do, or even feel the director shouldn't have done. We have a harder time writing really low key scenes where there's not much going on. It's easy to overshadow these scenes, but at the same time they usually need a little pepping up. In THE LAST COMMAND, for instance, the ending is pretty unsatisfying. After an entire film where the General (Emil Jannings) has been in conflict with the revolutionist turned film director (William Powell), Powell ends the film with a very corny Hollywood speech about what a great guy the General was. It's not believable, and that make it hard to find the proper tone for the music.

There was another scene in THE LAST COMMAND where The General is in his office, and not much action happens for about 8 minutes. It's clearly one scene, so we kind of have to stick with one composition. It's a very long amount of time to play quiet background music that follows the mood of this low key scene. This piece of music is more complex than most - with lots of different sections and suble reiterations of the basic theme.

Time to rehearse. I'll be back on line this afternoon.

Best,
Ken
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Post by Ken Winokur »

I've noticed that you and the Alloy Orchestra often perform outdoors accompanying silent films as well as in concert halls and theatres. Do you prefer one over the other acoustically/artistically and how different are the audiences in those venues?

When you mention that you've noticed that there is a musical rhythm to silent movies, I wondered if you ever know what musical accompaniment might have been played for a particular scene in any of the films that you've scored? Is it better creatively not to know such details?




I'll answer these two softball questions.

Outdoors vs. indoors - All performing situations have different acoustics. This can be kind of confusing, but over time you get used to hearing odd things coming back to you on the stage. Outdoors is usually has less ambiance (reverb) but sometimes, when there buildings in the back or sides of the audience there can be these really annoying slap-backs. That's when you hear an echo of what you're playing - delayed just enough to throw off your rhythm. Since we always play with a sound system with audio monitors (not much choice in this when you're using a synth), you can always adjust the monitors so that you hear enough of what you need to hear. For us, it's always about hearing the synth over the cacophony of the drums. Sometimes we put a little clarinet or accordion in the mix so that we can make them balance the more amplified synth.

The audiences outdoors can sometimes be great. It's a fun, party-like atmosphere. And then, usually it rains. We've had an almost amazingly bad record of rain before or during our shows. Including power outages during lightening strikes, and even the blowing up of the electrical system to the projectors. That kind of thing makes it more fun!

***

The guys in Alloy disagree about whether to listen to previous scores.

I try to listen, as much as possible, to any of the original scores that might have been written for the release of the film in the olden days. I also enjoy new scores. I don't have any problem distancing myself from this other music when it comes time to compose. In reality, since nobody else is doing the kind of percussion we are there's really no possibility of copying the old scores.

I find it really interesting to listen to other silent film accompanists. Whether it's a traditional score, a modern orchestra, or a keyboard improvisation - I love to hear how other musicians read a particular scene and translate that into music. I've made an effort over the years to be friendly with almost all of the musicians in the field (with only a couple of notable failures).

Terry and Roger, on the other hand, prefer to avoid previous scores with the fear that it will color their own compositions.

Best,
Ken
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Post by SSO Admins »

We talked briefly about this, but can you give us an idea of how the process is different for comedies vs. more dramatic films? I know you said that the other guys don't like to listen to previous scores, but is there something else that serves as inspiration for the group as a whole?
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Post by charliechaplinfan »

Hello Ken, thank you for joining us, I hope you'll enjoy your time here.

Loving Chaplin as I do, I love all aspects of his work. As a professional musician what is your opinion of his scores for his silent films. Do you have a favorite?

Also, do you ever wish you could go back to the silent era meet the names and compose some of the scores.

I can't wait to hear your version of The Last Command. It is such a good silent movie, it really deserves to be seen by more people.
Failure is unimportant. It takes courage to make a fool of yourself - Charlie Chaplin
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Back again

Post by Ken Winokur »

Hi, I'm back again. Rehearsal was short today. We're working out the details of the big revolution scene in LAST COMMAND. Revolutions are easy. We find doing the big dramatic scenes to be our forte. We can very intuitively play big drum parts, along with Roger's melodies. This scene needed little work.

We talked briefly about this, but can you give us an idea of how the process is different for comedies vs. more dramatic films?

There's not really any difference in the process between the comedies and the dramatic stuff - just the types of music we work with.

With comedies there's always a question of how you score a scene. If it's funny, do you try to do funny music to make it funnier? Or do you play somewhat straight music, with the assumption that the scene plays funny enough without help. We've tried it both ways.

With the Fatty Arbuckle/Buster Keaton shorts that we did for the Kino 2 DVD release (and subsequent shows of 3 of the shorts), we yucked it up. These seemed like really goofy movies, and ones that were done with a high degree of improvisation by Arbuckle and Keaton. So, we tried to take the same approach. We tried out every zany idea we had, and included most of them. There's everything from "tuba singing" (singing through the tuba so that it sounded tubby and funny) to tons of zany sound effects.

The Arbuckle scores were done at a very fast pace (due to Kino's deadlines), and there was hardly any time to go back over them and redo stuff.

We were very happy with these scores, but others would disagree.

With THE GENERAL we took the opposite approach. Keaton never cracks a smile, so we take his cues. We wrote serious, dramatic music all the way through. In this case it seems to make the comedy funnier by comparison.

SPEEDY by Harold Lloyd is a combination of funny music and dramatic (which reflects the general tone of the film which is serious but punctuated with lots of comedy). I've always thought that this was one of our best scores (and certainly our most intricate). SPEEDY is very elaborately edited - there are tons of scenes that start up and before they gain momentum, they stop short (usually because Lloyd's character, Speedy,. has screwed up something on screen). All that stopping and starting if reflected in our score. It isn't until the end of the movie that we get to really rip into a fast paced (and long) chase scene. Unfortunately, SPEEDY never made it to DVD, so you have to come see this one live.

I know you said that the other guys don't like to listen to previous scores, but is there something else that serves as inspiration for the group as a whole?

Everything is inspiration. Terry says that tv is his biggest inspiration. He would watch cartoons as a kid and know that he wanted to be doing live foley work (putting in the sound effects).

Roger is a devote of John Cage (prepared piano, minimalist composition, utilizing chance as a compositional technique). He's also into Bartok and punk rock.

My biggest inspiration is probably the music of Harry Parch. Parch was a California composer who built his own instruments. They're a wild "orchestra" of percussion instruments and string instruments. He plays in an elaborate micro tonal scale (which sounds quite random to the untrained ear). His hand made instruments are amazing. Also, studying traditional latin rhythms made me consider how multiple drummers can work together - weaving simple rhythms together to make very intricate compositions.

Terry loves B movies (particularly Zombie movies) and I watch tons of independent and foreign films, along with lots of documentaries and experimental films. My (Jane Gillooly) is a filmmaker, so she exposes me to lots of odd films.

Roger doesn't watch many films. He's too busy playing music in every band in Boston.

Ken
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Chaplin

Post by Ken Winokur »

Loving Chaplin as I do, I love all aspects of his work. As a professional musician what is your opinion of his scores for his silent films. Do you have a favorite?

Well, he's certainly a competent composer, but I can't say that I love his scores. They're kind of sappy for my taste. And since his films tend to be kind of sentimental, I would have gone in the other direction - de-sappify them a little. I don't really have a favorite.

Of course, these scores aren't the way the audiences heard them originally. I don't think there were any real scores attached in the teens and 20's. He wrote the scores we hear later in life. Does anybody know if there were any composed scores for the premieres of the later features?

I have a question for you. What the deal with Modern Times? I always thought it was complete as we watch it now - with no real soundtrack except for the mechanical voices of the intercom etc.

I was recently in Ojai CA (at a very good Steve Reich concert) and read in the program that they were getting ready to put on a concert of the original score for Modern Times. Was there really one? Was this written later in his career or done with the premiere?

Also, do you ever wish you could go back to the silent era meet the names and compose some of the scores.

I have had that fantasy. Louise Brooks seems to pop into my head (and I won't tell you more about that fantasy).

I put together another group to do Tillie's Punctured Romance. This group plays original rigtime music (and a little early Jazz) and is called Tillie's Nightmare. I wrote up a fictional preas release for the group that explained that we all lived and worked in St. Louis (my actual childhood home), and that we originally performed TILLIE at the magnificent movie palace, The Fox. As the story goes, the group was entertaining at a "Juke Joint" in East St. Louis until the wee hours of the night, caught a couple of hours of sleep and then performed TILLIE for a Sunday matinée. This would have been about 1918 - a few years after the release of the film. The late date allows for the bits of early Jazz we mix in with the ragtime. The backstory (before the Tillie performance) has me traveling to New Orleans and hanging with some of the first jazz musicians, learning their new style and coming back to St. Louis to teach my bandmates.
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Post by movieman1957 »

Thanks so much for your answer on the process. It's a lot of great information.

One thing that stood out is you mention you've seen a film sometimes 40 times by the premiere. After that many times and (maybe having had enough of it) are you refining up until the last minute or do you come to a point where you say that you've done all you can do because maybe one more change is one change too many?

Being that I live very near Baltimore I hope to see you in September.
Chris

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seen it one too many times

Post by Ken Winokur »

One thing that stood out is you mention you've seen a film sometimes 40 times by the premiere. After that many times and (maybe having had enough of it) are you refining up until the last minute or do you come to a point where you say that you've done all you can do because maybe one more change is one change too many?

We never stop making changes. Even after playing it 20 times in performance, I still think of little fixes to the score. Often they're practical (like it's hard for me to grab the clarinet fast enough to start a new section, so I'll find a way of dropping out the preceding part a couple of bars early).

I can definitely get to a point where I'm sick and tired of a film. I think we did somewhere around 500 performances of METROPOLIS. Somewhere around 200, I was getting very bored, and started paying attention to the wallpapers in the film (they're fantastic). At 300 performances I started trying to make sense of the numerology that runs throughout the film (never succeeded with that). I was quite glad when the newest version of the film came out, and our score didn't fit it (the newest version is almost 45minutes longer than the Maroder version we originally wrote our score to). If we're going to start with METROPOLIS again, we're going to have to do a major rescoring. Now I hear there's new footage found. Oy vey!
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Post by Gagman 66 »

Dear Ken,

:) Welcome to SSO, it is very nice to have you here. I must say I did enjoyed seeing your website, and you have some very nice material over there.

:) My general taste toward Silent film scoring tends to lean more toward the traditional, and romantic music like Vintage Tango's, Waltz, and Fox-trot's, standards, and the like. Along With some Jazz numbers depending on rather they fit's the context of the film. All these were commonly used in Silent film accompaniment. In-fact there were several well known Tango orchestra's of 9 players that rose to great fame for their Silent film scoring during the 20's. These Tango orchestra's played a variety of different types of music, not just Tango's. Most of these groups have sadly been forgotten.. Their recordings are also difficult to find today, and are not around in the best condition, if you can find them.The Sextet House bands, were also quite common.

:o By contrast, large Theater orchestra's did not play an over abundance of Jazz tunes, but more classical oriented themes. At least to the drama's. Music for comedies may have included more popular standards of Jazz, and even hold over's of Ragtime melodies.

:wink: I've dubbed 10 Silent films now all with Vintage music, and I am very selective and picky concerning what melodies I use for each sequence.

:o I have to defend Charles Chaplin as a musical talent, and clarify a few things. Chaplin started composing sheet music as early as 1915. Even had his own publishing company. Actually, Chaplin released both CITY LIGHTS, and MODERN TIMES with his synchronized scores in 1931, and 1936 respectively. However, long before that Chaplin still was very conscious of the music He wanted played with his films. For example, He closely oversaw the compiled scores for A WOMAN OF PARIS (1923), THE GOLD RUSH (1925), and THE CIRCUS.

:roll: The original score prepared for live orchestra for Chaplin's THE CIRCUS released with the film i 1928 was attributed to Arthur Kaye, but Chaplin himself was also involved, and may have even had a hand in the composition of some of the original themes that were included Jillian Anderson has toured with this score live several times.

:o Chaplin even conducted the Orchestra at the New York Premier of THE GOLD RUSH in 1925. The entire score was uncovered in Chaplin's vault in 1991. As were the original scores for A WOMAN OF PARIS, and THE CIRCUS. In the case of THE GOLD RUSH. it's very discouraging that the original score has never been recorded with a new restoration of the 1925 cut of the film.

:? As you have seen and both UNDERWORLD, which you scored, and THE LAST COMMAND, which you are in the process of scoring, I wondered if you had seen Josef' Von Sternberg's THE DOCKS OF NEW YORK (1928) as well? If so, what were your impressions? Many of us feel that this is Von Sternberg's best Silent overall. Again, nice to have you here.
Last edited by Gagman 66 on July 14th, 2008, 7:16 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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