'The Trailer Park' is a new project to practice scoring movie trailers. I have always been one to get to the theatre early to see all the upcoming attractions. The best trailers pull you into their world and imagery without giving too much away. They leave you with a desire to see the film, not the feeling that you have already seen it.
I grew up in the era of previews that featured the voice of Don LaFontaine and similarly deep-voiced God-like narrators. Their scripts told us the premise of the movie without revealing too much actual dialogue from the film. That era is pretty much over. Today, sound effects and music do more heavy lifting. Most of you are probably familiar with the ‘Booj.’ The deep resonating effect used in almost every action movie trailer these days. It is a low frequency that you can feel in a theatre. It is unsettling. Or, at least it was. It has become something of a trope. For a detailed investigation of that sound, check out The Twenty Thousand Hertz episode on it.
Many, including myself, are anxiously anticipating the release of the new Dune film. David Lynch’s version, perhaps due to lack of editing control on the final cut, is widely considered a failure. I think calling it a failure is a step too far. It certainly has its issues (the exhausting number of inner dialogues). The Sci-Fi channel made an excellent mini-series out of the Frank Herbert novel in 2000. Perhaps my favorite version, though, is the one that never got made. Alejandro Jodorowsky conceived his version in the mid-70s. The soundtrack was going to be composed by Pink Floyd and Magma and would star Mick Jagger.
In the 1984 Lynch version, another rock star would join the legacy of Dune. Sting plays the part of Feyd-Rautha, the despised nephew of the Barron Harkkonen. Toto provided the soundtrack. An additional track, Prophecy Theme, was contributed by Brian Eno.
The vast desert planet of Arrakis has clearly been an attractive one for the world of Prog Rock. Dune has inspired many songs, albums, and band names. Iron Maiden’s 1983 song To Tame a Land was originally titled Dune, but Frank Herbert denied them permission. It seems that he didn’t care for the rock music that he inspired, especially heavy metal. I saw a funny Reddit post in which the commenter posited that it was out of fear of attracting a worm. But, as we know, we should not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. For a comprehensive list of music inspired by the novel, look no further than the Dune Wiki.
The book itself features many songs as the preface to specific chapters. This one, for instance, is A Dirge for Jamis on the Funeral Plain from Songs of Muad’ Dib:
Do you wrestle with dreams?
Do you contend with shadows?
Do you move in a kind of sleep?
Time has slipped away.
Your life is stolen.
You tarried with trifles,
Victim of your folly.
I don't know, it sounds pretty metal to me.
Herbert, though, probably heard the words sung in accompaniment with the Baliset — a nine-stringed fictional musical instrument. It is tuned to the ‘Chusuk’ scale. ‘Chusuck’ being another planet in Dune known for its great composer, Emi Chusuk. So, yeah, Herbert seemed to take the idea of music, even pretend music, very seriously. In the 1984 version, the Baliset is presented as a Chapman Stick with a fan on it for reasons unknown. In the mini-series it shows up in the form of a lyre, perhaps an Oud.
The trailer for the 2021 adaptation features music by Hans Zimmer. I am listening to Zimmer’s Dune Sketchbook as I write this and I think it might be his best work in a while. I am partial to You're So Cool from True Romance, but it is essentially Carl Orff's Gassenhauer.
I wasn't really sold on the bagpipes I heard later on in Sketchbooks, but after learning that the instruments origins are Sumerian (present day Iraq) I changed my thinking. Frank Herbert built his world around the the Arabic language and other customs found throughout the Middle East . Muad'Dib for instance means teacher in Arabic. Shai-Halud translates to something like 'immortal thing." The Fremen, Dune's native inhabitants, are 'free men,' or Amazigh, the name that the Berbers of Northern Africa call themselves. The Fedaykin, Paul Atreide's death commandos, are named after the Fedayeen — a name that means "those who sacrifice themselves." Paul Atreides leads a Jihad, not a crusade. If you listen to the trailer, though, you will hear Paul say, "a crusade is coming." Hopefully this is not an early sign of poor interpretation within the whole of the film. As Ali Karjoo-Ravary points out in his opinion piece for Aljazeera, "...in Hollywood, Islam does not sell unless it is being shot at."
Including some Middle Eastern musical themes or instruments hardly makes up for the fact that there are no major actors of Middle Eastern descent in the new Dune, but it's something. Most Americans will still likely associate the bagpipes with pints of Guinness, though. Musical intervals are commonly attributed to Pythagoras with no mention of the Mesopotamians and we are instructed on the achievements of Copernicus without acknowledging the astronomer and mathematician Nasir Al-Din Al-Tusi — for whom the concept of heliocentrism owes a massive debt.
The trailer also features a reworked version of Eclipse by Pink Floyd with choral arrangements. Re-working classic songs in a slowed-down melancholic tone have become another prominent trailer feature in the last ten years. In 2010 David Fincher’s The Social Network used a pulled back version of Radiohead’s Creep for the trailer. The performers on this version, Scala and Kolacny Brothers, became highly sought after. In 2012, they performed Metallica’s Nothing Else Matters for the trailer to Kathryn Bigelow’s Zero Dark Thirty. The phenomenon is detailed in a New Yorker article by Alex Pappademas. The Zimmer version of the Pink Floyd classic isn’t precisely replicating the Creep/Nothing Else Matters trend. It is more of an elaboration on the original. It maintains the energy heard on Dark Side of the Moon. Incorporating Pink Floyd is a nod to Dune fans. An acknowledgment of the failed Jodorowksy venture.
As for my version, I chose not to listen to the original version before scoring it. This is the first time I have attempted music for an action trailer or any trailer for that matter. As such, I may have been a bit more inclined to try out some of the cliches for myself —the epic string ostinati, the deep percussive impacts when a title hits the screen. I couldn’t help myself. I also suspect that this is the expectation of many clients. It would be an exciting idea in the future, to circle back and try to re-do these concepts in a unique way that provokes the same level of suspense. I tried to balance expected musical ideas with some tasteful ones. The quiet piano that emerges in the first clip of Paul Atreides and the Reverend mother transitions into a spirited synth arpeggiation as Paul feels the pain of the Gom Jobbar. I wanted to incorporate some science fiction timbres. It's interesting that the synthesizer, in so many was tied to 80s retro trends is still the sound of the future. I'll have to dive into that weirdness at some point.
As the Atreides family arrives on Arrakis, I utilized a singular desolate synth sound to evoke the barren planet. The final movement of ostinati has a harmonic minor melodic theme played on two clarinets an octave apart. With its raised seventh scale degree, the melody couples the suspense with the ‘mystery’ of Middle Eastern music. 'Mysterious,' is meant as a tongue in cheek characterization here. obviously, this music is less mysterious-sounding to those that grew up hearing it. The harmonic minor scale is, of course, like the music of Exotica, not actually representative of the music of the Middle East. It would be interesting, in retrospect, to explore some of the Arabic Scales for this project. The quarter-tone scale, for instance, breaks the octave into twenty-four different tones, as opposed to the eight that western ears are used to hearing. Krzysztof Penderecki has utilized this scale in Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima. It has been used in many films, including Alfonso Cuaron’s Children of Men, to produce an unsettling effect.
If I had written this before I doing the practice score, I would have made some different decisions. After being reminded of just how much Herbert's novel relied on Middle Eastern culture, I would have maybe traded the clarinets for the Mey or tried out something a little more ambitious than a harmonic minor scale —the double harmonic minor for example. This scale has a major third and flattened second. I just spent some time playing it on the piano and it is absolutely beautiful.I am pleased with the outcome of the trailer, but incorporating different cultural ideas into musical works is a great way to appreciate them and, in this case, probably better serve the source material.
Here is my take on the new Dune Trailer:
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