# Danny Elfman Composed An Original Horror Movie Score For Trump Stalking Hillary At The Debate



## Markus S (Oct 15, 2016)




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## rottoy (Oct 15, 2016)




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## fritzmartinbass (Oct 15, 2016)

Mike Oldfield did an original score about Hillary a few years back.


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## TGV (Oct 15, 2016)

A bit disappointing.


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## Jdiggity1 (Oct 15, 2016)

I hope he didn't put in too much time.


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## chillbot (Oct 15, 2016)

Was thinking the same thing... I could music edit a better score... when I heard Elfman did it I was excited for something more... "elfmanesque".


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## Zhao Shen (Oct 15, 2016)

Elfman isn't going to spend days or even hours writing a piece with no purpose other than for online memes. Judging by the structure of the piece, I'd wager he tossed this up in Cubase in about twenty minutes or so.


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## rottoy (Oct 15, 2016)

chillbot said:


> Was thinking the same thing... I could music edit a better score... when I heard Elfman did it I was excited for something more... "elfmanesque".


By all means do a better music edit, then. I think Danny's piece served the silly purpose well.


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## chillbot (Oct 15, 2016)

rottoy said:


> By all means do a better music edit, then. I think Danny's piece served the silly purpose well.


I'm happy you enjoyed it!


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## Gabriel Oliveira (Oct 15, 2016)

Zhao Shen said:


> Cubase



Digital Performer


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## nordicguy (Oct 15, 2016)

I'll have to admit that the overall reaction perplexed me a bit.
Of course we'r talking about Mr. Elfman.
Means great expectation, but still.
It's that bad?
I liked it for what it is.
That just me though.


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## chillbot (Oct 15, 2016)

It's not bad at all, it's quite funny in context and accomplishes the job. It's just something that anyone could have done... some horror strings and stings and drones? I suspect it was not scored as much as edited to picture by James Jacoby.

When I heard the name Elfman I was hoping for that kind of Elfman quality that is both scary and makes you laugh out loud, maybe something along the lines of Men In Black. Of course he's not going to spend all day writing something for this, I don't blame him. But possibly if he knew that "danny elfman" was trending with 500,000 people talking about it on facebook alone he might have done a bit more than phone it in.

Why so defensive about it? Isn't it ok if I thought it was funny but not brilliant?


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## rgames (Oct 15, 2016)

Neither funny nor brilliant. Only lame.

I seriously doubt Elfman had anything to do with it.


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## nordicguy (Oct 15, 2016)

chillbot said:


> ...
> Why so defensive about it? Isn't it ok if I thought it was funny but not brilliant?


Really, I'm not defensive.
I was genuinely surprised and reaching for a better understanding.
Btw, it wasn't directed at you at all, I would have used quote.
May be I reacted this way because I think that doing something good regardless how elaborate it is, always takes some time.
For me at least.
Of course it's probably different for you guys since you could do the same within pretty short delay because that just the way you'r used to work, every days.


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## rottoy (Oct 15, 2016)

rgames said:


> Neither funny nor brilliant. Only lame.
> 
> I seriously doubt Elfman had anything to do with it.


Implied here is that anything that Danny Elfman is involved with is funny and / or brilliant.
This was lame, so Danny Elfman definitely didn't have anything to do with it.


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## NoamL (Oct 15, 2016)

First, cool score.

Second, while I am 100% for any meme that makes Trump lose, the reality is that Clinton did this *to Trump* with intelligent purpose.

You can see Bill Clinton doing the same thing in this debate with President George HW Bush in 1992



Bill crosses the stage to address the voter but he makes sure to stand in a position such that the camera sees the President over his shoulder looking small and awkward. He also forges a closer connection with the town hall voter, visually, than Bush did - subconsciously reinforcing the message that the President is out of touch with people's problems.

In her own town hall debate Hillary crossed the stage often and made sure to position herself between the camera and Trump. All you have to do is go back and look at the tape, Trump is not moving more than 5-6 feet from his chair, it's Clinton who is crossing the stage every time she has the excuse (i.e. there's a voter sitting near Trump).

She was _literally_ framing him 

Obviously that idiot Trump didn't help the optics one bit by getting out of his chair constantly and using threatening body language like pointing, scowling, and leaning. Perhaps he understood that Clinton was deliberately framing him in the background of her shots, but if so he had no good plan to react and his realtime reaction made it TEN TIMES worse. It's kind of an incredible indictment of Donald Trump that he is up against a politician as scripted, predictable and inflexible as Clinton and yet she continues to successfully bait or trap him at every turn. I don't think I've ever seen a politician with more politically-debilitating personality flaws than Trump. It's quite a statement about all the people who think he's a chess grandmaster.


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## Markus S (Oct 15, 2016)

Agreed, he is obviously trying to place himself to his advantage to the camera, appearing always sort of above her.


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## nordicguy (Oct 15, 2016)

rgames said:


> Neither funny nor brilliant. Only lame.
> 
> I seriously doubt Elfman had anything to do with it.


On NO! Not an other conspiracy?


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## Gabriel Oliveira (Oct 15, 2016)

rgames said:


> I seriously doubt Elfman had anything to do with it.



yes he had, his agent said so.


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## rottoy (Oct 15, 2016)

Gabriel Oliveira said:


> yes he had, his agent said so.


The man's in denial, let him take his time.


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## Markus S (Oct 15, 2016)

Isn't Elfman lurking on the forum, maybe he can clear that up..


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## givemenoughrope (Oct 15, 2016)

What, no "LA LA la la"s x 1000?


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## jononotbono (Oct 15, 2016)

I don't believe Elfman did this at all.


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## chillbot (Oct 15, 2016)

Gabriel Oliveira said:


> yes he had, his agent said so.


His agent says a lot of things, if you hadn't noticed.


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## Gabriel Oliveira (Oct 15, 2016)

chillbot said:


> His agent says a lot of things, if you hadn't noticed.



He even directed the video. No reason to lie about it.

Elfman is lying too?

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/danny-elfman-his-funny-die-938551


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## givemenoughrope (Oct 15, 2016)

The one Mike Post did just has a stinger on the end and it's way scarier.


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## jononotbono (Oct 15, 2016)

Wow. Ok, fair enough. I can't recognise that as Danny Elfman's music! Sounds nothing like one of the greatest film composers of all time! Very surprised!


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## chillbot (Oct 15, 2016)

Gabriel Oliveira said:


> He even directed the video. No reason to lie about it.



I never said he didn't, I merely pointed out that his agent says a lot of things. His job is to say a lot of things. How exactly do you "direct" this video anyway of pre-shot footage. If you like to believe everything you read on the internet that's fine with me.

My personal guess is when Elfman said he "spent an hour on it" maybe he spent an hour digging up some old snipets or files and splicing them together and then let the editor loop it to picture. Or he had an assistant do it. Whatever... I have no idea. And to his point in the interview he didn't think a ton of people would hear it or he might have. Going back to my original point it's just a bit of a letdown compared to the high Elfman standard we (I) expect and was hoping to hear.


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## givemenoughrope (Oct 15, 2016)

Anyone remember this?


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## NoamL (Oct 15, 2016)

chillbot said:


> I never said he didn't, I merely pointed out that his agent says a lot of things. His job is to say a lot of things.



Nothing wrong with that btw. I have noticed that Hans Zimmer always has an understandable story to tell the entertainment press about each of his scores. It's never just "I tried to do a good job" nor does he talk about music theory & composition. Instead he talks about the one page letter for Interstellar, the celebrity drum circle for Man Of Steel, the Roma immersion experience for Game Of Shadows, the "one punk note" for Dark Knight, or the Magnificent Six for TAS2. He's his own best agent!


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## givemenoughrope (Oct 15, 2016)

And yet I've always somewhat resented those hype-y puff pieces since it's so easy to convince any willing non-musician (or person who wouldn't know any better) that you conjured your music from the stars or the ocean or some child logic. When someone explains their approach, what they were reaching for, how they failed and what they ended up with then I consider that worthwhile.


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## jononotbono (Oct 15, 2016)

Life is far too short to resent hearing a good story. People love stories. Well, I do and probably most "non-musicians" that love movies do to! Isn't that what films are all about? Creating and sharing Magic!


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## rottoy (Oct 15, 2016)

But the important thing here is that certain members of V.I Control are more of an authority on the Elfman "sound" than Elfman himself.


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## jononotbono (Oct 15, 2016)

rottoy said:


> But the important thing here is that certain members of V.I Control are more of an authority on the Elfman "sound" than Elfman himself.



Please tell me you are actually Danny Elfman! haha!


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## rottoy (Oct 15, 2016)

If only.


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## jononotbono (Oct 15, 2016)

rottoy said:


> If only.



That's what Danny would say. I would know.


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## Jdiggity1 (Oct 15, 2016)

rottoy said:


> But the important thing here is that certain members of V.I Control are more of an authority on the Elfman "sound" than Elfman himself.


Yep. Very important.

...


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## NoamL (Oct 15, 2016)

givemenoughrope said:


> And yet I've always somewhat resented those hype-y puff pieces since it's so easy to convince any willing non-musician (or person who wouldn't know any better) that you conjured your music from the stars or the ocean or some child logic.



Well, I kind of agree. There's definitely a public stereotype of composers as conjurers as opposed to craftsmen and he is leaning into it. But I think I see the reason why.

Take the "1 page letter" theme from Interstellar... let's analyze it musically...

3/4 meter
short-phrased, rising, rocking melodic motif
that repeats a little insistently or yearningly
in a slow tempo
often played quietly on piano
So... the theme of Interstellar is quite like a lullaby.

Which is just right for a movie that is at its core an emotional story about being a dad! It's _necessary_ that it be a lullaby!

IMO seeing into the heart of a movie and what it needs, is a skill without which even the best composer would be a pretty shabby film composer, and it's a skill HZ has in spades for sure.

And in a way, if you picture it as a two step process (1: "It needs to be a lullaby", 2: "I wrote _this_ lullaby") which step is actually more key to making the film work? Take Sherlock Holmes as another example, the main theme is great, but I think the actual creative decision/insight in the score is that it needs to be _literally_ "Bohemian"... everything follows from that and a lot of conceivable alternative themes in the same genre would have worked. What would not have worked is a genteel, intellectual violin theme like the Jeremy Brett version of Holmes:



What the public doesn't really understand, I think, is that they have a pre-existing music literacy and that music is only emotionally accessible to people insofar as it speaks within that language at least to a certain degree. It can challenge or evade our expectations but it has to INTERACT with our expectations. So sometimes you're constrained - if you want to get a lullaby-ish sort of feeling, you either have to write a lullaby or you write a theme that has certain sneaky subsconscious ways of _evoking_ the _idea_ of a lullaby. What you cannot do is just go and write whatever. But if you explain it this way to the public, it contradicts their pre-existing and mistaken conception that composers are mad solitary geniuses who pull highly original and contextless music from the ether based on pure inspiration. Actually to the contrary, highly original and contextless music has no emotional impact at all (on laypeople). So I see his stories as kind of navigating between Scylla and Charybdis in that regard.


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## kavinsky (Oct 15, 2016)

let me tell ya, this score was an absolute disaster... sniff


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## rottoy (Oct 15, 2016)

kavinsky said:


> let me tell ya, this score was an absolute disaster... sniff


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## Desire Inspires (Oct 16, 2016)

Actually Elfman had T****** G******** do most of the work. Elfman mostly did the editing and final approval.


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## Andrajas (Oct 16, 2016)

I want to see one for Hillary as well, would be fun, eh?


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## Mike Fox (Oct 17, 2016)

You can tell just by listening to this piece that Elfman didn't give a rats ass about it. It was meant to be a joke, which is why it sounds like a joke. Why would anyone seriously expect anything more?

Confession: I expected more before I hit the play button.


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## rottoy (Oct 17, 2016)

mikefox789 said:


> You can tell just by listening to this piece that Elfman didn't give a rats ass about it. It was meant to be a joke, which is why it sounds like a joke. Why would anyone seriously expect anything more?
> 
> Confession: I expected more before I hit the play button.


The horror underscore equivalent of this. 
Always cap it off with a perfect cadence.


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## handz (Oct 17, 2016)

It sounds too bad even for something like his quick sketch piece.


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## rottoy (Oct 17, 2016)

I invite all those who felt Elfmans piece was lacking to do a re-score.

Could be fun!


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## nordicguy (Oct 17, 2016)

rottoy said:


> I invite all those who felt Elfmans piece was lacking to do a re-score.
> 
> Could be fun!


Well, could be interesting indeed.


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## Mike Fox (Oct 17, 2016)

rottoy said:


> I invite all those who felt Elfmans piece was lacking to do a re-score.
> 
> Could be fun!


'Tis the season!


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