X-MEN: DAYS OF FUTURE PAST Composer/Editor John Ottman Talks to WAMG

Sony Music is releasing the Original Motion Picture Soundtrack of X-Men: Days of Future Past, featuring music composed by BAFTA Award winner John Ottman. The soundtrack will be available digitally on May 19 and on CD June 3.

John Ottman graduated from the School of Cinematic Arts at the University of Southern California. One of his early assignments was to provide original music for the computer game I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream. In 1996 he won a BAFTA award for editing THE USUAL SUSPECTS, and was later nominated for an Emmy Award for his score to the ABC series Fantasy Island.

Ottman’s range of composition takes in X-MEN 2, the dark comedy of THE CABLE GUY, the nightmares of GOTHIKA and ORPHAN, and the animated notes of ASTRO BOY.

With six films already released, X-Men is one of the most successful franchises in film history. It started in 2000 with the original X-Men movie, directed by Bryan Singer. X-MEN: DAYS OF FUTURE PAST is the seventh in the series and the third directed by Singer. The cast Hugh Jackman, James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence, Halle Berry, Anna Paquin, Ellen Page, Peter Dinklage, and Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen.

It is a dual sequel to X-MEN: THE LAST STAND and X-MEN: FIRST CLASS, and also follows up the story of THE WOLVERINE. The ultimate X-Men ensemble fights a war for the survival of the species across two time periods in X-MEN: DAYS OF FUTURE PAST. The beloved characters from the original X-Men film trilogy join forces with their younger selves from the past, X-MEN: FIRST CLASS, in order to change a major historical event and fight in an epic battle that could save our future. The film opens nationwide this Friday.

In Variety’s review of the upcoming film, writer Justin Chang said, “Like many of Singer’s prior pics, the production benefits from the dual contributions of versatile editor-composer John Ottman — particularly evident in the story’s clean pacing and construction.”

In my recent phone conversation with Mr. Ottman, we discussed his return to the world of the Mutants. He was very honest and forthcoming about the trials and tribulations that come from editing and composing for this type of motion picture.

What’s it like to be back with Professor Charles Xavier, Magneto, Wolverine, and Mystique after being away for so long? “It was great to be back in that world especially since X-MEN 2 was my first big film that I got to do. I have fond memories of it because, in retrospect, it was a film that seemed to go very smoothly and had very little interference from the studio. I tend to look back on it as an exciting time, so it was awesome to go back into it.”

“On this film, with the story being focused on a young and broken Charles Xavier, I was given a musical opportunity to underscore his journey of rekindling the hope he’d lost.  Charles Xavier finally gets his own theme.”

Ottman was brought on board to X-MEN: DAYS OF FUTURE PAST, ”pretty much at the tail end of pre-production – we were putting together the pre-visualizations and I came in and worked on those, even before we began shooting.”

The composer is no stranger to this epic movie series and to the superhero genre. As both composer and editor, Ottman is the musical right-hand man of Bryan Singer, with whom he collaborated on THE USUAL SUSPECTS as well as X-MEN 2. How does that work, especially with this type of big film?

“Before shooting there are all these animated versions of the scenes that we have to put together – you’re pre-conceiving the scenes, (previs), and we have a tremendous amount of those to do and many of them we were doing as we were shooting because there are so many sequences. With previs, we were already planning the shoot on the next thing we had to design. It’s a tremendous amount of work to design shot-by-shot and figure out what the scenes are going to be and how they’re going to be laid out.”

Once into the thick of it, I asked Ottman if he was composing to the edit or editing to the score.

“I wish I was doing either one, but when I’m editing the movie it’s so completely overwhelming that there’s no way I could even have a hope of going to my keyboard to write anything while I’m dealing with the cut of the film. Cutting the movie also involves storyboarding the scenes and designing previs’, so what I do is cut the whole film together at length. I don’t even put music on my scenes while I’m cutting them. I want to sit back and watch a film work without music and then once I put my editor’s cut together, then I put contemporary music in there for weeks after – that way we can screen the film for people at the studio. The actual score I don’t start writing for months after that.”

In combining the two jobs, Ottman says, “As I’m cutting, and putting sequences together in my head, I’m subliminally hearing and thinking about the kind of music it’s going to be, but what it’s actually going to be, I’m not sure yet.”

“All I do is worry about it from the moment I go to wherever we’re shooting, I’m worried about the score and when I’m going to write it, and how I’m going to do it. The editorial process never ends – especially on a complicated film. Then when the studio comes in with notes and the film starts going around in circles, and I have to go write the score somehow, yet I’m still tending to the recutting, various special-effects problems, looping the actors and test screenings. It never ends. There’s never really I time where I can say, ‘okay everybody, I’m going to go write the score now.’ I can’t put the film on hold.”

In Ottman’s ongoing, incredibly productive collaborative relationship with Singer, the two have developed a shorthand communication that allows their creative process to thrive. How did Ottman go from scoring films to “I think I’ll edit.”?

“It’s not a choice. It’s by gunpoint. The director (Bryan Singer) refuses to let me score the film unless I’m the editor, because we go way back to USC Film School and he depends on me to be his working partner.”

“After our first feature – PUBLIC ACCESS – won the Grand Jury Prize at the 1993  Sundance Film Festival, I was like, ‘well hell, I like scoring films.’ When we did SUSPECTS, I said, “Can I just score the film?” and he said, “Hell no,” and that blackmail basically continues to this day.”

“But it’s occurred to me, why in my right mind would I do such a thing and then leave my scoring career – it’s not financially a wise thing to do because I lose a lot of work during the time I’m in editing ‘jail.’ ”

“On the other side of it, I have a hand in creating the film I’m going to score. Sometimes after I’ve been scoring films for a while, I feel like a film score grunt. Being the editor on a film puts me in charge of something.”

Is any editor totally happy with the finished product? Ottman says, “Depends on the movie. Some movies yes, some movies no. This was a very complicated film. I likened this one to ‘Whack-the-mole’ game more than any other movie we’ve done because of the time travel element. With time travel, you solve one problem, you create a different one. You just have to keep whacking the mole until the smallest mole that pops up is the one you can live with. This is the logic we’re going with.”

“I look at the film… there’s some things I wish in retrospect we had had the time to do and so forth, but I’m generally very happy with it.”

Ottman’s involvement with X-MEN: DAYS OF FUTURE PAST began on set, where he would meet with Singer before filming began, and continued through the recording of the orchestra and choir on the Fox scoring stage. Even with a big film like this, was a musically quiet score ever considered?

“I would love to write a little, quiet score. I have no intentions to fill a film with music, but you know it’s the nature of the beast with this type of movie. Once you light the fuse with the music, it’s hard to stop it. With this one we went in knowing this is going to be a big score, however having said, it’s not really that traditional of a score as I’ve done before. It’s more modern. There’s a lot more synthesizer elements in the score and many times the orchestra is simply sweeping something I’ve designed with synthesizer.”

Ottman wrote the soundtrack for X-MEN 2, the second in the X-Men series. Fans can expect to hear parts from the 2003 film.

“The future is very dark, and so by default the score is very dark. I did use elements from X-MEN 2 since that’s the one I scored. I resurrected that theme too, so that is the theme of X-MEN: DAYS OF FUTURE PAST.”

“I see X-MEN 2 as the most embraced X-MEN film. I’m a little biased, but I always felt that theme should have been a common thread throughout this film. I know the studio felt that way so I really didn’t have a hard time convincing them.”

Being a fan myself of his scores for SUPERMAN RETURNS, JACK THE GIANT SLAYER, the recent, NON-STOP, and especially VALKYRIE, the composer said he tries to keep the music to these action films in the background.

“With VALKYRIE, I set out to do a score that was very scant and sparse. Because I’m very involved in the sound design of the movie, I was very proud of all the typewriter and teletype machines sounds in VALKYRIE. I wanted it to sound raw and realistic and not film glossy.  That movie is a caper. VALKYRIE was a trick of keeping the excitement going, editorially and musically, because there are a lot of old men talking in a room.”

“I did a very pulsating score and then I actually buried the score intentionally with sound effects. When people watch the movie, they’ll find there’s a lot of score there, but I want them to just feel it – not really hear it. The story is so good. I felt from day one very confident about that movie. At the end of the day it’s a great story.”

Ottman’s film scores have earned him a Saturn Award and several BMI Film Music Awards. As Hollywood’s only editor/composer of blockbusters, John Ottman also added director to his title with his directorial debut on the film URBAN LEGENDS: FINAL CUT. Does he want to direct again?  ”You know, I really do! If I could split myself into clones – one would be developing a film and getting ready to direct and the other one would be going for that dangling carrot that Bryan (Singer) always puts in front of my face with the X-MEN movies.”

“It’s hard because if I decide to go direct something, that’s going to take a long time to develop, I’m going to inevitably run into an X-MEN movie that I can’t say no to. At some point, I’m going to need to get the guts to say no and go and do something on my own for fun. At this point in my career, knock on wood, I can afford to just go off and do a little movie and not worry about it. I would love to do a little film.”

So just how keen is Ottman to the notion of another composer writing the score for one of his movies in the future? With a laugh, his reply was, “No. When I started in the early days of my career, my intention was, ‘well, I’ll direct and score movies’ so I can choose the ones I want to direct and score for. That was a crossroads for me – after URBAN LEGENDS. In retrospect, who knows if I made the right decision? I was offered countless Teen movies and I just said, ‘I don’t want to do Teen movies,’ and I said no. I felt like the Film Scoring community had written me off. So I went back to film scoring. Either I would have directed a bunch of teen movies, and by this time directing everything I wanted to, or my next film could’ve been a complete failure. Who knows? Believe it or not, URBAN LEGENDS was number one at the Box Office, so it was a success.”

As for his next project, Ottman has nothing intentionally planned. “After having double duty, it’s more than I would wish on my worst enemy. I think I’ll take some time and smell the roses and do some thinking about when I want to jump back into something.”

Aside from jokingly advising against it, Ottman’s advice to budding film composers is, “Do. Do. Do. Do everything that comes to you or that you may see or seek out – no matter how dumb or ridiculous the project seems. Take on that stupid little movie. It will train you to have a good attitude about things, creatively. You put yourself in the position of making something better and making yourself believe in something that may have initially started out as a stupid movie, but making yourself believe it’s going to be good because of your work on it. That really never changes.”

“Even to this day, I get on some terrible film, but by the end of it I’ve convinced myself that it’s a really good movie and I’ve helped make it better. The other advantage to have that mindset is the project you least expect is always the one that leads you somewhere. Some dumb little thing you do, someone’s brother’s uncle’s sister may have seen that little movie and it leads you to a place that you least expect. Basically, the more you do, the more you’re going to have an opportunity somewhere.”

X-MEN: DAYS OF FUTURE PAST hits theaters on May 23.

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