Interview – WAMG Talks To EDGE OF TOMORROW Composer Christophe Beck

Award-winning composer Christophe Beck scores the action-drama EDGE OF TOMORROW, directed by Doug Liman and starring Tom Cruise and Emily Blunt. The film follows a soldier (Cruise) who finds himself caught in a time loop while battling an alien invasion. 

The EDGE OF TOMORROW soundtrack will be released on Watertower Records. In theaters now, read Jim Batts’ review HERE. Earlier this week I spoke with the composer about his latest film soundtrack.

Christophe Beck is behind the score to the Golden Globe- and Oscar-winning film FROZEN. The FROZEN soundtrack, certified platinum 11 weeks after its release, has sold more than one million copies, and spent five non-consecutive weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 album chart. Beck returned to the Muppets in MUPPETS MOST WANTED after scoring THE MUPPETS in 2011. He’s also scored the blockbuster HANGOVER trilogy, TOWER HEIST, DUE DATE, DATE NIGHT and PITCH PERFECT. He staged the drama for such films as WE ARE MARSHALL, PERCY JACKSON & THE OLYMPIANS: THE LIGHTNING THIEF, ELEKTRA, THE SENTINEL, UNDER THE TUSCAN SUN, and indie films YEAR OF THE DOG, PHOEBE IN WONDERLAND, SAVED! and the award-winning documentary WAITING FOR SUPERMAN.

In addition to FROZEN – which earned Beck an Annie Award for best score – his recent work includes THE INTERNSHIP, directed by Shawn Levy and starring Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson, and RUNNER RUNNER, directed by Brad Furman and starring Ben Affleck and Justin Timberlake. Beck also composed the music for Shana Feste’s romantic drama ENDLESS LOVE.

The Canadian composer began playing piano at the age of five, studied music at Yale and attended the USC film scoring program under the tutelage of composers like Jerry Goldsmith. He started composing in television at the personal recommendation of Disney music legend Buddy Baker, and was soon writing music for the hit series “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” earning an Emmy Award.

Liman worked with composer Christophe Beck, who created a score that captured the suspense, the action and the fun of Cage and Rita’s extraordinary journey.

WAMG:
How did you come to be on this project?

CB:
Warner Brothers had already been down the road with another composer and things were not working out and they were looking for somebody new to take over. At first they needed a European composer and I happened to be a French citizen, so that kind of got me in the mix, initially. In the end they could have hired anyone, but then I had already met with Doug (Liman, director) and things were looking pretty good. So in some ways I got really pretty lucky.

WAMG:
In a very good way, your credits are all over the map – Hangover series, Frozen, Pitch Perfect – were you looking to do a sci-fi action movie or just whatever appealed to you?

CB:
Early in my career I did a lot of comedies, and I used to let that frustrate me a little bit, in that I really wanted to do all kinds of genres. Of course as artists, we all like variety, we don’t like to repeat ourselves. But now, even though I get to do more different styles of movies, comedy is still pretty much my bread and butter. But its really not about the genre for me anymore – its more about working on hopefully good films with people in a pleasant working environment where I can feel more freedom to do great work. So its more about the people and the project than the genre.

WAMG:
What was your approach to a film like EDGE OF TOMORROW? Did you see a rough cut, or just the script?

CB:
Like I mentioned, I was the second composer on the project. So by the time I was brought on, there was already a cut in pretty good shape. I loved it when I first saw it. And I sort of had a preconceived notion before I saw it, but I’ve been a big fan of Doug’s for a while, ever since Swingers and Go, and really throughout his whole career. I was really impressed.

WAMG: 
What was the level of involvement from Doug Liman? Was he hands on, making suggestions or did he just give you the reins and say do your thing?

CB:
Well, every director of course likes to be very involved, as they should be, and Doug is no exception. He really challenged me to stretch myself and to go a little outside myself, so it was a bit of an adjustment process for me to finally figure out the sort of things that Doug responded to. So for the first month or two, it was definitely a bit of a struggle to find what the sound of this film was, what kind of things I could do to support the humor, of which surprisingly, there is a large amount of in this movie. And how do you support that in this kind of a movie? I mean, of course I have done dozens of comedies, I know how to support comedy in a comedy, but its a bit of a different animal in a film like this. But once we figured those things out, the process – well I wouldn’t say the process became smoother because Doug was really pushing me from beginning to end.

Once we figured out one part of the movie, and then moved on to the next part of the movie, he was always challenging me to come up with different ways of thinking about the film. But when we got to the end, I was and am enormously proud of what we ended up with. And through the process, even though it was frustrating at times, I grew to really really respect Doug and how smart he is and how great of a director he is.

WAMG:
I know a little of your history and that you were a student of Jerry Goldsmith at USC – along with fellow composer Marco Beltrami?

CB:
Yeah! My friend and classmate Marco Beltrami. In fact we actually partnered up for awhile the first couple of years out of school – we were the Beck-Beltrami composing team. But that kind of fell apart after like 3 jobs in a row where they fired me and kept him. That’s the actual truth of it, actually! And we’re still very good friends.

Jerry (Goldsmith) was a revelation to me. I didn’t pay much attention to film music, beyond what a typical movie fan would. My heart was set on becoming a rock star when I was growing up. It wasn’t until I came out and did the USC program that I really thought about doing film music myself, and that’s when I was exposed to Jerry, being one of my teachers and getting curiouser and curiouser about about his work and going back into his catalog and listening to a bunch stuff he had done.

I think his greatest quality and what he talked about all the time to our class, is something that I take with me even today – is just be economical with your music and not have too many ideas in a piece of music. Making more music out of fewer and his ability to do that is almost Beethovian! You listen to, for example, a piece of action music in one of his films – he uses the repeating piano/strings/bass line, there’s the main theme in that, in the pattern of those notes. He makes so much great music out of so very few good ideas. And that’s a real challenge when you’re film composing, to be able to make it sound like one cohesive journey.

WAMG:
Some of your more recent films like Frozen, Burlesque and Pitch Perfect are musical by nature. Do you find that easier or more difficult than composing for a straight drama/action film?

CB:
Well, for example you look at Pitch, you look at Burlesque, the music in the script is all this very temporary pop and Burlesque is old fashioned and a bit of a throwback and so the style is completely different and so the score would obviously be completely different as well. But its all really just storytelling, even across genres that are wildly stylistically different.

Its the same challenges – what point of view should it be with this character or that character? Does it help accent what you are already seeing or does it provide some kind of counterpoint? These are the challenges that are universal in film composing. The rest I think is style and I do do a lot of different kinds of projects and I do write a lot of different music. But ultimately its all the same, which is finding the emotional core and somehow translating that.

WAMG:
You have a lot of TV in your credits. Do you see huge differences when it comes to composing film as opposed to TV?

CB:
Well, in terms of the universal challenges we just talked about, no. But there are lots of differences in terms of the way things work day to day in TV and the main one is the amount of music that has to be written in such a tight schedule. On a film, I can luxuriate, only having to write 1 or 2 minutes a day, or if the mood strikes to really zero in on one short section and spend the whole day on one stupid detail. But in TV, you don’t have that luxury. The phone calls come in with requests to do this particular scene, and on a film it’s like “sure, I’ll get it to you in a few days, no problem,” but in TV its like ok we need it in 3 hours. It’s insane to keep that kind of pace up week in and week out. I don’t know how I did it.

WAMG:
And these were big hit shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer and The Practice…

BC:
We cut a lot of music and it was all big music. Of course we didn’t have the money to hire orchestras for all those episodes, so it was “fake orchestra” and it took a lot of time to put all that together.

WAMG:
Speaking of orchestras, I know some composers just like being in their own space, composing and coming up with ideas – and then others who really enjoy being on the scoring stage with the whole orchestra, performing. Where does that process fall for you?

CB:
You know I hate to sound jaded about it because I remember how exciting it was early in my career when I got to work with orchestras. As far back as USC, we had a couple of sessions with big orchestras and they were totally magical and overwhelming and incredible. And now I’m really more of the former than the latter. I like to sit in my hovel and just be by myself. Of course orchestra sessions are enjoyable and there is always pleasure in hearing something come together that you heard for months one way and all of a sudden it sounds different and so much more lively. There’s great pleasure in that of course. But after about an hour of that, I’m ready to to go back to my studio and enjoy my tinkering.

But of course I end up staying the whole day – professional duty calls. They’re very exhausting some times, just having to listen that intently and stay that focused for the whole day.

But my sessions run pretty quickly. We don’t spend too much time on one piece of music, but we certainly focus on detail. More and more I’ve been letting some of the guys that work with me run the sessions and they’re getting really really good at it. So I can be more relaxed and let someone else be on the microphone having confrontations with the conductor. And then I can just jump in when I need to.

WAMG:
What is you’re next project – what are you currently working on?

CB:
At the moment I am working on HOT TUB TIME MACHINE 2, which is great fun with (director) Steve Pink, who is a friend and a really really nice guy. Its outrageous and hilarious, more so than the first one. I’m really having a blast.

WAMG: Thanks to Christophe Beck for taking the time to talk to us!

Oscar nominee Tom Cruise (the “Mission: Impossible” films, “Collateral,” “Jerry Maguire”) and Emily Blunt (“The Devil Wears Prada,” “The Adjustment Bureau”) star in Warner Bros. Pictures’ and Village Roadshow Pictures’ sci-fi thriller EDGE OF TOMORROW, under the direction of Doug Liman (“The Bourne Identity,” “Mr. & Mrs. Smith”).

The epic action of EDGE OF TOMORROW unfolds in a near future in which an alien race has hit the Earth in an unrelenting assault, unbeatable by any military unit in the world.

Major William Cage (Cruise) is an officer who has never seen a day of combat when he is unceremoniously dropped into what amounts to a suicide mission. Killed within minutes, Cage now finds himself inexplicably thrown into a time loop—forcing him to live out the same brutal combat over and over, fighting and dying again… and again.

But with each battle, Cage becomes able to engage the adversaries with increasing skill, alongside Special Forces warrior Rita Vrataski (Blunt). And, as Cage and Rita take the fight to the aliens, each repeated encounter gets them one step closer to defeating the enemy.

The cast also includes Bill Paxton, Brendan Gleeson, Jonas Armstrong, Tony Way, Kick Gurry, Franz Drameh, Dragomir Mrsic and Charlotte Riley.

Doug Liman directed the film from a screenplay by Christopher McQuarrie and Jez Butterworth & John-Henry Butterworth, based on the novel entitled All You Need is Kill by Hiroshi Sakurazaka.

EDGE OF TOMORROW will be distributed in 2D and 3D in select theatres and IMAX® by Warner Bros. Pictures on June 6th.

www.edgeoftomorrowmovie.com/