One the best things about First Time Fest — a New York City-based festival that celebrates the work of first-time filmmakers that is now in its second year — is the astounding level of talent the festival has brought in to conduct panels about filmmaking. One of the marquee panels from this year’s iteration of the First Time Festival was Sunday’s “From Rock to Score” at NeueHouse, which featured Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Slash, best known for being guitarist of Guns N’ Roses, Velvet Revolver and for being the only person who looks cooler in a top hat than the Monopoly Man, and Duncan Sheik, the 1990s pop-rock singer/songwriter who has since become a Tony Award-winning composer of musicals and movies. Though the two have wildly different experience in music, they both offered deep insight into transitioning from traditional pop music into the more atmospheric work of film scores.
First, both musicians spoke about how they ended up working in the film industry. The first time Slash was credited for composing a score was for 2011’s This Is Not a Movie, but he pointed out that he played guitar on the soundtrack of several other films, including The Wrestler. 2013’s Nothing Left to Fear was his first film as a producer and Slash co-composed the soundtrack with Nicholas O’Toole. Slash explained that he wrote the music on guitar and then O’Toole would transpose it into the orchestral score as heard in the film.
Duncan Sheik, who is best known for 1996 hit “Barely Breathing” and for co-writing the score for the Broadway hit Spring Awakening (which won him Tony Awards for Best Original Score and Best Orchestrations), pointed out that he has a similar working process. When he works on a score for a musical or for a film — Sheik has composed the soundtrack of numerous films, including 2010’s Harvest and 2007’s The Cake Eaters — he plays as many of the instruments as he can and then hooks up with his collaborator — including his longtime Spring Awakening collaborator Steven Sater — to find musicians to record the instruments he doesn’t play (as Sheik put it, “anything you blow into”).
Both had different ways of ending up in the soundtrack business. Slash explained that he started out doing music for film because he kept getting offers to do little bits and pieces, and when he was asked to do the soundtrack for This Is Not a Film he confessed that he wasn’t doing anything else at the time. He said he was particularly impressed by the experience, especially after the director, Olallo Rubio, told him filmed various sequences of the film to his score. Afterwards Slash decided to form his own production company, Slasher Films, to make horror films. Slash explained that he had always enjoyed film music growing up, particularly in Disney films — but, the rocker noted, he only liked the score, not the songs. He noted Fantasia as a good example of what he was talking about.
Sheik admitted that his move into writing the music for movies and musicals came in a more direct way. His 1998 album, Humming, did poorly commercially and only sold 70,000 copies in its first week and peaking at #163 on the Billboard charts — though as Slash pointed out, selling 70,000 albums in the first week would be considered a major hit these days (as a point of comparison, Slash’s 2010 solo album sold 61,000 in its first week and peaked at #3). Regardless, after Humming Sheik began to explore musicals as another outlet for his talents even though he admittedly wasn’t a fan of traditional musicals. He eventually came into contact with Steven Sater, who suggested that they collaborate on making a musical adaptation of the 1891 Frank Wedekind play Spring Awakening. According to Sheik, it was a very different form of writing — as a solo artist, he wasn’t used to working as closely with someone like Sater In fact, Sheik recalled that numerous times when Sater — who also directed Spring Awakening — wanted to make music changes and Sheik thought to himself, “F— off, that’s my song!” However, Sheik explained that he has since grown much more comfortable with scoring, and is currently fine-tuning the music for the American Psycho musical, which recently had a trial run at the Almeida Theatre in London starring former Dr. Who Matt Smith as Patrick Bateman and is set to be produced in a West End theater at the end of 2014.
Slash explained that he is currently working on his second film as a producer which he will also score, but he called it a “slow process” and added “I’m not going to quit my day job.” Though he pointed out that he is currently working on his next solo album and will be going out on tour again later this year, Slash added that he really enjoys recording instrumental film music because, as he put it, “I don’t like to sing and I don’t like to write lyrics.”
At the end of the session, Slash and Sheik took questions from the audience which reflected their different backgrounds and approaches to scoring music for film. Both were asked what was their “big break” and whether or not they would recommend the same path to younger musicians. Slash said Guns N Roses receive their break from relentlessly playing live shows until a record label noticed, while Sheik pointed out that he wasn’t much of a live performer and just recorded demo after demo until Atlantic Records finally liked what they heard. However, both pointed out that the music business has changed so much since their early years
Another member of the audience asked Slash if he ever considered doing a musical adaptation of Guns N’ Roses’ first album, Appetite for Destruction. Slash responded with a humorously curt “No,” but then added that he did see it as a very cinematic record even if it wasn’t written as a concept record. He noted that he wasn’t a fan of “rock musicals” with only few notable exceptions — Jesus Christ Superstar and Tommy. Sheik then joked that he was currently working on the Appetite musical.
For anyone interested in being a professional musician, both Slash and Duncan Sheik highlighted composing for film as a good career path for either new musicians or musicians thinking of utilizing their established talents outside the realm of pop music. While we won’t ever get to see that Appetite for Destruction musical, it’s clear from “From Rock to Score” that musicians can be just as passionate about their work composing for film even if you won’t hear it on the radio.
For more information on First Time Fest, check out the website here.
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