Hey folks, Harry here as Mysterio continues his exhaustive coverage of all things JAY & SILENT BOB... The film is not far off now as we continue to head closer and closer. And I just now realized... damn, I haven't seen this with the right score.... Damn... Well I was gonna see it again anyway. I predict that this could very well end up being my father's (who is the man in charge of banning) favorite comedy of the year. Well, here's the scoring session...
THE HILLS ARE ALIVE, WITH THE SOUNDS OF… ‘JAY AND SILENT BOB STRIKE BACK’
Director Kevin Smith hasn’t been getting much sleep lately due to the hectic schedule he’s been keeping of late. Today is no exception.
It’s Wednesday morning, July 18th 2001, and just creeping in past 10 am, walks in Smith and uber-producer, Scott Mosier.
It’s here, on the Paramount lot, that the third and final day of scoring is taking place on Stage M. It’s apparent from the signed posters, when you walk in through the doors to the stage, that these walls have heard some fantastic music scored by some of today’s best composer’s of modern cinema. Elliot Goldenthal, Howard Shore, James Newton Howard, Marc Shaiman, Hans Zimmer & Danny Elfman are just a few whose signatures that adorn the walls from their scoring here.
Today, they’re about to add another, as the film’s composer, Jim Venable is about to put the finishing touches to the film’s score. It’s been a 3-day scoring session with a full orchestra consisting of an 83-piece on Monday, followed by a scaled down 53-piece on Tuesday and today. But hey let’s not kid ourselves, an 83-piece orchestra for ‘JAY AND SILENT BOB STRIKE BACK’? You bet. Not to mention that an 83-piece is the largest EVER for any View Askew film, even on ‘DOGMA’, which Howard Shore did, (partially with The London Philharmonic) using just an average 50-some-piece orchestra.
On the stage composer Venable, checks out the stage and orchestrations before instructing his conductor during rehearsal.
Venable comes back into the engineering booth where he listens and oversees the scoring process, all the while asking Smith and Mosier they’re opinions after laying down each cue. The usual answer from Smith is usually, "Genius." It’s obvious that Smith has complete and total faith in Venable’s scoring abilities, even though he occasionally playfully berates Venable here and there with that sarcastic Smith wit that he’s so known for; nothing but good fun here.
But genius it is, as Venable is really pulling out all the stops here, by blending and using instruments ranging from brass horns, wind instruments, strings, synthesizers, drums and xylophones to name a few. The score is fun, and bouncy most of the time, while occasionally building up into crescendos reminiscent sounding of Elfman’s ‘BATMAN’ score, who Venable credits as one of his musical influences.
For the monkey stuff with "Suzanne", Venable chooses to go with cues that have a "jungle"-flair to it and occasionally using such instruments as bongos and steel drums at certain cues, which lean towards having a fun "Caribbean"-sounding feel.
At one point, feeling that a piece is missing that "something", he finds that a simple anvil sound will fill the musical void, and here Venable steps out from behind the booth, to step up to the mic and play that anvil!
Later to hear playback, Venable pays close attention to the timing. Making sure that certain beats and swells in the music time just right with the images and cuts on screen.
Scott Mosier then urges me to venture outside the booth and go out on stage to check out the music "live". I’ll tell you, hearing the orchestra from inside the booth, then standing at ground zero as it all happens, words simply cannot describe – there’s so much vibrancy, richness and clarity bouncing acoustically off these walls that you can literally "feel" the music. Amazing, truly amazing. Your high school band practice this ain’t!
Later that evening, Smith, Mosier and Venable pack up, head out, and move to another sound studio in Hollywood to record the choir, which will highlight other key moments in the film.
Music is another language entirely and it takes a person like Jim Venable to translate that language into a form that can truly be shared and enjoyed by all, and enjoy it I did!
For more info about composer, Jim Venable, take a visit to his website we’re you’ll learn more about his background, equipment, and influences at:
The following morning, Thursday – July 19th, brings us to a small recording studio buried somewhere in Burbank. It’s here that some of the film’s ADR (automated dialogue replacement) takes place. It’s 9:33 am and Smith, Mosier and co-director of the upcoming J&SBS documentary, Malcolm Ingram arrive inside, quickly greeted by one lively, Jay Mewes, who’s been there already for half an hour, and appears ready to go.
For Mewes, ADR seems to come naturally to him. Actors are basically given the choice of headphones with or without reference production sound so they can mimic their lines, followed by 3 "beeps" which help to cue the actor as to when they should begin saying their lines at a particular cue. With Mewes, the man needs no headphones, or reference. He just follows the scene on screen in front of him, followed by the "beeps" and nails it like a pro. Throughout production the guy’s been on the ball, never seeming to miss a beat, and today’s no different. I think the fact that Mewes essentially carries this film will be quite a surprise to some. He’s done some surprisingly good work here, and after putting the character of "Jay" to rest, desires to continue his pursuit of his acting career into different areas, outside of just playing "Jay".
Inside the booth, Scott sits with the recording engineer, while Smith and the film’s sound mixer and supervisor, Phil Benson has flown down from Skywalker Sound to help supervise the session, as he’ll be the one that’ll have to re-mix in the new dialogue recordings.
The reason being in doing this is that sometimes while shooting, dialogue can seem "dirty", "unintelligible" or that the director is just not content with the delivery of a particular line reading, and for those reasons today, we find Jay, Dietrich Bader and Eliza Dushku coming in to loop some of their dialogue.
Eliza opts for the headphones and "beeps" to assist her, but oddly her voice since shooting, has gone through a slight change, which she accounts must be due to her recent decision to give up smoking and now lends itself to some difficulty in matching her voice.
Scott also has to loop a line to and admits that he’s terrible with ADR, and that some people can do it, and some can’t. He, being one that can’t and at the end of the day confirms this fact as he struggles with delivering one line in the same tone and timing as he originally did on-set months ago.
Inside the recording room, Malcolm continues to shoot behind the scenes footage for the documentary, and as a special treat, has brought a reel of some assembled, cut footage for the documentary, which upon viewing, really seems to capture the fun spirit of what it was to be on-set during the shooting, interspersed with actors comments and such.
It’s looks to be a winner folks, and it sounds like it’s getting so big and so good, that festival screenings are becoming more and more likely to happen before appearing on a DVD; similar to how the feature-length documentary of ‘FROM DUSK TILL DAWN’, ‘FULL TILT BOOGIE’ played at festivals before showing up on home video.
So with that, "we cue the music" and fade out…
- Mysterio
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