Dreams on Spec

Sometimes, I get to work on something that really stretches my wings and allows me to let my colors show. I love those kinds of projects, but I've learned to appreciate them when they come, because they are few and far between. It takes an especially confident director to allow a composer to unleash with whatever comes to mind, with the assumption that it will all work out in the end. I can count on one hand the number of times I've been given such an opportunity on a film project, and Dreams on Spec was the first.

In late 2006, television producer/director Daniel Snyder contacted me about his new endeavor, a feature documentary film he was calling Dreams on Spec. The film chronicles the exploits of three aspiring screenwriters—each in a different stage of developing their first Hollywood feature script. Along the way, we are treated to dozens of stories, insights, and anecdotes from established pros like Carrie Fisher (Star Wars; , James L. Brooks (Jerry Maguire; Broadcast News), Nora Ephron (Sleepless in Seattle; You've Got Mail), Gary Ross (Seabuscuit; The Majestic), Ed Solomon, and many more.

I remember meeting Dan for the first time at a Starbucks on Sunset Blvd. I also remember thinking that was pretty frickin' cool—everyone knows that all kinds of high-powered stuff happens at Starbucks on Sunset. Right? Yeah. Uh huh. Sure. Nevertheless, I felt empowered, so I went to the meeting with high hopes. We talked about all kind so things—film score favorites, our most memorable movie experiences, childhood experiences of seeing movies and going to the theater for the first time. We really hit it off. I knew we would get along well and that this was going to be a lot of fun.

Dan explained that, because of the limited interest of the art form, he had taken a major risk in even bringing the subject of screenwriting to a documentary feature. In keeping with the brave and unique qualities of that approach, he wanted me to do the same with the music. That was the first time that a director had ever said that to me. Usually, as composers, we get a directive to listen to a temp or  follow a certain mood or tone, but Dan wanted me to experiment. He wanted me to try things that "no director has ever let you try, but that you've always wanted to." I was pretty skeptical at first, but he really meant it. The first few ideas I gave him, he pushed me to go deeper. "It's there—I hear it—but go deeper with it. Really push it."

He also told me right from the start what my budget would be. I recall thinking that it wasn't a ton, but it forced me to get creative and think about how to write something to support our story that wasn't conventional. Something that was truly different. I knew how I wanted to score the piece—how the old Deane would do it—but I fought against those tendencies, and so did Dan. He helped me fight them. His words kept ringing in my ears: "Go deeper with it. Really push it."

Instrumental Colors

After several controlled experiments with the overall tone for Dreams on Spec, I landed on a unique instrument grouping that I felt would best communicate all the feelings that our three protagonists were experiencing. The overriding emotions in Dreams on Spec ranged from melancholy to outright sadness, hope to all-out fear of failure, a scene of incredible victory and a scene depicting someone's full-on emotional psychotic meltdown. The raw power of the film didn't need any help. It was all there. So my job was to subtly support that, bringing it out in all the right moments, and suppress it when it was too much to take. The soundscape needed to act as an aural "faucet" of emotional experience, and the score would be the regulator switch. All of the emotions I was being asked to play on were, to me, primitive reactions and responses to organic events. Raw emotion. Nothing shaded and no punches pulled. I felt that struck percussion, being the most primitive and organic of all musicalities, should carry most of the rhythmic undercarriage of the score. I used a balaphon, a vibraphone, and a small toy xylophone to handle the movement in the music. I used woodwinds (played by the late John McElnick of the Oregon Symphony) to add texture and dynamics to the main melodic motifs.

I also decided that the cinematic element of the film business needed attention. After all, this was a story about breaking into the motion picture industry, and to leave the heaviness of that journey unobserved in the music wouldn't serve the story as well as if I were to address it. I used the better part of my budget to travel north to my hometown area of Portland, Oregon and record a 13-piece string ensemble—made up mainly of members of the Oregon Symphony—at the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall (also known to us locals as the "Schnitz"). Dan and I agreed that the subtle lilting of a small section of violins, violas, and celli would be just enough to enhance the cinematic element of the storyline. The sheer joy of being able to record a live ensemble for Spec was an experience that has stayed with me since.

The Dreams on Spec strings would be no ordinary string section. Prior to the three-days of recording sessions at the the Schnitz, the last time I had set foot in that hall was to see Steve Winwood play when I was still in high school. Before that, Dire Straits, and before that... Billy Joel. All in all, I'd probably seen a couple dozen shows at the Schnitz growing up in Oregon. So, standing up on a stage that I used to go to shows at, a baton in my hand, before a group of musicians from my home state—many of whom I used to play with when I was in high school—was pretty freaking surreal. Goosebump city.

After the string sessions in Portland, I came back to Los Angeles and laid down all the percussion in the Musicave. I used everything I could think of, and then peeled most of it away, leaving what you hear in the final tracks. I went nuts. I bowed an old oil drum, I sticked out a few rhythms on a steel beam that we found out in the alley behind my studio... I went insane. During the beginning of the track "Bending the Spoon", you'll even hear some pitched wine glasses that I hung from the ceiling of the Musicave and struck with chopsticks. I then ran them through some stomp boxes and reversed the sound for a weirder, more otherworldly effect.

One of the things I stumbled upon fairly early was a color I still love very much... an instrument called the "oceanharp". I discovered it on the project that I had finished just before Spec and carried it over to this score as well. I found it necessary to somehow highlight the fragility of one of the main characters—a woman named "Deborah"—and as I began to really learn how to coax various tones of wonderment and pain out of the oceanharp, it became Deborah's voice throughout the score.

As part of the pulsating drive of the music, I used many strung instruments like acoustic guitar, cavaco, mandolin, and autoharp, and played them by tapping, plucking, bowing and scraping them with various found objects. I then had my buddy Rick Fry over to the Musicave to add his signature textured electric guitars in certain key sections.

The entire score was one big amazingly awesome experiment. As I started presenting Dan with my mock-ups and telling him about how I wanted to do certain things, he got excited and encouraged me to exhaust every possibility I could think of. And I think I did. I conducted so many experiments with sound on this score that I honestly lost count. But it was always with the idea that creating—making something unique—like what my protagonists were trying to do in the film... that's what was important. As Creatives, we all sit in our little laboratories of solitude and we create. We write, we direct, we draw, we compose, we act, we design... we create. It's what drives us and gets us out of bed in the morning. That act of making something unique. I feel like we accomplished that with Dreams on Spec. As I said in the beginning, it was an experience for me that doesn't come along very often. I'm glad I jumped in with both feet and went for it. Years later, it's still a timeless score for me, and one that I think I will always be supremely proud of.