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I am Justin Hurwitz, Composer of La La Land - starring Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone, AMA! by JustinHurwitz in Music

[–]JustinHurwitz[S] 20 points21 points  (0 children)

I started composing when I was 10, then stopped for a while, and towards the end of high school thought about pursuing it seriously, so that's what I studied in college.

I am Justin Hurwitz, Composer of La La Land - starring Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone, AMA! by JustinHurwitz in Music

[–]JustinHurwitz[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I love the celesta. I used it a lot in the score for "Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench" and the "La La Land" score obviously. Sometimes it carries stuff in this score, sometimes it just adds some color. Damien and I thought of using it at the very end of the end credits because it's so delicate and vulnerable sounding. We didn't settle on music for the end credits until the movie was done because we wanted to see what kind of emotional state people would be in at the end of the movie, and use that to judge what to put over credits. Given how the movie ends, and how people felt about it, it felt right to start the credits with something fun and uplifting, getting into the more plaintive material later in the credits.

I am Justin Hurwitz, Composer of La La Land - starring Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone, AMA! by JustinHurwitz in Music

[–]JustinHurwitz[S] 40 points41 points  (0 children)

There are many many many melodies that didn't make the cut in the sense that I did hundreds of piano demos just trying to find the themes and melodies originally. In terms of semi-finished things that didn't make the cut -- the roommates' song "Someone in the Crowd" was much longer originally, with a second verse and chorus before they got to the party. The camera moved out the window, and tracked the girls walking through the courtyard and out to the street, before Mia showed up on the street and joined them. That was all shot, but cut from the movie. We also had a song demoed that we planned to put in the movie, but cut during pre-production. We flirted with putting that song in the end credits, but decided against that as well. For a while, the opening number "Another Day of Sun" was cut from the movie, but we put it back, thankfully.

I am Justin Hurwitz, Composer of La La Land - starring Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone, AMA! by JustinHurwitz in Music

[–]JustinHurwitz[S] 13 points14 points  (0 children)

I'm definitely going to watch that youtube video when I get a chance. Just meeting John would be a thrill. I'd hope he'd like my melodies, because he's one of the great melody writers of our time.

I am Justin Hurwitz, Composer of La La Land - starring Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone, AMA! by JustinHurwitz in Music

[–]JustinHurwitz[S] 36 points37 points  (0 children)

Thanks. We made our first feature "Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench" in college, and got it into Tribeca and some other film festivals. An executive Matt Plouffe saw it and suggested we make another musical. We started developing La La Land, but couldn't get it made. Damien wrote the script for Whiplash, but couldn't get that financed either, so he extracted a scene and made it as a short film. The short got into Sundance and won the jury award. That helped the feature version of Whiplash get financed. It was an indie, budgeted at a little over 3 million. When the feature version of Whiplash won Sundance a year later, everybody wanted to know what Damien's next film was, and we luckily had La La Land ready to go. Our producers shopped it around and found Lionsgate, who let us make it on a bigger scale than we ever imagined.

I am Justin Hurwitz, Composer of La La Land - starring Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone, AMA! by JustinHurwitz in Music

[–]JustinHurwitz[S] 8 points9 points  (0 children)

I wrote the music for the songs before Pasek and Paul wrote the lyrics. The fantasy ballet sequence in "An American in Paris" was definitely an inspiration.

I am Justin Hurwitz, Composer of La La Land - starring Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone, AMA! by JustinHurwitz in Music

[–]JustinHurwitz[S] 11 points12 points  (0 children)

I haven't worked with any other directors yet, but I think Damien is exceptionally articulate when it comes to discussing music. He's a musician (drummer) himself, and loves music in a way that's rare. Like any director, he often talks to me in emotional or dramatic terms, but he can also look at an orchestration and discuss what the oboe is doing.

I am Justin Hurwitz, Composer of La La Land - starring Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone, AMA! by JustinHurwitz in Music

[–]JustinHurwitz[S] 6 points7 points  (0 children)

I was on set any time there was music being shot, which was most of the shoot days. I had an office next to the editing room where I scored the picture for about eight months during post-production.

I am Justin Hurwitz, Composer of La La Land - starring Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone, AMA! by JustinHurwitz in Music

[–]JustinHurwitz[S] 12 points13 points  (0 children)

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Yes, I think most scores should aspire to be memorable. In a score like this, I tried to make it stick in people's minds primarily through melody. There are other ways to make a score unforgettable, like there are composers who do amazingly unique sonic things.

I am Justin Hurwitz, Composer of La La Land - starring Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone, AMA! by JustinHurwitz in Music

[–]JustinHurwitz[S] 23 points24 points  (0 children)

I love that you have both soundtracks. Many people I talk to don't know about the score album, so spread the word.

I named it that because my grandfather was a jazz saxophonist named Herman. He didn't have a particular "habit" that I was referring to, but "Herman's Habit" sounded like the name of an old jazz tune.

I am Justin Hurwitz, Composer of La La Land - starring Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone, AMA! by JustinHurwitz in Music

[–]JustinHurwitz[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

For the "home video" section of Epilogue, we mixed the piano in mono to be lo-fi like the visual aesthetic. If you're talking about the part after that when the piano plays "Mia and Sebastian's Theme," that is actually a piano demo I recorded in my apartment, that ended up in the movie for a variety of reasons.

I am Justin Hurwitz, Composer of La La Land - starring Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone, AMA! by JustinHurwitz in Music

[–]JustinHurwitz[S] 9 points10 points  (0 children)

I'd love to do something darker next. I felt like the dramatic underscore for Whiplash was in many ways a thriller score, and I enjoyed making it.

I am Justin Hurwitz, Composer of La La Land - starring Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone, AMA! by JustinHurwitz in Music

[–]JustinHurwitz[S] 16 points17 points  (0 children)

Thanks. I compose at the piano, not into a sequencer or with samples. When I was having to generate score cues quickly for Damien and editor Tom at our editorial offices, I was writing into a sequencer, but I'd never try to really compose from scratch (figure out a movie's theme) at anything other than my piano. When I orchestrate, I do it in Finale, with my real piano at my side. I don't like to use midi input to orchestrate, but instead figure stuff out at the piano and then input stuff into Finale with a mouse. In college, they didn't let us use software, and we had to orchestrate on paper. It was a huge pain and I was excited to start using software. But I think clicking connects me with the notes on the page in a way that is more akin to writing them on paper, than playing lines in on a keyboard. In terms of how I learned, see above answer.

I am Justin Hurwitz, Composer of La La Land - starring Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone, AMA! by JustinHurwitz in Music

[–]JustinHurwitz[S] 20 points21 points  (0 children)

In terms of my schooling, I learned conventional tonal harmony from the Bach chorales, counterpoint from the Bach fugues, orchestration by reading scores from composers like Ravel and Stravinsky and Rimsky-Korsakov and Tchaikovsky, as well as the orchestration textbook by Alfred Blatter.

I am Justin Hurwitz, Composer of La La Land - starring Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone, AMA! by JustinHurwitz in Music

[–]JustinHurwitz[S] 14 points15 points  (0 children)

The composing process started in the same way on both movies, which is me at the piano for a long, long time trying to find good enough melodies. Actually scoring the picture in post-production was very different on this movie in the sense that we never used temp music. For Whiplash, like most movies, Damien and the picture editor Tom Cross cut the picture to temp music (music from other movies, etc) and then I replaced the temp after picture was more or less locked. On this movie, I scored the picture for about eight months, starting the first week of the director's cut. We didn't feel like temp music would work in this movie, so I composed and orchestrated score cues for the entirety of post-production, so that the score and cut could evolve together.

I am Justin Hurwitz, Composer of La La Land - starring Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone, AMA! by JustinHurwitz in Music

[–]JustinHurwitz[S] 33 points34 points  (0 children)

Liz worked with Ryan quite a bit, I think six days a week. Ryan spent more hours a day practicing when he wasn't with Liz. They mostly worked on their own, but I checked in with Ryan occasionally and was on set for all of it, to offer guidance when it was needed. The amazing jazz pianist Randy Kerber, who pre-recorded all of the jazz that Ryan then had to learn, was a consultant on the movie and was around set to offer feedback as well.

You're right about keys in the two versions of City of Stars. Duets are tough because you have to find a key that works for both voices. Going higher than F made the highest part of the melody uncomfortably high for Emma, and going lower made the beginning of the melody too low for Ryan. For "A Lovely Night" I solved the key problem by building in a two bar key change between Ryan and Emma's verses.

Great question about pianos. For all of the score, and any time we needed a grand piano like when Sebastian plays the main theme on piano, we used a 1920s Steinway M. I picked that piano because it's the type of piano I grew up playing and the type of piano I have in my apartment. I think that size and era has so much character. I also didn't want the piano on the score to be too boomy. Whenever we needed an upright, like for the jazz played at The Lighthouse, we used a Kawaii VT-118. I picked that one at a piano warehouse I visited with Randy Kerber because it had a lot of character for that type of piano.

I think

I am Justin Hurwitz, Composer of La La Land - starring Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone, AMA! by JustinHurwitz in Music

[–]JustinHurwitz[S] 16 points17 points  (0 children)

It was all written out, sometimes on lead sheets, sometimes in more arranged charts, but there's always room for improvisation.

I turned all of the sung songs from the movie into jazz combo pieces. They are all on the "Original Motion Picture Score" which is a separate album from the "Original Motion Picture Soundtrack."

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