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Graeme Revell.
 Earlier this month I saw a film that utterly blew me away. That film was Robert Rodriguez' adaptation of Frank Miller's seminal graphic comic book series 'Sin City'. The film is separated into three vignettes, 'The Hard Goodbye', 'The Big Fat Kill' and 'That Yellow Bastard'. The score of the film is similar, in the fact that there are three composers working on a segment each: Graeme Revell, John Debney and Rodriguez himself, respectively.
As luck would have it, I was able to speak to the composer of my favourite segment: Graeme Revell, whose cinematic work dates back to 1989 with the release of Philip Noyce's 'Dead Calm'. At last count, he has worked on over eighty films since then, such as 'The Crow', 'From Dusk Till Dawn' and 'Suicide Kings'. Recently, he received the Richard Kirk award in recognition of his work, joining the ranks of such luminaries as Danny Elfman, Lalo Schifrin and Alan Silvestri. "Well, it's a lifetime achievement award, so it proves I've had a life," he chuckles. "I often wonder. I'm in good company with a lot of great composers who have won the award before so that's wonderful".
'Sin City' marks the second film that Revell has worked with Robert Rodriguez, the first being the aforementioned 'From Dusk Till Dawn' and he has already completed work on the third, a Rodriguez family project known as 'The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl in 3-D'. "It's really fun," he says of working with Rodriguez. "He's just so much fun, a really talented guy. What I most appreciate is that not only is he multi-talented, he writes music and themes and does everything else on the movie, but he really focuses on the big picture. Often we end up trapped in the minutiae, the details and Robert just doesn't think like that, he just thinks of the broad scope and on the style. It's so much fun to work like that. Plus we have a very solid communication. He spoke to me about 'Sin City' and said 'I want to create a schizophrenic twenty-first century 'Conan The Barbarian'': y'know, easy!"
There is obviously some exceptional chemistry between the two. "The first time I worked with him, on 'From Dusk Till Dawn', I said 'I really wanna write a mariachi surf opera' and he said 'Cool!' It's very deconstructive. When I first worked with him I showed him basically how to use digital material and cut it up and process it so that it's almost unrecognisable. He said he found that very inspiring and that's what he has gone on to do himself. For example, he said 'I want John Debney to use a trumpet for his segment, what do you think you would use?' I said 'Well, I'd like to use a saxophone but as long as there's no way it's gonna end up sounding like Kenny G. For me, it has to end up sounding like a dying elephant.'" He laughs. "And he said 'Okay!'"
Revell's work punctuates the steady flow of action in the film. Surely it must be difficult to provide the director a score that is set to the beat of the film's visual style, only to have the director constantly rewriting and re-editing the piece. "That's probably 50% of the gig," he shrugs, "especially the kind of movies that I work on which are of the action genre. A large proportion of what we see when we're composing is green screen, upon which the CGI is going to be put in later on. You're really looking at some bewildered actor attached to wires in front of a green screen. There's no real knowledge of what the hell the scene's about. Trying to write for that is quite difficult and then slowly the pieces get filled in. I can spend all day working towards a scene in the knowledge that they've already edited it again!" he laughs.
Film scores are something that are often overlooked (or 'underheard'?) by the general audience, especially with films with such a frenetic, strong visual style as 'Sin City'. However, when you're in the cinema, be aware that there is something happening beyond what you are seeing. Keep your ears pricked up: you will be rewarded.
D. Stuart Gravestock
 | 'Sin City' is reviewed in the film section of this issue! |
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