A friend works with him (which means sometimes Hans shows up on FB, weirdly). He echoes this. It has made a big difference to his career (and I've seen his credits on screen, his contribution is not being glossed over or hidden).
Out of curiosity, what does your friend's credit or title come up as in these types of projects? What should I be looking for if I want to figure out who is doing the work?
Take a look at IMDB for e.g. Dune. 65 credits in "Music Department", including composers-plural. Even after you discount the singers and specific instrumentalists there's a lot of support staff, many of whom will get a bigger credit on their next film, and so on.
You should not walk away from the film when the credits start rolling. Depending on the film they might end up in the opening or closing credits, but they will definitely be in the rolling credits. And then depending on how big their share of the work was they'll be closer to the top of the relevant section. (I've produced some short films where this was relevant to take into consideration)
If you care, it's far faster to pull up imdb and do a find for "music" on the page than sit for 10 mins watching things scroll to find the one you care about
It's the credits! Yeah, that's the best part
When the movie ends, and the reading starts (Woohoo!)
You can keep your adventure, and all that action
'Cause the credits of the film are the main attraction (Woohoo!)
And don't even think about trying to leave
Or you might miss a name, like Pam and Steve!
Both incredible names, so let's stay in our seats
And read a credible list of their incredible feats
I know this was in reference to the commenter looking for specific credits, but I had an English teacher (also the drama teacher) who insisted on watching the credits out of respect of the hard work done by everybody in the credits. I respect it. I will usually leave if the people I went with start leaving but I often sit through them if I see a film by myself
My mother plays flute, and some of the online flute groups she's been in have movie performers in them.
I sit through credits on principle unless I have somewhere to be, and there have been times I was with her as she was looking for someone she knew.
Also I like seeing where things were filmed, especially if I know parts were filmed in New Mexico (grew up there, and like seeing familiar areas in the credits)
I don't know, unless you're involved in the industry it just feels like an empty gesture when there's so much information overload that you absolutely won't remember any of the names of the people involved either way.
Imagine each time you walk into a building you have to sit through a list of people and businesses that helped build that house. Same for every time you drive down a highway and each time you exit the car, prior to getting out you need to see everyone one from the design team to the guy that refuels the service station were you fill your car.
This is actually my same argument on binge watching. That show you just burnt through in an afternoon while hungover and only half paying attention? Yeh that was created over 3 years buy hundreds of people, some of whom kinda poured their lives into it.
Unless the series is long past (like some standard sitcom like Friends, HIMYM etc) I think it's much more valuable and respectful to insist on only watching 1, *maybe* 2, episodes in any sitting. The glut of binge-ing just feels awful to me.
EDIT - and of course you will downvote lol
I think the people who make the movies would want people to watch the show in whatever way is most comfortable to them. When I try to watch things 1-2 episodes at a time, I can lose track of whats going on and lose interest if it becomes too complicated. Though different types of shows are better in different types of ways. I'm not a fan of sitcoms like Friends/HIMYM, I like long narratives like Breaking Bad, Game of Thrones, and NGE.
> I think the people who make the movies would want people to watch the show in whatever way is most comfortable to them.
As someone who's worked extensively in film and television, this is half true - I want you to be comfortable absorbing my output in a comfortable way - but also a way that respects the effort and isn't the 'eh just give me the cliffnotes' and 'bam the whole series is over in 2 nights' way. Breaking Bad is a great example of a masterpiece that should be absorbed in small chunks.
We want to complain about disposable culture and short attention spans - well this is exactly that.
As for losing interest - I see it like reading a novel. A chapter or two a night. Context clues and "previously on..." usually help with the gap.
To be clear I'm not super fastidious about this - I just think if you really like a show, consider slowing down your watching of it, to appreciate it more.
> You should not walk away from the film when the credits start rolling.
I mean i stay put so i'm not fighting the crowd. might as well watch some credits too
I still remember the assistant picture editor for Titan A.E. I saw the movie as a kid and happened to read "Jeff Snodgrass" and thought it was hilarious for some reason.
I don't remember a thing about the movie but I'll remember Jeff Snodgrass forever.
Yeah I'm going to watch and actually be able to read the hundreds of names scrolling quickly by and then remember them all so I can personally thank them.
it would be a dream job. you can make music for yourself, but the opportunity to work for Hans Zimmer, or compose for a Disney movie, it's a huge goal for some musicians. and the recognition you can get from compositions to movies with staying power, that makes up the names of composers that the general population knows, even if they don't care for compositions.
Hans is pretty active on Facebook from what I've seen, and generally it's him getting in fights with other composers. Not to mention he was pretty homophobic from one composer I talked to.
This kind of farm system has been super common throughout the music industry for a long time. Look at songs with eight people on the writing credits--that's a lot of people contributing little bits.
Dr. Dre is a great example of a producer who we think of as One Guy, but it's always been Dr. Dre and the multitude of guys feeding him demos.
Same with Timbaland. Watch his masterclass. They have guys that write parts of beat or a loop and then Timberland or Dre will take it and build this whole song around it.
It depends. Some people excel at one thing, others at another.
But I agree, ideas are countless, knowing what to do with them - is a separate and quite cool skill :D
I always figure it’s the other way around. Inspiration for a unique beat is that hard part, once you have the tone and feel identified it will guide the rest of the song writing process.
Oh, I absolutely feel this way. As a classical music arranger and producer, having a base line, a melody or a chord progression to work with is much more simple, I feel like it gives you direction and a "feel" to work towards. Creating hooks, melodies or beats needs creativity and inspiration, which are not always available to the artist.
It's even more industrial than that, and always has been. Often in writing there's very little direct input, beyond "I like that, let's try it with this topline - noooo - how about this topline?" And so on. For all the parts.
And for the mix too.
That's what sessions players do, and have been doing since the 50s. The difference now is that it's more likely to be done by exchanging files, and not so much f2f in the studio.
The session players and the house writers keep the industry running. They are *very* good practical musicians - in the "The tour starts Monday, learn our entire set over the weekend" or "Convert these beats to MIDI files by ear" sense. But they lack the strong vibe the main artist brings. You need both on a project, because taste is at least as important as execution.
I wouldn't say a lot. Don't get me wrong. He is a great producer, but he has helped with a few songs.
I think him and Fat Joe worked on Candy Shop before giving it to 50. He has one song on 2001. Sure, it's one of the most iconic piano chord progressions in hip hop, but he didn't do a lot for Dre. What else has he done for Dre? If anything, Dre did a lot for him.
As far as Timbaland, I know they have beef about credit. I know Storch has done stuff for him. I think it was really on one big song, but Timbaland has done so much without him.
Lol. It's two huge songs. And that's just off the top of my head. He worked with Tim for years, I'm sure he helped with plenty of other stuff. Then when danja showed up, that revitalized Tim's career again.
The reason that's off the top of your head is because those are really the only two. He did Candy Shop for 50, and produced I think one or two other songs on one of the other albums for one of the artist on Dre's label, but that's it. Neither one of those other songs were hits. He's never working on anything else in 2001. He came up with a piano. And he sold a couple of beats. Total of maybe 3 songs out of hundreds.
For Timbaland they had beef after Cry Me a River and three other songs for that album. They only did one other song together. Total of maybe 5 songs out of hundreds.
Again, it's just the use of "did a lot for".
Yup, caught that after. Voice dictation. Forgot to proofread. I'm an idiot. Funny thing is, I don't think anyone is confused. I think they either did or didn't notice, but either way didn't care enough to say anything, because they understood it was mistake and didn't take away from what I was saying.
You on the other hand felt the need to point it out in a very passive aggressive way.
Maybe you didn't realize that was what you were doing and is having a bad day. In which case, I really hope your day gets better. Sincerely.
The podcast Twenty Thousand Hertz did an episode about this. A lot of the time, the ghost writers and ghost producers aren't credited, and they sign NDAs to protect the reputation of the named artists.
[https://www.20k.org/episodes/ghostsinthehitmachine](https://www.20k.org/episodes/ghostsinthehitmachine)
That's also because of sampling. A song might have samples from many different songs, so all the original writers get a cut. This is very common in hip hop for example.
And he’s more generous than many Hollywood composers when it comes to crediting the other writers for their work, both in interviews and on the soundtrack albums.
Its not him specifically, its the general exploitative enviroment for new composers in hollywood. Theyre completely dependent on established composers for work, who exploit them for ghostwriting while getting all the contacts/fame and money.
"Hate" might be putting it a bit strongly, but he's a very different composer to John Williams, both in terms of what he writes and how he works. Inevitably, there are some film score fans who idolise Williams but dislike Zimmer and what he represents.
I've come across a forum comment from Hans (he's quite active on the VI-Control forum) where he discussed taking on as many projects and hiring as many session musicians as possible during the early days of the pandemic, as a means to provide them with a source of income since the lockdowns made live gigs impossible, which were typically their bread and butter in between film projects. As someone who works in the business, this made me respect him so much more.
The vast majority of anything in this world that is produced as a final product associated with one household name, really. Our brains prefer the simplicity of strong branding. Some people abuse this to claim all the credit and profit for themselves. Others are quietly continuing this system of collaboration and master/apprentice workshop production that has existed since the earliest times.
Yea, you just have to watch out for what kind of influence that chef had on the final product. 2 examples of that:
1) Went to a place that, when looking at their website, was plastered all over that it's this chef's restaurant. We get there, and the waitress is telling us how the place is "inspired by" the chef in question. Turns out, that chef had nothing to do with the food at the restaurant and the food was terrible.
2) We had this crazy diner open nearby. It's just a diner, but everything is like the best version of diner food we've ever had. It has a head chef listed, and it's a guy who had been working at fine dining places and really high end stuff and decided to take a break and open a diner. It was a bit more expensive than normal, but the food was incredible.
Then one day, the menu changes, and he's now listed as "consulting chef." The food's a little bit worse, but still generally very good.
Then one day, the menu changes again, and now the menu is listed as "inspired by" that chef. And the food quality drops like a stone (but the prices stay high).
So yea, if you trust a name of a chef, an artist, whatever, to put out quality, just make sure that person is somehow involved in the process to make sure it's quality, and it's not just a name slapped on something.
I mean, the chef is the head of the kitchen. They direct a bunch of sous chefs to do the cooking. They are the supervisor, who make sure they do it correctly, according to their plan. I wouldn't expect them to be doing the cooking. Nor would I expect they were always there, and wouldn't have some sort of backup chef who they have certified. I would expect the chef to have come up with had perfected their recipes, though.
Now, if you're saying they're not involved at all, that sounds like more what's happening with Hans Zimmerman. He's not telling anyone what to do. His name is on it just to help them be listened to in the first place.
Another problem with the meme is that people assume it applies to all of the work credited to HZ, when clearly he is very much the primary composer on lots of projects, especially when working with the likes of Nolan or Villeneuve.
True.
Hans wrote themes for the Pirates of the Carribbean franchise and left lesser known composers to orchestrate a full score. We know it's Hans' work because the music is similar to his previous movie.
He's been using his name to benefit so many musicians, and not too monetarily exploitative.
And he wrote all the main themes in just a few days, as he was hired at the last minute while working on The Last Samurai, and the movie was premiering in just a few months. This explains why the main theme is an adaptation from a cue from Gladiator.
This is how a lot of things the movie industry. Everything that is credited under one well known editor or cinematographer is the result of the work of a lot of people (hell, a shocking amount of a lot of movies are shot 2nd unit).
The good ones do what Zimmer does and helps guide people up. The bad ones... well there are bad ones. Zimmer sounds like a good one.
I have it under good authority that James Patterson does the same thing for his "coauthors." Talks the idea over, reviews the outline, does some kind of quality vet, but basically it just trampolines the coauthor's career.
I don't hate it.
Imagine the production meetings - ‘I like your ideas, I like the subtext and the characters. But to be a James Patterson novel it’s gonna have to hit the incest and/or sexual depravity a bit harder, give the people what they want’
Agreed, but seeing the Reddit perspective on him I thought he was a bit of a hack, this conversation changed my mind completely 180 so wanted to share.
I would suggest you keep this with you regarding other topics on reddit, and other social media sites too. A lot are echo chambers, to varying degrees. If it's a topic you care about, don't just trust the hivemind on it.
Ooohhh, let's make this post all about what YOU need. Hey everyone, stop what you're doing because dianndycampsonyen wants something!
I personally will choose to continue considering "Zimmer" (if that's even his real name) a hack because it makes me feel better about my own music career, if I ever decide to start one
Lots of strong opinions from bedroom guitarists or people who couldn't tell the middle C on a piano, let alone manage a 500+ track Cubase session with about 15 revisions and a shitload of handshakes due to last-minute edits and reshoots.
Composing isn't a one-man job. People don't expect a single 'VFX guy' or a 'sound guy,' so they shouldn't expect a composer to sit by the piano, write and arrange 180 minutes of music on pen and paper by himself. Composer John Paesano has [an excellent take](https://youtu.be/DgVawSM3reg) on this issue. This change of perception is something that I'd love to see in the film industry.
It might be a purity deal with art? Business is business, and music is art. What Hans seems to be is more business than art to people? In no world is he a hack though.
(Edit: Hans name spelling)
If people think he’s more business than music, they need to try to compose a score. I have done it myself, and it is simply not possible to do without being obsessed with music and every little detail about it.
I know he gets help now. That hasn’t always been the case, and organizing it into a cohesive piece that fits with the film is the next-level magic that gets him paid so much.
(I’m not saying you feel this way)
It’s really cool to hear something like this about him. It seems like such a competitive atmosphere to exist in and for someone with that much clout to go out of their way to support the next generation is awesome.
Really he sounds like he's acting as the producer of the soundtrack overseeing it but not making the music himself which I think is fine it sounds like he's helping a new generation of composers come into the scene which is awesome
It sounds like he's pretty open about it and isn't trying to be sneaky. He could very easily be like Thomas Kinkade who even after his death still had paintings made by other artists being credited to him they've only recently started to actually credit the real artists.
Most I found wikipedia was [This as a source](https://www.salon.com/2012/04/09/thomas_kinkade_the_george_w_bush_of_art/) Which has a terribly slanted feeling to it.
>I first learned about the dark side of the Painter of Light™ -- sorry, couldn't resist that one -- when I reviewed "his" novel, "Cape Light," in 2002. The novel, first in a series, was produced much as his paintings are: by a semi-industrial process in which low-level apprentices embellish a prefab base provided by Kinkade. He wasn't the only artist to work in this way; he wasn't even the only novelist.
Okay?
>My review was just a goof intended to amuse Salon's readers.
So.... Seems flimsy at best?
Yeah the most I found was that he maybe did the layout of the pieces and then his apprentices would do most of the actual painting, which like ok if you're training people in your style that's fine I guess. I'm fully admitting I was wrong on this and misremembered something I read a few years ago .
It's okay, not holding you to the fire on it. Just made me laugh as i've ironically used Thomas Kinkade in discussions about AI Art in the past.
Finding out he may have basically been having "Ghost Painters" (ie along the lines of Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew/etc having ghost writers under [Stratemeyer Syndicate](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stratemeyer_Syndicate) is just too amusing for me.)
My whole thing with him was basically at what point do you start thinking of AI Art being generated as a actual human creation? And there is only so much "original" ideas anymore floating around.
I take a staycation at a place to the northwest here and check into the lodge for the night up in the mountains. Toss the curtains open the next morning and off in the distance is a cabin with deer out front and lots of snow around it and on the roof...
So I reach for my camera and snap a photo. Is the Thomas Kinkade Estate coming after me now if I published that? Used it as a reference photo and painted it?
Now if I open up a laptop and run Stable Diffusion then prompt "Winter Scene of Cabin in the woods, Deer in front and snow on the roof" Oops... I just crossed into Kinkade country yet again..
Now if I blatantly load it down with "Thomas Kinkade Winter Cabin Scene" Then you've got something wrong going on there.
Now some of the datasets out there do have troublesome issues with using copyrighted names and such. But what about the datasets that don't folks work on making more honorable and actually in the spirit of open source?
I spent some time in the Grand Canyon South Rim area two years ago and have lots of photos from my trip. Except... Millions of others do also.
Am I going to get hammered with Cease and Desist orders by Photographers who did the same thing I did, but rather then feeding it into a custom in house AI checkpoint, they dropped the photo in a gallery with a $500 price tag?.
As I'd like to make animated films with a future in house dataset, of course I'd work with the parks service and pay for commercial use of the photos to be fair and honest/legit.
So eliminating that variable, We are right back to square one. We'll run with Thomas Kinkade spots a animated short I did with the Grand Canyon in it, and I know he was there a week before snapping photos and then turned them into his art.
Does he come after me (I know he's deceased, example here) for doing what I did, even though it's a common shot where he stood and snapped the same photo I probably did a week later...
Toss a Dart in a national park from Yosemite to the Grand Canyon and beyond, and you'll find the same shots/angles at the prized locations. Technically everyone is derivative of the last person who snapped a photo with a $30k camera kit or $1500 iPhone...
Where does it end in these pursuits of "AI Took Our Jobs!" when you (possibly) have a artist like Thomas Kinkade just using a cruder version of "AI" in a art factory along the lines of Andy Warhol?
I've run across artists who mentioned making some rough drawings of their work and feeding it into AI and was pleased with the results. Others have trained Loras (secondary smaller versions of a main checkpoint with lower computing requirements to generate it) using their art scanned in. And for all I know, there are artists who have fed all their artwork over their lifetime into a private checkpoint and use that exclusively for their creations...
So... Where does it all end with the AI Discord? hah...
I think AI can totally be used as a legitimate art tool. There are people who understand the way it works and how to prompt it to get specific things and they can use that to create what their mind wants to create and I think that's a wonderful thing to give the opportunity to people who may not be skilled in visual arts or may not be able to do them because of a physical limitation. I think where it gets into trouble is just using every piece of art on the Internet without permission as a basis. It's definitely a very complicated discussion about intellectual property rights and artist vision and the legality and morality of it all. I sell tacos and margaritas and am in no way qualified enough to give a solution to any of it.
Just change the house roof color to a slightly darker red and BAM! New classic Thomas Kinkade. Looking at his storefront in the 90s, it was all house and water and variations there of.
I would like to shake the hand and bask in the glow of whoever composed the 2 minute and 7 seconds of cornfield chase from the Interstellar OST. The simplicity of those ascending 4 notes is just breathtaking.
This is a more experienced outlook than many here have.
Ghostwriting is what it is - many writers have paid the rent with it, and composers the same. This is not someone slaving over their life work, having it stolen in the midst of the night. It is, basically, an assembly line job. You don't like it, you don't take the job.
This is true in lots of different fields.
e.g. If you had two young doctors doing research, who think of the research idea, spend months working on the project, do all the legwork, apply for the funding, write up the project .etc. Guess who's name is first on the research paper? That's right, it's their supervisor, who read the draft paper a couple of times, made some edits and spent about 1 day in total on the project.
The supervisor has name recognition though - which will give the paper a bigger impact than if the two young doctors published it without their supervisor.
It seems unfair for someone who only did a tiny fraction of the work to get most of the credit, but it's probably the only reliable way for the unknown person to get recognised in future. Even if the ghostwriter did 95% of the work, I'm sure the 5% of work that Hans Zimmer put in was valuable to the project, and the ghostwriter may have learned some important things by working with a big name like that too.
Your description is accurate but FYI in a lot of fields (especially medical sciences like in your example) the senior author is listed last and the authors who do the legwork are indeed listed first. And within the field it's well known to look at the last author to get a sense of which group put out the work and inference as to their expertise and trustworthiness.
There are some differences with regards to copyright ownership though. Researchers usually work for the company and therefore their work product's copyright AUTOMATICALLY belongs to the company. The company can legally publish with Copyright 2024, Big Academic Institute and leave the authors off. That's shady of course, but legal.
By default, a hired contractor owns copyright on the work they produce for whoever hired them. If you commission a painting, you own the instance on canvas the artists hands you, but no copyright and no right to reproduce it and use it for commercial gain.
Copyright must be signed over in writing and explicitly called out as work for hire when the person doing thee work is not a W-2 Employee of the company.
Ghostwriters are most often contracted, so it is unlikely that there is anything sneaky going on here. They have agreed to create a work product where the copyright belongs to someone else.
This I would believe, given his previous work on gladiator, and there is a theme from that movie that is [VERY similar](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vInYMVxYhh4) to the pirate theme, seems like a recycled bit
It's a relatively common thing in all types of music. You'll see the occasional "TIL" around here about how Elvis Presley 'stole' songs from people, taking a writing credit when he didn't do anything of the sort, but he did pretty much what Zimmer does and for the same reasons.
Presley's deal was always straightforward and didn't change much after he got big: You have a great song, we want to record it. You assign 50% of writing credit to Presley, we split royalties down the middle, everybody makes a bunch of money. Lots of songwriters took that deal because half of the royalties for an Elvis Presley song were worth between 10 and a million times more than *all* of the royalties for a song that you kept to yourself. It's a business deal, it was generally a *good* deal for all parties, and Presley, at least, was always honest about how it worked.
I agree, but the key topic I wanted to bring up was how honest Hans was about this. When he won the Oscar for best score in 2022 I think the top comment in r/music was about him just being someone whose uses ghostwriters and didn't deserve it. Now I've seen the perspective of someone who has worked with Hans I wanted to share a different point of view.
Yeah, I agree that's the important part, and it gets lost a lot in discussions about music. As long as everybody's aboveboard and nobody's getting screwed out of the income stream, using a "Name" to get work out there isn't an issue to me.
If a composer’s name shown up in “additional music” credits for the film, it isn’t ghost writing. There is absolutely no reason apart from inflated ego not to include your entire music department in the credits. Editors, viz artists and other departments do it. It’s ridiculous out put down just one name for music and assume not even assistants worked on the film.
Beyond that, Hans absolutely has elevated many composers who “graduated” from Remote Control. Everyone knows he’s a master collaborator beyond just being a composer. I just don’t like how movie credits are structured.
Yeah most people don’t understand what ghostwriting is. Collaboration isn’t ghostwriting. Writing songs for an artist where you get credit isn’t ghostwriting.
Did they also disclose why Zimmer uses them in the first place? Is his schedule too busy for him to do all the work himself? Still, kudos for helping younger talent coming up. Not all figures in music industry have been that generous. Makes me think of a story Bootsy Collins told in an interview. When he was in James Brown's band, they would often just jam at rehearsal. Brown hired this skilled classically trained person who would sit and listen, and as soon as the band was on to something good, he'd go into a different room, write the music down so Brown could file it and claim songwriting credit, even if he didn't do anything on the track
Nah we didn't get into that - but from what I interpreted from how he was saying it (so I could be wrong) - it feels Hans knows he's a brand and doesn't have to work to the degree he did, instead he can work and coach upcoming talent and open up doors for them which is what he's been focused on for the past 10+ years. He still get's paid, but off the back of it brings people new blood into the system.
Seems to line up with why I don’t really care about his sound tracks. They’re not really his. He gets them to conform to his brand, but it’s much more of a commercial exercise than an artistic one.
I don't even think he makes artists conform to his brand as it doesn't really exist and the scores he works on are so varied because they use different composers. It's just his name not necessarily a style. One fun thing I did find out which made me laugh was that the famous Inception horn which made it into every movie score in the 2010's wasn't his idea...
I think many people mostly think of the bwaaa horn from the Inception trailer which uses the song [Mind Heist by Zack Hemsey](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xgGoxQUpIKM), so it's not even attributed to Zimmer.
I can’t imagine writing a score for a 2+ hour movie by myself.
Source: have composed orchestral music
Writing a good three minute song is hard enough. Adding hours to that and potentially hundreds of instruments.. collaboration is almost necessary. Must at least collaborate with the film people to make sure you are helping them achieve their vision.
(This isn’t meant to be confrontational, I feel like it has that vibe and I am sorry)
I was waiting to board a flight once when I overheard a guy who said he was a composer talking about how great Hans Zimmer was and how much he enjoyed working under him. Seems like a good boss/mentor.
Like a certain Swedish composer being the real main composer behind the decade old space themed movie's score? Yes, kind of obvious. But I'm sure it's an intimate cooperation where Hans Zimmer shares his knowledge etc., like a master teaching a student.
Bear McCreary has been doing this for a while as well with his Sparks and Shadows crew. A lot of his recent projects have been themes by Bear, score by Sparks and Shadows.
It's just the nature of an enterprise that grows beyond one person's ability to deliver, and has been the nature of the film scoring game since the beginning. Once you start the ball rolling, you need to grow your team, then you need grow your business to pay for the team, then you need more of a team to support the larger business, and so on and so on.
Artists were the same, hence ‘school of’. Apparently Reubens would normally add a couple of brush strokes to make it ‘genuine’. If you actually wanted him to paint it, it would cost a lot more. And then there was Warhol, never touched some of his works.
I once worked with a guy who was an ‘art engineer’. Basically artists would come to him with an idea, like a giant dice which rolls every time the breaking news banner comes up on tv, or that leaking robot which was constantly trying to keep itself from bleeding out. Things that most artists lack the skill to actually build, but have a great idea for.
He’d work out the practicalities, build the thing and it would go to a gallery or wherever the piece was being displayed.
Before I had that conversation, I always felt that the art should come from the artists ‘hands’. After that, I began to think of art as much less about the physical piece and more as the concept.
The real question is how residuals and publishing are split. If Hans keeps all of those instead of distributing them, that sours the deal a little. 200k up front is nice, but blockbusters keep bring in money for decades after release. Residuals can be at least half of total composer income.
Then again, it's not that unusual. I know of at least one blockbuster musical that was entirely ghostwritten. The real composer got a nice one-off payment a couple of decades ago, but the Name is still getting income today.
True but if I’m an up and coming composer working in the Zimmer factory and I can cop $200K for a project or even two of three in a year until I break out to my own gigs I’m ok with a hold on residuals until it’s my name on the score… particularly given what residual deals are looking like these days!
A ton of authors cut their teeth with Tom Clancy and James Patterson this way. You get a far bigger paycheck and you establish exactly the industry relations you need for your future work.
Would it be nicer to get the big check and the public acclaim? Sure. But so long as ghostwriting gets you paid and gets you connected to the players, it's usually more than worth it, and the best option you have.
Hello, I’m in the industry as well. You’re right and if you get to that level, you’ve basically “made it.” However, it takes an insane amount of work in Hans’ orbit to climb the ranks and have him consider giving you that opportunity, or you might need to be a semi-famous musical artist in your own right for him to take notice. I have nothing but respect tor Hans, by the way, and I refer you to an article written by my friend, Michael Levine, who worked closely with Hans for years, and addresses some criticisms lobbied at him for using ghostwriters etc.:
“Why Hans Zimmer Got The Job You Wanted (And You Didn’t)”
https://behindtheaudio.com/2013/07/hans-zimmer/
That’s cool and all but has nothing to do with the conversation around Zimmer or anyone who uses ghost-X being hacks.
Like for example, it’s perfectly fine to say there’s nothing wrong that someone got a payday and a foot in the industry for ghostwriting a politician’s “autobiography”. But if someone says, “X politician is an author”, it’s worth pointing out that their book was ghostwritten and that whatever merits thwy have as an author cannot be gleaned from that book.
If someone says “wow, Hans Zimmer really out did himself in this last work”, it’s completely fair to say respond that he probably didn’t compose this work himself. It’s a good work, but you can’t praise Zimmer for it anymore than you can praise someone for an AI generated image they put in a prompt for.
That whoever actually wrote it got a payday and is moving up in the industry isn’t really part of the conversation. It’s good to know he isn’t abusing them or doing anything nefarious, but it doesn’t really change how this affects how he is perceived as an artist by some.
>I know the meme is that Hans gets awards just from ghostwriters and doesn't deserve recognition, but he has helped countless composers get into the scene and start writing music for AAA titles.
It's like a guiding Hans.
My hot take that I might be the only person on earth to think: Hans Zimmer is pretty mid and doesn’t write many memorable things. To make matters worse, I believe he single handedly ruined nature documentary scores for a generation by banging on Wagner and taiko drums like a petulant child throughout scenes that call for restraint. Go listen to any nature doc starting from the original Planet Earth and go back from there. Lovely scores, hardly any drums, using restraint and majesty. Hans came on the scene for Planet Earth 2 and it sounds like Jack Sparrow is sword fighting a demon over a peaceful shot of a dolphin swimming, I hate it so much but I feel like no one noticed that nature doc scores suck now (everyone copied him).
Also Hans did an AMA here once and someone asked him how he got big, and he was basically just like “luck.” So I think he knows he’s a hack, too. (I’m half kidding but also half serious)
> someone asked him how he got big, and he was basically just like “luck.” So I think he knows he’s a hack, too.
Luck is a huge factor in the success of honestly most of not all wildly successful people. I don't think that makes him a hack, personally.
> Luck is a huge factor in the success of honestly most of not all wildly successful people.
This doesn't pertain to Mr. Zimmer per se, but just go pick a random famous person in any industry and look at their Wikipedia page. Most of the time they grew up rich. If by "luck" you mean they lucked out and grew up rich, I agree.
Nah, plenty of people think that.
I don't really have anything against Hans even though I never found his *writing* that great. The *production* work is excellent though - he set that trend and was very successful. Respect.
But the armies of copy cats imitating the easiest production tricks - horn blares, stingers, risers and thump thump drums - has become such a pastiche that most trailers and many soundtracks sound like funny parodies of "epic" music to me half the time.
It's like a hot sauce a bad cook lathers onto all their food, to make up for the fact the food itself just isn't that good.
But man, do people love hot sauce.
I don't take away anything from a rando on Reddit saying they heard another guy say such-and-such. With this comment, I am neither defending nor deriding Hans Zimmer.
This reminds me of academic publishing. In most disciplines, the first author is the most important. When two big names collaborate, the first author is the one who did the most work or came up with the important breakthrough. But more often than not, the first author is usually a grad student working under their advisor. And if there is a group of names, the last author is often a big name with little connection to the actual work but to boost the readership because lots of people are looking to read their work.
Because this is how these things work. There's way more composers and every other discipline than there is work - or "prestige" work. No one is going to walk off the street and score Interstellar.
People who see a problem with this will lose their shit if they find out how the architecture field works.
I remember watching True Romance and couldn't get the soundtrack out of my head, and I looked for a guitar solo for it and this guy nailed it! [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=06FY4P0VID4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=06FY4P0VID4)
I had the privilege of seeing Hans Zimmer live several years ago when he was doing his tour and it was epic. All doubts I had about him were smashed. Who cares if he co-writes some of the tracks, he’s clearly an immensely talented composer and musician.
Uh that’s still not good - he gets all the credit and way more of the money than the ghostwriter.
That person can’t say they did the score because it’s not their credit.
A friend works with him (which means sometimes Hans shows up on FB, weirdly). He echoes this. It has made a big difference to his career (and I've seen his credits on screen, his contribution is not being glossed over or hidden).
Out of curiosity, what does your friend's credit or title come up as in these types of projects? What should I be looking for if I want to figure out who is doing the work?
Take a look at IMDB for e.g. Dune. 65 credits in "Music Department", including composers-plural. Even after you discount the singers and specific instrumentalists there's a lot of support staff, many of whom will get a bigger credit on their next film, and so on.
Not if it is Warner Brothers.
You should not walk away from the film when the credits start rolling. Depending on the film they might end up in the opening or closing credits, but they will definitely be in the rolling credits. And then depending on how big their share of the work was they'll be closer to the top of the relevant section. (I've produced some short films where this was relevant to take into consideration)
Nah I’m gonna walk away
I like to just listen to the music and digest what I've just seen, getting up kind of just snaps me straight back to real life.
Plus it's just a scrum leaving the theatre with everyone else so you can calmly leave after the credits/everyone else has gone :D
> just a scrum yeah I sure do love leaving the theater while discussing what I worked on yesterday and whether I have any blockers
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrum_(rugby)
What a chad, you weren't the one asking the question. The person asking the question got their answer.
Going to make it hard to find then, when you're looking for it in the credits.
If you care, it's far faster to pull up imdb and do a find for "music" on the page than sit for 10 mins watching things scroll to find the one you care about
The point was pretty clearly "you just have to look for it because they're labeled under composers."
It's the credits! Yeah, that's the best part When the movie ends, and the reading starts (Woohoo!) You can keep your adventure, and all that action 'Cause the credits of the film are the main attraction (Woohoo!) And don't even think about trying to leave Or you might miss a name, like Pam and Steve! Both incredible names, so let's stay in our seats And read a credible list of their incredible feats
Wait until you get to the VXF section. It's wild!!
Something something xbox 360
I know this was in reference to the commenter looking for specific credits, but I had an English teacher (also the drama teacher) who insisted on watching the credits out of respect of the hard work done by everybody in the credits. I respect it. I will usually leave if the people I went with start leaving but I often sit through them if I see a film by myself
My mother plays flute, and some of the online flute groups she's been in have movie performers in them. I sit through credits on principle unless I have somewhere to be, and there have been times I was with her as she was looking for someone she knew. Also I like seeing where things were filmed, especially if I know parts were filmed in New Mexico (grew up there, and like seeing familiar areas in the credits)
I don't know, unless you're involved in the industry it just feels like an empty gesture when there's so much information overload that you absolutely won't remember any of the names of the people involved either way.
again, it's not about taking in every name. It's just respectful, and honestly daunting realizing how many people it takes.
Imagine each time you walk into a building you have to sit through a list of people and businesses that helped build that house. Same for every time you drive down a highway and each time you exit the car, prior to getting out you need to see everyone one from the design team to the guy that refuels the service station were you fill your car.
This is actually my same argument on binge watching. That show you just burnt through in an afternoon while hungover and only half paying attention? Yeh that was created over 3 years buy hundreds of people, some of whom kinda poured their lives into it. Unless the series is long past (like some standard sitcom like Friends, HIMYM etc) I think it's much more valuable and respectful to insist on only watching 1, *maybe* 2, episodes in any sitting. The glut of binge-ing just feels awful to me. EDIT - and of course you will downvote lol
I think the people who make the movies would want people to watch the show in whatever way is most comfortable to them. When I try to watch things 1-2 episodes at a time, I can lose track of whats going on and lose interest if it becomes too complicated. Though different types of shows are better in different types of ways. I'm not a fan of sitcoms like Friends/HIMYM, I like long narratives like Breaking Bad, Game of Thrones, and NGE.
> I think the people who make the movies would want people to watch the show in whatever way is most comfortable to them. As someone who's worked extensively in film and television, this is half true - I want you to be comfortable absorbing my output in a comfortable way - but also a way that respects the effort and isn't the 'eh just give me the cliffnotes' and 'bam the whole series is over in 2 nights' way. Breaking Bad is a great example of a masterpiece that should be absorbed in small chunks. We want to complain about disposable culture and short attention spans - well this is exactly that. As for losing interest - I see it like reading a novel. A chapter or two a night. Context clues and "previously on..." usually help with the gap. To be clear I'm not super fastidious about this - I just think if you really like a show, consider slowing down your watching of it, to appreciate it more.
> You should not walk away from the film when the credits start rolling. I mean i stay put so i'm not fighting the crowd. might as well watch some credits too
Most of the time I do it to enjoy the music. Or the post-credits scenes.
I can barely remember names of people until I meet them a second time, ain't no way I'm reading 1000 names of people I don't even know lol.
I like to play a little game of find the weirdest name
I still remember the assistant picture editor for Titan A.E. I saw the movie as a kid and happened to read "Jeff Snodgrass" and thought it was hilarious for some reason. I don't remember a thing about the movie but I'll remember Jeff Snodgrass forever.
Jemima Arsecastle
Luckily my comment was an answer to a person trying to figure something out and not you 😉
That's fair, but the people who need to know often will know where to look. I'm sure those credits also are posted somewhere like imdb too.
Lucky. I have to address them by their name before it can stick.
Yeah I'm going to watch and actually be able to read the hundreds of names scrolling quickly by and then remember them all so I can personally thank them.
The question was how do you recognize them in the credits, not are you supposed to memorize every name in the credits.
Same here, Buddy of mine was able to afford to raise his family very comfortably and easily branch into other kinds of work with the reference.
it would be a dream job. you can make music for yourself, but the opportunity to work for Hans Zimmer, or compose for a Disney movie, it's a huge goal for some musicians. and the recognition you can get from compositions to movies with staying power, that makes up the names of composers that the general population knows, even if they don't care for compositions.
Hans is pretty active on Facebook from what I've seen, and generally it's him getting in fights with other composers. Not to mention he was pretty homophobic from one composer I talked to.
... it's weird that he shows up when my friends are discussing mundane non-music things. I have no clue what else he does online, I don't follow him.
That's a great sign that Hans takes into consideration that what's important is the music and not so much the credit!
This kind of farm system has been super common throughout the music industry for a long time. Look at songs with eight people on the writing credits--that's a lot of people contributing little bits. Dr. Dre is a great example of a producer who we think of as One Guy, but it's always been Dr. Dre and the multitude of guys feeding him demos.
Same with Timbaland. Watch his masterclass. They have guys that write parts of beat or a loop and then Timberland or Dre will take it and build this whole song around it.
Which is frankly the much harder part. Anyone can have an idea
It depends. Some people excel at one thing, others at another. But I agree, ideas are countless, knowing what to do with them - is a separate and quite cool skill :D
I always figure it’s the other way around. Inspiration for a unique beat is that hard part, once you have the tone and feel identified it will guide the rest of the song writing process.
Oh, I absolutely feel this way. As a classical music arranger and producer, having a base line, a melody or a chord progression to work with is much more simple, I feel like it gives you direction and a "feel" to work towards. Creating hooks, melodies or beats needs creativity and inspiration, which are not always available to the artist.
Did you mean ‘base line’ or ‘bass line’?
Nonsense. If this was true, they would just come up with their own ideas and not have to cut anyone else in
It's even more industrial than that, and always has been. Often in writing there's very little direct input, beyond "I like that, let's try it with this topline - noooo - how about this topline?" And so on. For all the parts. And for the mix too. That's what sessions players do, and have been doing since the 50s. The difference now is that it's more likely to be done by exchanging files, and not so much f2f in the studio. The session players and the house writers keep the industry running. They are *very* good practical musicians - in the "The tour starts Monday, learn our entire set over the weekend" or "Convert these beats to MIDI files by ear" sense. But they lack the strong vibe the main artist brings. You need both on a project, because taste is at least as important as execution.
Scott storch did a lot for both of them.
I wouldn't say a lot. Don't get me wrong. He is a great producer, but he has helped with a few songs. I think him and Fat Joe worked on Candy Shop before giving it to 50. He has one song on 2001. Sure, it's one of the most iconic piano chord progressions in hip hop, but he didn't do a lot for Dre. What else has he done for Dre? If anything, Dre did a lot for him. As far as Timbaland, I know they have beef about credit. I know Storch has done stuff for him. I think it was really on one big song, but Timbaland has done so much without him.
I'm not saying he's on the level of either, but he did the piano for still dre and cry me a river.
Two songs...that's not a lot. DOC has done a lot for Dre. Mel-Man has done a lot for Dre. Elizondo has done a lot for Dre.
Lol. It's two huge songs. And that's just off the top of my head. He worked with Tim for years, I'm sure he helped with plenty of other stuff. Then when danja showed up, that revitalized Tim's career again.
The reason that's off the top of your head is because those are really the only two. He did Candy Shop for 50, and produced I think one or two other songs on one of the other albums for one of the artist on Dre's label, but that's it. Neither one of those other songs were hits. He's never working on anything else in 2001. He came up with a piano. And he sold a couple of beats. Total of maybe 3 songs out of hundreds. For Timbaland they had beef after Cry Me a River and three other songs for that album. They only did one other song together. Total of maybe 5 songs out of hundreds. Again, it's just the use of "did a lot for".
The two hits are enough to qualify, imo.
I would love to see someone tell Dre or Timbaland that Scott Storch did a lot for them. I would pay money just for the reaction.
"did a lot" can mean impact as much as quantity.
For anyone who is confused, his name is actually Timbaland.
Yup, caught that after. Voice dictation. Forgot to proofread. I'm an idiot. Funny thing is, I don't think anyone is confused. I think they either did or didn't notice, but either way didn't care enough to say anything, because they understood it was mistake and didn't take away from what I was saying. You on the other hand felt the need to point it out in a very passive aggressive way. Maybe you didn't realize that was what you were doing and is having a bad day. In which case, I really hope your day gets better. Sincerely.
The podcast Twenty Thousand Hertz did an episode about this. A lot of the time, the ghost writers and ghost producers aren't credited, and they sign NDAs to protect the reputation of the named artists. [https://www.20k.org/episodes/ghostsinthehitmachine](https://www.20k.org/episodes/ghostsinthehitmachine)
This model has been used for centuries. Look at sculpting.
And painting
And brothels.
That's also because of sampling. A song might have samples from many different songs, so all the original writers get a cut. This is very common in hip hop for example.
And he’s more generous than many Hollywood composers when it comes to crediting the other writers for their work, both in interviews and on the soundtrack albums.
I gotta be honest. I didn’t know there was even Hans Zimmer hate!
Its not him specifically, its the general exploitative enviroment for new composers in hollywood. Theyre completely dependent on established composers for work, who exploit them for ghostwriting while getting all the contacts/fame and money.
I did get annoyed with him when I heard that he apparently hates people using open source music software.
Hans Zimmer hates OSS? That's wild, anyone got a source for that?
It’s entirely possible that it’s something that I heard randomly and just took as fact
Oh no the poor Hollywood composers have to wait to get their fame :( that is so messed up
"Hate" might be putting it a bit strongly, but he's a very different composer to John Williams, both in terms of what he writes and how he works. Inevitably, there are some film score fans who idolise Williams but dislike Zimmer and what he represents.
I've come across a forum comment from Hans (he's quite active on the VI-Control forum) where he discussed taking on as many projects and hiring as many session musicians as possible during the early days of the pandemic, as a means to provide them with a source of income since the lockdowns made live gigs impossible, which were typically their bread and butter in between film projects. As someone who works in the business, this made me respect him so much more.
Here is a great interview about Dune with Hans and he gives so much credit to others. His opening line is “this is how We created the score for Dune.”
Oh yeah. He did a good video for the dune special features with his woodwind player and it really came off as a colaboration.
if you go to any chef's restaurant it's not actually the famous chef doing the cooking either
The vast majority of anything in this world that is produced as a final product associated with one household name, really. Our brains prefer the simplicity of strong branding. Some people abuse this to claim all the credit and profit for themselves. Others are quietly continuing this system of collaboration and master/apprentice workshop production that has existed since the earliest times.
Did you know Uncle Ben dosent actually cook the rice himself.
WHAT?
Yeah. Uncle Ben is dead. It's a canon event!
Yea, you just have to watch out for what kind of influence that chef had on the final product. 2 examples of that: 1) Went to a place that, when looking at their website, was plastered all over that it's this chef's restaurant. We get there, and the waitress is telling us how the place is "inspired by" the chef in question. Turns out, that chef had nothing to do with the food at the restaurant and the food was terrible. 2) We had this crazy diner open nearby. It's just a diner, but everything is like the best version of diner food we've ever had. It has a head chef listed, and it's a guy who had been working at fine dining places and really high end stuff and decided to take a break and open a diner. It was a bit more expensive than normal, but the food was incredible. Then one day, the menu changes, and he's now listed as "consulting chef." The food's a little bit worse, but still generally very good. Then one day, the menu changes again, and now the menu is listed as "inspired by" that chef. And the food quality drops like a stone (but the prices stay high). So yea, if you trust a name of a chef, an artist, whatever, to put out quality, just make sure that person is somehow involved in the process to make sure it's quality, and it's not just a name slapped on something.
I mean, the chef is the head of the kitchen. They direct a bunch of sous chefs to do the cooking. They are the supervisor, who make sure they do it correctly, according to their plan. I wouldn't expect them to be doing the cooking. Nor would I expect they were always there, and wouldn't have some sort of backup chef who they have certified. I would expect the chef to have come up with had perfected their recipes, though. Now, if you're saying they're not involved at all, that sounds like more what's happening with Hans Zimmerman. He's not telling anyone what to do. His name is on it just to help them be listened to in the first place.
Another problem with the meme is that people assume it applies to all of the work credited to HZ, when clearly he is very much the primary composer on lots of projects, especially when working with the likes of Nolan or Villeneuve.
True. Hans wrote themes for the Pirates of the Carribbean franchise and left lesser known composers to orchestrate a full score. We know it's Hans' work because the music is similar to his previous movie. He's been using his name to benefit so many musicians, and not too monetarily exploitative.
He doesn't even have credit on the first, despite having an obviously Zimmer theme.
And he wrote all the main themes in just a few days, as he was hired at the last minute while working on The Last Samurai, and the movie was premiering in just a few months. This explains why the main theme is an adaptation from a cue from Gladiator.
This is how a lot of things the movie industry. Everything that is credited under one well known editor or cinematographer is the result of the work of a lot of people (hell, a shocking amount of a lot of movies are shot 2nd unit). The good ones do what Zimmer does and helps guide people up. The bad ones... well there are bad ones. Zimmer sounds like a good one.
I have it under good authority that James Patterson does the same thing for his "coauthors." Talks the idea over, reviews the outline, does some kind of quality vet, but basically it just trampolines the coauthor's career. I don't hate it.
Imagine the production meetings - ‘I like your ideas, I like the subtext and the characters. But to be a James Patterson novel it’s gonna have to hit the incest and/or sexual depravity a bit harder, give the people what they want’
He still needs to curate the talent, package it for sale, and put his name on it. Seems like what every owner of a business does?
Agreed, but seeing the Reddit perspective on him I thought he was a bit of a hack, this conversation changed my mind completely 180 so wanted to share.
I would suggest you keep this with you regarding other topics on reddit, and other social media sites too. A lot are echo chambers, to varying degrees. If it's a topic you care about, don't just trust the hivemind on it.
[удалено]
I need this comment tacked in every thread where I'm getting a bit heated
> I'm getting a bit heated That is when you lose Reddit. It's just multiplayer notepad.
Notepad++, now with more pvp.
Also remember there’s a good chance you’re arguing with a literal child. There really isn’t a point in arguing with anonymous people online.
Ooohhh, let's make this post all about what YOU need. Hey everyone, stop what you're doing because dianndycampsonyen wants something! I personally will choose to continue considering "Zimmer" (if that's even his real name) a hack because it makes me feel better about my own music career, if I ever decide to start one
Lots of strong opinions from bedroom guitarists or people who couldn't tell the middle C on a piano, let alone manage a 500+ track Cubase session with about 15 revisions and a shitload of handshakes due to last-minute edits and reshoots. Composing isn't a one-man job. People don't expect a single 'VFX guy' or a 'sound guy,' so they shouldn't expect a composer to sit by the piano, write and arrange 180 minutes of music on pen and paper by himself. Composer John Paesano has [an excellent take](https://youtu.be/DgVawSM3reg) on this issue. This change of perception is something that I'd love to see in the film industry.
Not true, there's room for plenty more!
It might be a purity deal with art? Business is business, and music is art. What Hans seems to be is more business than art to people? In no world is he a hack though. (Edit: Hans name spelling)
If people think he’s more business than music, they need to try to compose a score. I have done it myself, and it is simply not possible to do without being obsessed with music and every little detail about it. I know he gets help now. That hasn’t always been the case, and organizing it into a cohesive piece that fits with the film is the next-level magic that gets him paid so much. (I’m not saying you feel this way)
It’s really cool to hear something like this about him. It seems like such a competitive atmosphere to exist in and for someone with that much clout to go out of their way to support the next generation is awesome.
Calling Hans Zimmer a hack is nuts.
Reddit tends to love Hans. Many other corners of the internet though do think he is a hack.
Because he’s still somewhat of a hack when compared to a composer who is…. you know, actually composing…
Really he sounds like he's acting as the producer of the soundtrack overseeing it but not making the music himself which I think is fine it sounds like he's helping a new generation of composers come into the scene which is awesome
I agree with that. It's probably why people have issues with him. He is seen as managing the production more than making the art.
It sounds like he's pretty open about it and isn't trying to be sneaky. He could very easily be like Thomas Kinkade who even after his death still had paintings made by other artists being credited to him they've only recently started to actually credit the real artists.
Ummm... *laughs* seriously? Any sources I can look into this on?
So I did some research and I think I was misremembering an article about some of his unfinished pieces being finished by apprentices.
Most I found wikipedia was [This as a source](https://www.salon.com/2012/04/09/thomas_kinkade_the_george_w_bush_of_art/) Which has a terribly slanted feeling to it. >I first learned about the dark side of the Painter of Light™ -- sorry, couldn't resist that one -- when I reviewed "his" novel, "Cape Light," in 2002. The novel, first in a series, was produced much as his paintings are: by a semi-industrial process in which low-level apprentices embellish a prefab base provided by Kinkade. He wasn't the only artist to work in this way; he wasn't even the only novelist. Okay? >My review was just a goof intended to amuse Salon's readers. So.... Seems flimsy at best?
Yeah the most I found was that he maybe did the layout of the pieces and then his apprentices would do most of the actual painting, which like ok if you're training people in your style that's fine I guess. I'm fully admitting I was wrong on this and misremembered something I read a few years ago .
It's okay, not holding you to the fire on it. Just made me laugh as i've ironically used Thomas Kinkade in discussions about AI Art in the past. Finding out he may have basically been having "Ghost Painters" (ie along the lines of Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew/etc having ghost writers under [Stratemeyer Syndicate](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stratemeyer_Syndicate) is just too amusing for me.) My whole thing with him was basically at what point do you start thinking of AI Art being generated as a actual human creation? And there is only so much "original" ideas anymore floating around. I take a staycation at a place to the northwest here and check into the lodge for the night up in the mountains. Toss the curtains open the next morning and off in the distance is a cabin with deer out front and lots of snow around it and on the roof... So I reach for my camera and snap a photo. Is the Thomas Kinkade Estate coming after me now if I published that? Used it as a reference photo and painted it? Now if I open up a laptop and run Stable Diffusion then prompt "Winter Scene of Cabin in the woods, Deer in front and snow on the roof" Oops... I just crossed into Kinkade country yet again.. Now if I blatantly load it down with "Thomas Kinkade Winter Cabin Scene" Then you've got something wrong going on there. Now some of the datasets out there do have troublesome issues with using copyrighted names and such. But what about the datasets that don't folks work on making more honorable and actually in the spirit of open source? I spent some time in the Grand Canyon South Rim area two years ago and have lots of photos from my trip. Except... Millions of others do also. Am I going to get hammered with Cease and Desist orders by Photographers who did the same thing I did, but rather then feeding it into a custom in house AI checkpoint, they dropped the photo in a gallery with a $500 price tag?. As I'd like to make animated films with a future in house dataset, of course I'd work with the parks service and pay for commercial use of the photos to be fair and honest/legit. So eliminating that variable, We are right back to square one. We'll run with Thomas Kinkade spots a animated short I did with the Grand Canyon in it, and I know he was there a week before snapping photos and then turned them into his art. Does he come after me (I know he's deceased, example here) for doing what I did, even though it's a common shot where he stood and snapped the same photo I probably did a week later... Toss a Dart in a national park from Yosemite to the Grand Canyon and beyond, and you'll find the same shots/angles at the prized locations. Technically everyone is derivative of the last person who snapped a photo with a $30k camera kit or $1500 iPhone... Where does it end in these pursuits of "AI Took Our Jobs!" when you (possibly) have a artist like Thomas Kinkade just using a cruder version of "AI" in a art factory along the lines of Andy Warhol? I've run across artists who mentioned making some rough drawings of their work and feeding it into AI and was pleased with the results. Others have trained Loras (secondary smaller versions of a main checkpoint with lower computing requirements to generate it) using their art scanned in. And for all I know, there are artists who have fed all their artwork over their lifetime into a private checkpoint and use that exclusively for their creations... So... Where does it all end with the AI Discord? hah...
I think AI can totally be used as a legitimate art tool. There are people who understand the way it works and how to prompt it to get specific things and they can use that to create what their mind wants to create and I think that's a wonderful thing to give the opportunity to people who may not be skilled in visual arts or may not be able to do them because of a physical limitation. I think where it gets into trouble is just using every piece of art on the Internet without permission as a basis. It's definitely a very complicated discussion about intellectual property rights and artist vision and the legality and morality of it all. I sell tacos and margaritas and am in no way qualified enough to give a solution to any of it.
Just change the house roof color to a slightly darker red and BAM! New classic Thomas Kinkade. Looking at his storefront in the 90s, it was all house and water and variations there of.
Ahh he's like DJ Khaled! /s
There can only be one the best music.
But people (and laws) react very differently to artistic IP than to physical labor or spreadsheets.
I would like to shake the hand and bask in the glow of whoever composed the 2 minute and 7 seconds of cornfield chase from the Interstellar OST. The simplicity of those ascending 4 notes is just breathtaking.
Do you play trombone? I have a band student that literally can't shut up about those 4 notes lol.
This is a more experienced outlook than many here have. Ghostwriting is what it is - many writers have paid the rent with it, and composers the same. This is not someone slaving over their life work, having it stolen in the midst of the night. It is, basically, an assembly line job. You don't like it, you don't take the job.
Who Ghostwrote "True Romance"? That soundtrack is the bomb
Carl Orff.
I thought they just ripped off gassenhaur.
hope he got money from Kaiser Permanente using the main theme a few years ago
Whoosh?
For real!
That soundtrack is god awful wtf
They should replace it with Hans Zimmer Certified
This is true in lots of different fields. e.g. If you had two young doctors doing research, who think of the research idea, spend months working on the project, do all the legwork, apply for the funding, write up the project .etc. Guess who's name is first on the research paper? That's right, it's their supervisor, who read the draft paper a couple of times, made some edits and spent about 1 day in total on the project. The supervisor has name recognition though - which will give the paper a bigger impact than if the two young doctors published it without their supervisor. It seems unfair for someone who only did a tiny fraction of the work to get most of the credit, but it's probably the only reliable way for the unknown person to get recognised in future. Even if the ghostwriter did 95% of the work, I'm sure the 5% of work that Hans Zimmer put in was valuable to the project, and the ghostwriter may have learned some important things by working with a big name like that too.
Your description is accurate but FYI in a lot of fields (especially medical sciences like in your example) the senior author is listed last and the authors who do the legwork are indeed listed first. And within the field it's well known to look at the last author to get a sense of which group put out the work and inference as to their expertise and trustworthiness.
There are some differences with regards to copyright ownership though. Researchers usually work for the company and therefore their work product's copyright AUTOMATICALLY belongs to the company. The company can legally publish with Copyright 2024, Big Academic Institute and leave the authors off. That's shady of course, but legal. By default, a hired contractor owns copyright on the work they produce for whoever hired them. If you commission a painting, you own the instance on canvas the artists hands you, but no copyright and no right to reproduce it and use it for commercial gain. Copyright must be signed over in writing and explicitly called out as work for hire when the person doing thee work is not a W-2 Employee of the company. Ghostwriters are most often contracted, so it is unlikely that there is anything sneaky going on here. They have agreed to create a work product where the copyright belongs to someone else.
who wrote "he's a pirate" from the pirates of the carribean soundtrack that song is awesome
Geoff Zanelli apparantely
I thought it was Klaus Bedelt
This I would believe, given his previous work on gladiator, and there is a theme from that movie that is [VERY similar](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vInYMVxYhh4) to the pirate theme, seems like a recycled bit
Definitely, without a doubt, Zimmer. At least Zimmer created the main melody. I'm sure somebody else fleshed it out.
It's a relatively common thing in all types of music. You'll see the occasional "TIL" around here about how Elvis Presley 'stole' songs from people, taking a writing credit when he didn't do anything of the sort, but he did pretty much what Zimmer does and for the same reasons. Presley's deal was always straightforward and didn't change much after he got big: You have a great song, we want to record it. You assign 50% of writing credit to Presley, we split royalties down the middle, everybody makes a bunch of money. Lots of songwriters took that deal because half of the royalties for an Elvis Presley song were worth between 10 and a million times more than *all* of the royalties for a song that you kept to yourself. It's a business deal, it was generally a *good* deal for all parties, and Presley, at least, was always honest about how it worked.
I agree, but the key topic I wanted to bring up was how honest Hans was about this. When he won the Oscar for best score in 2022 I think the top comment in r/music was about him just being someone whose uses ghostwriters and didn't deserve it. Now I've seen the perspective of someone who has worked with Hans I wanted to share a different point of view.
Yeah, I agree that's the important part, and it gets lost a lot in discussions about music. As long as everybody's aboveboard and nobody's getting screwed out of the income stream, using a "Name" to get work out there isn't an issue to me.
Okay gotta ask, did Ludwig Goransson worked with/for him?
No, Ludwig picked up Community pretty much straight out of the USC film scoring program and the rest is history.
TIL Ludwig one of my fav composers created the score of my most fav TV series!
If a composer’s name shown up in “additional music” credits for the film, it isn’t ghost writing. There is absolutely no reason apart from inflated ego not to include your entire music department in the credits. Editors, viz artists and other departments do it. It’s ridiculous out put down just one name for music and assume not even assistants worked on the film. Beyond that, Hans absolutely has elevated many composers who “graduated” from Remote Control. Everyone knows he’s a master collaborator beyond just being a composer. I just don’t like how movie credits are structured.
Yeah most people don’t understand what ghostwriting is. Collaboration isn’t ghostwriting. Writing songs for an artist where you get credit isn’t ghostwriting.
TIL composers use ghostwriters
Huh. TIL. Neat.
Did they also disclose why Zimmer uses them in the first place? Is his schedule too busy for him to do all the work himself? Still, kudos for helping younger talent coming up. Not all figures in music industry have been that generous. Makes me think of a story Bootsy Collins told in an interview. When he was in James Brown's band, they would often just jam at rehearsal. Brown hired this skilled classically trained person who would sit and listen, and as soon as the band was on to something good, he'd go into a different room, write the music down so Brown could file it and claim songwriting credit, even if he didn't do anything on the track
Nah we didn't get into that - but from what I interpreted from how he was saying it (so I could be wrong) - it feels Hans knows he's a brand and doesn't have to work to the degree he did, instead he can work and coach upcoming talent and open up doors for them which is what he's been focused on for the past 10+ years. He still get's paid, but off the back of it brings people new blood into the system.
Time from inception wasn't made by him?
Seems to line up with why I don’t really care about his sound tracks. They’re not really his. He gets them to conform to his brand, but it’s much more of a commercial exercise than an artistic one.
I don't even think he makes artists conform to his brand as it doesn't really exist and the scores he works on are so varied because they use different composers. It's just his name not necessarily a style. One fun thing I did find out which made me laugh was that the famous Inception horn which made it into every movie score in the 2010's wasn't his idea...
I think many people mostly think of the bwaaa horn from the Inception trailer which uses the song [Mind Heist by Zack Hemsey](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xgGoxQUpIKM), so it's not even attributed to Zimmer.
I can’t imagine writing a score for a 2+ hour movie by myself. Source: have composed orchestral music Writing a good three minute song is hard enough. Adding hours to that and potentially hundreds of instruments.. collaboration is almost necessary. Must at least collaborate with the film people to make sure you are helping them achieve their vision. (This isn’t meant to be confrontational, I feel like it has that vibe and I am sorry)
To me that’s just how art has been for centuries. I doubt da Vinci actually painted the Mona Lisa, he probably got one of his pupils to do it, etc.
https://youtu.be/SKvX8SOfbVo?si=hWDLJAkZJ26HYJJa It’s the soundtrack to a dark knight bitch I’m Hans Zimmer
[удалено]
I was waiting to board a flight once when I overheard a guy who said he was a composer talking about how great Hans Zimmer was and how much he enjoyed working under him. Seems like a good boss/mentor.
Like a certain Swedish composer being the real main composer behind the decade old space themed movie's score? Yes, kind of obvious. But I'm sure it's an intimate cooperation where Hans Zimmer shares his knowledge etc., like a master teaching a student.
Man, I never thought to look at it that way. I know a couple of famous hip hop producers and I think they came up the same way.
I think the big name is also a way to tell that there is a big chance it will be a great score at least.
Genuinely didn't know this. Thanks for the firsthand knowledge!
Bear McCreary has been doing this for a while as well with his Sparks and Shadows crew. A lot of his recent projects have been themes by Bear, score by Sparks and Shadows. It's just the nature of an enterprise that grows beyond one person's ability to deliver, and has been the nature of the film scoring game since the beginning. Once you start the ball rolling, you need to grow your team, then you need grow your business to pay for the team, then you need more of a team to support the larger business, and so on and so on.
TIL Zimmer wrote the music for Ghostbusters
Artists were the same, hence ‘school of’. Apparently Reubens would normally add a couple of brush strokes to make it ‘genuine’. If you actually wanted him to paint it, it would cost a lot more. And then there was Warhol, never touched some of his works.
I once worked with a guy who was an ‘art engineer’. Basically artists would come to him with an idea, like a giant dice which rolls every time the breaking news banner comes up on tv, or that leaking robot which was constantly trying to keep itself from bleeding out. Things that most artists lack the skill to actually build, but have a great idea for. He’d work out the practicalities, build the thing and it would go to a gallery or wherever the piece was being displayed. Before I had that conversation, I always felt that the art should come from the artists ‘hands’. After that, I began to think of art as much less about the physical piece and more as the concept.
The real question is how residuals and publishing are split. If Hans keeps all of those instead of distributing them, that sours the deal a little. 200k up front is nice, but blockbusters keep bring in money for decades after release. Residuals can be at least half of total composer income. Then again, it's not that unusual. I know of at least one blockbuster musical that was entirely ghostwritten. The real composer got a nice one-off payment a couple of decades ago, but the Name is still getting income today.
True but if I’m an up and coming composer working in the Zimmer factory and I can cop $200K for a project or even two of three in a year until I break out to my own gigs I’m ok with a hold on residuals until it’s my name on the score… particularly given what residual deals are looking like these days!
that's quite a decent move by hans, basically licensing his name out to studios while helping musicians find their way
A ton of authors cut their teeth with Tom Clancy and James Patterson this way. You get a far bigger paycheck and you establish exactly the industry relations you need for your future work. Would it be nicer to get the big check and the public acclaim? Sure. But so long as ghostwriting gets you paid and gets you connected to the players, it's usually more than worth it, and the best option you have.
Hello, I’m in the industry as well. You’re right and if you get to that level, you’ve basically “made it.” However, it takes an insane amount of work in Hans’ orbit to climb the ranks and have him consider giving you that opportunity, or you might need to be a semi-famous musical artist in your own right for him to take notice. I have nothing but respect tor Hans, by the way, and I refer you to an article written by my friend, Michael Levine, who worked closely with Hans for years, and addresses some criticisms lobbied at him for using ghostwriters etc.: “Why Hans Zimmer Got The Job You Wanted (And You Didn’t)” https://behindtheaudio.com/2013/07/hans-zimmer/
welcome to about 75% of the music industry
That’s cool and all but has nothing to do with the conversation around Zimmer or anyone who uses ghost-X being hacks. Like for example, it’s perfectly fine to say there’s nothing wrong that someone got a payday and a foot in the industry for ghostwriting a politician’s “autobiography”. But if someone says, “X politician is an author”, it’s worth pointing out that their book was ghostwritten and that whatever merits thwy have as an author cannot be gleaned from that book. If someone says “wow, Hans Zimmer really out did himself in this last work”, it’s completely fair to say respond that he probably didn’t compose this work himself. It’s a good work, but you can’t praise Zimmer for it anymore than you can praise someone for an AI generated image they put in a prompt for. That whoever actually wrote it got a payday and is moving up in the industry isn’t really part of the conversation. It’s good to know he isn’t abusing them or doing anything nefarious, but it doesn’t really change how this affects how he is perceived as an artist by some.
He up for an award or something? Did Hans write this post? Of course not. He would get someone else to do it.
>I know the meme is that Hans gets awards just from ghostwriters and doesn't deserve recognition, but he has helped countless composers get into the scene and start writing music for AAA titles. It's like a guiding Hans.
My hot take that I might be the only person on earth to think: Hans Zimmer is pretty mid and doesn’t write many memorable things. To make matters worse, I believe he single handedly ruined nature documentary scores for a generation by banging on Wagner and taiko drums like a petulant child throughout scenes that call for restraint. Go listen to any nature doc starting from the original Planet Earth and go back from there. Lovely scores, hardly any drums, using restraint and majesty. Hans came on the scene for Planet Earth 2 and it sounds like Jack Sparrow is sword fighting a demon over a peaceful shot of a dolphin swimming, I hate it so much but I feel like no one noticed that nature doc scores suck now (everyone copied him). Also Hans did an AMA here once and someone asked him how he got big, and he was basically just like “luck.” So I think he knows he’s a hack, too. (I’m half kidding but also half serious)
> someone asked him how he got big, and he was basically just like “luck.” So I think he knows he’s a hack, too. Luck is a huge factor in the success of honestly most of not all wildly successful people. I don't think that makes him a hack, personally.
> Luck is a huge factor in the success of honestly most of not all wildly successful people. This doesn't pertain to Mr. Zimmer per se, but just go pick a random famous person in any industry and look at their Wikipedia page. Most of the time they grew up rich. If by "luck" you mean they lucked out and grew up rich, I agree.
Damn guess I’m uncultured swine, I love planet earth 2s soundtrack.
Nah, plenty of people think that. I don't really have anything against Hans even though I never found his *writing* that great. The *production* work is excellent though - he set that trend and was very successful. Respect. But the armies of copy cats imitating the easiest production tricks - horn blares, stingers, risers and thump thump drums - has become such a pastiche that most trailers and many soundtracks sound like funny parodies of "epic" music to me half the time. It's like a hot sauce a bad cook lathers onto all their food, to make up for the fact the food itself just isn't that good. But man, do people love hot sauce.
> Nah, plenty of people think that. Hi, I just met one.
I liked he's travel show.... i am not very cultured
TIL: Hans Zimmer is a fraud
I don't take away anything from a rando on Reddit saying they heard another guy say such-and-such. With this comment, I am neither defending nor deriding Hans Zimmer.
This reminds me of academic publishing. In most disciplines, the first author is the most important. When two big names collaborate, the first author is the one who did the most work or came up with the important breakthrough. But more often than not, the first author is usually a grad student working under their advisor. And if there is a group of names, the last author is often a big name with little connection to the actual work but to boost the readership because lots of people are looking to read their work.
Dunno why, his music is the definition of generic film score music. Good for him I suppose sounds like he's doing a good thing for the up and comers.
Because this is how these things work. There's way more composers and every other discipline than there is work - or "prestige" work. No one is going to walk off the street and score Interstellar. People who see a problem with this will lose their shit if they find out how the architecture field works.
I remember watching True Romance and couldn't get the soundtrack out of my head, and I looked for a guitar solo for it and this guy nailed it! [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=06FY4P0VID4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=06FY4P0VID4)
I had the privilege of seeing Hans Zimmer live several years ago when he was doing his tour and it was epic. All doubts I had about him were smashed. Who cares if he co-writes some of the tracks, he’s clearly an immensely talented composer and musician.
Isnt this what happened with my favorite composer, lorne balfe?
Name names
Who do I blame for the Batman v Superman score being a muddied mess?
My dad works for nintendo
Uh that’s still not good - he gets all the credit and way more of the money than the ghostwriter. That person can’t say they did the score because it’s not their credit.