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Ok so I’ve been reading through Jeff Rona’s The Reel World: Scoring for Pictures. It’s a pretty good book from the business side of things, but I just read something about Danny Elfman that I have never heard and think might be an error on the author’s part.
“Danny Elfman scored Tim Burton’s student film, and they went on to collaborate on several hugely successful films afterward. It paved the way for Elfman’s entire career.” (page 217)
I thought Paul Ruebens saw Forbidden Zone and Burton saw the mystic knights live and that’s how they ended up with Elfman. What student film is this guy talking about? I thought Tim went to Cal Arts for animation or art or something, and then went to Disney as an animator. Elfman didn’t do Vincent or Frankenweenie, so what the hell? This guy iz in the biz, wrote a book on scoring, and scored White Squall? How could he possibly make a mistake? Your thoughts?
Chris
Yeah, that’s completely wrong. Elfman and Burton didn’t meet until Pee Wee’s Big Adventure. As you know, any bloake can sniff around on IMDB and see that Burton made a couple TV projects before Pee Wee that were scored by David Newman and Michael Covertino (together).
Either he got his facts mixed up or decided to invent something. In either case, he didn’t do any research at all, clearly. It’s not like I had much of an opinion of Jeff Rona to damage to begin with, but oh well.
Yeah – too bad that someone will read that and think it’s the truth. No big deal I guess, but what an embarrassing error…
And FRANKENWEENIE and VINCENT were not even Burton’s student films.
Yeah, wasn’t Burton in school for animation, not directing? Did he even do any student films? I don’t know about this Rona guy’s fact checking, but I guess it’s not that big of a deal anyway. Plus he worked with Basil Poledouris so he gets some points.
Jeff Rona also used to write a scoring column in Keyboard Magazine back in the day called “the reel world” (I think that was the name of it?). It was very informative and even step through his process when he was working on White Squall.
Also of note, before Keyboard Magazine had a complete overhaul a few years ago, Danny was listed as something on the publisher’s page. Can’t remember right now what it was, but as soon as I can dig out my old issues back at home I’ll let ya’ll know… or maybe someone on here can help me?
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