[mverta]

Hi guys –

A friend forwarded me this thread; though I don’t generally like to jump in on stuff like this, I thought you might appreciate a little behind-the-scenes on this one.

The project was a joint venture between Six Flags Theme Parks and Warner Bros. Another composer had originally been hired to do the work, but after many weeks, hadn’t come up with anything acceptable. When I got the call, it was very late in the schedule; so late, in fact, that I ended up writing and orchestrating the whole piece over a weekend.

I was told that the producing entities had paid good money to use Elfman’s Main Title theme, so it was a requirement, but no other Elfman themes were allowed. Now, one little other tidbit – part of the reason I got the call was because at the time, I was doing 90% of WB’s movie trailers/commercials/promos, etc., and one of those things was the trailer for Scooby-Doo. That trailer was entirely a tongue-in-cheek gag where the audience is supposed to think it’s a promo for Batman, all the way up until the very, very end, when it is revealed to be Scooby Doo instead.

Now, as often happens – much to my dismay – the creative directors, and producers of Scooby kept wanting me to get the score closer and closer to the original Batman theme, to help sell the joke. Closer and closer it got; revision after revision, as my protests increased. Eventually, it was so close to the original, that Danny said it had to fall under the category of a “re-recording,” which is cheaper than actually licensing the original, but damn close. Now, this is really stepping on toes; it’s not cool to rip-off a peer’s work, no matter how many executives think it’s a great idea, so I was VERY sensitive about using Elfman’s theme at all, ever again. And yet, here it was, literally a Batman piece, with a mandate to use the theme.

On some level, I didn’t want to write a new theme for Batman anyway; Elfman’s just nailed it, and didn’t need to be re-thought. On the other hand, I actually do have my own ideas and creative instincts to express. So in the end, my decision was to sculpt a score which was faithful not just to the Main Title theme, but also had the overall “flavor” of that first score, so the rest of the piece didn’t feel like it came out of nowhere. By nature, my default sound is much more Williams-esque (I gave up fighting that a long time ago ) so that’s definitely in there whether I want it to be or not. But in the end, I think the piece “feels” like Batman, and is truly one composer’s best attempt to homage and respect a truly iconic piece of work.

I requested – and got – the original score to Batman’s 1m1 rather than re-interpret it. But here’s a piece of trivia – Shawn had re-mixed the original Batman score at some point – or came in to help it, can’t remember – because at one time it was in VERY rough shape. And one of the things he had struggled with was this really unusual, enormous horn section – I think it was 6 or 8 on the first recording. It really wasn’t necessary to have a section that big to get a big sound, and he asked me if it would be possible to do it with the standard 4 horns, and let the balance happen naturally as part of the recording and the mix. We tried it both ways, and sure enough, with his unerring ear for recording, the 6 horn version sounded ridiculously overdone. So I deviated from the original cue’s original recording by dropping 2 horns. That theme appears only in the beginning of the piece as it was in the first Batman; every other instance was re-orchestrated by me to flow and blend into the other sections of the piece.

The entire 6-minute cue was a single take, performed during one two-hour session. I think we did it 6 or 7 times in all. The musicianship amongst the players – 90% of whom play every major score in town – was its usual jaw-dropping virtuosity – something people often take for granted. But I saw a lot of smiles during the session – everybody likes playing that theme

So there you have it. In the end, it was damn fun to play in Danny’s sandbox for a few minutes, and I didn’t feel robbed of an opportunity to do my thing either. All things considered, that’s a rare balance to find in this town. Glad you guys enjoyed it.

Best,

_Mike Verta

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