Dan McCaughern Blog

On the live album “Roxy and Elsewhere” Frank Zappa talks to the audience about “Cheapness” in horror movies. “…the cheaper they are, the better they are!”

It’s strange that the special effects seen in todays movies, now digitized and rendered in such glorious “realism” still have a tendency to cheapen the look of a movie unless they are used with care.

Hollywood moguls are, no doubt, cock-a-hoop at the relative cheapness of these effects and, like greedy kids at a fairground, want more and more and more!

The audience, watching yet another fire breathing dragon or kung fu kick (which takes out a skyscraper) reaches for the popcorn and looks at a fat bald man who is sitting in the next row and wondering if that girl, with curves that could cause a riot in a monastry, is his partner.

We are generally bored!

There is another problem…

I watched Spiderman 3 during a flight recently and I was actually very unimpressed with the special effects!

That generally didn’t look like Peter Parker swinging about the city, and looked more like a kid’s video game, albiet an expensive one! 

I think that Hollywood is slapping itself on the back these days for inferior products -and it doesn’t give damn!

Bring back the scriptwriter with a pen like Hemingway or Steinbeck. Use special effects but don’t splash all over the screen with a ten pound brush!

A l;ittle taste gentlemen! (and ladies -though to be fair I think you are generally innocent of overuse of boys toys!)

Keep thinking!

I was in a hotel room a couple of weeks ago and, there being nothing else on the TV, I watched “Pretty Woman” Julia Roberts and Richard Gere and, not going into the moral grounding of the film which is complex, an interesting bit of soundtrack struck me: When Julia Roberts is about to perform a sex act on Gere she switches the TV off. (She has been watching The Lucy Show and lying on the floor giggling like a little girl)

As soon as the TV show’s antics have been silenced, a new seriousness is experienced by us, the viewer. The little girl has grown up and become aware of sexual tension…

Neat work! 

I’ve just finished another piece for an animation which is called “Migration.” (Hopefully on the website soon.)

The thing is, I can hardly remember composing it!

I remember starting it, and playing a kind of gentle waltz on the piano, then I went back to it and found that I had almost finished it, orchestrated and all!!

I wish all composition was that easy! I tweaked it a bit and mixed it and that was that.

Sometimes someone gives me something to work on and I get very inspired straight away. =Dangerous!! Right-brain working overtime and probably in need of some left brain editting. I have instantly “composed” before and then realised that Frank Zappa or Dimitri Tiomkin has (rather selfishly,) written the damn tune first!

I’m not the only one this happens to (Danny Elfman’s Batman music sounds perculiarly like some of the incidental music to “The Wolfman”  with Lon Chaney Jnr, but I bet Danny didn’t realise it when he wrote his theme! I’m not bitching Danny Elfman is great!) -but it’s a sod when it happens, because I get carried away and think “…oh great, I’ll have trombones doing the theme there and some quick woodwind -hang on a minute this sounds a bit like -Oh…*%$%^%$*@”

But as they say *%$%^%$*@ happens!”

I am currently accepting commissions for new work. If you are a film maker please contact me with details about your project and I’ll get back to you asap.

I love a good story by the way.

I am pleased to announce the launch of my new web site danmccaughern.co.uk. If you are interested in music composition or music in general please be sure to visit often for regular updates.