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Creating music for television is normally a very functional
thing. At the end of an edit, someone says, "Hey, shouldn’t
we put some music in here?" and the editor grabs one
of thousands of library albums to look for a little musical
wallpaper to fill the gaps. At Pilot we have always taken
a completely different approach to music. For a start, it
is very unusual for a production company to have a Musical
Director, but Pilot Productions has Neville Farmer,
who has directed the music for over 200 productions for the
company. As a music journalist, author, record producer and
recording artist, Neville took a totally new approach to creating
music for picture.
The first thing to do was throw away the rule book. All Pilot
productions employ a composer before the crew start shooting
the film. The composer works closely with the Musical Director
and the director of the programme to create a unique soundtrack all the way through the production process, so the music influences
the way the pictures are edited and gives a natural rhythm
to the programme. The sound engineers on location spend much
of their time gathering interesting samples of sounds and
music for the composer to weave into the soundtrack, thereby
creating a direct organic link between the pictures and the
music. African cattle herders you might see chanting in their
fields in one shot will become part of a larger piece of music
later on. A child singing might become a fully orchestrated
theme. Even the sounds of pots and pans clanking, motorbikes
passing, the presenter talking, all become part of the soundtrack.
Because Pilot productions start working on the music much
earlier, there is time to experiment, to make mistakes and
to change things, and finally to re-arrange some music to
fit specific pictures. It also means that Pilot can try out
new and interesting composers, who might have little experience
in television but years of inspirational recording behind
them. Between them, Pilot’s fantastic composer team have
produced or written or recorded many hit albums ranging from
the techno-pop of Blancmange to the New Wave of XTC
to the rock of Roger Waters or Robert Plant
or the world music of Baba Maal and The Afro Celts
Sound System. They have even recorded great classical
guitar works. Pilot’s composers have worked with Peter
Gabriel, Nigel Kennedy, Eurythmics, Stevie Wonder, Lloyd Cole,
Robbie Williams, The Waterboys, Bernard Butler, Future Sound
Of London, Laurie Anderson, Lenny Kravitz, Neneh Cherry, World
Party, Sinead O’Connor, Trans Global Underground, Roni
Size and many others. It’s little wonder Pilot has
released six soundtrack CDs of their work. |
