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EQ's Music: Interview Remarks
Klaus
Badelt Talks Equilibrium
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Various interviews and comments that the film's composer has
made in regard to Equilibrium...
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Film Music Radio Interview
The
following is the short Equilibrium/Ultraviolet section of an interview
Klaus Badelt, the film's composer.
Interviewer:
Now early in your career you made a very fun partnership with the
director/writer Kurt Wimmer in Equilibrium and most recently
Ultraviolet. And in this I think we started to really hear this...a lot
of fun, energetic, percussive futuristic electronic sound.
KB: Yeah, Kurt is an amazing writer and he...I remember...I was think
Equlibrium was, if I remember right was the first picture, a studio
picture, I ever wrote so I *laughs* sat down for weeks. He was still
shooting in Rome and in Berlin, so I was sitting down for three or two
or three weeks and I wrote this very long, in my terms, very long
piece...about twenty minutes. Twenty minutes of music, which came to my
mind not having seen anything actually of the picture. And I think we
were able to--which was great luck!--were able to use about 90% of what
I wrote. You can hear in the movie basically unchanged even though I
never wrote it to picture.
Interviewer: And what is really cool about Equilibrium is--which is a
massive cult film by the way--and Ultraviolet, again...you're not the
first composer to come out of Hans's (Hans Zimmer) school to kind of
write in these really fun, dense electronic passages. But yet your
music in the genre stands out as belonging to you. Was that difficult,
again, when so many people from Hans's school kind of writing like this
to make your music stand out?
KB: Well, um, I think what happens when you grow up around a master
like Hans, you, just practically speaking. You learn very much how to
work for him so you know exactly how to make it sound like him. If you
really, you know, if you know the craftmanship of it. And so that is
what you basically come out of. And when you know when it's time to
leave, the important thing is to create your own sound...which you know
you had before. It's just, you know it's like Michaelangelo, or these
artists hundreds of years ago, they had these guys. You
cannot...experts today have a hard time telling what...Hey, for
example, da Vinci *laughs* very commonly popularated, you don't know
what da Vinci actually painted and what he didn't anymore really. He
had these amazing guys around him. So that's what you start off with I
think. And then, you know, towards the end you find back towards your
roots and try to make it your own. Which comes as a relief after
probably years of working for the big guy who, you know, needs a
specific sound and if you're lucky you can deliver that.
*This part concludes with a selection from the Equilibrium soundtrack
(I'm losing my fangirl status as I don't know the title of the track)
and the Ultraviolet opening theme*
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 Scoring Equilibrium - Richie Nieto,
Geoff Zanelli, and Klaus Badelt
Image
property of hanszimmer-archiv.de 2001/Dirk Hein /(c)
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Dreams to Dreams Interview
he
following is the short Equilibrium section of an interview Klaus
Badelt, the film's composer, did for the French site.
Translation thanks to BaleheadNutcase & FreeTranslation.com
DtD)
Your current
work is rather loaded. Let us start with EQUILIBRIUM by Kurt Wimmer,
with Christian Bale. How would you describe this film?
KB) EQUILIBRIUM is the first movie for which I alone
composed since my arrival in the United States, well before The Time
Machine. I started working on it in the Summer of 2001. Because it had
additional scenes, it went over 6 months. I was really inspired and
liked the subject of the film a lot! It is a political thriller with a
critical vision of a fictitious society set in 2080.
DtD) What did Kurt want in the movie?
KB) He wanted the music to emphasize the weight of the
society and the coldness of its leaders. I started to write a rather
long piece, while work was always continuing, and Kurt tested it on the
print, this allowed for him to see if it worked. This was the case!
DtD) How did you translate the implicit threats that weigh
on the leaders?
KB) The film is situated in the future, so I played with the
combination of Wagnerian aspects and techno music. Poor Richard Wagner,
he is so often quoted for movies involving Fascist systems. (laughs)
I thought back to the old films in black and white that
showed us these systems! I wanted the music to include the images, so I
have added a massive choir. That could evoke a nationalist hymn
(anthem). Unfortunately, there wasn't a sufficient budget to hire an
orchestra. So I did everything myself, with the aid of synthesizers and
choir samples. There's not the least trace of a vocalist in this
piece...
DtD) Do you think there will be a CD?
KB) I don't know. Maybe in Europe when the film is released?
I will think "à m’en occuper"...
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