20th Century Fox’s 2-disc Collector’s Edition DVD of Live Free and Die Hard is not only an excellent representation of a terrific action film, its second disc includes an excellent and thorough 90-minute-plus documentary on the making of the film, from writing, casting, special effects, stunts, sound design, editing, and finally, to a 7 minute segment called “Symphonic Book” about Marco Beltrami’s score for the fourth Die Hard action escapade. “I think the biggest challenge for me in this project is the fact that it was the fourth in a [series], and that there was a musical identity associated with the past three scores,” Beltrami said in his DVD interview. “In terms of a motif for the John McClane character, that’s already been established from the previous movies and that’s something I used throughout the movie.”
“Michael Kamen scored the last three Die Hard movies and I was very conscious of that when we were doing this,” Beltrami says. “This was definitely a Die Hard movie and … I thought there should be a connection between the first three and what I was doing, and yet also I have my own style. What we ended up doing was using some motives for the Bruce Willis character, McClane, and introducing that into the score as well as some stylistic things that were used in the first three.”
Beltrami described the Die Hard motive as a kind of Jaws-like ostinato, a repeated note gong up a half step, that he used frequently during McClane’s heroic deeds. He also relayed how they recorded sections of the orchestra separately on different tracks (“in stripes,” Beltrami called it), so that the music editor could add or subtract various elements of the orchestra as needed to during the editing process.
He also recollected how he set up a separate recording session just for his percussion instrumentalists. “I’m always looking for ways to add something new and different to scores, so we had just a percussion session” Beltrami says. “I didn’t want to solely rely on synthetic electronic elements, but et I wanted to take acoustic sounds and manipulate them in an electronic way. We recorded the percussionists playing groove type stuff on all sorts of instruments from little small shakers to large metallic drums and all kinds of things. Then we took that and brought it back to my studio and cut it up and processed the stuff through the computer and created loops out of it that we used as a basis for some of the rhythmic elements in the score.”
The feature provides a few short moments of isolated score, and also depicts the recording sessions, showing Pete Anthony conducting the orchestra for the sessions.
The DVD also includes an outstanding 22-minute interview with Bruce Willis by director Kevin Smith, who has a small but significant role in the movie. Smith, being an insider, coaxes some interesting stories and viewpoints from the normally reticent Willis about his views on the franchise. |
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