Doug Besterman – New King of Orchestrations

besterman-85.jpg(Douglas Besterman in 1985)

Doug Besterman is the King of Orchestrations.

WHO CARES ABOUT DOUG BESTERMAN?

I do. And I’ll tell you why. I will force you to care about this man and why he is so important. Well, no, not “important” – he is a magician of music.

My fascination with Doug Besterman started a couple weeks ago. I am working on a new musical. That may sound grand (and indeed it IS!), but there’s a whole hairy backend to doing this that requires a technical setup and workflow that’s efficient and doesn’t get in the way of the creative process.

Conductors get a lot of kudos and attention at showtime just because they are steering the ship during a show. But the REAL brains behind that is the orchestrator and arranger. You barely ever hear about them. Who orchestrates Andrew Lloyd Weber’s music? Yeah, see. Who cares? Well, the orchestrator is the one that brings the chicken scratches to life.

Orchestrations in the old classical composer days was more of a feat of skill, a time to showoff or improve on a great master. One composer would orchestrate a previous composers work for new instruments. But they would never have someone else orchestrate their OWN material. Who’s every heard of “Mozart Piano Concerto #1” , orchestrated by Beethoven. The first releases anyway, the composers did themselves.

Especially in musical theater it’s common for the “composer” (sometimes really just a songwriter) to pen out the melody and basic chords. The orchestrator can take this and turn it into a symphony. It’s a thankless job.

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(Besterman working in his studio)

So for my musical – the end product I need to have created is finished scores for the musicians that coincides with the script. That’s obvious. But EEGADS that got complicated real quick when I started rearranging my studio specifically for this task.

As I’m searching online I come across references to the orchestrations of Besterman. One of the projects he orchestrated was Seussical the Musical. I conducted that show last year and a little light went off “Why yes, those orchestrations WERE FANTASTIC!” (The production of Seussical I conducted was with a full 20+ orchestra. It is VERY fun with a full ensemble – if you’re doing a production of Seussical please consider NOT pairing the orchestra down) I have a pretty good memory for music parts so I’ve been going over the orchestration in my head, recalling the parts that were particularly effective.

As I search on and on I have found many interviews with Douglas Besterman online that give a little insight to his training and where his influences come from. Of course nothing beats hearing it for yourself, so I’ve ordered several of his soundtracks to listen to.

Here’s more info on Besterman. At the end of this article is a link to his website. I’m glad you know who he is now – you’ll have to listen to his orchestrations for yourself to hear why he is a “magician of music”. He breathes life into new music, instead of that oldy moldy Broadway sound.

To my orchestration buddies (yes, I know you’re at there, all five of us) – check out a search of Besterman and orchestration terms online for interviews. There are many nuggets of wisdom and insight to be found.

BESTERMAN – On Orchestrating THE PRODUCERS

While the stars get encores and accolades-“Nathan Lane gives the performance of his career!” says WCBS-TV-and even the director gets notices- “Susan Stroman’s brilliant staging doesn’t miss a sight gag or a comic inflection!” says The Star-Ledger-most theater-goers might overlook the orchestrator’s credits.
We’re the designers of the sound of a piece,” Besterman says. “Outside of the theater world, a lot of people don’t really know about the job of an orchestrator. That’s partly because the kudos go to the composer when a score works, but it’s a job that’s pretty high on the food chain in theater.”

In a typical production, the composer develops the show’s melodies-the contextual skeleton-for each song, mainly on piano. The orchestrator then fleshes out each piece and develops them for a mini-orchestra-usually about 24 musicians for live theater.

Sometimes, a composer will pass on a fully developed piece. But often there’s little more than a hum of an indication of how a song is supposed to go. To complete that translation, the composer turns to the orchestrator.

“Composers carefully choose the right partner for a project,” Besterman says. “It’s very much a partnership.”

And Besterman has partnered with some of the best in the business in a career that has included bestselling Disney films and honored Broadway plays.

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(left) Doug Besterman (Tony-award Winning Orchestrator, Fosse, The Producers, Thoroughly Modern Millie) wife Johanna, Julie and Gregory Jbara

BESTERMAN CREDITS TECHNIQUE TO MENTOR RAYBURN WRIGHT

s with many aspiring artists, Besterman dreamed of working on Broadway and in film while a college student. At Rochester, he studied both music history and theater, a program that allowed him to take classes at the College and at the Eastman School of Music.

Although he was always interested in composing and orchestrating, he says Rochester helped set the stage for his
career.

He studied with the late Rayburn Wright ’43E, then head of the Department of Jazz and Contemporary Media at Eastman, who had been a chief arranger at Radio City Music Hall in the ’50s. Besterman credits his former teacher with speeding his development.

“The things I learned from Ray shaved 10 years off my learning curve because it was incredibly practical information,” he says. “People used to say that I had no experience yet I was able to do so much, because that’s what Ray knew and taught us. It was an incredibly valuable four years.”

INTERVIEW WITH DOUG BESTERMAN
By Dan Goldwasser

What does an orchestrator do?

An orchestrator is responsible for taking a composer’s musical ideas – often written for piano or guitar – and expanding them to be played by a larger group of musicians – in the case of a Broadway show, anywhere from 6 to 24 musicians – and for a film, from 40 – 100.

What’s the difference between an arranger and an orchestrator?

Technically, an arranger will add his or her musical stamp on a piece of music – in the form of adding an intro or ending, coming up with counter-melodies, or re-conceiving the musical style of the piece – an orchestrator, technically speaking, won’t add anything.

In practice, orchestrators on Broadway – and to an extent in film as well – are also arrangers – we do often add counter-lines and re-conceive the musical style – but no distinction is made.

What are some of your more memorable experiences?

Well, it was fantastic being a part of the musical The Producers – a show like that only comes along every so often – the same goes for the movie Chicago. It was also great to work with singers like Barbra Streisand and Barry Manilow – and producers like Arif Mardin and Phil Ramone – recording industry legends.

Have you worked outside of musical theater and film?

Absolutely. I have done song arrangements for recording artists like Beyonce Knowles, Toni Braxton and Mandy Patinkin. I orchestrated two ballets for choreographer Susan Stroman, one for the Martha Graham Dance Company, and the other for the New York City Ballet. And I have written symphonic arrangements for the Hollywood Bowl, the Boston Pops, and the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestras.

I have also worked in the video game industry, creating and adapting music for Mulan (Disney Interactive), and Shadoan (Virtual Image Productions).

Through the course of your orchestration career, have you continued to write your own music?

Yes, I’ve continued to compose, and it the last couple of years, ever since moving out to Los Angeles, I’ve been more interested in songwriting and composing. In the last year or two, I’ve placed three songs in two shows (“Summerland” and “One Life to Live”) and one film, The Punisher. I enjoy writing – both songs and scores – and I would love to do more of that.

Do you have your own studio?

Yes – Mighty Music Productions, located in Los Angeles. I have a ProTools HD3 Accel system – I use Logic, Reason and Finale software – and I am set up to sync to video as well. I can create everything from orchestral synth mockups and demos to final tracks.

How did you get your start as an orchestrator?

It might sound strange, but I was aware that there were jobs called “orchestrator” and “arranger” from the time I was in my early teens. I grew up outside of New York City, and my family and I were big fans of musical theater – my parents loved Broadway shows, and would bring myself and my brothers to see shows as kids. At a certain point – I think it was probably the musical A Chorus Line – I noticed that there was music under the singing, and that it was interesting. My ears started to pick out that there were things happening under the singers, and they had a lot to do with the style and the tone of the show. So I really started to explore and investigate what that was, and how you did it.

By the time I was ready to go to college, I was pretty sure I was going to go into the music industry in some way – I was a pianist, and a French horn player, also. I ended up doing a dual program at the Eastman School of Music and the University of Rochester – so I was trained at a conservatory, and I was really fortunate at Eastman to study with a guy named Rayburn Wright. Ray had been the chief arranger at Radio City Music Hall in the 1950s, so we had a lot in common in terms of his experience, and my interest. Ray gave me a very clear understanding of how the music industry worked, what an arranger did, what an orchestrator did, and the mechanics of how you did that job in the industry. Somehow I walked away from Eastman feeling like I really understood how that all worked.

While I was in school, I studied Jazz Arranging, Film Scoring, Orchestration, as well as a conservatory curriculum in Music History and Theory. For a time, I toyed with being a professional horn player – being in conservatory, that’s a great place to really explore all those things. But by the time I left college, I knew that I was heading in a direction of musical theater. It was something I loved to do, I had worked semi-professionally as a rehearsal pianist and music director, and I felt like this was something I could do to earn a living, and be in the music industry, and see if I could move forward as a composer or as an arranger.

I got to New York in 1986, and started working as a rehearsal pianist and assistant music director, wrote arrangements for people, played auditions – then in the early 1990s I just had a lucky break – I met Danny Troob, who is a great orchestrator on Broadway, and had done a lot of film work with Alan Menken. Danny and I worked on a project together, and he asked me to help him with some orchestrations. Then an opportunity to do an off-Broadway show for Alan Menken came up, and Danny wasn’t available – so he recommended me. My phone rang at 9am one morning, and it was Alan. He said, “Danny says we should meet – grab a demo, and come up to my house.” That’s how my career as an orchestrator started.

You moved to Los Angeles in late 1990’s – how is it working on Broadway shows from LA?

I commute back and forth – I have a lot of frequent flier miles! It’s kind of ironic – I moved to Los Angeles, because I was getting busier doing basically what I do for Broadway, but for film. That was the end of the heyday period of the animated musical – I worked on Mulan and Anastasia long distance, from New York. So I moved out here to catch that wave – and because I was interested in being in LA and living in California – and a year after I came out there, I won my first Tony Award and got very busy in New York.

But in the last couple of years, there’s been a resurgence of interest in the Broadway musical on screen. Between Chicago and The Producers, for me it’s a very convenient calling card – in terms of doing more work in the film industry. I don’t think people in LA know that I’m in LA – they think of me as a New York guy!

A List of Some of the Composers that Doug Besterman has Collaborated With

Mel Brooks
Phil Collins
Randy Courts
Stephen Flaherty
Michael Gore
John Kander
Robert Lindsey-Nassif
Melissa Manchester
Howard Marren
Alan Menken
David Newman
Stephen Schwartz
David Shire
Alan Silvestri
Carly Simon
Kathy Sommer/Nina Ossoff
Stephen Sondheim
Charles Strouse
Jeanine Tesori
Danny Troob
Matthew Wilder
Frank Wildhorn

THEATER PROJECTS THAT DOUG BESTERMAN HAS ORCHESTRATED
*Note: This is just for theater. He has many more projects he has composed for television, film, and interactive game software.

BROADWAY/WEST END:
Tarzan (Richard Rogers Theater, NYC) – spring 2006
– Phil Collins, music

Guys and Dolls (Piccadilly Theater, London)

Dracula (Belasco Theater, NYC)
– Frank Wildhorn, music

Thoroughly Modern Millie (Marquis Theater, NYC)
– 2002 Tony Award &Drama Desk Award, Best Orchestrations

The Producers (St. James Theater, NYC)
– 2001 Tony Award & Drama Desk Award, Best Orchestrations

Seussical (Richard Rodgers Theater, NYC)
– Stephen Flaherty, music

Music Man (Neil Simon Theater, NYC)
– Drama Desk & Tony Award nominations

Fosse: A Celebration in Song and Dance (Broadhurst Theater, NYC)
– 1999 Tony Award, Best Orchestrations

King David (New Amsterdam Theater, NYC)
– Alan Menken, music

Big (Schubert Theater, NYC)
– David Shire, music
– Drama Desk Award nomination

Damn Yankees (Marquis Theater, NYC)
– Drama Desk Award nomination

Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (Lyceum Theater, NYC)

OFF-BROADWAY/OTHER NEW YORK THEATER:
A Christmas Carol (Theater at Madison Square Garden, NYC)
– Alan Menken, music

Weird Romance (WPA Theater, NYC)
– Alan Menken, music

Christmas Spectacular (Radio City Music Hall Productions, NYC)

Jack’s Holiday (Playwrights Horizons, NYC)

Johnny Pye and the Foolkiller (Lambs Theater, NYC)

REGIONAL:
I Sent A Letter To My Love (North Shore Music Theater, MA)
– Melissa Manchester, music

Captains Courageous (Ford’s Theater, Washington D.C.)

Paramour (Old Globe Theater, San Diego, CA)

Eliot Ness in Cleveland(Denver Center for Performing Arts, Denver, CO)

Jeanne La Pucelle (Place Des Arts, Montreal, Quebec)

Opal (George Street Playhouse, New Brunswick, NJ)

Visit the official Doug Besterman website at http://www.dougbesterman.com/

Alex Tirrell

alex-tirrell.jpgAlex Tirrell has acheved an incrdible amount of music and stage experience for his age. Keep your eye on him as an up and coming mover and shaker in the music world.

TIRRELL BACKGROUND INFO
(As of May 8, 2006)

Alex Tirrell is one of the original founders of the East Providence Community Theatre. He is currently serving as Technology Director, resident Music Director and on the Board of Trustees. Alex is a former member of the Rhode Island Music Educators Association and the Music Educators National Conference.

He is currently a Sophomore at Rhode Island College and is pursuing a Bachelor of Arts in Music with concentration in Voice and Piano. Alex is a Bass in the Rhode Island College Chorus and the Chamber Singers. Alex has also performed with the RIC Men’s Chorus and the Freshmen Men’s Quartet. He is the pianist for the Concert Jazz Band. He has also appeared as an ensemble singer with Opera Providence.

Alex is currently studying Voice with acclaimed tenor Dr. Fredrick Scheff, who has performed in national touring company productions of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “Phantom of the Opera” and with many local opera companies. On the keyboard side, Alex currently studies classical piano with Lila Kane. He has previously studied Jazz Piano with composer/pianist Michael Kregler.

Alex has recently appeared on stage with the East Providence Community Theatre as Egeus in Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” (2005). Alex was previously the Music Director of the Holy Ghost Brotherhood Mariense Youth Group in East Providence. With HGBM he directed music and was pianist/conductor for Annie and The Wizard of Oz (RSC). He was also a pianist for The Wizard of Oz (RSC) at the now closed City Nights Dinner Theatre in Pawtucket.

Credits at East Providence High School include Keyboardist for Footloose – The Musical (2005); Bishop of Digne, Bambatois, Grantaire & Major Domo in Les Miserables (2004); Slim and Keyboard II in Oklahoma! (2003); Mr. Sheinkopf and Keyboard II in Fame – The Musical (2002); and The Messenger/Ensemble in The Wiz (2001).

Credits at Riverside Middle School include Crapshooter (Closing night cameo) in Guys & Dolls Jr. (2004), (School Board Member) in The Music Man Jr. (2003), Lighting Design & MIDI sequencing for The Wizard of Oz (2002), and Rooster Hannigan in Annie Jr. (2001)

Other Credits include Xander Harris and MIDI sequencing for ‘Once More, With Feeling – A Buffy Musical,’ a television-to-stage adaptation directed by Jon Brennan (2004).

Alex is also a keyboardist/vocalist for local rock band Shryne since 2004.

The Secret’s David Schirmer exposed

I had posted criticism of The Secret in the past and was told I was being negative. Maybe those people could take a couple minutes to watch this video.

101 Things We Learn from Disney’s High School Musical

  1. Hitting someone in the face with a cream pie is still funny
  2. If you’ve been dating for 5 days, it’s ok to start holding hands
  3. Dancing jazz squares still sells tickets
  4. It’s easy to bounce a ball in time and dance
  5. Basketball players have feelings too
  6. You can hack into a school electrical grid with a laptop
  7. Most high schools have dozens of pro music arrangers to choose from
  8. “Coming Out of the Closet” means you admit to playing cello
  9. It’s normal to see full scale choreography in the school cafeteria at lunch time
  10. A good rhyme for a song is “Are you gonna be strong, gonna sing a song…”
  11. High school students still need to “stick it to the man”
  12. Basketball players can sing three part harmony
  13. In Disney shows, couples fall in love without ever kissing
  14. German and French sound the same
  15. Now post some of your own!

And you know what, I’m running out of things to add to my “101 THINGS” list – can you guys help me out and add your own?

Looking forward to your lists!

Script Layout Hints

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Format
In order to gauge more or less how long a film a script will make (very useful for producers), there are certain standards in formatting. Avoid these at your own risk. Americans especially are very rigid about this. These standards allow us to measure a script’s length by saying that: “a page of script equals roughly a minute of screen time”. This is a very rough guide (often action films scripts are short but take longer on screen than a dialogue based script) and not to be completely trusted.

Font
You should use Courier (or New Courier) Size 12. This is a fixed-width font, which many believe makes it easier to read. You’ll be surprised how picky some readers are about this.

Length
Should fall between 90 to 120 pages. Anything longer and your chances of being read begin to diminish. Dumb huh?

Numbering
Avoid numbering scenes unless it is a shooting script which will only be seen by yourself or when actually shootingthe film. Script readers don’t like them.

Layout
A script layout should look something like this. Some will demand exact measured layouts but few are very sticky about exact distances from margins etc. (Note that it is difficult to display exact layouts on web browsers – this is only a rough guide.)
Layout Example

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Dialogue
This one is a toughie. It’s very hard to teach dialogue. One has to develop an ear for the way people really speak and not how we think they speak. Listen to people from various backgrounds and in various situations talk as often as you can. You’ll probably notice that people are not very eloquent in general. They don’t express themselves very well vocally and a great deal of what is NOT said is just as important (often more so) than what is said. Bring these thoughts to your scriptwriting process. And again read lots of scripts and watch many films to become more sensitive to dialogue.

An important thing to remember is that scripts are the basis of the visual medium of film. An old adage is: never say what you can show instead. In other words if a character is angry don’t have her say “I’m angry!”, show it to us. E.g. have her smash a window with a chair instead.

Characters
There is almost always a central character in a Hollywood movie. That is because Hollywood films work on the basis of the audience being able to identify with a character and his or her experiences. More than one central character tends to confuse the viewers (at least according to many studio execs).

Characters are expected to be three dimensional and rounded. By that it is meant that we should get a sense of their history and how it has affected them as well as understanding why they do what they do (usually called Motivation). (E.g. X avoids men because of a previous heartbreaking episode). This is based on the idea that we do things for knowable reasons. Modern psychology came up with this somewhat naïve notion. However we rarely actually have access to the full reasons why we, others (or ourselves) do what we do. Nevertheless Hollywood believes otherwise.

This convention often leads to some awfully contrived scenes in which characters reveal really corny back-stories and traumatic past events. This is also called “exposition” and is very difficult to write without being obvious or corny. Exposition should happen organically and without the audience realising it. Some filmmakers such as David Cronenberg don’t allow us to get close to their characters and we rarely know why they do things except for the obvious. Unlike in most Hollywood films we are not participants in Cronenberg’s films – but voyeurs watching the action from the outside.

Nevertheless it often helps to create back-stories for your characters. These are basically histories for your characters – their life experiences, social and economic background etc. This doesn’t have to all be obviously present in the script but helps to craft more real characters.

Part of having a three dimensional character is that we see him or her develop across the course of the script. They should change in front of our very eyes. Again remember these are all conventions for a conventional style of film.

Camera Directions
It’s usually not appreciated that you include camera movements in your scripts. There are ways of getting around this in sticky situations. Sometimes it can’t be avoided. Tarantino’s scripts on the other hand are full of camera directions. If the script is going to be pitched to outside producers and script-reader

Formatting Scripts

final-draft.jpgHow long should a script be?

How important is the format of my script? And if it’s SO important, how do I go about doing it properly?

While this is the subject of much debate – generally along the lines of individuality versus making life easy for a reader – it seems largely accepted that to be taken seriously you should at least attempt to follow a recognised format for screenwriting. Most of the rules about fonts, margins, page size etc. exist so that scripts follow the very rough formula of one page roughly equalling one minute. The most common way of doing this is as follows:

1. Scripts should be typed in 12 point courier in order to conform to the page a minute rule. Do note that the rule is an average one and the reality is more like 1 page of dialogue = 30 seconds, balanced out by 1 page of action = 2 minutes or more. Either way a script that comes in at longer than 100 pages indicates either a long film or a dialogue-heavy one (or both) with both types of film more difficult to finance and to sell….

2. Margins should be approx 3cm; Text should be justified to the left, with dialogue tabbed approx. 5cm from left; and character names centred.

3. Character names should be centred above dialogue and written in CAPITALS, except when they occur in the actual dialogue. An alternative here is the US method which only puts the character in CAPS when he/she first appears. This makes the first entrance clear for every department – useful for readers and also for make-up, costume, etc, – and avoids the sense that the writer is SHOUTING.

4. Double space stage directions from the dialogue; single space the lines of the stage directions themselves; use a single return between the name of the character speaking and the dialogue that follows.

5. Directions should be written in CAPS (eg INT. PUB – DAY)

6. Number scenes on the left. There is some discussion about not numbering until you have been asked to provide a shooting script, immediately prior to production. From that point on the numbers are “locked” and can never be changed. After the numbered shooting script, any new scenes are inserted, eg: 7a, 7b… and deleted scenes are marked as such, eg: 6 SCENE DELETED. They should also be copied on different coloured paper for each redraft. But none of this should concern scripts which haven’t yet been bought.

Software
It is of course possible to make life easy with a number of pieces of screenplay formatting software, the most common of which is Final Draft. The UK edition of Final Draft Screenwriting Software seems to be the serious screenwriter’s software of choice. It’s widely endorsed by industry figures.

While Final Draft is more popular amongst writers, Screenwriter 2000 has stronger production features and integration with MM Scheduling and Budgeting. Other than that, it’s usually down to personal preference.

Free formats
There are a number of free downloadable programmes which have some of the features of Final Draft though most have not been designed to write scripts and so while templates will give you a perfectly formatted script (as will a typewriter), what they will not give you is flexibility and control over your screenplay as you write.

You can set up a template in your Microsoft office program. Go into ‘Styles’ in the formatting menu, set all your styles as per industry format script, type in some keyboard shortcuts so that you can just select and edit text as and when you want to for Directions, Speech, Parenthetical business etc, and just type away. The master scene script is set in a single column format. With the left edge of the paper at zero and your type preferences in picas, give your copy horizontal spacing thus:

10 – sequence numbers
15 – directions – 75
30 – speeches – 60
40 – parenthetical business – 55
45 – names of speakers
60 – transitions
75 – page numbers (although this is the least important setting)

Assign all the type in Courier New 12pt type, put these settings in your style menu in word and assign them short cuts (ie: ‘control + 1’ for directions, ‘control + 2’ for speeches etc.). You can set your CONT’s and page numbers in your header and footer menu, then save the whole document as a template which you go into every time you are writing a script. Then, just type. When you return to your work later and highlight each section you can use your short cuts to format it.