Award-winning film editor and film composer John Ottman reteams with director Bryan Singer for Warner Bros.' epic fantasy Jack the Giant Slayer. The score album, available on Watertower Music, will be released digitally on February 26, 2013. Jack the Giant Slayer is not Ottman and Singer's first confrontation with the forces of evil. The team has gone from confronting Nazis in Apt Pupil and Valkyrie to fighting villains in Fantastic Four and X2: X-Men United. Ottman's classically styled score for Jack the Giant Slayer harkens back to classic adventure movies. Using a 100-piece orchestra, Ottman's score contributes to the tension, adventure and grandeur. Ottman explains, 'There aren't many current films that give license to classically styled scores, but Jack the Giant Slayer called for it—a throwback to vintage adventures and the perfect invitation to compose broad music that tells a story and wears its intent on its sleeve." Jack the Giant Slayer opens March 1, 2013.
Ottman has film edited and scored all but one of Singer's films including The Usual Suspects and Superman Returns; Ottman could not collaborate on X-Men because he was directing Urban Legends: Final Cut. John Ottman spent over two years working on Jack the Giant Slayer as the film's editor, composer and associate producer. Jack is a departure from other film collaborations between Ottman and director Bryan Singer. Ottman explains, "Past projects required music to ride a sensitive line, conjuring up psychological ironies buried deep in subtext. The music for Jack needed to reflect time-honored themes: good versus evil, magic, a love story and an unlikely hero. I didn't want the music to be cutesy or cliché. Instead, the aim was to push the score to reflect the gravitas of a world we took seriously. Too frivolous and the movie would be dismissed as silly; too serious, the experience would become a downer. So there's always a line, and this was the one I was riding on Jack."
Ottman created four main themes: Jack's, the love theme (or Isabelle's), Roderick's, and the crown. For the giants, the composer wanted an instantly recognizable primal motif; what he calls the "boom clack" (A taiko drum slammed on the skin and then on the side with sticks, often surrounded by clashing woodwinds.) The beans also have their own brief motif with solo tremolo strings, glockenspiel and choir. Roderick's playfully sinister music features dulcimer and rising classical chords.
Jack the Giant Slayer stars Nicholas Hoult, Eleanor Tomlinson, Stanley Tucci, Ian McShane, Bill Nighy and Ewan McGregor. The film tells the story of an ancient war that is reignited when a young farmhand unwittingly opens a gateway between our world and a fearsome race of giants. Unleashed on the Earth for the first time in centuries, the giants strive to reclaim the land they once lost, forcing the young man, Jack (Nicholas Hoult) into the battle of his life to stop them. Fighting for a kingdom, its people, and the love of a brave princess, he comes face to face with the unstoppable warriors he thought only existed in legend—and gets the chance to become a legend himself.
John Ottman and Bryan Singer first began collaborating as film editor/composer and director, respectively, while students at USC's Film School on the film project Public Access which won the Grand Jury Prize at the 1993 Sundance Film Festival. John Ottman won the prestigious BAFTA award in editing for The Usual Suspects and a nomination from the A.C.E. (American Cinema Editors). Ottman continues to edit all of Singer's films. As a film composer, Ottman has successfully traversed every genre. His wide range of credits include the dark comedy Cable Guy, the thriller Gothika, numerous superhero movies including Fantastic Four 1 & 2 and Superman Returns as well as the drama Kiss Kiss Bang Bang and the Sci-fi blockbuster, The Invasion. Ottman's film scores have earned him a Saturn Award and several BMI Film Music Awards. As Hollywood's only editor/composer of blockbusters, John Ottman made his directorial debut with the film Urban Legends: Final Cut.