Sam Ewing
Appearances
DC High Volume: Batman
Interviews with Gordon Actor Jay Paulson & Composer Sam Ewing
I frankly never imagined I would ever get such a chance. So weirdly, I felt like super prepared to take it on because I think there's like zero fear, you know? Because it's like, you're kidding me. All right, well, let's go. Let's do it, you know? What I particularly find exciting about the... audio version of it is that it naturally just puts some emphasis on music, right?
DC High Volume: Batman
Interviews with Gordon Actor Jay Paulson & Composer Sam Ewing
Because there aren't that many elements. There's voice, there's sound design, and then there's music.
DC High Volume: Batman
Interviews with Gordon Actor Jay Paulson & Composer Sam Ewing
There was so much discussion how we approach this just like musically, sonically, and I think ultimately like the visuals are what never failed us. And there's an undoubtedly, the word I would use is gothic quality to the visuals in the comics and just associated with Batman in general, right? And the word gothic tends to have a certain associations with it musically. I think of,
DC High Volume: Batman
Interviews with Gordon Actor Jay Paulson & Composer Sam Ewing
First of all, like literal Gothic cathedral is like an easy, you know, lateral move. Lots of space, lots of reverb, maybe choirs and big instrumentation, orchestra. You really want it to feel like larger than life and sort of exaggerated in that way. And also I would say... just dark and at times sad, other times obviously heroic, other times just grimy, you know, grimy and grungy.
DC High Volume: Batman
Interviews with Gordon Actor Jay Paulson & Composer Sam Ewing
It's so funny. Um, the short answer is, is yes, but I, you know, it's, it's, these are things that sort of like, it's like an instant reach for, for, for certain colors. Um, in other words, it's less complicated than, than you might think. Uh, Batman, Bruce Wayne, he's got gravitas. He lives in a big mansion. He's heroic, but he's dark.
DC High Volume: Batman
Interviews with Gordon Actor Jay Paulson & Composer Sam Ewing
So we need like dark, big orchestral instrumentation with some choir to support him. Bang, there's your theme, right? Next, Catwoman. She's in the shadows and spying and kind of tiptoeing and she's graceful and she's mischievous. And Um, so you have something lighter that lives up in, in terms of instrumentation is like, is just higher, right?
DC High Volume: Batman
Interviews with Gordon Actor Jay Paulson & Composer Sam Ewing
You've got like, you've got twinkling harp that, that's kind of, you know, prowling around on the rooftops. You've got, uh, you've got strings playing harmonics and they're like absolute highest register playing this sort of slow kind of, um, like crawling, um,
DC High Volume: Batman
Interviews with Gordon Actor Jay Paulson & Composer Sam Ewing
Melody, you know, and it's just like literally if you're like a child and like you're asked to describe like a cat, like you just take those descriptions and like apply them to music and to instrumentation and you've got your themes. And it's really like it's the shortest distance between the two possible that is usually the answer.
DC High Volume: Batman
Interviews with Gordon Actor Jay Paulson & Composer Sam Ewing
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And the audiences pick up on that, even if they're not, they can't describe it. And it's music is often so not in the foreground. It's setting the stage is bringing the atmosphere for something.
DC High Volume: Batman
Interviews with Gordon Actor Jay Paulson & Composer Sam Ewing
Yeah, definitely. I had written a track for a theme for Catwoman and it was with... these sort of mischievous bells and these very unsettling little strings that kind of like sit as a bed. And somehow, someone on the team was like...
DC High Volume: Batman
Interviews with Gordon Actor Jay Paulson & Composer Sam Ewing
there's this like zone you enter when you're inspired by an idea that you get and you have a vague idea that, okay, yes, like this, this will be, this will be Catwoman's thing, but like, it enters your brain and you just gotta like get it out of you and like out of your fingers and like onto the keyboard.
DC High Volume: Batman
Interviews with Gordon Actor Jay Paulson & Composer Sam Ewing
And then like, and then you've built your track and you've composed your thing and it happens extremely quick because it's, you've just got this burst, right? So I knew like, this is cool. Like I really like this and I'm let this, this feels to me like Catwoman. And then it, it took the observation and discussion with like other people on the team to, to realize this,
DC High Volume: Batman
Interviews with Gordon Actor Jay Paulson & Composer Sam Ewing
would work so well for the Joker. But that's what's cool too about collaborating and working with other people who can help you see things with a little more distance and clarity.
DC High Volume: Batman
Interviews with Gordon Actor Jay Paulson & Composer Sam Ewing
I would say yes. I might say that the medium itself, like any medium, has a particular set of challenges that sometimes are tied to clarity for the audience. Personally, I would put a big emphasis on that one for this because Let's be honest. A lot of people who are listening to this are, like, cooking pasta or, like, driving to work.
DC High Volume: Batman
Interviews with Gordon Actor Jay Paulson & Composer Sam Ewing
There's a lot... Or, like, optimal situation is, like, you're sitting in your, like, you know, $10,000 speaker, like, studio where there's, like, no external noise and your eyes are closed. Yeah. But, like, very few people are doing that. So... I wanted immediately to make just clear when certain characters enter the scene and we don't have those frames, which are so gorgeous.
DC High Volume: Batman
Interviews with Gordon Actor Jay Paulson & Composer Sam Ewing
And I'm hoping a lot of people will read along and look at these comics, which are like so well adapted to the audio because that just enriches the experience. But without that... It's important to me that the music can cue what is happening and what characters are entering into those frames. It can be, even if it's not confusing, it's just supportive.
DC High Volume: Batman
Interviews with Gordon Actor Jay Paulson & Composer Sam Ewing
And this is what I find really exciting about this particular show is that... the themes. There are a lot of themes and it's a super fun playground to use those and use motifs. And sometimes it's just like someone is referenced by Bruce or by Catwoman and we hear a couple notes and that just clues the audience in. Or at the end of an episode, maybe the person
DC High Volume: Batman
Interviews with Gordon Actor Jay Paulson & Composer Sam Ewing
being looked at who in the frame of the comic might be like a silhouetted figure who has no dialogue, Like that's the ending of the visual, but in this medium, we don't get that dialogue-less visual. So I will give you their theme instead. And it tells you who it might be and is so suggestive in a way that the visuals can also be.
DC High Volume: Batman
Interviews with Gordon Actor Jay Paulson & Composer Sam Ewing
Man, I feel like I have so many examples, but just like, just thinking about the end of episode one, when Bruce becomes the bat, right? That is, I mean, visually... it's so iconic. And there are so many reasons that scene, if you're reading it, is standout. It's iconic. Bruce Wayne is becoming Batman, right?
DC High Volume: Batman
Interviews with Gordon Actor Jay Paulson & Composer Sam Ewing
And it just so beautifully ties in the tragedy of his parents and into this like newfound sort of triumph, if you will. And
DC High Volume: Batman
Interviews with Gordon Actor Jay Paulson & Composer Sam Ewing
yeah like how do you take that on musically you know what the heck like how can we not step on this but also like make it even more enriched and like add a musical theme to it so that's what i've done and we've got uh we've got a musical we've got a musical theme for sure and it's it's along the same lines it's got this tragic gothic um
DC High Volume: Batman
Interviews with Gordon Actor Jay Paulson & Composer Sam Ewing
almost classical quality to it, and a female voice, which I like to think is, you know, like the voice of his mother, right? So another simple, just very direct, like, pull right there, just instrumentally, just Mother. How about female? Vocal. Very straightforward. But, you know, I mean, the fans will have to let us know, you know, did I do it justice?
DC High Volume: Batman
Interviews with Gordon Actor Jay Paulson & Composer Sam Ewing
But I think that's just an example where, I mean, it's just like an honor to score a scene like that, you know? And it's just like, it's honestly, you said cinematic, it's just like scoring a movie or, you know, the end of a finale of a TV show or something.
DC High Volume: Batman
Interviews with Gordon Actor Jay Paulson & Composer Sam Ewing
I so appreciate that because that for me, it's really job security, you know. Because truly, I'll say it again, like I bet if you were, like you asked a five-year-old, like stand at a piano and like play good guy music, they would like twinkle around with like the upper keys where it's like, you know, and then like play the bad guy, you play the low keys. Yeah. And like, there you go.
DC High Volume: Batman
Interviews with Gordon Actor Jay Paulson & Composer Sam Ewing
Well, again, I'm a big cinema guy, right? So maybe to sort of give you a slightly left-of-field answer again, the moods set, and that's, I think, maybe the word that's important here is the mood and the atmosphere that I think Christopher Nolan did so well. It's one of the strongest takes on Batman in a linear, like, audio or visually form, right?
DC High Volume: Batman
Interviews with Gordon Actor Jay Paulson & Composer Sam Ewing
And one of the things that he's just done so well is just create this sense of motion and, like, driving forward and sort of gluing together scenes. And that was critical in the opening episodes because we've got these intertwined stories
DC High Volume: Batman
Interviews with Gordon Actor Jay Paulson & Composer Sam Ewing
intercutting I mean you might remember better than I but it's like every page or two yeah it's rapid and it's dense it's super dense and you're cutting between Jim Gordon and Bruce Wayne and this is before either of them are like you know heroes yet and like how do you how do you treat that's I mean the challenge there is immense from an audio perspective because we're just getting to learn these characters and
DC High Volume: Batman
Interviews with Gordon Actor Jay Paulson & Composer Sam Ewing
We're establishing the world of Gotham, but we've also musically, we want to present something that's cohesive and not just like annoying and like jittery, right? So there's something to be said about, you know, Christopher Nolan's approach, which is just like, well, don't make them separate stories with like, oh, we got Jim Gordon. Oh, we got Bruce Wayne. But just like...
DC High Volume: Batman
Interviews with Gordon Actor Jay Paulson & Composer Sam Ewing
this is the story of Batman year one. Yeah. Like it's coming together and just like go along the ride with us, you know? And, and like, and we will, we'll help transitions out, but we won't slam the listener over the face every time there's like a page turn, right? It's just, it's too much. So there's something to be said for that. And so, yeah, that anyway,
DC High Volume: Batman
Interviews with Gordon Actor Jay Paulson & Composer Sam Ewing
Well, the theme that I had written for Catwoman that later became the Joker is a prime example.
DC High Volume: Batman
Interviews with Gordon Actor Jay Paulson & Composer Sam Ewing
That's a perfect example of just this collaboration that is like, And I would say a necessary one where, as I was describing, a lot of times the composer is just simply too close to the material, especially early on. When a composer comes onto a project, you like entrench yourself.
DC High Volume: Batman
Interviews with Gordon Actor Jay Paulson & Composer Sam Ewing
and you live in that world and you're just like, you're trying and using like a ton of effort, I would say, to just like unearth these musical versions of these ideas and these themes and like get them to life. And then once they get going, it really sort of, there's a rhythm and the effort becomes less strenuous and you really find a stride.
DC High Volume: Batman
Interviews with Gordon Actor Jay Paulson & Composer Sam Ewing
And so, and my point is that in those early iterations, like the collaboration is so important because someone, you're entrenched, you just don't have the perspective. So early on, I was entrenched with Marcus Begala who was helping, we were both composing themes together and we were just doing, we were doing a lot of back and forth. He was the one who was like, dude, like,
DC High Volume: Batman
Interviews with Gordon Actor Jay Paulson & Composer Sam Ewing
I don't know, man, but I feel like this Catwoman thing you just wrote could be sick for the Joker. And I was like, whoa, OK, sweet. So that's where the seed was kind of planted. So yeah, those collaborations. They're so key.
DC High Volume: Batman
Interviews with Gordon Actor Jay Paulson & Composer Sam Ewing
That's a really good question. There are little Easter eggs for sure. I would say in Long Halloween... as we get to the holiday killer, just become familiar with these two little sort of off-kilter piano notes and the little bed that lives underneath it. I think it's gonna, as I had mentioned earlier, in the comics, sometimes you have these frames where there is no dialogue.
DC High Volume: Batman
Interviews with Gordon Actor Jay Paulson & Composer Sam Ewing
this is a thing that just, it becomes sort of a chameleon and it's a really fun thing to play with and sort of, you know, I wonder if this character is the killer. I wonder if that character is the killer. So we get to have a lot of fun with that.