My Composing Process: Georges Méliès's "Un homme de têtes" (1898)

Dear Readers,

In 2014. I wrote an original score for the French cinema icon Georges Méliès’s 1901 short film “Barbe-Bleue” (Bluebeard). I did the entire score in the notation software Sibelius. I am still proud of this score, which is (unbelievably) almost 10 years old. Looking back at it now, I can see how I was developing my melody-writing abilities and learning to work with visual rhythm of each scene. I composed leitmotifs for each of the main characters and created variations of the themes for moments later in the film. This composing process was one of the most important of film composing development. You can view the film with my original score by clicking here.

This year, I returned back to Georges’s brilliant work, in search for more shorts to write new music for. A lot has happened to my composing process over the last decade, so I was interested to see what I would come up with. In March I scored two of his shorts (l’Homme Orchestre” (1900) and “Le Repas Fantastique” (1900)) and will write blog posts about both of those scores eventually. Today, I want to focus on my most recent Méliès sonic reimagining project: “Un Homme De Têtes”.

The title translates literally to: “A man of heads”. It is also called “Four Troublesome Heads”. Made in 1898 (125 years ago!), this short gem depicts Georges detaching his head three times (and then replacing each one out of thin air), placing the heads on two tables and then attempting to sing with them (accompanied by his open-backed banjo). When this doesn’t pan out (the heads are not with the program), he explodes with anger, destroyed two heads, throws out his own and attaches the final head to his body. Then he walks off screen, the entire dramatic episode complete.

For my Méliès scores this year, I decided to use the same technique that I developed while scoring Charlie Chaplin’s “The Immigrant” (you can view the film here). This involved using recorded object sounds to accent movements, painting the score with ambient soundscapes that I had recorded in various locations and blending synthesizers with orchestral instruments.

This composing technique works perfectly for Méliès because his films frequently have exaggeration movements, items appearing and disappearing and quick changes in energy and emotion.

So let’s dive into the composing process for “Un Homme De Têtes”!

Fantastic Banjo Opportunity + Beginning To Score With The Bass

While browsing through HBO Max, I saw “Un Homme De Têtes” in the comedy section. I had never seen this Méliès film before, so I watched it. When I saw the banjo I knew that I had to score it. I started learning banjo in 2022 and have been itching to use it in more projects.

This project began with experimentation. All of my projects start like this. I begin with a blank Logic file and start adding in instruments and sounds. The starting point for this score was the Rare Groove Piano (Short) instrument from Spitfire LABS. It had a playful quality to it, but with a darker synthy edge. So I ran it through an amplifier, compressed it and added a pitch shift up an octave (out of tune and only mixed about 38% so it wasn’t too obvious). And there it was! The first instrument for the score!

From a music theory perspective, this bass melody sits on C major for the first six measures. Then it moves to D major (so the major 2nd of C) and then quickly to G major (The fifth of C) and then back to C. The move to D is always fun, because you modulate to a different key (G major, so the fifth of C). Very simple stuff but very effective. The last two bars (15 and 16) are fun because they still accomplish the same thing as measures 7 and 8 (i.e. shaping out D major to G major to C) but with a lot more movement. You also have a slight bit of dissonance with the F# becoming an F natural in the blink of an eye (DM to G7).

This bass line was entirely improvised. I just played it out while looking at the picture. Completely by accident, it matched up perfectly with the character’s movements (at the tempo 120 bpm). Even the rest at measure 8 allows the perfect amount of time for the character’s hand motion.

And so I was off to a great start. Time to add more instruments!

More Instruments Arrive!
The rest of the score’s instrumental ensemble (excluding the aforementioned Rare Groove Piano) are as follows:

Ragtime Piano
Cimbasso (staccato)
Tuba (Short Tenuto)
Trumpet (Staccato)
Cello (Vibrato Pizzicato)
Violin 2 (Pizzicato)
Clarinet (Tenuto)
Banjo (played live)

The Ragtime Piano (from Native Instruments) adds a wonderful bounciness when it plays on the up beats (2 and 4). The Cimbasso and Tuba add some nice heft to the Rare Groove Piano bass melody. The pizzicato (plucked) cello and violin 2 and trumpet all play the main melody of the score:

This lilting melody follows the C major - D major - G major chord progression of the bass line. It was also entirely improvised (I think using the vibrato cello virtual instrument). My goal was to create a playful tune of the main character that would add energy to the third head section. The grace notes (the notated smaller notes) create such kinetic, chaotic, energy. The move to C# and D (in the 5th measure) is unexpected because it is quite dissonant with the C major chord occurring beneath. I’m going to be honest, this was a mistake by me while improvising but I decided to keep it in because it sounded pretty great haha.

My mini banjo. It has a fantastic sound. So happy to include it in this score.

All of these elements return once again at the end of the piece as the main character trots happily out of frame. The only addition is the banjo, which plays the C major - D major - G major chord progression in a typical banjo picking pattern. I played this live on my Gold Tone CC-Mini Travel Banjo (see photo).

Recorded Object Sounds And Soundscapes

Here is the entire list of objects, sounds and soundscapes used in this score:

Banjo metal picks in glass jar
Squirrel dog toy
Pig dog toy
Pin art toy
Leaves being kicked
Horse halter
Horse chewing carrot
Footsteps
Glass lamp being hit
Karmann Guia (engine + shifting sounds)
Auto harp (muting the strings after strumming)
Cast iron pot (hit)
Castenets
Pillow being hit against bed
Tie Rack (plastic hangers being pushed to one side)
Metal coils (hit)
Kettle boiling
Lawnmower (running)
Board game Timer
Eurasian Blackbird singing in Copenhagen
Birds singing in Villanova, Pennsylvania
Crickets in Christiansburg, Ohio
Crosswalk sound in Oslo, Norway
Waterfall in Blue Hill, Maine
Air pump
Broken Smoke Detector
Rotary Phone
Tambourine
Car Horn in Rome
Cannon sound heard from the Château Hill in Nice, France
Bucket in barn (kicked by horse)
Altoids tin closing
Bionicle Toy

I love looking at this list because it represents recordings of mine spanning almost four years. The earliest recordings are the kettle and lawnmower (both recorded in Edinburgh in early 2020). Some of these sounds (like the smoke detector, pig toy and metal coils) can be heard in my score for “The Immigrant” (completed in August of 2020). The recordings in Norway, Copenhagen and France were done earlier this year while I was on my three month networking trip in Europe to meet filmmakers. The horse recordings were done in February of this year for my score for the Nebeker Twins folk horror film “Will The Circle Be Unbroken”. The car horn in Rome was recorded last December when my family was on vacation in Italy (my first visit to that incredible country). When I look at this list, I see a diary of sounds that I have created or discovered over three and a half years. Each sound is a memory.

And each sound serves a specific purpose in this film. I don’t want to give away where every sound is located in this film, I think it might be fun for you to figure it out yourself. I will say that most motions in this film are accented by a sound.

The act of adding sounds to this film really helped it come alive. My process involves digging into my sound kits onto my computer. I learned about creating sound kits while studying at the University of Edinburgh for my master’s degree in music composition for screen. A sound kit is an organized folder of sounds. I have almost 2500 individual sounds on my computer, all organized by object or location and each named in a specific manner so that they can be easily identified and used. So while I watched the film, I dragged some sounds in and lined them up with movements so see if they worked. Most of the time I will not second guess and just go with my first instinct. You can layer sounds too. That is how the act of him removing his head sounds like a pin art toy, leaves being kicked and a squirrel dog toy squeaking.

Thankfully, a lot of the movements in the film lined up with the 120 bpm tempo of the score. So, as he places the first head onto the table (the sound of a horse halter being jingled), that sound lines up with the rare groove piano note perfectly. Also, when he wiggles his head while under the table, the muted autoharp strum lines up both with the tempo and the rest in the bass melody.

One of my favorite moments in the whole score was completely serendipitous. At 0:58, Méliès throws his arms in the air, his face filled with glee, and we hear the squirrel dog toy squeak. Then he bows. Another squeak. And then, he hits his face lightly with both hands. Two more squeaks! I literally laughed out loud as I was putting in the squeak audio files. I shaped the bass notes around these squeaks so they would be isolated. It all came together so beautifully.

I frequently found myself laughing out loud when I added in these object sounds. The way they exaggerated and livened Georges motions just made the film even more entertaining.

I isolated just the object sounds from the score so you can have a close listen. Try to distinguish the origin of each sound:

The Singing Sequence

The hardest part sound-wise was when the main character starts to play the banjo. In this moment, you have each of the three heads singing at different points and the man singing and playing banjo. Once he stops playing he holds his hands to his ears and then smashes two of the heads with the banjo. Then he throws the other head away.

It took me a while to get this part right. Initially I made one head sing as a lawnmower, another as the pig toy and the third as the Karmann Ghia. But the sounds didn’t work together and it all just sounded too noisy. Eventually, I made the head on the left the board game timer (with a bit of Karmann Ghia at the end), the second from the left the broken smoke detector and the one on the far right the air pump (with some lawnmower right at the end). I spaced all the sounds out in the stereo image so that they matched up with their respective heads. I played the banjo live to match up with his playing. I added in the Eurasian Blackbird (spliced with a bird from my backyard singing by our feeder) to stand in for the man’s singing voice. As the noisiness in the scene increases, I brought in the Ohio crickets, the Maine waterfall, the Rome car horn and the crosswalk sound. This all crescendos to the Nice cannon (lined up with the banjo hitting the table). The head on the right keeps opening its mouth after this, so I spliced up the air pump as it was turning off so it feels like the head is reacting to what has just occurred. Also if you listen closely with headphones, you will hear that the pig dog toy sound that plays as he throws the head to the left side of the screen lines up with that motion. I did this by using a directional mixer and shaping the directional movement in my computer.

You can see this whole section from my Logic file below:

Riveting Conclusions

Choosing the album cover for this project was tough, but I settled on a freeze frame of Méliès about to destroy the heads with his banjo. It captures this moment of violent fury. Georges’s films balance comedy with tragedy so perfectly. And the fact that almost 130 years later this film still feels fresh and exciting shows that Méliès’s was truly a cinematic genius.

It has been a lot of fun returning back to Georges’s work. It’s funny, whenever I think of him I think of the fantastic Martin Scorsese film “Hugo”, in which Ben Kingsley plays an older Méliès. The flashback sequence (scored wonderfully by Howard Shore and then to Eric Satie’s Gnossiennes: No. 1, Len) astounded me when I saw it in the movie theater at 17. To see the filming process of these silent films was pure magic. I wouldn’t be surprised if “Hugo” was the reason why I decided to score “Barbe-Bleue” in 2014.

If you have any questions about my composing process or about my work in general, don’t hesitate to email me at nicholasescobarcomposer@gmail.com.

As always, thanks for reading!

Your’s Musically,

Nicholas Escobar