Occasionally I drop a teacup to shatter on the floor on purpose. I’m not satisfied when it doesn’t gather itself up again. Some day, perhaps, the cup will come together.
I just finished writing my review and recap of the first episode of this third season of “Hannibal“, which I’ll be posting immediately after it airs this Thursday, June 4 at 10 PM EST, but until then I came across a piece at Wired discussing “Hannibal” composer Brian Reitzell. I think most of us that watch this show love Hannibal’s use of the teacup metaphor. I don’t know how most interpret it, but I best see it as Hannibal believing himself to be something of a god and/or an agent of chaos. In these terms he views those that come into his circle as a teacup, a collective whole of which he has shattered and won’t be satisfied until they come together just as he has planned.
Well, I don’t think Hannibal (Mads Mikkelsen) planned for the events that concluded the second season, but he’s making due as he and Bedelia (Gillian Anderson) have flitted of to Europe to begin their lives anew. But beyond our readings of the show’s metaphors, Reitzell reveals something fascinating about how he scored the shattered teacup as the scene rewinds, bringing it back together.
Brian Reitzell was unsatisfied with a scene in which a teacup shatters, then rewinds back together. The key, it turned out, wasn’t your average swell of strings. “I needed to break two sake bottles to add texture,” he says, “and then I swirled around chunks of broken glass in a bucket.” For someone who frequently maxes out Pro Tools with 256 distinct tracks of sound, it’s just another day at the office.
Given the amount of wall-to-wall music in each episode Reitzell needs to create about 40 minutes of music for each episode. This means working 12-hour days, six days a week, for two weeks–for each of the 13 episodes per season.
For this third season Reitzell “embraced Mediterranean influences, citing Francis Lai‘s ‘Live for Life‘ and composer Ennio Morricone.” On top of that listen for a 100-year-old celesta to a Renaissance-era organ as well as the sound of bouncing Ping-Pong balls.
You can hear some of Reitzell’s music in these first four clips from the season three premiere titled “Antipasto”.
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