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Music supervisor Vicki Hiatt previously worked with director Michael Mann on Heat and Ali. “Michael brings a lot of people into the mix,” she comments. “For example, Brazilian composer Antonio Pinto, who did City of God, was — in ‘Michaelese’ — ‘the architect of Vincent's [Tom Cruise's character] deconstruction as it occurs throughout the course of the film.’ That's not necessarily what he was hired for, but that's what he wound up being. His music appears in reel 3, as the night starts to fall apart for Vincent, and it propels that dramatic line. James Newton Howard's music is the emotional tension binding the diverse sensibilities that are the story of Collateral and Los Angeles.
“Tom Rothrock's music wound up being Fanning's story on some level. Fanning is the LAPD detective with intuition about what's happening. Tom's music is in the cue where we see Vincent for the first time, and also where we see Max cleaning up his cab and getting into it.”
Multiple music choices were available on the dubbing stage at all times. “Michael swaps the music in and out,” Hiatt continues. “But after he's chosen a music cue, the picture changes. Our job is to keep the feeling intact even though the scene gets shorter or longer. That's where the music editors really need to know what they're doing. We were really lucky on this film; we had a lot of very skilled people.
“With Michael, it takes a lot of people and there's a great deal of organization involved. It's hard, but Michael puts in three times as much work as anyone else does, so it's also very rewarding. And because his style is so painterly, it's always visually stimulating. There's never a dull day at work.”
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