A very Apt Pupil has submitted the following article to AICN on a very talented individual and it may give you an insight into his work. I'll just let the pupil give you the story from hereon...
From an early age in San Jose, California, John Ottman began writing and recording radio plays on cassette tapes with his neighborhood friends as extra cast members. Soundtrack music would always play a dominating role in the stories, as many of the stories were often written to accommodate his favorite scores.
By the fourth grade, John was playing the clarinet and continued doing so throughout high school. But his real concentration turned from his audio productions to film. He turned his parents garage into a movie studio, where multiple sets were interchangeable to accommodate a production - invariably some sort of science fiction film. By high school, his films evolved to hour long productions complete with large casts and big sets and lavish scores edited together from his favorite soundtracks. Once again, much of his favorite film music often inspired the scenes he shot.
His efforts gained him local attention on television and the paper(San Jose Mercury), with special attention given to a supernatural thriller he shot, this time in his parents home; a spaceship wasn't needed. Plenty of dry ice was the order, however.
USC film school became his next stop, where, after already having been a veteran of super-8 films, he excelled. Ottman was the only undergraduate to receive an 'A' in directing, and received accolades for how well he edited his performances in post production. It was in this directing course that a graduate filmmaker recognized John's talent and asked him to re-edit his problem-plagued thesis film. John created a new story from raw footage and also designed the film's extensive sound. The film, Summer Rain, ended up winning the Student Academy Award. On the film, a production assistant named Bryan Singer noticed what John had done, and be-friended him.
Ottman was suddenly editing films and doing sound design, but at the same time, building a make-shift music studio in his house with used equipment. Frustrated with incompetent film scores on his friends' student films, Ottman re-scored them as practice, and as an experiment to see whether he could do this or not. Realizing he had found his true passion, (aside from directing which he chose to put off for awhile), he began scoring industrials and short films.
Bryan Singer, only knowing John's editing, asked him to edit a short film starring Ethan Hawke - a childhood friend of Singer's. John ended up co-directing the film, as well as editing and doing the sound design.
On Singer's first feature, PUBLIC ACCESS, John edited the picture in three months while simultaneously holding down a full-time job. Ottman's riveting sequences and editorial montages became the highlight of the picture, PLUS, in the eleventh hour, the film lost its composer, and John's time had come. After having heard John's work, and sensing his passion for scoring the film he had created in the editing room, Singer asked Ottman to write the score. Public Access took the Grand Jury Prize at the 1993 Sundance Film Festival, with the score and editing often being applauded in reviews. The synthesis John created between music and image had been born.
With THE USUAL SUSPECTS, and all future Singer films, John held to his promise to Bryan that, despite his scoring dreams, that he would commit to the months required to also edit Bryan's films. THE USUAL SUSPECTS released Ottman from his 9-5 job, and the leery producers gave the go-ahead to have him both edit and score the extremely complicated picture. Through sound and picture montage, (edited all on film in John's livingroom) coupled with his musical vision, The Usual Suspects received widespread acclaim, invariably mentioning the sweeping score and the inspired editing. John was nominated by the American Cinema Editors and won the British Academy Awards for his editing, as well as a Saturn Award for his score to the film.
After Suspects, actor Ben Stiller hired John to score CABLE GUY, which was Johns opportunity to weave in his distinctive style within a comedic context. Before CABLE GUY was even done mixing, John was already hard at work writing a huge score for the film, Snow White with Sigourney Weaver. APT PUPIL, Singer's next project, was on the horizon, so John was declared unavailable for months as the film continued to be delayed and eventually fell through before going to another studio. But just before APT PUPIL was to finally film, director John Badham hired John to write a masterful score to his film, Incognito. Incognito offered John a rare blank canvas on which to compose- large sequences , some five minutes in length, with no dialog and very little sound design. A film about the mastery of art forgery, John brought film music to a refreshing high in many of the long sequences, blending his neo-classic musical style with the baroque and classical styles of the past.
As he finished recording his score for Incognito with the Seattle symphony Pupil was already filming. Now, many hard months later, John has once again taken a very difficult film and created a provocative world that is a musical and visual journey through the dark minds of the filmis two characters, played by Ian McKellen and Brad Renfro.
An apt pupil
