Han Otten - Film Composer
Han Otten is a film composer, also working for contemporary dance and other media.
During his music studies at the HKU University of the Arts Utrecht he already started composing for Dutch Film academy's student films. One of his first projects was the score for the student film ‘Marionettenwereld’ by Elbert van Strien, which won a Student Oscar in 1994.
He has been scoring films ever since and has created scores for a large number of feature films and worked with Peter Greenaway, among many others, recording with a broad palette of European Orchestras in the process.
His most current project is the score for the psychological thriller ‘Marionette’, which is a remake from the student film from 1994, coming full circle.
Regarding contemporary dance, he started working with Jiří Kylián for 'Car-men' (2006) a dance film, which won awards all over the world, and created 4 more soundtracks for Kylian, among these last year’s ‘Scalamare’. His collaboration with Hungarian-Dutch choreographer Krisztina de Chatel comprises 11 pieces to date. A double bill with two of these pieces premiered in Amsterdam's city theatre September 2018. He recently created the music for ‘Peter Pan’ (chor. Emanuele Suavi) by the Bavarian state theatre Gaertnerplatz in Munich.
More with Han Otten
Han Otten is a film composer, also working for contemporary dance and other media.
In this magazine we talk to Han Otten, Jorrit Kleijnen and Vidjay Beerenpoot about their works and experiences in the film industry.
In this chapter Han and Maurits discuss composing for different media and art forms such as film and modern dance: are there any differences? And when becomes music sound design or the other way around?
We watch a scene from the feature film Marionette and Han tells us about the use of microtonality in film music and how this affects the perception of the audience. Maurits Overdulve and Han discuss their collaboration for Marionette.
Another scene from the film Marionette tells us how to stretch violin players to their limits. Han and Maurits also discuss the use of temp track by directors and how to deal with this phenomenon being a film composer.
We watch a scene from the feature film Marionette and Han tells us about the use of microtonality in film music and how this affects the perception of the audience. Maurits Overdulve and Han discuss their collaboration for Marionette.
Alexa Rodrigues and Simon de Koning question Han about the peculiarities of being a film composer, having your own individual sound, the needed social skills, the collaboration with a director, the use of temp track, and much, much more
