On Thursday, Nov. 14, the Fort Wayne Philharmonic Orchestra will perform live accompanying a holiday film classic for the whole family: Elf, starring Will Ferrell. 

Fan-favorite Caleb Young will return from Berlin to conduct. 

“Film with Orchestra” is a genre of entertainment that didn’t exist a generation ago. Now, touring the world and conducting orchestras to film has become the mainstay of Young’s career.

Heart-warming holiday tale

You already know and love Elf, from 2003, directed by Jon Favreau. 

Elf’s score is by John Debney. While not a household name, he has a huge output across film and television, including Iron Man 2, The Greatest Showman, and The Passion of the Christ. He’s done recent work for shows on Netflix, Apple+, and Disney+. The list is so long we’ll leave it to you to look him up.

Regarding Elf, it’s poignant, 21 years on, that the great comedic actor Bob Newhart, who played Buddy the elf’s adopted father, passed away this year. Two other leads in the film, Edward Asner and James Caan, died in the past three years.

Elf has antecedents in the cinematography and the music. The scenes in Santa’s North Pole are an homage to the Rankin/Bass stop-motion animation television specials Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (1964) and Santa Claus Is Comin’ to Town (1970), both built around the hit songs by Johnny Marks, and Fred Coots and Haven Gillespie, respectively. The rest of Elf pays respect to holiday movies set in the heart of New York City, first and foremost George Seaton’s Miracle on 34th Street (1946), scored by Cyril Mockridge.

Unorthodox score

In “film with orchestra,” the orchestra plays to a prepared version of the film where the audio track provides the sound effects but the orchestral music is removed so that the orchestra can play those parts live.

I spoke with Young over Zoom last month from his home in Berlin as he was preparing for a series of concerts with orchestras across the U.S. He gave insight into how the music is composed and how it’s performed.

In Debney’s cues, he often weaves in short melodies from a plethora of hit tunes by many songwriters.

“For me, what’s interesting about Debney’s score is how, I don’t want to say it’s hilarious in a way that it’s not serious music, but it is very comedic in a way,” he said. “It’s almost like an operetta, if that makes sense.”

Elf’s soundtrack isn’t like a more traditional score. In places it’s more like a pop-culture mixtape. Across the 97 minutes of Elf, the live orchestra provides only about 30 minutes of music. At various times, Young will stop conducting while the audio track plays short sections from original recordings by Louis Prima, Eartha Kitt, Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, and others.

For their parts, the conductor and each member of the orchestra wear earbuds to listen to a click track to help them keep each cue in sync with the film. 

However, Elf presents particular challenges because, like last year’s production of The Muppet Christmas Carol, characters on the screen sing. Young has to lead the orchestra in following the singers on screen. 

Elf goes even further, as there is some jazz scat singing and whistling that’s “burned into” the audio track.

“I think what is challenging is that the whistling and the click track and the singing and the orchestra parts don’t always link together,” Young said. “I don’t know if there was some weird editing that happened in this film, but there’s times where I’m going to have to tell the orchestra, ‘Ignore the click track. Watch me. Ignore the singing. Watch me.’ ”

As for what makes Debney’s score most interesting, Young says it’s his use of percussion.

“Now, normally you do like a John Williams score, and the percussion, it’s either A) a very atmospheric, spooky setting, like Raiders of the Lost Ark, first act, or B) a very driving chase, with drums,” pounding out staccato rhythms.

“But in this film, it being a Christmas film especially, all of the percussion is very atmospheric. And there’s a lot of mark tree, and bell tree,” which create ethereal high-pitched washes of sound. “I find that his orchestration in the percussion department is unique in a way that if I heard one of his other films, I would say, ‘That’s probably John Debney,’ because I think every composer has a thumbprint.”

Debney is skillful in his use of the celesta, an acoustic keyboard instrument that plays bells. Tchaikovsky pioneered the celesta in his ballet The Nutcracker way back in 1892, and Debney uses the same kind of flourishes.

Young revealed he will spend about 200 hours studying Debney’s score and practicing before he arrives in Fort Wayne for two days of rehearsals with the orchestra to conduct the performance. 

He says that of the 30-odd films he’s conducted, some take as little as 100 hours of preparation. But when he performed Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, he had to spend twice as much time as he will on Elf.

Fort Wayne and beyond

Film with orchestra has rapidly become a tradition around the world. Young says that in the U.S., it’s coming down to three films for the holidays: either Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life (1946), with score by Dimitri Tiomkin, Chris Columbus’ Home Alone (1990), with score by John Williams, or Favreau’s Elf. 

Young makes no secret that Home Alone is his favorite; he gets to conduct an orchestra and a choir.

After Fort Wayne, Young will be conducting a new Star Wars in Concert revue in Los Angeles, Home Alone in Kansas City, Missouri, and again in Reykjavík, Iceland, and Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince in Rome. In January he’s doing a classical concert for the BBC in London, and then on to his debut in Singapore with another Harry Potter film.

Back here in Fort Wayne, if you listen for all the details in the music, or if you just want to enjoy the heartwarming comedy on the screen, Elf is a great holiday outing. 

As Buddy the elf would say, “Don’t be a cotton-headed ninny muggins.” 

Learn more and buy tickets online at fwphil.org/events.