A professor of music is taking a semester-long sabbatical in the fall of 2021 to write a book.
Dr. Erik Heine, professor of music and assistant director of the honors program, is taking a sabbatical to write a novel on the music of the “How to Train Your Dragon” trilogy of films.
Heine published his first book, “James Newton Howard’s Signs (A Film Score Guide,)” in 2016 with Rowman & Littlefield Publishing. He said he is returning for his second book at the encouragement of his editor at Film Score Monthly, where he writes features and reviews.
He said he told his editor he would need the direct involvement with composer John Powell before committing to a book on the “How to Train Your Dragon” films.
“Five minutes later, my editor sends me a text with Powell’s assistant’s email and his agent’s email,” Heine said. “So, I sent an email to the agent, waited two weeks and didn’t hear anything. I then sent an email to his assistant and half an hour later had a response.”
Heine said after sending Powell’s assistant Batu Sener a series of writing samples and credentials, the assistant approved his work on the project and offered cooperation. He said his next goal was to convince Powell’s representation to give him complete access to all of the scores and transcripts for all three films.
“They really didn’t want to give everything to me. I had to say, ‘look, I really need this because the only way I’m going to be able to make connections with the orchestration and with the motivic stuff is if I can hear it and see it,” Heine said. “There’s things that I can see that I won’t necessarily hear that are very important.”
Heine said Sener eventually agreed, but had him sign a non-disclosure agreement before handling the documents.
“I’m not allowed to show anyone anything that I’m working on. I’m allowed to say I’m working on it, but I can’t tell anyone any specifics,” Heine said. “Literally two days ago, I got an email saying, ‘Here’s the links to your scores for two and three, and here’s the links to the music.’ The links are password-protected, and opening the PDF has separate password protection. It’s all very under wraps.”
Heine said until the project is completed, he cannot share any content or theses related to the materials he’s gotten access to. He said he was granted a similar amount of access for his book on the movie “Signs,” but without involvement with composer John Newton Howard.
“Film music isn’t the property of the composer, it’s property of the film studio. With ‘Signs,’ I was able to get permission from the film studio to have the documents reproduced,” Heine said. “They sent me complete orchestral score and all the MIDI mockups. I ended up with over a thousand pages of PDF material for that book.”
Heine said the “How to Train Your Dragon” material will include somewhere between 1,400 and 1,500 pages of final score and countless pages of additional revisions.
He said he will be taking a semester-long sabbatical to write his book, but the project will likely take longer than the allotted time.
“I’m not going to get the whole thing done during the sabbatical for sure. The goal is to get as much work done over a semester as possible,” Heine said. “When I took a sabbatical in 2014 to write ‘Signs,’ I certainly didn’t get the book done, but I did get all the research done and drafts of all six chapters finished so that when I came back to teaching, it was more editing than creating.”
Heine said he hopes to write a book that appeals to a wide demographic of people who all love and cherish the “How to Train Your Dragon” trilogy. He said he wants to create a valuable book for both people who understand music theory and those who don’t.
Heine said the full score to the first “How to Train Your Dragon” was published by Omni in October of 2020 and sold out in an hour.
“My audience is hopefully people who love the music of the films. That demographic is huge, spanning many ages, spans genders. We’re going to be getting parents, people who grew up with these films, and industry folks,” Heine said.
Heine said he has not found a publisher yet but was encouraged by Sener to wait until the book is completed to find a publisher.
“My hope is that DreamWorks is going to work with me and include some artwork, much like Doug Adams’s ‘Lord of the Rings’ book had,” Heine said.
Zoe Dongas, music theater senior, has taken Heine’s Film and TV Music Theory course, as well as his Shakespeare in Film course. She said Heine is one of the most dedicated and intelligent professors she has ever had.
“His expertise as a music professor and as a film connoisseur is astounding. His knowledge about all the different terms and concepts in music and film allowed me to better understand how film scores interact with their movies,” Dongas said. “And he’s just seen so many dang movies. He can talk about any movie and make interesting connections.”
Sarah Schulz, music theater senior, has also taken several classes with Heine.
“Because of his expertise, he teaches the great importance of music in film,” Schulz said. “When you’re watching movies with an untrained ear, you don’t always pay attention to the little details, but he is able to point those moments out, and it helps everything make sense.”
Heine said “How to Train Your Dragon” has a rich and detailed score, which he is excited to explore thoroughly. He said there was a quote from Dean DeBlois, co-director of “How to Train Your Dragon,” in the book lining of the published score which encapsulates many of his feelings about the power of Powell’s score:
“I quickly realized that John has a very strong story sense in his own right. And when it came to filling the movie with tunes and motifs, he was finding his own way through the story that was almost like a harmony to the main themes that we were tackling on the surface with dialogue and visuals. It’s a really unique ability and something that I’m thankful for. Because the music itself is not just supporting the storytelling. It’s deepening it,” DeBlois wrote.
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