The “Bounty Hunter” with Jennifer Aniston and Gerard Butler comes out today. I’d love to see it this weekend, because it will bring back the great memories of a charity auction prize that I won recently.

The prize was watching the first hand process of creating a film score for that movie with English composer George Fenton. The prize was donated by Jennifer Aniston for Friends of El Faro, a charity that her acting coach is involved in.

Robert and I lucked out because there was a potential that the event would take place in L.A. and instead, it took place at Clinton Studios in Manhattan.

The date kept changing because, as I was told by K.C.,director Andy Tennant’s executive assistant, first the movie had to go before  test audiences to see if anything needed to be changed. Once the powers-that-be felt that the test audiences were satisfied, the movie was “locked in.”

After  the movie was locked in, the film score could be synchronized with the film. George Fenton had already composed the score at his home in England, and Andy Tennant had visited him there to go over it. The two men had a long relationship with such films as “Hitch”, “Ever After”, “Sweet Home Alabama” , “Fool’s Gold”,and “Anna and the King.”

The date kept changing and we had to keep moving around our schedule, but it was well worth it.  When they finally came up with a date, we visited the upstairs recording studio and saw many musicians waiting to begin the process. We were told that the union official was contacted and, that person, in turn, contacted musicians who were so talented and experienced that they could immediately step in and perform the music the way the composer wished them to.

We were then led to a room which held very expensive recording equipment. At the front of the room was a glass wall that permitted us to observe the composer and the musicians at work. Directly in front of that wall was a comfortable couch that the director normally sat in, but that we were told to relax there and watch the process. Directly above the glass wall was a flat screen TV that they intended to run the movie on.

Then for several hours the composer and his musicians labored over and over to properly synchronize his music to specific scenes in the movie. You couldn’t hear the dialogue, but the music, whether fast-paced and jaunty or slow-paced and romantic, gave you the feel for what the composer and the director were trying to express.

Later, Andy Tennant sat down with us and spoke about the movie making process. He told us that this performance room was smaller than usual so that  only the strings and horn section could be focused on that day.

Andy also discussed the many films that he both wrote and directed and how much he enjoyed working with Reese Witherspoon. He also mentioned that Jennifer Aniston was picked for the female role in this particular movie in part because of her success in “Marley & Me.”  Gerard Butler had, in part, been picked because he and Jennifer Aniston had been seen together and they appeared to have good chemistry. Gerard  also seemed the right pick to play a man of that age group.

Andy also emphasized how important the test audiences were in determining the final cut of the film. For instance, in “Hitch” it was originally felt that there needed to be a ten minute segment explaining why a beautiful wealthy woman played by Amber Velletta would fall for the heavier, clumsy accountant played by Kevin James. The test audience liked Kevin James so much that they said that the explanation wasn’t needed. As a result, that piece of the film was cut.