Striking a Balance of Cruelty and Whimsy for the Score of A Series of Unfortunate Events
Child marriage, infant abuse, insatiable greed, and murder plots do not seem like the makings of a family program. And yet, Netflix’s A Series of Unfortunate Events achieves just that by channeling the highly stylized essence of Daniel Handler’s classic thirteen book series for young adults. Now in season 2, the plots have grown wackier and darker. The show is reliant on composer Jim Dooley to maintain levity. Dooley can attest to the music’s influence,
Mudbound & Come Sunday Composer Tamar-kali’s Singular Path
At less than 2% of all composers, the percentage of female scoring artists working in the film industry is the lowest and most out of balance with the number of men getting hired. There isn’t any official data on how many of those are women of color, but it’s an even smaller fraction. With her critically acclaimed score for Mudbound, and now with her new work for the film Come Sunday,
The Beyond Skyline Composer on Making Aliens Sound as Big as They Look
Captain America: Civil War star Frank Grillo will not be appearing in the Avengers’ showdown against Thanos later this month, but he’s been busy battling aliens of his own. Grillo leads the human fight against an intergalactic invasion in Beyond Skyline. The film is something of a family drama with Mark (Grillo) trying to reconnect with his son Trent (Jonny Weston) during the chaos. Composer Nathan Whitehead wrote the eerie and epic score that weaves together a tense father-son dynamic with colossal creatures.
The Composing Team for Life Sentence Gives A New Beginning a Fresh Sound
Time seems to go by too fast. You rush to work, cram in family events at night and meet friends on the weekend. Suddenly weeks, months and years fly by. What we often forget is that life is also long. Much longer that Stella expected on new CW dramedy Life Sentence.
Lucy Hale plays a cancer patient who believes she has months left to live, only to find out she’s been cured.
Lean on Pete‘s Composer on why This Gorgeous Film Needed a Live Score
Though the score created for Lean on Pete is placed only in chosen scenes, those scenes are chosen expertly. The score is a powerful element that helps bring cohesion to the emotional and physical journey taking place in the movie. Lean on Pete is by acclaimed filmmaker Andrew Haigh (Weekend, 45 Years), and is based on the novel by Willy Vlautin. The story’s centered on fifteen-year-old Charley Thompson (Charlie Plummer),
Composer Chris Willis on Scoring Armando Iannucci’s Darkly Hilarious The Death of Stalin
Armando Iannucci said that he wanted to take a break from the insanity of American politics after creating the critically acclaimed, depressingly believable satire Veep on HBO. After five years of looking at the inanities and insanities of Selina Meyer (Julia Louis-Dreyfus)’s rise, fall, rise and fall in Washington D.C., Iannucci needed a palate cleanser—so he turned his attention to the very end Stalin’s ruthless, murderous grip on the Soviet Union with The Death of Stalin.
How the I, Tonya Composer Helped Recast an Infamous Villain as a Tragic Character
When the news hit in 1994 that Olympic ice skater Nancy Kerrigan had been struck in the knee just before a performance, viewers were gripped. As the sensational story unfolded and the assailant became tied to rival Tonya Harding, America thought it would never forget the event. Nearly 25 years later, it turns out that the details have grown fuzzy – some even remembering Tonya swinging the baton herself. Three-time Oscar nominated I, Tonya returned to the scene of the crime and uncovered fresh perspectives on the infamous event.
Early Man Co-composer on Collaboration & Finding The Right Caveman Yells
To soundtrack fans, British composer Tom Howe may not be a household name, but he’s been clocking eighteen hour workdays for over a decade, and has over sixty IMDB credits to his name. He believes some of the most rewarding and successful projects on that list have been collaborations. Howe got on the international radar by creating theme music for The Great British Bake-Off. In 2017, he scored the music for Professor Marston and the Wonder Women and created additional music on the blockbuster Wonder Woman itself.
Sundance 2018: American Animals Composer Captures Four Students’ Wild Alter Egos
A tribal orchestration sprinkled with sounds of the wild opens American Animals to the contrasting sight of establishing shots of Lexington, Kentucky. Composer Anne Nikitin immediately sets the tone for the rambunctious docudrama about a daydream gone too far. A group of college aged men concoct a movie style plan to steal valuables from a university, to initially hilarious result. As the events grow more sobering, Nikitin dials up the drama and brings us back to reality where the scheme collides with consequences.
Sundance 2018: The Tale Composer Delicately Threads a Fragile Story of Adolescent Abuse
For decades, documentarian Jennifer Fox had convinced herself that the sexual abuse she’d suffered as a child was consensual. In revisiting her memories and the events under the light of adulthood, Fox had a reckoning with the true nature of the events. Her memoir, starring Laura Dern as Jennifer, is laid bare in Sundance premiere The Tale. After decades of employing coping mechanisms to avoid the atrocities of sexual abuse she experienced as a child,
Sundance 2018: Talking to The King Composer About How Elvis’s Life Mirrors Modern America
If you were going to try and diagnose America’s current overall political and social health through the lens of Elvis Presley’s life, you’d want documentarian Eugene Jarecki as your filmmaker. And for Jarecki, composer Robert Miller was the man he tapped when he thought about how to create a score that would help elucidate the connections he was trying to make, while also living comfortably in a film that would be filled with indelible music,
Composer Henry Jackman on Channeling Indiana Jones for his Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle Score
Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle is an action comedy set inside a computer game being played by four teenagers. We’ve already spoken with stunt performer Jahnel Curfman about how she helped star Karen Gillan, who plays the avatar Ruby Roundhouse, make the action feel as plausible and thrilling as possible. Now, we speak with composer Henry Jackman about how he to found a way to set the tone with music that matched the action,
Oscar Watch: The Disaster Artist Composer on Memorializing the Best Bad Movie Ever
Nearly everyone who loves a good story dreams of making their own movie at some point in their life. Very few actually ever try it, and even fewer succeed. In 2003, Tommy Wiseau and Greg Sestero set out to make The Room, a ‘real Hollywood movie’ that is often regarded as one of the worst movies ever made. Ironically, their story has inspired one of this year’s strongest Oscar contenders. The Disaster Artist tells the story of two people who have been mocked as failures,
Listen to how Coco’s Composer Conjures Mexico’s Musical Heart
*We’re sharing some of our favorite interviews of the year this week in our ‘Best of 2017’ roundup.
Mudbound Composer on the History of African-American Persistence That Inspired the Score
A man’s worth was once tied to his land, and whether they liked it or not, the families who lived and worked on that land were bound to one another. Dee Rees’ Mudbound tells the story of two such families, one black and one white, whose fates are intertwined on a Mississippi farm in the 1940s. With Mudbound, Bessie, and Pariah, Rees has picked away at painful moments in American history and found beautiful,
The Goldbergs Composer on Bringing Fresh Life to 1980s Nostalgia
The 1980s were an awkward time for us all. No one escaped the fashion nightmares of track suits in bright colors, the huge hair, and an abundance of shoulder pads. Nearly all sins are forgiven with the passing of time, and The Goldbergs, now in season 5, proves there has been enough space between then and now for us to laugh at ourselves again.
The decade was, however, a golden age for nerds as cinematic classics like Ghostbusters,
Composer Carter Burwell Orchestrates Emotions for Music-Filled Wonderstruck
Carter Burwell scored 15 movies for the Coen Brothers, composed music for three Spike Jonze films and picked up an Oscar nomination for the lush score he wrote for Todd Hayne’s fifties-era melodrama Carol. But in terms of sheer magnitude, Wonderstruck marks Burwell’s biggest film scoring achievement to date. Describing his latest collaboration with Haynes on the kid-friendly adventure, Burwell says, “It’s 80 minutes of music, much more than I’ve written for a film before.”
How Battle of the Sexes Composer Nicholas Britell Uses ’70s Technology to Make Modern Score Feel Retro
Over the past five years, composer Nicholas Britell has built a name working on some of the most impressive and artful Best Picture nominees in recent memory: Twelve Years a Slave, Whiplash, The Big Short and, most recently, the stunning (and Oscar-winning) Moonlight. This year, Britell entered the Oscar race once again with Battle of the Sexes, Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris’ charmingly vivid retelling of the historic tennis match and rivalry between Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs.
Jigsaw Composer Dissects Why Music Scares Us
Former Nine Inch Nails band member Charlie Clouser knows how to give you a good scare. He’s composed the music for Wayward Pines, that creepy American Horror Story theme, The Stepfather, and The Neighbor, but it all began with Saw. His music is the subverbal terror you can’t name lurking in every one of Jigsaw’s torture rooms. Ever since the first Saw was released in 2004,
