I’ve noticed a fun trend over my years covering the convention: music and score composition has become a significant chunk of programing. Take, for instance, the 7th Annual Musical Anatomy of a Super Hero panel which kicked off programming in Ballroom 20 on Thursday, and you’ll see the power of the notes. With a collection of all stars the panel covered a wide range of topics.
Panelists
Blake Neely
Pinar Toprak
Benjamin Wallfisch
Sherri Chung
Christopher Lennertz
Host: Michael Giacchino
Opening with a Bang
The panel started with each of the panelists showing off something cool. My favorite was Ben Wallfisch bringing a video of him working with a 100 person orchestra to play the Shazam theme, which is very reminiscent of the John Williams’ themes he idolized so much growing up.
Pinar, who scored Captain Marvel revealed that she was given a demo scene to score for the movie and paid, with her own money, for a 70-piece orchestra to do the demo. This story is wild but it also kind of illuminated for me the lengths women have to go to get jobs and how determined Pinar was to make sure she got a shot.
One of my favorite anecdotes from the panel was Christopher Lennertz talking about his process of scoring The Boys. Showrunner Eric Kripke wanted the music to sound more gritty so Chris actually played his own instruments to make it sound not as professional and clean.
How do you start?
Michael mentioned that working on films is akin to building a soup. You want to have the right ingredients to make it work. Composers try and figure out what will fit the movie perfectly and the best way to do that is to lock in on the characters. Especially with superheroes finding the vulnerability is key.
To Temp or Not to Temp
As someone who has worked with composers, I always find their thoughts regarding temp score fascinating. It is super useful for production, but the composers like Blake Neely don’t too much enjoy it. He spoke about how the issue is when directors and studio heads fall in love with the temp. Chris chimed in that often it’s the composer’s challenge to figure out just what they loved about the temp and then bring that to their own work, whether it’s an instrument or sound.