As I mentioned earlier, music has come to dominated the convention, and we are all the better for it! Yesterdays panel, the 9th Annual Character of Music, presented by BMI and White Bear PR, brought along some great panelists to talk about what it’s like working in different mediums to talk about process, how to create new sounds, and fun anecdotes.
Panelists:
Tyler Bates
Michael Schwandt
Frederick Wiedmann
Aaron Ehasz
Austin Wintory
Matt Nava
Working Live
Cirque du Soleil’s new show Run, is based on cinema stunts, written by Robert Rodriguez and costumes by Kim Barrett. Knowing that the show had such a strong cinematic DNA they turned to composer extraordinaire Tyler Bates. Bates has worked in a ton of mediums, but doing the music for Cirque du Soleil presented him a new challenge, scorng for a live production. He was excited because the show is so big and there’s no finite blueprint, much ot the ideas that informed the score were from conversations he had with Michael.
The Dragon Prince
The creator and composer for Netflix Dragon Prince had a pretty tall order when making the show. Stories of fantasy had been very European centric, and they wanted to bring in more modern characters and diversity. The extended into the music as there are lots of different races and ethnicities, and Freddy really strove to find different sounds. He built suites of different instruments and then shared them with Aaron. TV scheduling is much more compressed than other arts, and so it was crucial for Aaron to have someone like Freddy who could be brilliant, fast, and prolific, but also be a partner in the storytelling. To that end, Freddy actually doesn’t get to know what happens in advanced on the show, even though he wants to. But this allows him to score as if he’s an audience member, maintaining the innocence of the show.
Video Game Scoring
Modern video games have become such big productions nowadays and as such, have demanded more from the composers to compliment the increased quality of the visuals. Matt and Austin had worked together for a long time and they knew that because of the atmosphere they wanted for the project that they should start early. Austin creates overture pieces (a key element for all composers it seems) to determine if their visions are in alignment and how to continue to work on the sound.
Guardians of the Galaxy Footnote
The coolest thing I heard at the panel was when Tyler Bates talked about how his relationship with James Gunn has evolved. After working with him on previous films, the two knew that Guardians of the Galaxy would be crazy, so he began scoring to previz, meaning that by the time they were shooting, the actors could listen to his music before the scenes. When the second film rolled around, everyone had ear buds in as they were acting, listening to the music and filming to the score.